all categories

A new Oobject chart almost every day, below are the most recent


Posted by David Galbraith

 
The excitement over commercial sub-orbital space tourism masks the reality of real commercial space venture through orbiting satellites. Obviously these are splendid complex objects to drool over, but you only get to do that while they are being assembled on the ground. Here are some of our favorite images including the giant clean rooms where surgeon-like technicians in white overalls piece them together.
Mechanical horse are interesting because they straddle the gap between the era of the internal combustion engine (we still notionally benchmark our cars relative to horses through horse power) and that of bone & gristle.
Perhaps it’s because we sometimes take the things we see around us for granted and a technical drawing of its design shows the effort that went into it that I find these Nasa drawings so interesting. That in addition to the labels saying what things do. With that in mind, i included an diagram which isn’t really a blueprint, from a Apollo 15 press kit showing how they unpacked the lunar rover – for some reason I always wondered how they did that. I also cheated with a couple of NASA project images that aren’t from NASA to show how other companies were involved – such as Lockheed’s Hubble Telescope and Boeing’s drawings of the Saturn V configuration.
Lookout towers are often more dramatic pieces of architecture than tall buildings because they only have a single floor – the top one. This means that they can be very skeletal and the design is all about a dramatic staircase. Here are some of our favorite examples,accidental architectural gems, like mini Eiffel Towers used for watching everything from forest fires to smugglers.
Switzerland may not have been the place where the symbolically mundane cuckoo clock was invented (it was actually Germany), but it was where Hofmann invented LSD. And although the CERN lab is mainly in Switzerland, where the plaque commemorating the web’s invention sits, the room where Tim Berners Lee wrote the proposal for the web is literally a few feet across the border into neighboring France. Here are some some labs where famous inventors worked.
Lighthouses are extreme and iconic buildings. Remote, intrinsically conspicuous and built to withstand extreme environments. For this list I’ve picked some interesting lighthouses themselves, such as the transparent latticework hyperboloid structure by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov or the haunting abandoned soviet nuclear powered polar lighthouses. In addition I’ve chosen some interesting elements from the giant fresnel lenses lamps to the traveling libraries that the predecessor to the US coastguard used to pass around to lighthouse keepers to keep their sanity.
In case there were any doubt about just how unpleasantly weird Kim Jong Il’s tyrannical grip over North Korea, here are 12 examples of his propaganda posters. They range from imagery of attacks on the US in a bizarre blend of Soviet art and 50s American comic books to perhaps the most macabre of all, pictures of copious abundance of produce in a place where people are starving to death.
When the shuttle takes off tomorrow it will be a symbolic example of technological regress, a small step down for man, a giant plunge for mankind. After the Shuttle, there will longer be re-usable space vehicles, no rocket capable of taking us to the moon, no submersible capable of taking us to the bottom of the deepest ocean. Airline travelers will only be able to fly half as fast as they used to and most seriously, children will get diseases that were previously wiped out all because progress doesn’t always happen and because some people don’t believe in it.

I’ve picked 9 examples of technological regression, they will be ordered according to your votes – pick the the ones you think are the biggest loss.

