Technical Apparel/Product Designer
GRAND Studio Ltd.
Zürich, Switzerland

GRAND Studio Ltd. is currently seeking a Technical Apparel / Product Designer. The ideal candidate is a highly talented individual, comfortable with designing across a broad range of sportswear products. The designer must have an in-depth knowledge of the products, as well as a passion for sport and fashion. He or she must be able to visualize his/her ideas with hand-drawn sketches, to enhance and solidify designs digitally, and to supply finished production packs.

Tokyo Designers Week wrapped up a couple weeks ago, but NTT Docomo's remarkable 20th Anniversary Exhibition Future lives on online, supplemented by Japan-based forum member designobot's brief exhibition recap:

The onsite event was a wall of 20 years of smartphones going left to right from oldest to newest.

From the left were the black and gray brick types that were as boring as the more recent phones on the far right, black slabs. Right of the middle (early-mid 2000s) was where all the action was at. Phone in the picture, wristomo, was 2003.

Also interesting to note is the delay on the Japanese market for smartphones, mainly from 2010 on.

I wasn't able to find any images of the actual exhibition, but thankfully the exhibition website is as comprehensive as it is straightforward. The twelve-image thumbnail layout gives a nice sense of handset evolution over time—by 1998 there are a couple pages worth of phones per year, with the occasional oddball form factor among the mostly undifferentiated hardware. By the flip-phone-dominated mid-2000s, the otherwise decontextualized renderings somehow conjure typologies of everything from kitchen appliances to building façades or perhaps robots. (The fact that there are no images of open flip-phones, regretable though it may be, reinforces this uncanny uniformity between the devices.)

The Natural History Museum really does come alive, and not just at night: one of New York's most well-known museums is home to live and stuffed animals alike. After admiring the massive mammoths, you begin to notice the vivariums. The word itself is defined as a semi-natural space designed for specific flora and fauna for viewing and study. Maximizing the efficiency of a vivarium is just as important in the design of a window display. Understanding the relationship between animal and the viewer, designer Roy Lorieo shows his design and fabrication process.

Living space for Tree Frogs in New York's best known Upper West Side museum

With a diverse education, studying architecture at Yale and design at Pratt, it only seems natural for Roy Lorieo to pursue such a project. The vivarium is designed for Tree Frogs in the Natural History Museum. As an exhibition designer, Roy has also worked on a Traveling Dinosaur Exhibit as seen here on his Coroflot portfolio.

Blue foam construction shows more dynamic living space that will improve life longevity for the Tree Frogs

The previous vivarium suffered many design flaws that hindered the living habits of the frogs, as well making upkeep by the caretakers difficult. Roy addressed the flaws and sought out a solution.

We've seen plenty of projects from Boston-based designer/engineer Aaron Panone in the past, from CNC Sharpie drawings to an experimental desk lamp (I have yet to mount my 144#47 chainring... it looks too nice to use!)—but his most successful project to date is the Cuppow, a simple product that he (along with business parter Joshua Resnikoff) has seen from concept to nearly half a mil in profit.

So too have seen the product from launch to second iteration, and Panone is pleased to present an infographic capturing the economic impact of the Cuppow thus far (hot on the heels of last week's announcement of two new colors for charitable causes).

Ten months prior to the start of work on this infographic, we released Cuppow. Cuppow is a very simple product that turns a canning jar into a travel mug, and people like it. But, behind the utility of our product, our commitment to developing and maintaining the best localized supply chain possible has proven to be incredibly rewarding. We didn't anticipate that one product, made through utilizing domestic resources that we are happy to support could have such an impact.

In those first ten months, we realized that we were making an impact on domestic industry when part-time workers at our fulfillment center were suddenly full-time, and owners of businesses in our supply chain were suddenly very happy to speak to us on the phone when we called. We decided to go through our books and evaluate the impact that our product has had on the domestic industries that serve us, and once we crunched some numbers, we were very proud. We teamed up with renowned illustrator and designer, Natalya Zahn, to help interpret our data into an easily digestible infographic. The product of our efforts is a compelling argument for the maintenance and reintroduction of domestic supply chains in the production of consumer products.

