Public.Work: A Smoothly Searchable Archive of 100,000+ “Copyright-Free” Images

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We live in an age, we’re often told, when our abil­i­ty to con­jure up an image is lim­it­ed only by our imag­i­na­tion. These days, this notion tends to refer to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-pow­ered sys­tems that gen­er­ate visu­al mate­r­i­al from text prompts, like DALL‑E and the many oth­ers that have pro­lif­er­at­ed in its wake.…

Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943)

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In 2017, we brought you news of a world map pur­port­ed­ly more accu­rate than any to date, designed by Japan­ese archi­tect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the Autha­Graph, updates a cen­turies-old method of turn­ing the globe into a flat sur­face by first con­vert­ing it to a cylin­der. Win­ner of…

Ancient Egyptian Pyramids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

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Image by Charles Sharp, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The com­pelling but less-than-straight­for­ward ques­tion of how the ancient Egyp­tians built the pyra­mids has inspired all man­ner of the­o­ry and spec­u­la­tion, ground­ed to vary­ing degrees in phys­i­cal real­i­ty. Sheer man­pow­er must have played a large part, and it’s cer­tain­ly not beyond the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty…

The First “Selfie” In History Taken by Robert Cornelius, a Philadelphia Chemist, in 1839

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In 2013, the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies announced that “self­ie” had been deemed their Word of The Year. The term, whose first record­ed use as an Insta­gram hash­tag occurred on Jan­u­ary 27, 2011, was actu­al­ly invent­ed in 2002, when an Aus­tralian chap post­ed a pic­ture of him­self on an inter­net forum and

The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument: The EP-1320 Lets You Play the Sounds of Hurdy-Gurdies, Lutes, Gregorian Chants & More

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At this time of the year, the Swedish island of Got­land puts on Medeltidsveck­an, or “Medieval Week,” the coun­try’s largest his­tor­i­cal fes­ti­val. Accord­ing to its offi­cial About page, it offers its vis­i­tors the chance to “watch knights on horse­back, drink some­thing cold, take a craft­ing course, prac­tice archery, lis­ten to a con­cert or pic­nic…