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oobject: 'daily user-ranked gadget lists'
There is something inherently fascinating about survival kits. Here are some of our favorites, including those below ejector seats, some nicely designed kits from Japan and at Target, and those that we thought had interesting components. We will add to this list over time, send us suggestions of genuinely interesting or unusual, non-gimmick kits.

Survival Kits

Beautiful working model Stirling engines are a favorite of the Steampunk style, because these efficient engines use external flame heat as an energy source, combined with Victorian brass or steel mechanisms.But they have an added benefit, in that their workings are entirely intuitive and help people easily understand the principals of cylinder engines in things like cars. Here are a collection of videos of some of our favorites, some, but not all, 'Steampunky', in action.

12 steampunk stirling engines (videos)

A gallery of incredible streamline design. No other period in product design is more important to American history than the Streamlined period. Here are our favorite gadgets and vehicles from the Sky Captain World of Tomorrow.Ironically the streamlined shape is less aerodynamic than it looks. It came from the high speed steam trains designed by people like Raymond Loewy or cars by Norman Bel Geddes (the father of the actress who played Miss Ellie in Dallas) and still exists in kitchen and bar-ware and the 40s style Airstream trailers which escorted the Astronauts off the Space Shuttle today and still look futuristic.

24 Sky Captain gadgets & vehicles

From London to Moscow to New York, Chicago, Dubai and Shanghai, almost every single high rise city in the world is seeing skyscraper projects canceled even as they have their foundations laid and start to rise from the ground.Here is a list of the biggest projects that have been put on hold so far. The disappointing reality is that almost none of them have any particular architectural merit, apart from Calatrava's Chicago Spire, perhaps, and reflect a period when architecture firms were too overloaded with work to think very hard about the designs. Vote for which ones you would have liked to have seen finished.

15 skyscrapers on hold

Moving walkways are the machine that made many sprawling airports viable. Because moving walkways allow for corridors that are unusually long, places that require them are often spectacular and understated pieces of architecture with very exaggerated perspective. These are most often at airports or places that require nudging people along, such as aquaria or exhibits such as the British crown jewels. From a visual perspective, they make a great list.

moving walkways of note

Unintentional comedy is one of the consequences of Moores Law (that computer power doubles every two years) and almost any claim made in a computer ad more than a decade old. Included here are claims that compared to the Macbook Air that I am writing this on, a computer with 2 million times less RAM will "satisfy your lust for power"; that a computer a thousand times slower will give you "answers fast" for demanding applications and that a computer with several thousand times the volume is "compact and mobile".

16 hilariously unimpressive computer ads

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Apple is getting it in spades.For those that worry about Apple blazing a trail for others to copy less expensively, its not that simple. A product like the iPhone is heavily tooled rather than fabricated. The hole for the headphones is actually drilled. To do this, Apple have hogged the world's supply of the type of high tech, multi-dimensional machine tool needed.While companies like Nokia may copy, they may not be able to get the same build quality, even if they want to. Vote on the most blatant copy and post tips in the comments.

12 biggest apple design ripoffs

Somewhere between a damp cloth and a full NBC gas mask lies the often unintentionally hilarious looking smoke hood.Promotional material for these items is a particular source of amusement, combining the creepy looking imagery of people wearing strange plastic bags on their heads with the utterly normal attire of office workers or suburban mums. The effect is like catching your boss wearing fetish bondage gear.

