Tag: history

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Architecture & Design

Rejected designs for the Eiffel Tower

Rejected designs for the Eiffel Tower
via Twitter

In the 1880s, French designers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier mocked up what would become the Eiffel Tower. You can even see the size comparison to other landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty.

Thankfully, someone held on to the 14 other rejected designs. Number 3 seems to come closest to the final design, with embellished trusses added to the lower tier.

It’s hard to imagine Paris without the iconic Eiffel Tower today. However, engineer Gustave Eiffel never built the structure with the intention of keeping it up.

The city wanted to tear it down after the Exposition Universelle of 1889. But the same community of artists who criticized the Eiffel Tower’s initial design ended up mobilizing to save it.

Maurice Koechlin's first drawing of the Eiffel Tower #art #travel #paris #france
Maurice Koechlin’s first drawing of the Eiffel Tower 
Rejected designs for the Eiffel Tower #art #travel #paris #france #history
Rejected designs for the Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower as it stands today, a timeless design
Categories
Architecture & Design Culture & Society

Time travel back to New York City, 1911

Time travel back to New York City, 1911
A trip through New York City, 1911

In 1911, Swedish film company Svenska Biografteatern recorded its trip to New York.

Fortunately, the footage survived and most recently was speed-corrected (slowed down) and reproduced with the ambient audio of street sounds of car horns, horses, and police whistles to give us a sense of the environment back then.

There’s also a color version of the 8-minute long video restored via neural networks, featuring 60 frames per second and 4k image resolution.

Some observations:

  • Notice all the people wearing hats
  • The streets look a bit empty compared to today’s zoo
  • Cable powered trolleys
  • The kids go nuts when the camera is on them. Nothing’s changed!

This might be the closest we get to time travel.

Categories
Architecture & Design Culture & Society Health Technology

Why pirates actually wore an eye patch

Why pirates actually wore an eye patch

Eye patch, parrot, and wooden leg, and a limp. Those are the essential ingredients to becoming a pirate.

But did you know that pirates wore an eye patch, not because of a missing eye, but because the patch increased their sight instantly inside low lit areas?

Early technology to avoid temporary blindness

During raids, pirates needed the ability to flip up the eye patch so they could quickly snag a cannonball faster below the deck of the ship.

So one eye was trained to see in daylight, the other in dark. The pirate patch was an early technology to solve the issue of temporary blindness caused by going to a dark room from a brightly lit space.

Why pirates actually wore an eye patch
Categories
Culture & Society

The evolution of the price tag

The history of the price tag goes back to the founding of brick and mortar stores.

Can you imagine having to haggle over everything you bought in a store?

But as businesses got bigger in the 1870s, shopkeepers needed a way to streamline pricing for both sales clerks and customers alike. Two department stores helped pioneer the price tag: Macy’s in New York and Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia.

They adopted the Quaker’s concept of one price on all items, no questions asked. Price tags thus removed the hassle for both stores and the customers.

The price is right, usually

Dynamic pricing still exists though. Whether it’s an Uber surge or last-minute airline tickets to Tahiti, we churn across the internet looking for the best price.

Categories
Science

The spherical nature of the Earth

The spherical nature of the Earth
Photo: Unsplash/@miracleday

The world is round, and it has been for some time despite the rise of the flat earth movement.

Take a look at some of the armillary spheres below, starting with the Chinese diagram from 1092. Even back then, they had could rationalize that the Earth adopted a round shape.

The curvy nature of the Earth is manifest.

Chinese Diagram, 1092

From Su Song’s book of 1092 

Damascus, 1526

Work of Taqi al-Din from the Constantinople observatory

Germany, 1585

Sphere on top of an astronomical clock, made in Kassel, Germany by Jost Bürgi and Antonius Eisenhoit
Categories
Culture & Society Nature

Ancient Roman fleeing Mount Vesuvius crushed by flying rock

Ancient Roman fleeing Mount Vesuvius crushed by flying rock

Imagine fleeing the ash that swept Pompeii during the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., only to crushed by a flying stone.

According to the Telegram, the archeologists also found that the 30-year old merchant was carrying 22 silver and bronze coins in a leather pouch. They also found a house key buried underneath the skeleton.

Naturally, the extraordinary discovery has become a target for jokes, including one individual setting up a GoFundMe account.