Retro Thing

The Emergence of Tool Libraries

Despite the best efforts of kindergarten teachers everywhere, we're conditioned not to share. Nowhere is this more obvious than the garden shed. Most of us own dozens of tools, even though they spend 99.95% of the time sitting alone in the dark. 

Every once in a while we get brave and lend a grubby old hammer to the neighbor in exchange for some time alone with her wheelbarrow, but mostly we keep our stuff padlocked and forgotten. Of course, the helpful folks who run home improvement stores love our deranged selfishness, since it helps them sell boatloads of expensive stuff.

The Northeast Portland (Oregon) Tool Library is a clever solution to the problem. They offer an ever-increasing assortment of household tools. Membership is free for local residents and you're allowed to check out up to seven tools per week during the library's Saturday open hours. Tools are due back by 10:00 a.m. the following Saturday. It's a simple, cheap return to the past that should be emulated by grown-up kindergartners everywhere.

Northeast Portland Tool Library [via Make]

Top 10 Most Collected Arcade Games

Here's a list of the most collected coin-op video games, as tracked by The Video Arcade Preservation Society. Each of these classics is brilliant in its own way, although I'm somewhat stunned to see Ms. Pac-Man in the number one spot.

1. Ms. Pac-Man
2. Tempest
3. Pac-Man
4. Galaga
5. Donkey Kong
6. Centipede
7. Asteroids
8. Joust
9. Defender
10. Robotron 2084

Relocating: MZTV Museum of Television

Canadian entrepreneur Moses Znaimer is best known for founding the CHUM Radio and Television empire. He's also an avid television memorabilia collector. The newly relocated MZTV Museum features several unique pieces, including television's first star - Felix the Cat. The collection also includes the 1939 World's Fair Phantom Teleceiver and a Baird Televisor. Modern television is ubiquitous, yet Znaimer reminds us, "There are fewer prewar TVs left in the world than Stradivarius violins."

The MZTV Museum will reopen on July 20, 2009 at 550 Queen Street East in the heart of Toronto. If you'd prefer a virtual visit, the MZTV site features six permanent online exhibits, including a 3D interactive look at "seven of the most intriguing television sets in history."

MZTV Museum of Television

"Billie Jean" Done Casio Style

Matt Ryd sent us a link to a video of his latest project, a great Casio-heavy cover of Michael Jackson's hit "Billie Jean". There's no end in sight to the MJ tributes, but so far this is the only one I've heard that sounds like a fan could have created it in his bedroom in the 80's.

instruments in this video:

All plastic guitar, the Casio DG-10
Rolf Harris rocks the Stylophone
Toy instrument that made hits: the Omnichord

Weekend Retro Roundup

Let's start the weekend off right with a couple of vintage crash tests -- an old VW Beetle and classic Golf. Sadly, neither fared particularly well. Thank goodness for modern computer-designed crumple zones and airbags.

- Hack-A-Day recently featured a USB-equipped Commodore 64 modded to work as a standard PC keyboard. Given the nightmarish ergonomics of the C-64, I'm not sure this is a good idea. There's also a writeup on an insanely complicated Intel 8008-based clock.  

- Rob Beschizza seems to be re-targeting Boing Boing Gadgets at the arts & crafts crowd with a completely daft felt netbook sleeve reminiscent of an old NES controller. Inexplicably, I find myself drawn to its fuzzy retro cuteness.

- Ace Fairlight technician Peter Wielk is selling a fully expanded Fairlight Series III Computer Music Instrument on eBay, currently at $7,900. It's equipped with 32 MB of sample memory, a 4 GB hard drive and 16 voices. Shipping to the USA from Oz is a whopping $630 extra.

- Chiron Bramberger tells us, "A while back I wanted to see if I could turn e-waste into something fun, so I designed an effects pedal from the guts of an old modem." The result is the tremendously cool Dragonfly, an all-analog effects pedal that combines recycled components with demented chrome-plated skull knobs.

Oh, and I just discovered that my Essential Retro gadget book is now 10% off at Amazon. Only $17.95, with free shipping on orders over $25. If you love this site, please support us by buying a copy. We're also considering a run of Retro Thing t-shirts. Anyone interested?

1943: The Romance Of Steam?

"A general view in the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad locomotive shops." [click to enlarge]

Medium-format nitrate negative by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration. March 1943, San Bernardino, California. From the Library of Congress archives, via Shorpy.