12 smoke hoods

Apple's refresh of the Macbook line this fall is more evolutionary than revolutionary. In terms of design they have continued the trend, which started with the iPhone (see the drilled headphone jack hole on the original model) towards machining directly from block metal. This has lead to the latest Macbooks as being described as having monocoque structures, something which may not strictly be false but which is meaningless in the context.A monocoque is a single piece shell structure, it is a nice sounding word and is often used in marketing literature because it sounds technical. Because of this, and because of the fact that things like commercial airliners are hybrids of frame and shell structures almost anything can be described as such. There is a perfect geodesic truss in the list below which is described as a monocoque shell structure (the opposite), while an ordinary soda can is a monocoque. The use of machining for Apple parts has more to do with tolerances and finish and almost nothing to do with structure, so the term is not relevant.Below we discuss the merits of things which are described as monocoque - but as for the Macbook, not really

Apple monocoque or not

After having been traveling for more than 7 months in the last year, the combination of neck strain and carpal tunnel from using a laptop requires a really good stand.I needed one that is compact and portable for travel and one that is highly adjustable at home. Being super anal about these things, I looked through hundreds of web sites and so put together an oobject list. The list covers everything from wheeled out units to a truckers cab laptop stand and a wearable harness that actually manages to look undorky but several items are based on the simple premise of a compact or flat folding cheap and simple stand.In the end I chose both products from the same company, the Evo floating laptop arm, which is most like a task light adjustment system and the mini, tripod-based Cricket laptop stand.

the perfect laptop stand

Although the term galvanometer is often used to refer to things other than devices which measure electrical current (such as charge or resistance), there are an amazing array of early designs for this instrument, considering their simplicity.Many of these design differences are to do with the cases that surround what is basically a twisting wire, however there is something definitively analog in their mechanism and 19th century amateur scientist in their variety. Early galvanometers represent the extreme opposite of todays high energy physics, which requires giant multi billion dollar apparatuses and extreme digital processing for measurement. A long way off a compass and a battery.

different types of galvanometer

Aircraft factories are gargantuan, complicated and interesting.The Boeing Everett factory, where the Jumbo Jet was built and the Dreamliner is being built is the largest volume building in the world. It has a floor plan of 100 acres, enough to fit more than a thousand family houses inside, with doors that are the size of football pitches.Included alongside Everett are a variety of factory shots of famous planes from Concorde to the Virgin Galactic space craft, the Blackbird and the B2.The shots of wartime assembly lines, which churned out aircraft at a rate associated with car assembly in environments that look like computer rendering from video games lines, include the famous secret factory at Burbank which was hidden under a fake hillside.

aircraft factories

As technology companies oozed slowly from San Jose to San Francisco, the architecture morphed from purely university campus, to a hybrid between this and a South of Market warehouse, complete with loft living accoutrements such as foosball tables. The new Facebook HQ is a perfect example of this, looking something like a Wholefoods, whereas Google looks more like the place full of plastic balls that you leave your kids when shopping at IKEA.

technology hq architecture

The most impressive neon districts in the world include Tokyo's Ginza and Shibuya, Osaka's Dotonburi which was the inspiration for Blade Runner, the worlds largest shopping street, Nanjing Road in Shanghai and, of course, Vegas and Times Square. Bangkok's Soi Cowboy district (named after an American who opened one of the first go go bars in the 70s) deserves inclusion on account of its unpleasant strangeness, with live elephants paraded up and down the pink neon streets.Most dramatic of all, however is Hong Kong where the entire skyscraper cluster is animated for 15 minutes as part of the worlds largest light show.Vegas and Times square deserve double mentions as they are more famous for iconic signage which has since been demolished or taken down. We have included footage of both past and present.Although the classic welcome to Vegas sign by Betty Willis has been preserved, many of the famous signs lie in the Vegas neon boneyard and we have included a movie made by urban spelunkers who broke into the yard to explore it.

The 10 most important examples of neon signage

Gerry Anderson is a cult TV figure because he took the unfashionably low tech world of puppetry and applied it with such skill and design flair to science fiction subjects that the results were highly original and imaginative. From the late sixties to late seventies, Dinky Toys produced die cast model toys of some of the more memorable Anderson craft from Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, UFO and Space 1999. They are now highly collectible. Vote for your faves.

10 classic gerry anderson scifi toys

Welding goggles are a staple item for Burning Man and Steampunk fans, and the variety of welding masks and visors is impressive and iconic. They range from creepy leather hood "Monkey Masks" to hand held furnace mask derivatives, to sophisticated systems based upon racing helmets, with visors that darken instantly in a fraction of a second, and with customized paint jobs from kitsch to clever. Vote for your faves.