Click for full-size image

Fellow entrepreneurially-inclined designers would do well to read up on Panone's chronicle of his venture's growing pains with regard to manufacturing in these United States.

Just when you think you've seen it all with Lego, along comes this guy. A Japanese Lego builder going by the YouTube handle "talapz" has rendered both Todai-ji and Kinkaku-ji, two World Heritage sites and famous Japanese temples in Nara and Kyoto, respectively, in Lego. But the crazy part is he designed the structures to be collapsible, like a pop-up book.

It's pretty brutal for older female actors in Hollywood, who seem to have a de facto expiration date stamped on them; beyond a certain age there are simply no good roles that Meryl Streep hasn't already scooped up.

Well, it's even worse for chickens. Stacey Kelly is a fourth-year industrial design student at New Zealand's Massey U., and is attempting to address the problem of "spent hens" with design.

A spent hen is a chicken beyond her egg-laying prime for use in commercial situations. What is the fate of a spent hen? The carcass and trimmings of the hen may be mashed up to make MRM (mechanically reclaimed meat), this is used in food products such as hot dogs although it is becoming less common. Alternative methods include suffocation or gassing to become animal feed ingredients, burning (sometimes alive) or force moulting. Force moulting is complete withdrawal from food and sometimes water - this stimulates the hen to lose her feathers but reinvigorates her egg production.

Kelly has discovered there are organizations, both in New Zealand and around the world, that re-home spent hens in a humane way. Some of the hens will then naturally produce eggs for an additional eight years. So for her final year project at Massey, she's focusing on a coop specifically for spent hens—something like a chicken physical rehabilitation center and retirement home.

Her research led her to identify the key factor dissuading people from bothering to take on chickens: property damage. Like all poop, chicken poop can be disgusting and destructive if allowed to run rampant; but managed correctly it can be transformed into helpful fertilizer. To that end she designed the Nest Urban Hen House, where chickens can live healthily even in a city environment, provided they have access to a small patch of grass.

The chickens are housed in a pie-slice-shaped coop that periodically rotates around a patch of grass, keeping it fresher than if they were constantly sitting on the same plot. A deep litter floor is filled with wood shavings, so when the chickens shit the place up, their manure mixes with the shavings and creates useful fertilizer; she estimates the litter floor can go six months between changings, reducing maintenance. "The product and system should allow households to be away from their property for a number of days without jeopardizing the welfare of the hens," writes Kenny.

"Ideally," says an article on Massey University's website, "Ms. Kenny would like to work with a hen rescue agency to relocate commercially farmed hens, and then be able to provide everything from feed to vaccination supplies with a 'one-stop' hen house that should appeal to city dwellers."

As if we haven't seen enough "Holy Crap!"-worthystuff from Japan lately, today's second tip from our forums was too good to pass up: a Keio University research team led by Professor Masahiko Inami have adapted optical camouflage technology to "make the backseat [of a passenger vehicle] look transparent from the driver's viewpoint."

The main feature of our system is, it makes things look as if you can really see through them, rather than giving an indirect view of what's behind. For example, with a system that shows things on a monitor, you can understand your car's position and where any obstacles are. But the point about our system is, it gives a sense of depth, by making things appear where they actually should be when you look back.

That's right, the verysame technology that's being developed for a real-life version of sci-fi/fantasy trope of an invisibility cloak or cloaking device—for a rather more mundane interior application: as a sort of full-size rear-view mirror for auto interiors. And if the actual physics of the technology is surprisingly straightforward—"video from the rear cameras is projected onto the backseat using a half-mirror—it's more than just a glorified augmented reality periscope:

The screen is made of a special material called a recursive reflector. Optically, it has an interesting characteristic because it reflects light back in the direction of incidence. When we thought of applying it to automobiles, the advantage was, it gives a clear image in daylight, rather than in a dark place like this.