Mike Rivamonte's Robots

Allow me to introduce Benton. He's the brainchild of designer Mike Rivamonte. Unfortunately, Benton simply stands around looking distinguished -- he's a poseur, not a combat-hardened battlebot.

Rivamonte's obsession with technology started as a boy. He explains, "My work is greatly influenced by my family. As kids, my mom would take us to countless antique stores, curio shops and flea markets. During these 'field trips,' I marveled over dusty scientific instruments, phonographs and other obscure mechanical devices. I developed a deep appreciation and interest of inventions and history. I picked up the love of making things from my father and uncles. My dad built our first color television set, all kinds of radios and our first computer. He could and would build anything. We constructed many things together. My uncles, one a science teacher the other a carpenter, fueled my inquisitive, experimental nature and appreciation for the finer points of craftsmanship.

These sculptures reflect the imagination and influences of my childhood. They are my interpretation of robots and spacemen capable of flight and mischief. Rare and collectible objects from all over are transformed to create expressive unique characters. Each piece is constructed so that they appear as natural and lifelike as possible. I invite the viewer to enjoy their individual personalities and have as much fun observing the pieces as I do creating them."

Benton and his companions are created from all manner of vintage objects, ranging from old trolley fare boxes to vintage movie cameras and tube radios. You can rest assured that if I were Supreme Ruler of the world, I would squander billions to bring an army of benevolent Bentons to life... hunger and world peace be damned.

Mike Rivamonte's Robots [via Dinosaurs & Robots]
More Rivamonte robots on Flickr

Educational Film Causes More Problems Than It Solves

A friend and I were having an interesting chat about educational movies. VHS and DVD players in every classroom obsoleted the ritualistic wheeling in of the 16mm projector, the baffling threading of the film, and the hopelessly outdated movie unspooling before students who only cared about getting out of classwork. The largest boom in producing these films was in the 50's and 60's; the start of the push-button age. Taking inspiration from WWII training films, educators felt that multimedia could offer an essentially push-button solution to any problem, be it technical or emotional.

This is only a short clip from such a film (I don't know if I could stand the whole movie). While the underlying message is surprisingly progressive for the time, the actual application is clinical and just damned odd. If you think that your mother manages to make the occasional inopportune slip-up, just imagine if your mom chose her words and her chattier moments like Madam Emotionally-Barren here...

related:

Wrongheaded educational video warns: Don't Copy That Floppy
Educational puppets for the classroom
2-XL educational robot runs on 8 track tapes

The Ultimate Pedal Car

To celebrate their centenary, the Morgan Motor Company has unveiled a limited production run of 500 SuperSport Junior pedal cars. Designed for 6-13 year-olds, these stunning vehicles are manufactured in the Morgan factory alongside the usual array of grown-up toys.

Crafted from lightweight aluminum, the 2/3 scale recreation of Morgan's classic 3-wheeler offers a 3-speed crank drive, working lights and hand stitched adjustable seating. Production is planned to start in August 2009, with cars built to order. A £500 deposit is required... at a total price of £2,510 (excluding VAT and delivery). Oh, to be a prince.

Morgan SuperSport Junior Centennial Pedal Car

NASA Revisits The Moon In High Definition

The 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is less than two weeks away. In anticipation of this milestone, here's a look at NASA's shiny new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The LRO launched on June 19, 2009 - NASA's first lunar mission this century.

The spacecraft will spend a year in a low polar orbit approximately 50 km above the lunar surface. Its primary mission is to compile high-resolution 3D maps that could help to identify landing sites for future surface exploration. NASA will also be on the lookout for life-sustaining water and potentially lethal radiation.

Video: LRO/LCROSS Atlas 5 Launch
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: NASA's First Step Back To The Moon

FreeDOS: Like MS-DOS, Except Free

Fifteen years ago, Microsoft announced they were leaving DOS behind and pinning their hopes on a futuristic operating system called Windows 95 . Jim Hall wasn't happy about the change. He recalls, "In 1994, I was a physics student at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Most of my work up to that time had been done using DOS. But then Microsoft announced they were moving off DOS in the next release of Windows. So I started an effort to recreate DOS. PD-DOS was announced to the world on June 28, 1994."

OK, so nobody in their right mind would pay for a copy of MS-DOS these days. But if you find yourself in need of such a beast, you need FreeDOS. This compact operating system is more-or-less MS-DOS compatible and incorporates modern enhancements such as a mouse driver, media player, multi-boot and USB support.

