Showing posts with label Machine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Machine. Show all posts
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Source of inspiration 235 (click on this title!): Enigma machine
Enigma is the best-known encryption and decryption machine in history. The first Enigma cypher machine was invented by Arthur Scherbius, a German engineer, just after the First World War. German industries used it to exchange secret messages, about new models of their products, etc. It was a revolution in the means to share ideas without the risk of leaks. It was also used by armies and governments of the whole world.
When Germany was under Nazi power, the German secret service and army commissioned a more powerful model of Enigma. The Wehrmacht model was created just before the start of the war. It gave Germany a big advantage because no other country knew the workings of this new model. During the war, to encrypt a message using Enigma became a habit for the German soldiers.
For two years the Allied forces were unable to understand the Nazi messages; it was a terrible disadvantage. But in 1943, British scientists, namely Alan Turing with his Colossus machine, discovered how to decrypt Enigma messages at last.
Article by Thibault Prat
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Source of inspiration 227 (click on this title!): Mixing console
The mixing console or mixer is an electronic tool to mix different sounds together. It can be analog, digital or played with several computers.
A mixer is used in a recording studio, for movie music, for radio, during a concert, or by a DJ. Its size depends on its use. There are two kinds of mixer: the Splits, used for the sound system, and the In-Line used in the studio. All the buttons and knobs have a specific use (to make the sound fuller or lower for example).
Article by Florent Bourgain.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Source of inspiration 226 (click on this title!): Amplifier
The amplifier or amp is an electric unit for electric guitar or bass. There are two parts to an electric guitar: an electronic part for the amplification, and an electro-mechanical one when a speaker changes an electrical signal into an acoustic signal. We can do a lot of things with an amplifier, for example: the echo effect.
There are two types of amplifier: the tube amp which was the first unit with signal amplification, and the transistor amp; the transistor uses less electricity so it is more practical.The amp is a unit which has enough power to make you deaf, so be careful... Now that you know what an amp is, go get your guitar and hit those chords!
Article by Florent Bourgain
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Source of inspiration 219 (click on this title!): Wardrobe
This is no ordinary piece of furniture! It is through this wardrobe that children enter Narnia!
Clive Staples Lewis, better known as C.S. Lewis, was born on the 29th November 1898 in Belfast (Ireland) and died in Oxford (England) on the 22nd November 1963. He was a writer, and also a don at the University of Belfast. He worked on Medieval literature, was a literary critic, and a devout Christian. He is famous for writing the Narnia chronicles published in the 1950s.
What is the significance of the wardrobe in the Narnia stories? C.S. Lewis never explained it... Does it have something to do with his childhood or a particular event? Lewis was full of secrets... His perhaps excessive love of God sometimes made him write strange things; he sometimes made use of heavenly creatures as important characters in his stories.
The Narnia books have been adapted for the stage and film (the first, by Disney, in 2005), and there are video games based on the stories too.
A big wardrobe is impressive, especially for children (are there just clothes in there, or are there "skeletons in the cupboard"?!). It intrigues curiose kids... It can also be a refuge (that's the case in the Narnia story when the children are hiding from each other and then from a menacing adult). It is also the doorway to a better world, one of fabulous adventures in which children are no longer victims but become heros.
By Laura Caumel
Source of inspiration 218 (click on this title!): BoxBoxBoxBoxboxBox...
In 1937, the process called Xerography was invented by American law student Chester Carlson. Carlson had invented a copying process based on electrostatic energy. Xerography became commercially available in 1950 by the Xerox Corporation. Xerography comes from the Greek for "dry writing".
Article by Elliot Jackson
Source of inspiration 217 (click on this title!): Speed kills...
This is a traffic enforcement camera, also called : flash box, road safety camera, road rule camera, photo radar, or speed camera. It is a system including a camera to detect traffic regulation violations, including: speeding and vehicles going through a red traffic light. This strange box along roads can limit the number of road accidents.
According to BBC News "Oxfordshire has already switched off its fixed-location speed cameras" because their efficiency has been thrown into doubt.
Article by Elliot Jackson
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Source of inspiration 194 (click on this title!): Submarine
A submarine is a boat which can move in three dimensions. It can be used as a warship or for oceanography … The first miliary submarine was created in 1776: the Turtle (see photo above).
I think a submarine is a real prison because when you are 300 metres under the sea, you can’t get out of course. But, being in a boat under the surface of the ocean must be exciting.
Post by Camille Martinez
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Source of inspiration 170 (click on this title!): Barbecue
What is a barbecue? For a lot of people, sharing a barbecue meal is a convivial moment, often on a Sunday, with friends, family, or neighbours. But, for some, it is much more than that: it's almost a religion! They live to barbecue, making it an art, a science, a crazy competition with other aficianados!
In the United States, the "BBQ" is an institution. In Australia, the "barbie" is a way of life!