15 wonderful welding masks

There is something fantastically hellish about fiery steel manufacture, nothing seems more gigantic or obviously dangerous looking. The instruments used to transfer molten iron, steel and slag are massive solid items made of the same thing they contain in liquid form and are objects of wonder.Particularly interesting are the torpedo ladle railroad cars, which transfer hot metal from blast to oxygen furnaces. They are dramatic and interesting enough that despite their obscurity they are available in several forms for model railroads. Vote for your faves.

giant molten steel handling equipment

Here are a range of videos of some bizarre automated drawing machines, from an instrument that draws mushroom clouds from the dust from nuclear test sites, a large industrial robot used to automatically draw what it sees and a variety of increasingly odd contraptions.

bizarre drawing contraption videos

Mechanical calculators are the genealogical ancestors of today's computers. They also occupy a special place in the cultural history of gadgets, since they form the essential component of the mythical Steampunk alternative reality.Even if these clockwork beasts were steam driven, however, their electro-magnetic counterparts would inevitably have eventually replaced them. Vote on your favorites.

17 mechanical marvel calculators

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Category: 'lists'

videos of self assembling machines

December 10th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Despite being a qualified architect, IKEA furniture assembly quite often defeats me. Hence this list of self assembling objects, from computer memory to swallowable medical procedure components to chairs, particularly appeals. Perhaps Sweden should have a dedicated research institute geared around the discipline.

aircraft factories

December 8th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Aircraft factories are gargantuan, complicated and interesting.The Boeing Everett factory, where the Jumbo Jet was built and the Dreamliner is being built is the largest volume building in the world. It has a floor plan of 100 acres, enough to fit more than a thousand family houses inside, with doors that are the size of football pitches.Included alongside Everett are a variety of factory shots of famous planes from Concorde to the Virgin Galactic space craft, the Blackbird and the B2.The shots of wartime assembly lines, which churned out aircraft at a rate associated with car assembly in environments that look like computer rendering from video games lines, include the famous secret factory at Burbank which was hidden under a fake hillside.

video list of 3D printers in action

December 5th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
This is a video roundup of currently available or prototyped 3D printers, a gadget which has been sitting on the sidelines for a while, but hasn't become mainstream yet. 3D printing machines are fairly simple in their operation, building any 3D shape, no matter how complex, as a series of contour slices which are hardened as a printer head slides back and forth across. But the results look like magic, real objects, in color, with moving parts, direct from a CAD model. The main reason that 3D printers, still remain a professional niche product, used by design firms rather than end consumers, is that their output is small and slow. In addition, more people know how to create text files for 2D printers than a CAD design, and this is unlikely to change in the near future. As a result of this small market, some of the marketing videos of 3D printers shown here look distinctly old fashioned for such a futuristic product. We long for the day when we will be able to print a full sized chair in ten minutes.

a dozen vintage spy radios

December 4th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
These days, with chip based cellular devices and cameras, thing like spy radios and cameras are often toys, since the miniaturization of what used to be the realm of clandestine devices can now be made for a few bucks. As a result, modern spy radios are not that interesting, however these vintage versions from WWII right up to the Gulf War are.

memento mori timepieces

December 3rd, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Clocks and watches with the traditional latin reminder of mortality. Wonderfully morbid.

top 10 interesting tool chests

December 2nd, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Tool chests can provide perfect gadget porn - lots of beautifully crafted objects that fit intricately into a perfect container.Here are some of our favorites, including the stunning chest which resides in the Smithsonian and belonged to Organ and Piano maker, Henry O Studley at the other end of the scale is the garden variety, utilitarian tool box that saved the NASA Spacelab .