I was especially interested to learn that they're looking to develop the technology for an entire auto interior, affording a full 360° of reverse-cloaking transparency, a sort of virtual X-Ray vision that will do away with blind spots once and for all. "Currently, the system shows one point clearly. But from now on, we'd like to keep increasing the number of viewpoints. We plan to enable the system to be easily used by anyone."

Inami and his team optimistically estimate that it's a mere five years away from commercial availability. But not everyone is so enthusiastic about it: in response to wallflower's original post, Lmo writes,

Another "safety feature" crutch for people that really shouldn't be behind the wheel of an automobile. If you think about it, all that is needed is driver awareness. An acronym is taught to commercial vehicle student drivers: G.O.A.L Get Out And Look

Know what's around you before you get into the vehicle. No optical camo required.

Via Diginfo; hat-tip to wallflower

Chen Yaoguang is the principal and founder of Hangzhou-based architecture studio Dianshang Building Decoration Design Co. Ltd., DBDD for short. Over the past two decades, Chen has established himself as Hangzhou's premier interior architecture practice, garnering plenty of Chinese-language design press as well as exposure in the mainstream media. (His next challenge is to make a name in the West.)

In fact, China's swift ascent to economic superpower status is readily reflected in his success—the studio has grown to some 30 employees—and continued demand for his work is perhaps the surest sign of the nation's trickle-down prosperity. Indeed, he has built an impressive list of projects and clients, from corporate headquarters to cultural venues, from high-end hotels to ritzy residences for China's burgeoning nouveau riche.

Image courtesy of DBDD

Image courtesy of DBDD

And as is often the case with rapidly-acquired wealth, it seems that money can't buy taste: newly munificent Chinese tend to err on the side of overstated opulence as opposed to the understated aesthetic of, say, the Japanese or the Scandinavians. Yet DBDD's extensive portfolio proves that prosperity need not be too ostentatious: the interiors are thoughtfully-designed and vastly superior to the gaudy Gilded Age-inclination of conventional Chinese luxury.

Image courtesy of DBDD

Image courtesy of DBDD

Indeed, Chen's studio—a two-story office space, plus a couple courtyard-house-style archive beyond the terrace—is a veritable trove of uncanny curios from all over the world (he took the design team to Bali last year for 'research'), scatterbrained yet somehow coherent. The East-meets-West pastiche of ancient artifacts, Old World wonders and miscellaneous mementos collectively expresses an understandable instinct towards extravagance that is met with a healthy degree of restraint in his body of work, which is well-documented on his website [NB: the site was down as of press time].

Senior Designer
Radio Flyer
Chicago, Illinois

Radio Flyer is seeking an outstanding Senior Designer with 7 to 10 years of experience in consumer product design. This person will play a key leadership role within the design team of a fast-paced Product Development studio at this privately held Chicago-based company. This designer should possess excellent 2D sketching and visualization skills both on paper and digitally (using Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro, or similar) in addition to having outstanding presentation skills. A refined sense of form and passion for form development are necessary. This should be evident though presenting a portfolio & sketchbook full of beautifully and thoughtfully designed products.

If I asked a group of designers, or engineers, or marketers, to name the 12 Most Significant Cars in automobile history, each group would likely provide very different answers. But meat-eating Harley Morenstein, the guy behind Epic Meal Time, just might be objective enough to provide a list that addresses things every group could probably agree on, at least in part. (He's backed up here by Car & Driver editors, which doesn't hurt.)

The car nuts among you will still have issues with at least a few of these, but before watching, ask yourself: What car in auto design history would you estimate had 98% useable interior space? Can you name a car category that completely displaced an older, entrenched form factor within a matter of years? Which car defined the modern supercar? What was Europe's Model T?

The answers to these and more are in this comprehensive video, that clocks in at nearly 15 minutes yet moves briskly enough to be compelling. I should also point out that this list isn't about the best cars, nor the ones with the most positive impact; they specifically use the term "significant," meaning particular vehicles that simply had influence—for better or worse. One of the cars in the standings, for instance, can have a lot of the blame for getting America hooked on SUVs laid squarely at its tires; another car on the list went in the opposite environmental direction, making hybrids cool.