There is something "tribal" about sharing a meal outdoors... You eat with your hands, standing about, laughing, listening to the chief cook's bawdy jokes. He is the man of the house, it is he who hands out the hunks of meat from the "sacred fire pit" (that's the original meaning of the word "barbecue")...
By Alissa Viguier
Source of inspiration 165 (click on this title!): Coffee machines
Each person takes his coffee differently. Some like it with sugar. I personally love coffee with sugar and milk. What is certain is that people who drink coffee find it indispensable. In the morning the first thing a person does is to press the button of the coffee machine!
The coffee bean was first imported by our friends the Vinicians in the 1600s. The coffee tree probably originated in Ethiopia, in the province of Kaffa, but the question is not absolutely settled. The most common legend has it that a shepherd from Abyssinia (Ethiopia), Kaldi, noticed the tonic effect of this shrub on his goats...
The café is a real institution with a long history. In Britain and the USA it was originally the Italians that ran these coffee houses, which became the centres of community life (see the "Happy Days" link above). Their coffee machines are truely beautiful magic boxes, full of hissing and gargling, with the promise of dark, steamy, frothy cappuccino or machiatto... Humm, that smell!
Article by Laura Caumel
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Source of inspiration 157 (click on this title!): Clock
The 1985 film "Out of Africa", based on the novel by Karen Blixen, tells the story of a young Danish aristocrat who goes to Kenya when this country was still a British colony. She gets married but falls in love with another man.
Africa is, for her, a marvellous continent, which she both adores and fears. The natives who live on her farm are intrigued by her cuckoo clock (it looks a bit like the one above). We see this clock several times throughout the film and it takes on symbolic value. I think it's an image of time running out for the period of colonization, but also of the change and progress for which the local people were not perhaps yet ready.
Article by Camille Moins
Friday, July 23, 2010
Source of inspiration 155 (click on this title!): Oven
I suppose this old lady, like most grandmothers, uses her oven nearly every day. She prepares good meals for her family or her friends. The stove is an essential "box" in her home. It is no ordinary kitchen appliance though; the hearth is often seen as a home's central feature.
The first ovens date back to 3000 BC. Their use is a mark of progress: larger quantities of cooked meat and bread could be consumed because of them; whole civilizations evolved because of the invention of the oven!
Ovens are useful, and associated with good things (cakes made by grandmothers), but also, they can be a bit scary: "careful, the oven's hot!" Think of poor Hansel being threatened by the terrible witch of being thrown into the oven. Or think about more terrifying uses of ovens still...
Article by Marie Serre
Source of inspiration 154 (click on this title!): Washing machine
Louis Rodier patented the washing machine in 1857. In 1937, the Bendix Company introduced the automatic machine. In the 50s appeared the first machines which used centrifugal force.
This magic “box” revolutionized the household chores for women. Before, they needed to go to the wash-house and scrub with soap!
This box has saved time for women and thus contributed to their emancipation.
Laundrettes are still a feature of big cities; people who often cannot afford their own machine go to these fabulous places. They are warm, too busy or too empty, lined with monstrous-sized humming, clanking, spinning, portholed boxes. I love the smell of soap powder and stale clothes and detergent and cheap fabric softner... Laundrettes can be friendly places to philosophise or slumber in (cf. link above to the 1985 film "My Beautiful Laundrette")...
Article by Melissa Ben Allal
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Source of inspiration 97 (click on this title!): Press camera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Graphic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnGDJw_CqAo
http://photonumerique.codedrops.net/spip.php?article44
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEohnLg3zcg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y37QLpRqypE
http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/
http://www.leegallery.com/photographers/288-weegee.html
Arthur Felling aka Weegee was a famous American photographer. He used a Speed Graphic camera (see photo above).
He took black and white photographs of dramas like fires, murder scenes, or car accidents in New York, mostly at night, during the 30s and 40s.
To catch a good story, he would listen to the police radio. He worked for several newspapers.
He contributed to Hollywood as technical adviser on several films. The character played by Joe Pesci in the 1992 film The Public Eye is inspired by Weegee.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Source of inspiration 73 (click on this title!): Pillar box
An English village unites to save its postbox!
The story takes place in Ridgeway, a peaceful English village. Twenty eight families live in this town in northern England, and they were all up in arms against the Royal Mail.
Why? The single postbox in the village is 80 years old and, according to the postal service, too old and too dangerous. "We will remove it!" Royal Mail said.
The inhabitants of Ridgway would then have had to have gone to post their letters three kilometers away in the nearby town. The families did not understand. They wanted to save their postbox.
After several petitions, appeals and pressure on the Royal Mail, the people achieved victory: their postbox was to remain!
Royal Mail has said that it is "committed to consulting the people before changing the locations of mailboxes...".
Removing boxes only increases the isolation of villages... Let's all fight for our beautiful and useful street corner letter boxes!
Article by Laura Caumel
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