Retro Thing

1950s Cars For The 21st Century

You have the chance of a lifetime to experience a fleet of classic GM concept cars at the Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance on Saturday August 16, 2008. Nearly all were featured in one of eight GM Motorama shows between 1949 and 1961, which showcased a stunning array of mouth-watering automobiles to feed America's post-war appetite for mobility.

The 1953 GM Motorama marked the first time that show cars were presented to the public, including the futuristic fiberglass Chevrolet Corvette. Amazingly, GM ordered the destruction of many of these pre-production vehicles after their exhibition. A company executive was required to witness them getting cut and crushed, although I suspect they were none to excited at the thought of demolishing these gems.

Several were eventually discovered in a Detroit junkyard by auto enthusiast Joe Bortz, who restored them to their former glory. The Bortz collection will be exhibited alongside nearly a dozen dream cars preserved by GM.

All that's needed to bring some of them up to date is a touch of carbon fiber trim, an iPod dock and an eco-friendly engine that runs on hominy grits.

Finnair Travels Back in Time

Finnair is going retro. The 'Silver Bird' Airbus A319 will make its maiden flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen on July 30, 2008. To commemorate the airline's 85th anniversary, it's painted in the livery of the company's 1950s Convair fleet and the crew will be stylishly appointed in 1950s uniforms. A total of 60 retro flights are scheduled throughout the remainder of the year, although the aircraft will retain its historic color scheme for years to come.

Unlike the first time around, it's doubtful you'll be allowed to chain smoke a pack of unfiltered cigarettes while enjoying a scotch or two as you sail through the skies. The original Convair cabins had leather armchairs in two rows, tasty meals were eaten at tables for the first time and the airline even offered passengers the use of an electric Philishave razor.

Visit the Finnair Retro site for details [via retrotogo]

Basic Phone

"Seen on the streets of Ann Arbor, MI." [Wooster Collective via Make]

This leads me to ask...

Retro Style Nixie Clocks From China

Nixie clocks are the neon-tube brethren of modern digital timepieces. A cottage industry sprung up recently, with dozens of tiny manufacturers turning out impressive clocks.

It seems that someone in Hong Kong has been watching and decided to get in on the action via eBay. This range of six-tube Nixie desk clocks come preassembled for a mere $120, in both stainless steel and acrylic cases. Each clock includes a 9 VDC wall adapter (110 - 240V) with user-selectable 12/24 hour display and cross-fading between digits. The digits range from 16 to 20mm in height.

For those who haven't discovered their magical allure, Nixies are neon-filled glass tubes. They usually contain ten cathodes in the shape of the numbers 0 through 9, and a wire mesh anode. When electricity is passed between one of the cathodes and the anode, the corresponding number shines with an endearing orangey-red glow. Modern Nixie clocks are based on vintage "New Old Stock" tubes controlled by microcontrollers. [via Technabob]

Build A Baking Pan Tube Amplifier

Gio Militano points out this brilliant hack, "I love using baking pans because they are so cheap. Quite often a professional chassis costs more than everything else in a project."

Australian Mark Houston built this particular project in a $7 baking pan. He cautions, "Drilling thin metal can be more problematic than drilling a heavy chassis, so be patient with drilling. I mounted the power and OTs on rubber grommets that were sliced in half. This was done to reduce the potential for transformer vibrations reaching the tubes which can be microphonic. The thin chassis is mounted on thick lacquered pine and silicon feet to also help absorb vibration.

An Alps blue velvet 50k stereo potentiometer with an audio taper was used for signal attenuation. The front of the amp was finished off with a 4 oz solid brass knob. The brass knob and attenuator are expensive but what I saved on the chassis allows me to spend in other areas and still make this an inexpensive amp to build."

The amp is built around a $16 printed circuit board from Spare Time Gizmos and features a pair of General Electric 6T9 compactron tubes that incorporate a triode and pentode in a single envelope. Surprisingly, these tubes are still easy to find and cost only $7 each. Houston estimates you should be able to put together a similar amp for about $250 in the USA.

DIY 6T9 Tube Single-Ended Amplifier [diyaudioprojects.com]

Hey Mr. Microphone! I'll Be Back To Pick You Up Later!

When we talk about mobile audio around here, it's usually a cool car stereo, portable 8 track, or a slick boom box. In 1979 a commercial for a new on-the-go audio device was so pervasive that you just aren't a kid of the 70's if you don't remember Ronco's Mister Microphone.

Mister Microphone was the first wireless microphone I'd ever seen (at least the first I'd seen for sale at the grocery store). Inside it was a low powered transmitter that sends a signal to a nearby FM radio. According to the commercial, Mister Microphone can make you into a rapper, professional singer, or a letch in a convertible.