One of the most odd objects we’ve ever seen these items are sometimes confused with spy gadgetry, but the truth is stranger. Jailers’ keys were apparently filled with gun powder to create a primitive gun that could be detonated if there was any trouble when opening a cell door. We found several original versions that back up this claim, dating from the 17th century and of various complexity.
As someone who fell the height of the Eiffel tower in a climbing accident, each one of these images makes my palms sweat, from Bettmans classic views of acrobats on the edges of newly built NY skyscrapers to Li Wei’s elaborate illusions of people seemingly in mid air. One however, stands out from all the rest, the legendary stuntman Dar Robinson on the edge of the CN tower. Click through to see a video of the stunt.
Comic book ads are the nadir of capitalism, where the ability to blatantly deceive through advertising is exacerbated by the fact the audience is young children. Here are some classics.
Money is like quantum physics, the more you think about it the weirder it becomes, from the completely abstract versions of credit to 4 ton limestone Yap island coins. Money is most often based on trust, the illusion that a promise has tangible value. Here are some of the most interesting examples of money we could find, the earliest coins, credit cards and bank notes and the largest coins and checks.
Vehicles that are actually driven by screws were developed as all terrain vehicles for places like snow driven Siberia. In the US there were several experimental vehicles including the Fordson snow devil, built on top of a tractor. Included here are as many videos of them in action, as I could find.
Sometime in the last few years bored programmers realized that they could strap things like chairs and surfboards to the end of an assembly line robot – and so was born the robocoaster. Here are some videos of them as actual rides and as a recreational high for coders.
If you believe adverts like these, sugar, Fat, TV, Coke, cocaine, radiation, cigarettes: they’re all actually good for you. Manufactured consent!
The earliest remotes were neither wireless or used to control TVs. Since the 30s devices were available to control radios, Philcos 1939 wood and Bakelite model was actually wireless and predates any TV remote. TV remotes started with gadgets such as the Zenith Lazy Bones and it was Zenith who introduced the first cable free TV remote, with the Flash-matic.
I deliberately picked spiral ramps as opposed to spiral staircases, since they include buildings whose entire form is determined by the ramp rather than being merely a feature. Examples include everything from the Guggenheim to the Reichstag, the Tatlin Tower, Lingotto Factory or Lubetkin’s brilliant Penguin Pool at London Zoo. My personal favorite is the spiral ramp at Convair Aeronautics, by Pereira and Luckman, the people that designed the now defunct control tower at LAX. The insane but amazing proposal for a half mile high drive up skyscraper for the 1937 Paris exhibition is one example of a spiral ramp car park, and I’ve thrown a few examples of anonymous car park ramps into the mix to show how beautifu these often overlooked pieces of background architecture are.
Both the second world war and cold war produced particular styles and uses of bomb shelters that were unusual, from Swiss suburban houses with mandatory blast shelters and several years of food to the use of London’s tube stations as shelters during the second world war. Here are a few examples of vintage shelters, each with a hint of retro irony or bygone strangeness.
One of the ways to get something architecturally novel built is to tell people it is temporary. Despite the fact that 99.9% of buildings are temporary over a few generations, people seem to tolerate something as long as it will be gone before they are. As a result, several of the worlds most famous pieces of architecture (Barcelona and Rietveld pavilions) or some of the worlds most famous city landmarks (Eiffel Tower, London Eye) have remained because they won people over after the fact.
There is possibly no simpler gadget that is more creepy than a vintage ventriloquists dummy. A primitive automaton that threatens to come to life and haunt you. Here are a collection of slightly unsettling old ventriloquy puppets with their often equally unsettling owners.
Bridge layers have to be about the closest thing in the real world to a Transformer, giant fold up, extendable instantly deployable bridges that are most often fixed to modified tanks. They have been around since tanks first existed, during WW1, and are one of the more bizarre and obscure forms of military hardware. There is also something incredibly circular about a vehicle that carries its own road.
When I was an architect, it was common for structural engineering books to have this image of two people effortlessly supporting a third to demonstrate the cantilever principal of the famous Forth Rail Bridge outside of Edinburgh. When I was looking for this picture, I noticed that the people were different. It turns out that this iconic image is not unique and here are the three variants I could find, making this the shortest (and one of the more obscure) oobject list to date.
Roman cavalry would often have lifelike armored face masks which were deliberately expressionless to add to their creepiness. Conversely, traditional Japanese face armor is often contorted into aggressive displays of anger. Ironic somehow, since the Japanese are considered stoic and in control of their emotions whereas modern day Italians are caricatured as anything but. Military masks are interesting because they reveal the underlying hidden character of the often faceless uniforms of war. They range from early lifelike representations to some of the more abstract examples during the Renaissance or the accidentally terrifying arctic warfare masks of the otherwise friendly Swedish.
Up to the 19th Century mentally ill people were sometimes chained naked in squalid conditions in places like London’s Bethlehem hospital which became synonymous with chaos (its name being contracted to bedlam) and where tourists would pay to see the freak show. Then came the extreme rationalism of the Kirkbride plan which created a very unusual form of architecture for asylums throughout the Anglosphere that was used until the 20th Century. As a result of their demise, most are abandoned ruins today, giant, rotting testimonies to a bygone era of clinical Victorian discipline combined with neo-Gothic extravagance.

The Kirkbride plan consists of an enormous a symmetrical staggered wing, like a bird made out of lego. Men are on the left and women on the right in wings that radiate from the main entrance for increasingly violent or incurable patients. Early mental institutions where patients had to pay for their own incarceration would also vary in class (rich to poor) on the y axis. The staggering of the wings ensured the flow of air through each, purging them of diseased vapors perhaps, such was the Victorian obsession with fresh air, from outdoor Tuberculosis wards to seaside promenades and piers.