jumping off notable architecture (and surviving) videos

December 1st, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
BASE jumping is much more interesting than ordinary skydiving, for us, because it involves architecture. Here are some videos of people jumping off notable structures, such as Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Nervi's influential Pirelli tower in Milan and the enormous Burg Dubai. We have also included a jump off the end of a blade on a wind turbine (because they are beautiful structures) and an indoor jump inside a cathedral like, converted airship hangar. The Macau tower bungee jump is notable because its a similar height to the Eiffel tower and is a legal amusement ride that anyone can pay for. Our favorite, however, is the jump off Calatrava's Turning Torso building in Malmo, Sweden. Although Calatrava can sometimes appear willful in his focus on structure rather than space, revealing himself to be more of a creative engineer than an architect, the Turning Torso is his best work to date. Similarly the jump itself is spectacular, involving two parts: jumping from a plane onto its roof and then from the roof to the ground. In the rather obscure and narrow overlap between extreme sports and architecture this is a definitive piece.

10 enormous floating cranes

November 28th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Aside from their spectacular size, what makes floating cranes unusual and interesting objects is that they are essentially boats. As such, they dont exactly conjure up the idea of stability, which is the primary requirement for lifting things. They also look weird since boats usually consist of large hulls with smaller superstructure, here the arrangement is reversed making them seem very ungainly.Some of these cranes can lift tens of thousands of tons, at sea, and are engineering wonders.

12 Knife Bikes

November 27th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
A bicycle makes for an excellent machine even when stationary, something that is shown nowhere better than in the home-brew design phenomenon of bicycles and knife sharpeners. This is a design typology that spans continents and traces back to 19th century pedal powered machines. Here are our favorite examples from around the world.

16 thanksgiving turkey fryer videos

November 26th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
All around America people are preparing propane gas tanks, vats of boiling oil and elaborate hoisting mechanisms to cook turkeys in a way that poses both short and long term health risks. The great tradition of the Pilgrim Fathers puritanical feast has been replaced by an industrial accident involving a dangerous gadget. But its worth it, because it tastes absolutely delicious.We've collected videos of this ritual, from California to the Midwest to Texas and to Florida and each is a distinctive cultural snippet. Vote for America's most quintessential Turkey Fryers.

unusual suitcase kits

November 25th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Following on from yesterdays gadget suitcases, here is a similar list but of different types of objects: oddities. Here is a list of suitcase kits of unusual or strange objects, from Duchamp's classic 'box in a suitcase', to a a working suitcase fireplace, an emergency crib, a Chinese sex shop and, our favorite, a suitcase with a hidden gyroscope, that is impossible to carry.

tricked out gadget suitcases

November 24th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Ever since James Bond had tricked out briefcases as an accoutrement for his array of gadgets, the idea of a suitcase full of a kit of gizmos for a specific task is seductive; or morbidly curious, in the case of apocryphal suitcase nukes. The concept predates James Bond, with transmitter suitcases which were make for allied spies during WWII.

Chip Burka People

November 21st, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
One of the most cliched images in technology is that of someone wearing a burka-like clean suit holding a raw silicon wafer, like a trophy.To complete the cliche, a favorite science photo shoot lighting effect, consists of a deep blue, purple or green background. No labs actually look like this. In reality, they tend to be shadowless environments, awash with white light, like something in between a drug store and the spaceship entrance in Close Encounters, but for some reason, pastel lighting indicates hi-tech.Vote for the most cliched image in the list.

12 Types of Crash Test Dummy

November 20th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Although crash test dummies are iconic, there are a variety of different types, dating back to the fifties. There are ones for different genders, age, size and more recently, weight, with fatter dummies to represent the growing trend of obesity. There are different ones for cars, trains, planes, motorbikes and even those used for pedestrian impacts. Here are a dozen interesting examples.

12 ships with impossibly large cargo

November 19th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Heavy lift ships can carry loads of tens of thousands of tons, including oil platforms, other ships and even dry docks. The are often semi-submersible so that they can sink below the water line to let their cargo slide off. The sheer size of their cargo often looks impossible, as these items suggest.