The few times I used a Mister Microphone, I remember it being a bit flaky. Legally speaking these kinds of devices had to be really short range (can you imagine if your drunk uncle had the power to be on every radio in the neighborhood?), and finding the exact frequency on your FM receiver could be pretty fiddly.

Still, I'm for any product that lets regular people take control of the media - even if it's just their car speakers. Ronco advertised lots of other "necessities" like the Pocket Fisherman and the Veg-O-Matic, but Mister Microphone is still a kitsch classic that speaks for itself.

Here's another TV ad for version 2 of Mister Microphone

related:

Retro Sci-Fi stylings of wrist-mounted "Astro Com" microphone
An unusual tie-tack mic by ElectroVoice
Gorgeous collection of classic microphones

Ten Things You Should Know About the Model T

As part of our celebration of the Ford Centennial Model T Party in Richmond, Indiana, here are ten things you might not know about this classic:

1.  Although Henry Ford is famously quoted as saying "You can have any color you want, as long as it is black," the 1908 Model T touring car was painted red and the roadster was pearl grey.

2.  Black became the only paint color in 1914, following the introduction of Ford's moving production line. Not only did a single color simplify the manufacturing process, black paint was also the fastest drying. Ford historian Robert Kreipke explains that this made quite a difference, "With numerous coats applied, the bodies could be finished in one-tenth the time." Color returned in 1926 with the addition of maroon and green on certain models.

3.  Only 308 Model T's were produced in 1908. The Model T's top production year was 1923 with 2,011,125 cars manufactured worldwide. That year, the Ford Motor Company made a profit of roughly $37 on each car sold.

Build a Pixellated VW Beetle

The VW Beetle's iconic silhouette presented a serious design challenge for LEGO. However, the Beetle is the classic car most requested by LEGO fans, so designer Steen Sig Andersen took three weeks to craft his interpretation of its rounded profile from angular LEGO blocks.

Andersen explains, "When you scale things down, it’s more difficult to achieve that rounded look when you’re working with squares and cubes. So a few square edges are inevitable." The square edges initially caused concern at VW's head office in Wolfsberg, although the Germans eventually grew to love LEGO's daring reinterpretation of the iconic 1960 'Charlotte' model.

The 16" (41cm) long two-tone blue model offers a stunning level of detail, including opening doors, hood and trunk, a spare tire in the front and reproduction air-cooled engine in the back. The 1,626 piece kit is recommended for patient adults and retails for $119.99. Follow the jump for more pix.

LEGO Volkswagen Beetle [via my son's latest LEGO catalog]

The Snapshot Museum

Giles Perkins just drew my attention to Sonja Campbell's Snapshot Museum, which features a small but growing collection of found and donated snaps. Sadly, our modern preference for digital images is rapidly turning the printed photo into a dying art.

"The collection includes black and white and colour photographs, slides, negatives, Polaroids, Photo booth, albums, vintage camera equipment, home movies and other photographic ephemera.

Snapshots are candid and honest; sometimes bad, sometimes stunning. They have a charming lack of guile and intention. Within the collection there are photographs of outstanding technical and conceptual ability that could rival many acclaimed photographers."

Visit The Snapshot Museum

Ford Model T: A New Museum For An Old Friend

Time has a way of clouding history, and many of us have never experienced the Ford Model T firsthand or fully grasped its place in automotive history. To help us remember, the Model T Museum in Centerville, Indiana opened its doors in September 2007 – just in time to celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. The Model T was the Ford Motor Company's only product in 1908. While some questioned the wisdom of building an automotive company around a single machine, history proved Henry Ford right. Over fifteen million Model Ts were produced over the next couple of decades, cementing it as the vehicle that brought mobility to the masses.

Jay Klehfoth is the gregarious CEO of the Model T Ford Club of America. He and his wife Barbara are the driving forces behind the new museum and the massive Centennial 'Model T-Party' this week at the nearby Wayne County Fairgrounds in Richmond. He jokes that “Model Ts are like Fritos; you can't just eat one.” He knew he wanted one as a seven-year-old, and got his wish at the tender age of 13. The car was an olive green 1927 coupe that he admits “needed a little help.” It became a faithful companion, accompanying him to school in the early 1960s while his schoolmates dreamed of more modern wheels. Jay still owns that first car today, along with two of others. “I'll always own it,” he pronounces solemnly. Not to be left out of the fun, his wife Barbara owns a Model T as well.

Clairtone: Vintage Canadian Hi-Fi

DC Hiller and Daniel LeBlanc recently let us know about their site dedicated to the beautiful Clairtone Project G series. Clairtone was founded in 1958 by serial entrepreneur Peter Munk and designer David Gilmour. The elegant Project G stereos cemented the Canadian company at the forefront of industrial design in the early 1960s. Unfortunately, the company's expensive designs carried high production costs, and the company faltered in the late 1960s after an expensive attempt to get in on the ground floor of the color television market.

