Appropriately grainy, this photo of a newborn is the very first photo sent via cellphone. In 1997 this was cutting edge tech.
A long labor was the nudge it took for Philippe Kahn to hack together the hardware for a project he had been working on. Fun story from when the pic turned 20. Via IEEE Spectrum:
Philippe Kahn hacked together a Motorola StarTAC flip phone, a Casio QV digital camera that took 320 by 240 pixel images, and a Toshiba 430CDT laptop computer. When he took a picture with the camera, the system would automatically dial up his Web server and upload the picture to it at 1200 baud. The server would send email alerts to a list of friends and family, who could then log on and view the photo.
Neat video from Our Own Devices on the history of the Gestetner Cyclostyle, a copy machine from the 19th century.
I imagine it was a huge hit with the I would prefer not to set.
Las Vegas is defined by Neon Lights (or is it vice versa?). Great find from the Kids Should See This. Mellow virtual tour shared by Eric Minh Swenson Art:
The Neon Museum in Las Vegas is a vibrant rejuvenation of the city’s luminous relics and pop culture history. Born from the vividly named “Neon Boneyard,” the storage yard of the Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO), the gaudy neon glitz of the Las Vegas Strip eventually found refuge in this desert sanctuary after each was discarded along with the zeitgeist of bygone eras.
Make your own LED Neon Signs:
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
Adafruit’s Game of Life Kit is swell, but Nervous Squirrel has done something special. They’ve combined Conway’s cellular automata simulator Game of Life with an 8×8 jack Eurorack .module Here’s more from CDM:
Conway’s Game from Nervous Squirrel brings the cellular automaton “Life” to Eurorack form – complete with an 8×8 matrix of jacks, one for each cell.
That gives this module an astonishing 64 independent trigger outputs – you’ll have to work out just how to wire up that spaghetti. There’s also a MIDI input, which means this doubles as a MIDI to trigger converter. (You set the mode via a MIDI / LIFE switch at the top). Outs also can be set to either trigger or gate.