Here it is, and we'll be curious to see which you do and don't agree with—particularly if you work in the auto design field.

Traditionally, one of the challenges faced by creative communities in a Toronto or a Cincinnati has been brain drain: Talented designers are lured away by bigger cities like New York and San Francisco, leaving their hometowns in the dust. While that's been good for the big cities, it's lousy for the small cities in that the local citizens are deprived of a potentially helpful exposure to design.

Nowadays that's starting to change. Cincinnati native John Dixon received his degree in Industrial Design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, then picked up stakes and headed to Brooklyn for a furniture design internship. While he was there he learned a ton, and rather than stick around like most starry-eyed NYC newcomers, he decided to bring what he'd learned back to Ohio with him.

He wasn't alone. While schools like DAAP do a good job of deploying students around the globe for internships, a bunch of them found themselves back in Cincinnati. As fellow ID grad Mike Nauman told a local paper, "We all saw what was going on in the world," Nauman said. "We all fell out of love with industrial design."

So three years ago a core of them formed a Cincinnati-based industrial design collective, Losantiville LTD., to fall back in love with design. And this time it would be on their own terms.

At Losantiville, they would pool their resources and rent a storefront. They would share a space and tools. They would build what they wanted and how they wanted. They would succeed or fail on their own merits. They hung a sign in the front that says proudly: "We made all of this right here."

...It works because industrial designers do not need a lot of individual space, but they do occasionally need expensive tools. "This works for a person only if you are actually making things," Nauman said. "Only if you are making dust."

Each member pays $175 per month, which covers rent and utilities and dumpster pick ups -- this is a group that makes a lot of garbage. Each month, the left over money is saved for large group purchases.
The biggest one so far: a laser cutter called a CNC machine, which stands for "computer numerical control" and cost $10,000. The machine is quite useful, but it also had symbolic significance. The ability to buy a machine like this, meant they had made it. They were serious.

Sounds awesome, no? I don't know what the rent looks like in Cincinnati, but it's gotta be a damn sight better than what you pay in NYC or SF.

As it stands, Losantiville consists of nine designers spread over six brands, all DAAP ID grads, and currently all dudes. They've got a shop, they've got a storefront, and you can peruse their wares here.

Here's a vid showing what they do:

See also:
» E13 Workshop
» 2nd Shift Studio

Fifty billion dollars is the Hurricane Sandy damage estimate for the New York region. Which is nuts; it means if we spent $49.5 billion on defensive measures, we'd still be $500 million ahead.

Of course, even if spending that much were politically possible, we'd never be able to anticipate and design solutions to every single problem. But that doesn't mean people aren't trying. One major issue is being addressed with a fascinating potential solution: The Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is hoping to reduce subway flooding by installing gigantic, inflatable plugs.

If this problem and that solution were presented to you at design school, you'd quickly home in on the two big issues: Materials and deployment. What are the things made out of, and how do we get them into place? At first I thought the same thing all of you probably did—we deploy Jose Carreras and a team of Metropolitan Opera singers into the tunnels during a hurricane, and put them to work blowing up gigantic balloons that only their lungs could fill—but the DHS went a different route.

Their man with a plan is Dr. Ever J. Barbero, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering with a specialty in advanced materials. (He's been working on the problem for years, prompted half a decade ago by a surprisingly prescient DHS.) During his materials research phase Dr. Barbero contacted a company called ILC Dover, which is like a super design-build firm specializing in product design for government and industry—they made the airbags for earlier Mars Rover landings—and they recommended he use Vectran (even though I believe Jose Carreras is allergic to it).