There. Now you have no excuse not to revisit 1994.

The FreeDOS Project

Crafters Love The U.S.A. One Stitch At A Time

As night falls this July 4th, lots of Americans will hit the streets to set off all manner of fireworks and (unfortunately) illegal ordnance. Calamitous events of recent years have renewed patriotic ostentation - especially the kitschy kind. We've featured many classic examples of such - we still get email about the Marx Plastic Presidents from my earliest days at Retro Thing. It's easy to see that this country has a long rich history of political & social innovation... commemorated by tacky crap.

My mother is a witty little knitter. I mean it, she's a machine at the artful tangling of yarn and thread and turning out breathtaking artisan work. That's why I've never understood plastic canvas cross-stitch. A staple of the roadside craft fair scene, these plastic canvas productions always seemed like a project for juveniles or the recuperative set on their way to more advanced crafting. Clearly this is a far more popular hobby than I thought as thrift stores are piled high with this stuff. Mostly you find these opuses in the form of decorative wall hangings, but occasionally these projects take advantage of the plastic canvas' stiff structure to build 3D functional objects... like a patriotic tissue box cozy for example.

For a country that is very sensitive about display of the flag, and what is and isn't appropriate behavior around Old Glory, we're sure content to put our flag on darn near any piece of junk. I don't begrudge anyone for expressing their patriotism through their craft, but it seems odd to think that the drippy-nosed among us will feel our souls stir every time we reach for a tissue.

"Ah-choo!"
"Bless you."
"God Bless America, too..."

related:
Puzzle version of the U.S. by Hasbro
Presidents immortalized as aftershave
Cross-stitch your own heirloom clock

ACME Whistles

My 7-year-old would love an ACME whistle. However, it would only be a matter of minutes before one of his loving parents discovered him terrorizing the hamster with shrill 100 dB blasts.

Evil Parent would then accidentally flatten the bloody thing under the nearest passing bus. The disarmed kid would count to ten before wailing inconsolably (with a mischievous glint in his eye) until we promised to buy an even louder model.

Luckily, most of ACME's wares are dirt cheap. For example, the famous Metropolitan Police Whistle weighs in at a quite reasonable £8.55.

If you're eager to spend more, the Thunderer Titanic - finished in sterling silver - could be yours for £82.71. It's billed as the "Authentic whistle as used on the famous ocean liner." The site includes dozens of piercing audio samples in mp3 format for hours of torture listening pleasure.

The Official ACME Whistle Site [via Dominic Ali]

Sony Walkman Turns 30, Feels A Bit Overweight

The original Walkman was released on July 1, 1979. But let's get couple of things straight: Sony didn't come up with the idea, and its success was due to revolutionary lightweight headphones, not the lowly Philips Compact Cassette.

I labored for years under the mistaken belief that Sony invented the portable personal stereo, culminating in the release of the Walkman in mid-1979 (it sold only 3,000 units in the first month). It turns out I was wrong. The real credit for such devices goes to Brazilian intellectual Andreas Pavel, who created the first portable personal stereo players in the late 1960s.

He was unable to get people to see the magic of the device -- no great surprise, given the massive earmuff headphones that were the state-of-the-art in the sixties and seventies. He recounts that, while he lived in Milan in 1976, "people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, 'Why is this crazy man running around with headphones?"'

Pavel filed patents in five countries, and Sony agreed to license his technology in 1986 -- although they refused to acknowledge him as the technology's inventor. He fought long and hard, and it wasn't until 2003 that he reached an agreement with Sony that saw him credited for his idea, along with a sizable cash settlement rumored to be over $10 million. To his credit, he never let his legal battle consume him or define his life, even when faced with financial ruin.

While many people assume that the Compact Cassette tape was the secret behind the Walkman's runaway success, it would have been a dismal flop without the introduction of featherweight headphones with samarium-cobalt magnets.

The original headphones weighed a mere 45 grams. Prior to that, hi-fi headphones were bulky, heavy devices ill suited to jogging or riding the train. Their arrival was a critical and frequently overlooked part of the Walkman's immense success throughout the early 1980s, especially when you realize that the Compact Cassette had been on the market for 15 years before the Walkman set sales on fire.

Walkman 20th Anniversary Press Release from 1999 (oh, how far we've come...)
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman  [thanks, Gio and Retroandy!]