Hiller and LeBlanc eloquently explain the Clairtone allure, "In the sixties, Clairtone’s Project G stereo was the epitome of bachelor pad cool. It transformed the traditional console box by cantilevering its speakers outside the Scandinavian-style modern cabinet. It won a silver medal at the 1964 Milan Triennale, the international design industry’s most prestigious exhibition, and was adopted by progressives within the arts and entertainment community.

Frank Sinatra endorsed it, and G series models appeared in films such as The Graduate with Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman and A Fine Madness with Sean Connery. Hugh Hefner bought a unit for the Playboy Mansion and jazz legend Oscar Peterson claimed that his music sounded as good on a Project G as it did live."

Incidentally, a number of their photos appear in Nina Munk's book The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, including the cover image.

Clairtone: When innovation was in style and Canada was in vogue

Fantastic Contraption: Mechapunk Delight

Device, Volume 1: Fantastic Contraption is a beautiful 120-page paperback that highlights brilliant mechanapunk-steam-cybercreations by an international group of artists. The book release accompanies an exhibition of these contraptions at the new Device Gallery in La Jolla, California, which runs from July 19th through September 2nd.

Publisher IDW reports,"'Fantastic Contraption is as much as an experience as it is an exhibition and sets the tone for the unique aesthetic of the Device Gallery,' explains gallery co-owner Amy Brotherton. It’s like being transported in time to Leonardi Da Vinci’s workshop and while the work cannot easily be defined by a genre or medium, the sheer genius is undeniable."

It's amazing to see this movement hit the publishing mainstream, and I continue to hope that it'll have a positive influence on a new generation of young industrial designers and mad scientists. The book will be released on July 29, 2008, but it's available to pre-order for less than $14.

Order a copy of Fantastic Contraption
Visit the official Device Gallery site

Orbiter Space Flight Simulator: Do You Have The Right Stuff?

Martin Schweiger's Orbiter lets you try your hand at launching a space vehicle, although you should expect your first attempts to end in disaster. In fact, the FAQ includes questions like, "Why can't get into orbit?" The current version includes the TransX module to set up interplanetary routes, should you wish to try your hand at reaching Mars.

"Launch the Space Shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to deploy a satellite, rendezvous with the International Space Station or take the futuristic Delta-glider for a tour through the solar system - the choice is yours.

The emphasis is firmly on realism, and the learning curve can be steep. Be prepared to invest some time and effort to brush up on your orbital mechanics background. Good starting points are JPL's Basics of Space Flight, and R. Braeunig's Rocket & Space Technology."

Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

Bennett Robots Invade Brooklyn

"These robot sculptures, created by Gordon Bennett, are made from a mixture of found objects which are both old and new. The parts are found in various places including garbage dumps, basements, construction sites, and garage sales. They are inspired by Norman Bel Geddes and Raymond Loewy whose visions of the 'Modern Age' helped shape industrial design of the 40s and 50s."

The robots are on display at City Foundry, 365 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. RT reader Jack Szwergold visited City Foundry several years ago and snapped a great flickr set, including the photo above. Prices for these intricate handmade sculptures range from $750 to $6000. You can also purchase a 24" x 36" poster featuring 30 Bennett creations for $50 including postage.

Bennett Robot Works

Ford Model T Celebrates 100 Years, And We're There!

The first Model T rolled out of Ford's Piquette Plant in Dearborn, Michigan almost a full century ago. To celebrate the Tin Lizzie's 100th anniversary, the Model T Ford Club of America is holding a massive Centennial 'Model T-Party' this week in Richmond, Indiana. Close to 1,000 Model T's will be on hand for the festivities. Bohus and I will be there too, so expect frequent updates.

The Model T stood apart as the first affordable mass-produced car with interchangeable parts. However, what truly revolutionized the industry was Ford's moving assembly line, introduced in 1913. The Model T was equipped with a 20-horsepower, four-cylinder engine with a top speed of around 40-45 miles per hour, weighed 1,200 pounds, and achieved 13 to 21 miles per gallon.

The iconic car remained in production for 19 years, selling over 15 million units. Mass production allowed Ford to reduce the 1908 asking price of $825 to a mere $260 by 1925. In fact, by 1921 the Model T accounted for almost 57% of worldwide automobile production. In some ways, the Model T was the iPod of the early 20th century; it wasn't the first commercially produced automobile, but it became the dominant player in a young and fast-paced industry.

Read more about the Model T Ford Centennial T-Party