IBM 1001 DATA TRANSMISSION SYSTEM (Dec, 1961)

This IBM 1001 Data Transmission System lets you send business information in punched card form, from any office, plant or department to your central data processing installation at the cost of a telephone call.

It speeds collection of information concerning inventory, purchases, payroll, production, etc., keeps you continually informed of what’s happening in your business while it’s happening.

Link

Science Redesigns the Human Body (Aug, 1956)

How would scientists go about redesigning the human creature in order to get the most efficiency out of him?

Link

R2-D2 Workshop Manual Shirt Is Wearable

This is a picture from a shirt you can buy that was made to look like a Haynes workshop manual. Except it’s for R2 units! Like R2-D2, you know, from Star Wars! The shirt costs $24, and if you look closely at the insides you’ll notice that R2 units are packed with a bicycle, turntables, one of those robots from Dr. Who, and a dentist’s chair.

Link

Cities at Night: A View From Space

To an observer in space, humanity’s footprints on the surface of the Earth are large and varied. They include the regular patterns of irrigated cropland, straight lines of roads and railways running across continents, reservoirs on river systems, and the cement rectangles of ports and seawalls along coastlines. But what about humanity’s signature footprint—cities? By day, cities viewed from space can blend into the countryside, or appear as gray smudges, depending on the style of development and size of the urban area.

(via)

April 29, 1964: Godzilla, Mothra Clash for First Time

1964: Mothra vs. Godzilla makes its screen debut in Japan. Or was it Mothra Against Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mothra or Godzilla vs. The Thing?

By whatever name you choose — and it went by all of them at one time or another — for those of us who grew up watching these entertaining romps, this is the quintessential Godzilla movie.

It had everything you could ask for: wonderfully cheesy special effects (acute halitosis never looked so good), great dubbing (in the English-language release, the talking went on after the Japanese actors had stopped moving their lips), a couple of hot Japanese twins (albeit a pair of faeries scarcely a foot tall), wanton, widespread destruction (Nagoya, rather than Tokyo, took the hit this time), and a monster to root for (the big moth).

Link

Top 20 Screen Robots

Why do we love robots so much?

Well, we all love machines, right? Especially the ones which make our lives easier. Let’s face it, most of us can’t be separated from our iPods, laptops and iPhones these days. But how about when they turn against us? The time when our TV and cinema screens were full of clunky dustbins and oversized toasters just happy to help has long gone.

Link

Are Tron Guy and Xkcd the Future of Celebrity?

If you ever watched the Star Wars Kid and Homestar Runner, or gawked at the Tron Guy and web comic Xkcd, you’re changing the future of celebrity. You’re building a world where Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise will be replaced by captioned pictures of cats and clever comics about algebra. At least, that was the premise of a conference held over the weekend at MIT called ROFLCon, which brought together the web’s most famous meme-disseminators to prove that In The Future, Fame Will Be Different. Will it really?

Link