A “bookwheel,” designed by Italian military engineer Agostino Ramelli (1531-1600).
Because it keeps the reader’s place in various texts, it’s considered an early prototype of the World Wide Web.
Technology
Gotcha
As a prank, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak sometimes buys uncut sheets of $2 bills from the U.S. Treasury and has them bound into booklets. Then, when buying small items, he’ll pull out a booklet and cut off a few bills with scissors.
This is perfectly legal, but it’s caused at least one alarmed inquiry by the Secret Service.
“Lamps Lighted by Currents Passed Through the Human Body”
Mark Twain in the laboratory of his friend, inventor Nikola Tesla, where in 1894 Twain briefly became a human light bulb:
In Fig. 13 a most curious and weird phenomenon is illustrated. A few years ago electricians would have considered it quite remarkable, if indeed they do not now. The observer holds a loop of bare wire in his hands. The currents induced in the loop by means of the “resonating” coil over which it is held, traverse the body of the observer, and at the same time, as they pass between his bare hands, they bring two or three lamps held there to bright incandescence. Strange as it may seem, these currents, of a voltage one or two hundred times as high as that employed in electrocution, do not inconvenience the experimenter in the slightest. The extremely high tension of the currents which Mr. Clemens is seen receiving prevents them from doing any harm to him.
— T.C. Martin, “Tesla’s Oscillator and Other Inventions,” Century Magazine, April 1895
The Target
Cheese!
Russian chemist Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was taking color photographs as early as 1909.
He took this self-portrait in 1915, managing to look old-timey even without sepia.
Bang!
Bulletproof vests go back to the 19th century, when a special silk vest could stop a round from a handgun.
Archduke Ferdinand was actually wearing one on June 28, 1914 — but Gavrilo Princip shot him in the neck and started World War I.
Things to Come
This will be an eventful century, if our science fiction writers are right. Here’s what to expect:
- 2008: Jason Voorhees is captured. (Jason X)
- 2012: Aliens begin to colonize Earth. (The X-Files)
- 2015: Time travelers Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrive from the year 1985. (Back to the Future Part II)
- 2019: Former blade runner Rick Deckard agrees to do one more job. Ben Richards is forced to compete on The Running Man.
- 2022: New York City has become overpopulated, with 40 million starving citizens. (Soylent Green)
- 2035: Mankind lives in gigantic underground cities. (Things to Come)
- 2050: Newspeak eclipses oldspeak. (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
- 2052: New York City launches a giant ball of unwanted garbage into space. Experts warn the ball might return to Earth someday, but their concerns are dismissed as “depressing.” (Futurama)
- 2053: World War III. (Star Trek)
- 2062: The Flintstones arrive via a malfunctioning time machine constructed by Elroy Jetson. (The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones)
- 2063: First contact with Vulcans.
- 2084: Dancing is outlawed. Flash, Strobe, Laser and Pyro escape Earth to live on Moon Base Alpha to dance in freedom. (Dancemania)
Oh, and in the late 21st century Superman leaves Earth. Better hurry and get that autograph.
Unquote
“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” — Ken Olsen, president, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
Great Expectations
Orville Wright over Huffman Prairie, Ohio, Nov. 16, 1904.
Humans advanced from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years.
Airmail Before Airplanes
The world’s first airmail stamps were issued for the Great Barrier Pigeon-Gram Service, which carried messages from New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island to the mainland between 1898 and 1908.
It was pretty good: The fastest pigeon, aptly named Velocity, made the trip to Auckland in only 50 minutes, averaging an astounding 125 kph. That’s only 40 per cent slower than modern aircraft.