Vectran is technically known as an "aromatic polyester"—I don't like the sound of that, but it probably can't make the NYC subway system smell worse—and it's comprised of fibers spun out of a liquid crystal polymer. It's moisture-resistant and "stable in hostile environments," so we could even use it at that sketchy J-train station at Sutphin Boulevard. It's typically used as a reinforcing material in boat sails, ropes, high-end bicycle tires, and even woven into the strings of rackets made by Yonex for badminton, a sport I'm told Jose Carreras is quite good at.

Says the Department of Homeland Security of the Resilient Tunnel Project, as it's officially called:

"We're utilizing the strongest fabrics in the world," explains [Project Manager Dr. John] Fortune. "Textile engineering is cost-prohibitive, so we sought to obtain fabrics available on the market." Using a commercially available fabric reduced development costs and will make plugs more affordable for mass transit operators.

In Dr. Barbero's early trials, he had an enormous spherical plug made of the stuff—and it tore right down the middle during testing. The water pressure in a flooding tunnel is apparently very high, unlike in my shower. Barbero then doubled down on the layers, adding an inner polyurethane bladder, and added a third layer on the outside made from Vectran belts woven in a cross-hatch pattern, like those Nike Innevas. The idea is that if one belt failed, the surrounding ones would prevent a catastrophic failure. But there is more testing to be done, with an estimated several more years before the thing is ready to go.

The neat thing about the inflatable plugs, which are shaped more like aspirin capsules than beach balls, is that they have a measure of give to make up for inconsistencies in the shape they're plugging. Dr. Barbero's plan calls for some of the larger obstructions to be smoothed over in the brief cross-section of tunnel in which they reside—for example, filling the gap between the tracks with concrete for that little stretch—and it's okay if it's not totally watertight: If a little water seeps in, as it inevitably will, a crew can still manageably pump that out at a rate that will prevent system failure.

The thing we didn't cover yet is deployment. The current plan calls for plugs to be placed, in deflated form, at multiple intervals along the wall of each tunnel. In the event of an emergency, someone that isn't Jose Carreras hits a red button and a network of air pumps goes into action, inflating the plugs in 30 minutes or so. But designers don't always get what they want, of course, and Dr. Barbero's original deployment scheme was far cooler:

"[The] initial idea was to put plugs on rail cars so that they could be sent to any location, as needed," reports The New York Times. "'That sounded really far-fetched' to Homeland Security officials, [Dr. Barbero] recalled." Well, when Jose Carreras was six years old and told his parents he would one day sing like Mario Lanza, I'm sure that sounded far-fetched too.

Yesterday, we saw a 'retirement home for chickens'; today we have yet another urban agriculture project by a group of students from New Zealand. "Pod" is a household 'fogponics' gardening concept by a quartet of second-year Industrial Design students (Adam Ben-Dror, Nick Johnston, Casey Lin and Robert Skenea) at Victoria University of Wellington, who have adopted the name Greenfingers for the recent term project.

They researched several other options for a nutrient/watering system before arriving at fogponics, a variation of aeroponics, which differs from hydroponics in that it doesn't require a growing medium.

The fogponic system is similar to aeroponics in that the nutrient solution is vapourised, allowing it to be more efficiently absorbed by the roots of the plant. In fogponics an ultrasonic fogger to create an extremely fine mist. The optimum particle absorption range for plant roots is between 1 and 25 microns in size, and ultrasonic foggers typically create mist from 5 to 10 microns.

Fogponics require little maintenance to the system, with the primary thing being refilling the nutrient solution as it is absorbed by the plant, as well as periodically cleaning the ultrasonic fogger as a build up of salts can occur. Between crops the growing medium that is supporting the plant also needs to be replaced to remove all traces of the previous crops. The typical lifespan of a ultrasonic fogger is around 6000 hours, meaning it would need to be replaced 2-3 times a year, if continuously active.

It's been a while since I wrote a damning piece about robots, because there hasn't been anything robotic to scare me witless in quite some time.

