Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen did away with Terra Australis Incognito for good in December 1911. (It was more than a decade later that he went after Santa Claus in his polar fortress.)
He credited his success with not wasting much time surveying and mapping – he went to the South Pole, took two photographs, claimed it [...]
SONG: “Antarctica Awakes!” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake”, Washington Post, 31 Jan 2012, as used in the post “Lovecraft report: Scientists set to disturb primordial lake, deep under Antarctic ice.” (cf. 2011)
ABSTRACT: This is an anthem, written (as [...]
This device paraded at the inaugurations of President Grover Cleveland and the Statue of Liberty.
It also put out fires, nobly, before the turn of the last century.
Image from the New York Public Library Picture Collection.
Let us take a moment, while contemplating the sleek engineering of the quiet engine sonic inlet, to consider that tie. That man is not a model. He is, in all likelihood, an engineer. An actual rocket scientist. There are no horn-rim glasses, no pocket protectors and neither white coat nor jumpsuit. Perhaps… and I can find no higher resolution [...]
E.D. Leavitt, Massachusetts mechanical engineer, designed many huge machines in the 1870s.They moved things, macerated and mangled them, mined and melted them. Leavitt’s machines did things measured in the millions of gallons.
And his niece was one of the great women of astronomy, too.
[image via Old Book Illustrations]
SONG: “Bioluminescence at the Dragon Vent.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: Squid Pro Crow.
SOURCE: Based on “Exotic creatures discovered living at deep-sea vent in Indian Ocean”, Guardian, 28 Dec 2011, as used in the post “Creatures of the Dragon Vent”.
ABSTRACT: This song was a result of a thing that I found [...]
This early ’60s vision of the future (in all likelihood, right now) was painted by visual futurist Syd Mead, who worked in industrial design as well as making films like Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron look like tomorrow.
I found it on Professor Michael Stoll’s Flickr account, where he describes how he found it:
Sometimes students [...]
Image from Wikimedia Commons.
These symbols show steps in various chemical processes – the things you can do to change substances. Well, the things chemical engineers can do, one step leading into the next.
The symbols represent:
fan/stirrer, pneumatic line, pneumatic line vertical, measurement, simple heat exchanger
simple heat exchanger vertical, alternative heat exchanger, alternative heat exchanger, fixed-sheet heat exchanger, [...]
A medieval hunt for the “brownfish, or baleen.” Centuries before we got our light and energy by burning petroleum, we got it from whales.
This illustration comes from a series of books considered “the basis of modern zoology,” despite having mermaids and the Beast of Revelation among the squid and whale-hunters.
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