The Internet is wonderful for what it is, but there are many times I wish it was a truly high resolution medium. Perhaps that's why I still covet glossy magazines and books -- I'm addicted to pretty pictures.
John Alderman (author) and Mark Richards (photographer) share my love of stunning imagery and intelligent prose. Their new book, Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers, is a beautiful ode to 35 vintage computers that shaped the world. The featured machines are part of the world's most renowned computer collection, The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Over 100 full color photographs (frequently two page spreads) are the next best thing to being able to reach out and touch Eniac, a Cray supercomputer, an old French Minitel network terminal, an Osborne I portable or the incredibly quaint Apple I. Each set of images is accompanied by thoughtful text which offers insight into each machine's unique capabilities and eccentricities.
Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers [Amazon product page]




Perhaps it was evidence of how paltry my local library was, or maybe I was as weird a kid as I am an adult, but I remember reading a lot of really old books full of "dangerous" projects. I pulled out lots of project books that had their first printings in the 30's, often listing ingredients you couldn't get anymore. I realize now that perhaps I shouldn't have burned all those holes in the lawn, nor used the toilet & plunger as pestle & mortar.
This book collects some of the best of these old projects. What boy wouldn't like to learn how to make their own timer and tripwire? A periscope or go-kart? You'll learn about the greatest paper airplane ever, how to palm a coin, and the five knots every boy should know! This is the kind of stuff that my father showed me how to do - the kinds of things I thought everybody knew.
This may be the item that fits the most Retro Thing categories ever! Clearly this is a book, it deals with optics, and it uses a turntable to make the magic work. The first section of the book details how many popular spinning optical illusions work, the second part having full-page optical illusions that can tear out. The book has a hole through its center, so once you tear out the full page illusions you can pop them on your turntable.
The book explains that while you can see many of these illusions by spinning the patterns on a pencil tip, they work better with constant rotation like that provided by a turntable. The part that might be the most surprising is the publishing date of the book: 1992. That's quite a bit after turntables were on their way out of many households. The book's intro makes mention of this, joking that this book will help you get some use out of that "obsolete turntable" you didn't throw out yet.

David Bainbridge (now an Associate Professor at Alliant International University) published The Integral Passive Solar Water Heater Book back in 1981. It has been out of print for many years, but is now available again on the 'Net as a downloadable acrobat file. I've only skimmed it, but there are a lot of clever ideas hidden on these 25 year-old pages.
Compute! was a fantastic computer hobbyist magazine published between 1979 through 1994. Its hallowed pages covered Atari, Apple, Commodore, Texas Instruments, Timex/Sinclair, and many other early personal computers. 