Well that's changed now, thanks to the Trossen Robotics Community, a "one stop robot shop" responsible for the unholy monstrosity you see here. No thing on Earth and under Heaven ought move like this; it alternately scuttles with the grotesque urgency of a cockroach and the obscenely suggestive swaying of a strip club pole dancer. And unlike a marauding giant spider, it is the exact same creature when you flip it over, rather than being incapacitated. It is unstoppable and it is an abomination. Look upon it:

To the designer of this PhantomX Hexapod that retails for a fairly reasonable $1,199.95: I do not appreciate, sir, the wicked and sensuous way that the robot moves in the beginning of the video, its frightening ability to accelerate, its freakishly quick ability to rotate in a clearly menacing way, its disturbing rotational symmetry in all axes. I will not be fooled by the presence of children in this video, and when all of humanity toils under the yoke and direction of millions of self-assembled creatures like these, I will say, "I told you so."

Bre Pettis: Actual Size, S, M, L

No sooner do we finish covering Tokyo's Eye of Gyre 3D-printing photo booth, billed as the first in the world, when another company swoops in with a similar product and timing. At today's official Grand Opening of MakerBot's physical storefront, located in Manhattan's NoHo district, company founder Bre Pettis pulled the sheets off of the MakerBot 3D Photo Booth.

It's different than Eye of Gyre's, to be sure; MakerBot's is head-only and monochrome, versus the Harajuku gallery's painted (we assume) full-body shot. But for $5 to sit and $20 to print--or just the fiver if all you need is the scan, to bring home and print yourself--you can have your head immortalized in plastic in "smaller than golf-ball size, golf-ball size, and larger-than-golf-ball size."

The MakerBot Photo Booth's camera rig and attendant software is provided by ShapeShot, a Baltimore-based company that's developed a 123D-Catch-like way of converting 2D photos to 3D data. Click here to manipulate a model of a baby captured using their method.

"This is beyond digital photography—it is the future—and to be able to create a 3D image of yourself is just amazing," said Pettis. "We've had celebrities and musicians come in and get a 3D Portrait made. It's fun, it's inexpensive, and it's totally cool."

It's been a minute since we saw the last badass compressed air-powered motorcycle, so seeing as digital designer / 3D modeler Pierrick Huart finally got around to uploading the Saline Airstream to his Coroflot portfolio this past September, it's worth revisiting even a year and a half after its debut.

Back in March 2011, Technologic Vehicles reported that Huart was a member of one of seven teams of students from the International School of Design (ISD) in Valciennes, France, who submitted projects to a speedy brief from "Les Triplettes de Bonneville." (As such, we'd be remiss not to credit fellow team members Vincent Montreuil, Julien Clément, Thomas Duhamel and Benedict Ponton.) Described as "crazy French DIYers," the triplets selected the Saline Airstream design, when features an Alu-Magnesium chassis by Daniel Heurton and weighs in at only 102kg (224 lbs).

Meanwhile, Wes Siler of Hell for Leather explains the technology behind the engine far better than I could ever hope to:

Pneumatic engines using compressed air as their power source aren't new. If you've used an impact wrench or other pneumatic workshop tool, then you've used a compressed air engine. The technology enjoys particular interest in France, where Victor Tatin conceived an airplane powered by it all the way back in 1879. That's where Les Triplettes des Bonneville, the team that will run the Airstream and the makers of its engine come from.

The company making the engine is MDI, which is pushing the technology in low-speed, urban vehicles. Like electricity, compressed air is zero emissions (well, technically it's emitting air...), but unlike electricity, fill ups don't take hours. You can fill a compressed air tank from a compressor or storage unit in the same time it takes to fill up with gasoline. The downside is that power output and therefore performance are so far somewhat limited, something Les Triplettes are trying to address.

The function of a pneumatic piston engine of the kind employed here is incredibly simple. Air is stored in the Airstream's three tanks at 3,626psi and fed into the engine at 363psi, where it expands, pushing the piston down. That pistons's return path exhausts the air through a valve, just like in your gasoline-powered motorcycle.