8 Sky Hooks

November 17th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
A Sky Hook is an impossible item that interns were traditionally sent out to buy , as a prank. These eight flying cranes, seven helicopters and one blimp, are as close to reality as sky hooks can get. The blimp proposal is actually named the Sky Hook.

12 elegantly deconstructed machines

November 14th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Brittny Badger disassembles everyday appliances, carefully lays them out and photographs them, Paul Veroude takes cars entirely to pieces and suspends them from wires, like a giant real-life exploded isometric drawing, while Holger Pooten photographs gadgets as frozen in time snapshots of parts suspended in mid air. There is something satisfying, not just about the dis assembly of machines, appliances and complex objects, but the arrangement of their parts into a tableau. Here are a dozen.

12 real life cutaway cars

November 13th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Cutaway drawings are a standard way of revealing the inner complexity of machines, and they are an art form unto themselves. Occasionally cutaways are real, however, as with this collection of cars which have been literally sliced apart to show their innards.

12 real life jenga buildings

November 12th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Several star architects such as Herzog and de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas have produced building designs that have jutting out and cantilevered components that give the overall impression of a giant game of Jenga. The New Museum on the Bowery in New York, is the latest addition to this genre of minimalist deconstruction. But the most interesting Jenga building is an obscure, former Soviet ministry in Georgia, which is quite mad.

10 flea circus contraptions

November 11th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Flea circuses share one thing in common with combine harvesters. They are something that you hear about lot as a kid but rarely see. Popular since the 1600s till the late 19th Century, there is something fantastically creepy and Victorian about them, since they were cheap entertainment for the poor and the best performers were human fleas. Despite the mythology, flea circuses are real, and some still exist. Here are some pictures and videos to prove it.

12 moving building facades (videos)

November 10th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Jean Nouvel created a spectacular facade, based upon electronically controlled camera iris shaped devices in the style of decorative Arab screens, for the IMA in Paris, 20 years ago. For some reason, mechanical facades have recently started cropping up here and there in architecture. Here are some of our favorites.

17 found object chandeliers

November 7th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Chandeliers are all about opulence and excess. When decoration became cheap to mass produce, in the early 20th century, minimalist modernism was in and things like chandeliers were out. The tide is turning, now that Ikea can stamp out designer modernism for the masses, designery magazines are starting to show decorative things now. Bu why buy a horrid crystal monstrosity for $10K when you can make a chandelier out of almost anything. Here is a selection of chandeliers made out of inexpensive things or found objects - including human bones.

15 videos of amazing rolling ball machines

November 6th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
From commercial kits such as the Chaos Toy or Spacewarp, to the world's largest ball run, the 70 foot high Energy Machine in the Hong Kong Science Museum, these complicated contraptions are a classic form of Rube Goldberg Machine.Here are a collection of videos of some of the worlds most impressive ball runs in action, including the Mark Bischoff machine that was recreated for Anthony Hopkins' obsessive character in the movie Fracture, to one built for a one-off ending to Sesame Street.

election broadcast technology through history

November 5th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
This list covers the period from 1920 when the Harding - Cox election results were first broadcast by radio, to the present day when presenters have to interact with a virtual reality zoo of giant, artless, real-time animated charts.The first live TV election broadcasts were produced in the 50s, employing professional sign writers would have to paint charts, live. Static and very basic sets were used well into the 70s, as can be seen from the spartan US military set in South Vietnam for the 1972 Nixon election.Despite the technology behind contemporary broadcast sets, they are all unimaginatively dull, with identical patriotic, red white and blue color schemes and similar color blends and soft shading. These are the TV equivalent of a hideous blue-white blend default Powerpoint template.

