The vinyl resurgence shows no sign of slowing, so here's a great budget turntable for your newly thrifted LPs.
We take many things for granted in the modern world. Sometimes it's good to step back from the computer to attempt to create something utterly normal, just to remind oneself how bloody hard it can be. I'm surrounded by a sea of paper - it covers my desk, lurks in piles on the floor and bookshelf, and eventually flows into a recycling box in the corner. Paper is something that I couldn't do without, but don't have a clue how to make. Let's fix that in Retro Thing's first-ever "Martha Moment."
Fun Science Gallery features an excellent guide that leads you through the process of 'recycling' newsprint into a brand new sheet of heavy paper. You could also make the stuff from cloth and even bark, but that's more work than the gang at Retro Thing Labs is willing to invest.
Where else do you get to play with a mortal and pestle, hairdryer and a sieve, apart from your local meth lab? What you do with the final product is up to you - I heartily recommend ransom notes, really heavy paper airplanes and doodle sheets. Heck, you could even add a piece of duct tape and create a homemade post-it note.
OK, I'm done. I promise never to channel Martha Stewart again.
Atomic Rocket: Space Suits offers up pictures of dozens of imaginative designs that will ensure that you're the toast of every space station tailgate party. Just remember to follow the immortal words of Larry Niven in The Hole Man: "You don't leave your fly open in a pressure suit."
This led to talking of the days when "multimedia" actually meant multiple separate devices synchronized together to put on a show. Back when phones only made telephone calls, you'd need special machines in order to bring audio to visuals. The Singer Caramate (yes, the sewing machine people), brings together a carousel slide projector, a cassette player, and a built-in screen.
These weren't really consumer devices. I saw them mostly in schools and in libraries. In addition to looking at commercially available slide shows, you could also create your own using a 35mm camera and the Caramate - much easier than trying to make your own educational filmstrip! Until video cassettes came along, this was probably the least expensive way of synchronizing a visual presentation with sound.
Getting back to this game's place in the record books, I don't think that you can really call this game "electronic". To me an electronic game has to have calculations or logic going on inside its little brain. Beeps are also nice.
Enter the Dazey 160. Not only do it's multiple scary blades still make short work of ice cubes, it's housed in an unmistakable rocket shape. The late 40's brought with it an exuberant movement in design that fans call "Populuxe". 
As a boy I remember accompanying my father to the marble cutting plant he worked with. They had ancient and massive machines for slowly (we're talking days) sawing through slabs of marble that were two stories high. The large saws had massive wooden flywheels and exposed parts much the size of these things, so these gears must have been intended for something very, very large.
