string can phone

A comic from Diesel Sweeties, apropos of absolutely nothing at all.

We remember visiting the last of the Horn and Hardarts many years ago. We would have expected these automatic resturants to have a natural appeal to the stereotypical computer user. Perhaps they are all too young to have known the Automat, however. That would explain the dearth of good websites. There is at least two worth the time to look at, though: theautomat.com with history, some photos, and information on buying automat machines; and theautomat.net which many exists to promote a book, but has some more photos.

Leave it to those handy & techically-minded eccentric Germans to come up with PONGMECHANIK, a physical version of the venerable video-game Pong. The video (6-10MB, if you can handle the bandwidth—our acoustic-coupler was smouldering by the end) could do with several hundred fewer cuts, but shows an impressive looking and sounding machine.

By the way, the site is in German, so good luck.

Now, when do we get a version of Space Invaders???

Had our Teasmade awoken us last week, we might have been quick enough to note the sad passing of Donald Leslie, the inventor of the Leslie rotating speaker.

*Admittedly, RIP is a abbreviation in the Latin language, and we are showing our boorish English-chauvinism by presuming it could be any other. But then again, we are boorish English speakers.

The timely Things magazine web-log woke us up this morning with the delicate aroma of the Teasmade, a British device that combined an alarm clock with a teakettle and pot. As you can see above, this is no crude consumer-grade drip-brew coffee-pot with a clock hidden away inside.

No, this is a Device To Admire.

Gizmodo brings us to the Kikkerland Motion Flip Alarm Clock. You narrator is not providing a picture because quite a few are available at or beyond the link in question, and becase we have been, perhaps, posting too many images lately.

Ahem.

Digression notwithstanding, this is a new-fangled flip-clock that does look mighty interesting. We seem to be unable to pin down any significant history on the origin of the flip-clock, but we remember them well.

It seems a number of people are producing funky versions of the venerable flip-clock, including this London firm’s sold-out limited edition.

In a digression, we are led to the projection-clocks page of Roger Russell.

Endgadget has invaded our airspace with this post on a Hitachi TRK-8200HR boombox modified with a Tablet PC. This, we must say, is impressive.

Now, where did we put our Run-D.M.C. tapes?

The Museum of Communications is a no-frills homage to the history of conversing with others unhindered by distance. Located in Seattle, WA, the museum is a virtual warehouse of every communications device ever devised, including wired, indoors telephone poles. Of particular note is the display of six generations of fully-operational central office switch frames. We are so stirred upon seeing this collection that we are inspired to pick up our plastic, magically cordless telephone handset and ask the operator for Pennsylvania 6-5000.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a small Los Angeles museum in the tradition of a late Renaissance Wunderkammern. We were alerted to it’s existence having recently read a book about this obscure institution (Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler), but being no where near Los Angeles to visit the place in person, we decided to use this newfangled Internet for a deskchair tour.

Museums as we now know grew out of the personal collections of wonder inducing stuff that men of affluence collected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were typically a hodgepodge of art, technology, and natural items — all seen as facets of God’s wonderful creation. The MJT is such a collection, and imitates those wonder cabinets not just in scope but also in lack of fact checking. Truths, half-truths, fictions, and simply art all there to serve as an inspiration of wonder.