Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Keyboard Mod

December 5, 2024 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

Let’s face it, failed Kickstarters are no good. But they can spark good things, like real versions of technologies that might have actually been faked for the platform. A touchscreen mouse, for instance, with shortcuts that can be programmed for various applications.

A DIY mouse with a large touch screen. — Image by [Sam Baker] via Hackaday.IO

This story is one of scope creep, as [Sam Baker] says in the project details. At first, he thought he could just basically duct tape a touchscreen with shortcuts to an existing mouse. A couple of mouse teardowns later, [Sam] arrived at the conclusion that things would not be so simple.

After some digging around, [Sam] found a repository where someone created a way to communicate with the ADNS-5050 optical sensor, so [Sam] started by creating a breakout board for this sensor. By combining that with an ESP32 dev board and a touchscreen, [Sam] had his shortcut mouse.

Does it work? Yes. Is it useful? Well, yes. And also no. The beauty part of using a regular mouse is that you don’t have to look down at it to know where the buttons are. In the future, [Sam] would like to implement some kind of buttons for tactility. In the meantime, haptic feedback could be nice.

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A Brief History Of Teleportation

December 5, 2024 by Al Williams 88 Comments

OK, I know. We don’t have practical teleportation. But that hasn’t stopped generations of science fiction authors and movie makers from building stories around it. If you ask most ordinary people, they’d tell you the idea originated with the Star Trek transporter, but that’s far from the truth. So when did people start thinking about teleporting?

Ground Rules

Maybe it isn’t fair, but I will draw the line at magic or unexplained teleportation. So “The Tempest”, for example, doesn’t use technology but magic. To get to Barsoom, John Carter wished or slept to teleport to Mars. So, while technology might seem like magic, we’re focusing on stories where some kind of machine can send something — usually people — to somewhere else.

Of course, there’s a fine line between pure magic and pure technology where they overlap. For example, in the opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen”, a magic helmet gives people powers, including that of teleportation. While you could argue that Tarnhelm — the name of the magic helmet — was a technological artifact, it is still explained by magic, not science.

Some systems need a transmitter and a receiver. Sometimes, you only need the transmitter. Sometimes, you can only teleport within a limited range, but other make-believe systems can transport an entire starship across the galaxy.

Early Teleporters

The Man without a Body is a story from 1877 in which a scientist is able to transmit a cat via a telegraph wire. Encouraged, he attempts the same feat with himself, but the battery dies in the middle, leaving him with a disembodied head. The ending is decidedly devoid of science, but the story is possibly the earliest one with a machine sending matter across a distance.

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The London Underground Is Too Hot, But It’s Not An Easy Fix

December 4, 2024 by Lewin Day 91 Comments

The London Underground is an iconic piece of Victorian era engineering. What started in 1863 quickly became a core piece of infrastructure that would define the modern character of the British capital. It’s grown and changed immensely in the many years that have passed. Sadly, increasing patronage and more trains have created problems that the original designers never envisaged.

Deep in those London tunnels lies an engineering challenge. The Tube is literally cooking itself. Every day, millions of commuters descend into a network of tunnels that have been absorbing heat since the reign of Queen Victoria. Those clay-lined tubes have been soaking up excess thermal energy like a giant underground radiator, and now they’re giving it back with interest. The tunnels are simply too hot, and cooling them down is inordinately difficult.

The Perfect Storm of Thermal Chaos

The Tube’s heat problem isn’t just about one thing gone wrong – it’s about everything gone wrong at once. When Victorian engineers designed these tunnels, cooling wasn’t a major consideration. The tight, compact tunnels were built deep, nestled in the clay beneath London. In the early days, temperatures in the Underground were considered comfortably low.

“The Underground’s the only spot for comfort when the days are hot; it is cooler below.” – London Underground poster, 1926

Originally, the clay surrounding the tunnels sat at around 14°C, acting as a heat sink for the network. However, over the years, with more trains coming and going and more heat pouring in, the temperature has risen. It now typically sits anywhere from 19° to 26 °C. That’s just the earth around the tunnels, though. Air temperatures are worse—hitting as high as 47°C during a 2006 heatwave. The problem has been a continual bugbear of the beloved Tube, with concerns that future heatwaves could see temperatures rise ever higher. Continue reading “The London Underground Is Too Hot, But It’s Not An Easy Fix” →

Scratch And Sniff Stickers And The Gas Panic Of ’87

December 3, 2024 by Lewin Day 41 Comments

Ever wonder how those scratch and sniff stickers manage to pack a punch of aroma into what looks like ordinary paper? The technology behind it is deceptively clever, and has been used everywhere from children’s books to compact discs.

