The Bleeding Man
In 18th Century France, Jacques de Vaucanson built exquisite wind-up robots; a doll that plays a dulcimer, a duck that not only walks but excretes, and other marvels. He wasn’t the only one; as Max...
View ArticleTuring might be pardoned
Alan Turing was a mathematical genius, a codebreaker at Bletchley Park in World War II, and the inventor of Turing Machines (theoretical systems that underpin modern computing) and the Turing Test (a...
View ArticleThe Aurochs and the Konik: A doomed attempt to recreate the past
IN the mid twentieth century, in Germany, there was a doomed attempt to bring back to life extinct species: the fierce Aurochs, a relative of the modern cow that lived in Europe until about the 15th...
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Curator finds very first colour movie in a museum vault
Michael Harvey, a curator at the National Media Museum in the U.K., discovered an old reel of film by inventor Edward Raymond Turner that turns out to be the first colour movie ever made. Turner did it...
View ArticlePhilip K Dick’s prescience
J.R. Dunn on Philip K Dick’s vision of the future… Philip K Dick and our Predicament. The consensus SF world is long gone. The gleaming spacecraft, the extraterrestrial colonies, the world-transforming...
View Article1000 years of European history in three and a half minutes
This animation shows the shifting boundaries of nations and empires in Europe from 1000 AD to the present day. It’s not the only such video. You can also watch Europe, Middle east and Mediterranean...
View ArticleOrbis: Google maps for Ancient Rome
Stanford have developed a Google maps application for the Roman Empire in the year 200 AD, called Orbis. To get started, go to the Orbis home page and click on the map on the home page. You’ll get...
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