electrical engineering | The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Our brains run on 20 watts of power.

16 March 2026 grant 0

Are we bright, or really kinda dim? IFL Science reports that the human brain uses about as much electricity as the average computer monitor: Considered […]

Scientific illustration of a commercially available electric switch from 1905, a lever that creates a connection which turns an arc light on or off, indicating if the circuit is live. It's designed for the mains of a house, I think, or at least for wiring entering a building.

Science Art: Modern Electrical Construction, Fig. 58, 1905

2 March 2026 grant 0

This is a switch for “constant current” electricity to go into a building, a “A modern commercial form of this switch,” is what the book […]

A woman with short, bushy hair holds a cylindrical device and smiles next to a headline shouting VIOLET-RAYS! above a scientific illustration of a case of electric equipment that promises SOOTHING, INVIGORATING, CURATIVE VIOLET-RAYS, which are ABSOLUTELY SAFE and GUARANTEED.

Science Art: Violet-Rays!, 1917

12 January 2026 grant 0

This is an ad from the April 1917 edition of Hugo Gernsback’s The Electrical Experimenter, which you can read on archive.org here. I can only […]

Making batteries out of concrete.

19 October 2025 grant 0

As in the building material. MIT News reports on researchers who have gotten 10 times the power out of a reformulated battery that’s made from […]

Scientific illustration of air traffic control reading a plane's position on an instrument panel, while radar waves bounce in graphic zig-zags off an airplane flying high over a mountain range.

Science Art: Opportunities for Design & Development Engineers…, 1966.

12 March 2025 grant 0

This is the illustration from a full-page ad from the Hughes Aircraft Company in the Jan/Feb 1966 issue of Information Display magazine. This isn’t selling […]

Scientific illustration of early X-ray equipment, including induction coil, battery, X-Ray tube, and fluorescent screen.

Science Art: Apparatus Arranged for Taking a Radiograph, 1894.

29 September 2024 grant 0

This illustration is from an article in Science Gossip on how to set up your own “X-Ray Outfit.” As the author, James Quick, explains: “The […]

Scientific illustration of an electronic object that looks a little licke a pressure cooker with a cutaway side and some sort of an inditcator needle on the front. It's resting on a square stand with four tiny legs.

Science Art: The Turney Vario Variable Condenser, 1913.

19 August 2024 grant 0

This is from a photographically illustrated advertisement in Hugo Gernsback’s magazine The Electrical Experimenter. The description of this item is as follows: For extreme measurements […]

SONG: “Communications” (a penitential Slim Gaillard cover)

7 November 2023 grant 0

SONG: “Communications” (a penitential Slim Gaillard cover). (available as .ogg here) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This isn’t based on any research. It’s a cover of a […]

Scientific illustration of early radio equipment, in an advertisement for the Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone, which comes with a pocket receiver and a "special head set." The M.A.F. costs $60 unless you order it after October 1, in which case it's $75. Which is quite a lot in 1916 dollars.

Science Art: Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone ad, 1916.

16 October 2023 grant 0

This is an ad from, as Thomas Dolby put it, the Golden Age of wireless. More literally, it’s from the October, 1916, issue of The […]

Uruguay gets 98% of its power from renewable sources.

9 October 2023 grant 0

NPR had a piece on the little South American nation that’s leading the way to a less polluted future, getting nearly all of its electricity […]

Making a pain-free battery: “Nickel doesn’t have child-labor issues.”

16 June 2023 grant 0

Scientific Frontline looks at a new way to create rechargeable lithium-ion batteries – the power behind electric cars, iPhones, and most of the rest of […]

Texas expects record-setting power usage this week.

13 June 2023 grant 0

Reuters reports on a hot, hot summer that is pulling more electricity from the Texas state grid than ever before: AccuWeather forecast high temperatures in […]

Solar panels increase crop yields, insulate reservoirs, and can help farmers.

5 March 2023 grant 0

PNAS reports on some unanticipated consequences of solar farming – but things that banks of solar panels that are unexpectedly good, not bad: To generate […]

Scientific illustration of... well, there's a lot going on here. We've got a mythical-looking figure in a loincloth, sort of half-Zeus (his right hand is holding lightning bolts) and half-Hephaestus (his left hand, to our right, is on a large switch) Along the lower right of the image there are insets of various early 20th-century electrical devices. To the left and across the bottom is a block of text advertising a course in electrical science in the form of a book by S. Gernsback (doubtless a relative of the publisher, Hugo Gernsback) and H.W. Secor. It only costs a dollar!

Science Art: Experimental Electricity Course, 1916.

8 January 2023 grant 0

This is how you advertise a science book. At least, it was how Hugo Gernsback did in the pages of The Electrical Experimenter in September […]

India has built an all-solar village.

1 November 2022 grant 0

Reuters reports on Modhera, Gujarat, the first 24/7, all-solar village built in India for ordinary folks to live without a local power plant: The project […]