Most Scratch and Sniff stickers are simple nose-based novelties, though they’ve seen other uses as diagnostic tools, too. As Baltimore Gas and Electric discovered in 1987, though, these stickers can also cause a whole lot of hullabaloo. Let’s explore how this nifty technology works, and how it can go—somewhat amusingly—wrong.

The Science

3M developed the scratch and sniff technology in the 1960s. It quickly gained iconic status in the decades that followed. via eBay

At its heart, scratch and sniff technology involves the microencapsulation of tiny smellable particles, which are then impregnated into stickers or other paper products. Microscopic amounts of aromatic materiale are trapped inside gelatin or plastic capsules, and then stuck to paper. When you scratch the surface, these capsules rupture, releasing their aromatic cargo into the air. It’s an elegant feat of materials engineering, originally developed by Gale W. Matson. Working at 3M in the 1960s, he’d been intending to create a new kind of carbonless copy paper.

Scratch and Sniff stickers soon became a popular novelty in the 1970s. The catchy name was perfect—it told you everything you need to know. A children’s book named Little Bunny Follows His Nose was one of the first widespread applications. Released in 1971, it was entirely based around the whole scratch and sniff concept. Children could read along and scratch various illustrations of peaches, roses and pine needles to see what they smelled like. The book was reprinted multiple times, remaining in publication for over three decades.

Other popular media soon followed. Pop rock band The Raspberries put a scratch and sniff sticker on their album cover in 1972. Director John Waters would go on to release his 1981 film Polyester with an accompanying “Odorama” card, which featured multiple smells for viewers to sniff during the movie. The concept still resurfaces occasionally, though the gimmick is now well-worn. In 2010, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream album smelled like cotton candy thanks to a scratch-and-sniff treatment on the Deluxe Edition, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard put a similar touch on 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana. Continue reading “Scratch And Sniff Stickers And The Gas Panic Of ’87” →

A Brief History Of Calculator Watches

December 2, 2024 by Al Williams 33 Comments

When humans counted on their fingers, everyone had a state-of-the-art (at the time) calculator at all times. But as we got smarter about calculation, we missed that convenience. When slide rules were king, techies were known to carry them around like swords swinging from their belts. These were replaced with electronic calculators, some also swinging from belt loops, but no matter how small they were, they still were not that handy, no pun intended. That changed around 1975. The Time Computer Calculator company produced an amazing calculator watch for Pulsar. At the time, Pulsar was a brand of the Hamilton Watch Company.

A Pulsar calculator watch (photo: The Smithsonian)

There were a few problems. First, the watch was thick. Despite its size, it had tiny keys, so you had to use a little stylus to push the keys — not as handy as you might wish. On top of that, 1975 display technology used power-hungry LEDs. So, the display was prone to turning off quickly, and the batteries died quickly.

Unsurprisingly, Hamilton, in conjunction with Electro/Data, had earlier rolled out the first LED watch in 1972. With an 18-karat gold case, it went for a cool $2,100 — a whole lot of money in 1972. The first calculator watch was also gold and went for almost $4,000. Soon, though, they brought out a stainless and a gold-filled version that came in at under $500.

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Exploring The Sounds And Sights Of Alien Worlds

December 2, 2024 by Maya Posch 14 Comments

The 20th century saw humankind’s first careful steps outside of the biosphere in which our species has evolved. Whereas before humans had experienced the bitter cold of high altitudes, the crushing pressures in Earth’s oceans, as well as the various soundscapes and vistas offered in Earth’s biosphere, beyond Earth’s atmosphere we encountered something completely new. Departing Earth’s gravitational embrace, the first humans who ventured into space could see the glowing biosphere superimposed against the seemingly black void of space, in which stars, planets and more would only appear when blending out the intense light from the Earth and its life-giving Sun.

Years later, the first humans to set foot on the Moon experienced again something unlike anything anyone has experienced since. Walking around on the lunar regolith in almost complete vacuum and with very low gravity compared to Earth, it was both strangely familiar and hauntingly alien. Although humans haven’t set foot on Mars yet, we have done the next best thing, with a range of robotic explorers with cameras and microphones to record the experience for us here back on Earth.

Unlike the Moon, Mars has a thin but very real atmosphere which permits the travel of soundwaves, so what does the planet sound like? Despite what fictional stories like Weir’s The Martian like to claim, reality is in fact stranger than fiction, with for example a 2024 research article by Martin Gillier et al. as published in JGR Planets finding highly variable acoustics during Mars’ seasons. How much of what we consider to be ‘normal’ is just Earth’s normal?

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