X Games Senior Designer - Digital Media
ESPN
Bristol, Connecticut

ESPN Digital Design seeks a Senior Designer to join the X Games team that is dedicated to establishing and enforcing design and brand standards across digital screens as well as exploring new solutions for experience design that is displayed on a variety of connected devices, including desktops, tablets and handhelds.

This person will be responsible to deliver exceptionally high quality design solutions in support of xgames.com under tight deadlines. This is a creative role requiring imagination and subject matter expertise to deliver high caliber digital design solutions. An avid interest in and knowledge of Action Sports is highly preferred for this position.

Designer Massoud Hassani hails from Qasaba, Kabul, amid a landscape ravaged and weaponized by landmines that still lurk in off-limits regions. Although the "Mine Kafon" dates back to 2011, when he presented it as his graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven, the lo-fi de-miner was recently the subject of a short film by Focus Forward Films.

Like Theo Janssen's Strandbeests, the Mine Kafon moves with the wind; however, it's more like a tumbleweed or a clump of dandelion seeds than zephyr-powered locomotion. Hassani writes:

When we were young we learned to make our own toys. One of my favourites was a small rolling object that was wind-powered. We used to race against the other kids on the fields around our neighbourhood. There was always a strong wind waving towards the mountains. While we were racing against each other, our toys rolled too fast and too far. Mostly they landed in areas where we couldn't go rescue them because of landmines. I still remember those toys I'd made that we lost and watching them just beyond where we could go.

The uncanny object loses a few 'legs' with each successful detonation and Hassani estimates that a single Mine Kafon can readily handle the onslaught of three or four mines—at about €40 ($51 as of press time) to make, this is upwards of 100 times less expensive than the current cost of roughly $1,200 per mine.

At Dutch Design Week 2011

A reconstruction of the Wright Brothers' airplane catapult, sponsored by the Ohio Bicentennial commission and The Ohio Historical Society

In their efforts to create a flying vehicle, the Wright Brothers created a catapult to launch early versions. It wasn't a catapult in the Game of Thrones sense, but rather operated by constructing a tall framework tower, one that looked like an oil derrick, and dropping a huge weight down the center of it. The weight was attached to a rope and ran down a track that the aircraft was mounted on; at the nose end of the track, the rope did a 180 around a pulley, coming back to attach to the plane; so when the weight was dropped, the plane was effectively yanked forward to get it going.

The video below is of poor quality—it's from 1909, so it's a miracle we can see it at all—but if you fast-forward to about 3:19, you can see the derrick/catapult and subsequent launch of an early Army test plane, piloted by Orville Wright himself:

Once airplanes became established vehicles and the military decided they had value, it was just a matter of time before the technology advanced. Tri-planes, bi-planes and later fixed-wing aircraft had engines powerful enough to launch them of their own accord, but a later 20th Century invention—the aircraft carrier—had runways of limited length. To get around this, the British military devised, in the 1950s, an ingenious steam-driven catapult to launch aircraft from a shorter track. Here's some test footage from the era:

British engineers worked out the kinks, and the technology soon spread. The way it works is that steam boilers in the ship build up and store a tremendous amount of pressure. A channel in the runway deck contains a piston-like shuttle that is attached to the plane's front landing gear.

The steam pressure is built up behind the shuttle. When it's Go Time, the shuttle is released and shoots forward, dragging the airplane with it. The airplane works up enough speed to leave the deck, and then the now-detached shuttle runs into a channel of fluid—"water brakes"—to slow it down.

Remember the camo-dipping technique we looked at last month? To refresh your memory, it's a good way to get a complicated pattern (provided you can acquire the material) onto a complicated surface. Well, turns out you can use the technique for really complicated surfaces—like the human hand:

While it's true I couldn't think of any practical reason why you'd need the inside of your hand to look like carbon fiber, hydrographics still has plenty of useful applications. There have been lots of times when I needed to stash my deer skulls in nearby forests where the neighbors wouldn't spot them, and this stuff really saved my bacon.

If they had this coating in the first place, they wouldn't have ended up like this. Oh, the irony