17 architectural light sculptures

November 4th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Innovations in lighting design are often gimmicky or merely a case of LED everywhere. This list illustrates where lighting is sculptural and integral to architecture, from a night club made of glowing bricks, Daniel Libeskinds wireframe architectural chandelier, the amazing Lighthive exhibition at the Architectural Association and futuristic light sculptures by Kalle. Our LED example creates a grid of LED points that appear to float in mid air.

top 12 harley earl designs

November 3rd, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
1927 to 1959 was the golden era of General Motors. This was the period when Harley Earl started as Vice President of the Art and Color Division and gave birth to the modern notion of car design.Earl eschewed the purely engineering driven practicality of Ford to take inspirations from aircraft and space age concepts and add them to cars, turning them into works of art. The designs ranged from the highly futuristic Firebird gas turbine concept vehicles to the wildly successful production Corvette.Like almost all product design and architecture, the stamp of authorship is not clear cut and nor should it be. Many designs that are associated with him were produced by people working under him, but it was Early himself who created the school and he deserves a place alongside Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames as one of America's most important designers.Vote for your favorite.

top 12 videos of creepy automata

October 31st, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
There is nothing more creepy than the charred remains of a moth eaten victorian doll with rolling eyes and moving limbs. That is the premise for the Oobject's Halloween list, videos of the most creepy automata in action.

12 mesmerizing kinetic sculptures (videos)

October 30th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Kinetic sculptures may have been first developed by Duchamp and Moholy-Nagy, but the tradition is still very much alive. Some of the most impressive kinetic sculptures, such as those by the famous Theo Jansen are still distinctly analog, but this is an area where digital gadgetry has opened up nearly limitless possibilities. Here are a dozen of our faves, vote for yours.

12 steampunk stirling engines (videos)

October 29th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Beautiful working model Stirling engines are a favorite of the Steampunk style, because these efficient engines use external flame heat as an energy source, combined with Victorian brass or steel mechanisms.But they have an added benefit, in that their workings are entirely intuitive and help people easily understand the principals of cylinder engines in things like cars. Here are a collection of videos of some of our favorites, some, but not all, 'Steampunky', in action.

a visual history of video recorders

October 28th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Its strange to think that the now obsolete VCR or VTR has a half century history, from the giant Ampex and RCA machines used in TV stations to the multiple, competing format, consumer cassette players that culminated in the dominant VHS standard.Today you can by a DVD player for the same price as a DVD itself, due to the small number of moving parts and emerging market labor. However, VCRs were always relatively expensive because of their complex mechanisms, latterly involving gimballed rotating heads.In terms of design, aside from the robust utilitarian looking professional models, VCRs were ugly devices from the outside, but complex marvels inside.There are several great sites dealing with VTR history, including the excellent: http://www.totalrewind.org

definitive list of subway architecture

October 27th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Although this list has been done by others, we have spent an unhealthy amount of time looking for specific examples of massively long, futuristic tunnels and impressive stations to give a definitive list from specific vanatage points, including some more obscure examples.

12 ultra complex surface analysis systems

October 23rd, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
These are possibly the most impressive gadgets on earth, beautifully complicated, polished stainless steel instruments that employ electron, x-ray, and ion probes, often in combination with depth profiling techniques, for surface analysis. They are the instruments featured on the covers of science lab and university brochures and are exactly what I want for my birthday. Vote for your faves.

moving walkways of note

October 22nd, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Moving walkways are the machine that made many sprawling airports viable. Because moving walkways allow for corridors that are unusually long, places that require them are often spectacular and understated pieces of architecture with very exaggerated perspective. These are most often at airports or places that require nudging people along, such as aquaria or exhibits such as the British crown jewels. From a visual perspective, they make a great list.

jet engine test videos

October 20th, 2008 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Jet engines undergo a variety of tests shown here, from chucking water, sand and flocks of dead birds into their gaping intakes. They are also tested to see what happens when a fan blade is destroyed while the turbine is spinning, with an explosive charge, not something to try at home. But the best tests of all are those involving jet engine afterburners and the best of the best has to be those with vector nozzles.These are real oobjects, objects that make you go ooh. Vote for your faves.

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