More lists...

10 abandoned subway stations | 10 anti-masturbation devices | 10 antique phonographs | 10 best power strip designs | 10 classic jacob jensen gadgets | 10 classic reel-to-reel recorders | 10 console light guns | 10 dry land submarines | 10 enormous floating cranes | 10 failed automobile manufacturers | 10 flea circus contraptions | 10 gas guzzlers | 10 james dyson inventions | 10 luxury trains | 10 massive steam hammers | 10 money making machines | 10 mud huts yurts tents and an igloo with satellite | 10 neat camera hacks | 10 notable olympic flame cauldron designs | 10 obsolete web browsers | 10 rocket launch pads | 10 ski jumps | 10 strange snow vehicles | 10 transparent watches | 10 unboring ferris wheels | 10 unoperational operating theaters | 10 videos of ejection seat tests | 10 voting machines | 12 abandoned hospitals | 12 absurd olympic events | 12 advertainment video games | 12 alternative versions of famous monuments | 12 architects with architects glasses | 12 awful GUIs | 12 banned music videos | 12 batman vehicles | 12 bizarre military parade uniforms | 12 box guitars | 12 buildings inspired by the Farnsworth house | 12 cargo holds | 12 centrifuge gforce test videos | 12 classic pocket knives | 12 Classic Raymond Loewy Designs | 12 classic sony designs | 12 claustrophobic space capsules | 12 claustrophobic torpedo rooms | 12 clay car mockups | 12 concealed guns | 12 countries 12 condom commercials (videos) | 12 Creative Uses of a GoPro | 12 deceptive comic book ads | 12 dental training heads | 12 different food rations | 12 disposable gadgets | 12 diving suits | 12 DIY bicycles | 12 dramatic views looking down | 12 dry land swimming machines | 12 earliest models of gadgets | 12 ejector seats | 12 elegantly deconstructed machines | 12 enormous propellers | 12 examples of decayed Olympic sites | 12 examples of leaked gadgets | 12 examples of money | 12 examples of photo finish photography | 12 extreme examples of medical scaffolding | 12 failed apple products | 12 failed gaming consoles | 12 famous daredevils | 12 fetishy head frames | 12 floating airports | 12 floating staircases | 12 football helmet designs | 12 great modern fountains | 12 haptic interfaces | 12 hazmat suits | 12 health lies cigarette ads | 12 hyperbaric chambers | 12 images of hanging over the edge of skyscrapers | 12 inhabited bridges | 12 insane highways | 12 iron lungs | 12 Knife Bikes | 12 light therapy devices | 12 luxury airlines | 12 Magic Lanterns | 12 Mars Mission Failures | 12 mesmerising magicians posters | 12 mesmerizing kinetic sculptures (videos) | 12 mobile bridges | 12 movie industry camera cars | 12 moving building facades (videos) | 12 moving image machines | 12 Nasa Blueprints | 12 Norman Bel Geddes creations | 12 North Korean Propaganda Posters | 12 nuclear toys | 12 object covered cars | 12 of the worlds most fascinating tunnel networks | 12 pairs of dueling pistols | 12 periscope rifles | 12 pink tanks | 12 pleasure piers | 12 Pocket Sundials | 12 portable record players | 12 prefab ships | 12 primitive b movie style robots | 12 real escape pods | 12 real life cutaway cars | 12 real life glove boxes | 12 real life jenga buildings | 12 Retro Flight Simulators | 12 Retro kitchens of the future | 12 robotic car parks | 12 rockin guitar hero mods | 12 rooms in a box | 12 Safety Coffins | 12 satellites on the ground | 12 seized weapons caches | 12 sexist vintage ads | 12 ships with impossibly large cargo | 12 smoke hoods | 12 Soviet Bloc Computers | 12 space inflatables | 12 Space Rocket Launch Videos | 12 spectacular erections | 12 steampunk stirling engines (videos) | 12 strange tanks and armored vehicles | 12 times times square over time | 12 tiny Indian school buses | 12 tourbillon watches | 12 Types of Crash Test Dummy | 12 ultra complex surface analysis systems | 12 unbelievably filthy apartments | 12 unrecognizable before and after views of cities | 12 unusual cameras | 12 upside down houses | 12 US Presidential birthplaces | 12 very disturbing paintball teams | 12 vicious vintage dental tools | 12 videos of ships being launched | 12 videos of spiderman climbing real skyscrapers | 12 videos of welding machines | 12 vintage printing presses | 12 vintage walkmans | 12 wild west ghost towns | 12 wonderful water slides | 12 worst iPhone case designs | 12 Yves Behar Designs | 13 disgusting pepsi flavors | 14 cameras that look just like guns | 14 other examples of book burning | 15 abandoned theaters | 15 aircraft with lots of wings | 15 architects 15 chairs | 15 Blade Runner Buildings | 15 dieter rams classics | 15 Dr Kellog Contraptions | 15 Founding Father Invention Myths | 15 giant transporters | 15 high speed trains | 15 housing projects from hell | 15 human cocoons | 15 images of not so secret secret service buildings | 15 knockoff gadgets | 15 monstrous harvesters | 15 odd pods | 15 of the worst american foods | 15 Papua New Guinean superhero war shields | 15 payphones from around the world | 15 physicists in front of their blackboards | 15 pneumatic message networks | 15 radical beach buggies | 15 scifi movies 15 famous architectural locations | 15 skyscrapers on hold | 15 Solar Cookers | 15 spectacular eye testing gadgets | 15 splendid sidecars | 15 video projections on buildings | 15 videos of amazing rolling ball machines | 15 Videos of Sausage Making Machines | 15 vintage prosthetic limbs | 15 wall climbing robots | 15 witty pieces of text graffiti | 16 bat houses and bat caves | 16 concept watches | 16 Genuine Cyborg Technologies | 16 giant bucket excavators | 16 hilariously unimpressive computer ads | 16 impressive examples of bamboo scaffolding | 16 thanksgiving turkey fryer videos | 17 architectural light sculptures | 17 found object chandeliers | 18 brutalist buildings | 18 hovercraft designs | 18 radio telescopes | 18 really tiny projectors | 18 Spiral Ramps | 20 cipher devices | 20 classic 8mm movie cameras | 20 interesting boring machines | 20 railroad snowplows | 20 unusual tractor designs | 2007 countdown clocks | 3 forth bridge demos | 3d printed products | 8 Classic Nakamichi Cassette Decks | 8 extreme truck load videos | 8 inflatable military decoys | 8 inflatable shelters | 8 moving houses videos | 8 pointless uses of carbon fiber | 8 Sky Hooks | 8 super skinny buildings | 9 bathing machines | 9 depressing views of famous monuments | 9 diabolical teamaking contraptions | 9 diving bells | 9 early remote controls | 9 ghost towns of the recession | 9 good for you ads | 9 mine diagrams | 9 nail houses | 9 non submarine periscopes | 9 permanent temporary structures | 9 real wireframe models | 9 reasons why the highline sucks | 9 retro bomb shelters | 9 Roger Tallon Designs | 9 ronco gadgets | 9 screw drivers | 9 secure phones | 9 Strange Edison Inventions | 9 utopian architectural projects | 9 Vintage Monorails | 9 vintage x ray machines | a dozen vintage spy radios | a visual history of video recorders | abandoned pools | abandoned space technology | abandoned technology | absurd armored trains | accidental masterpieces, cooling towers | Aesthetic Prosthetics | aircraft factories | Alexander Graham Bell Tetrahedrals | algorithmic architecture | all 10 wienermobiles through history | all time worst apple products | amazing analog computers | amazing atomic clocks | american monuments under construction | anechoic chamber architecture | anniversary edition products | antarchitecture | Antique Surveying Instruments | apple II commercials (videos) | Apple monocoque or not | arab drifts (videos) | arabian mega skyscrapers | armor for animals | armored face masks | bad design gull wing cars | bank vaults | beautiful lighthouse lights | beautiful wind turbines | best apple concept mockups | best concept cellphones | best concept laptops | best gadgets at ceatec 2007 | best halloweenerd costumes | Best Hess Truck Ever | best interactive clothes | Best iPod Speakers | best keyboards | best lego stop motion videos | best lighting designs | best of ebay oobjects jan 25 08 | best of oobject jan 09 | best pet poop gadgets | best remote controlled gadgets | best Rube Goldberg Machine videos | best steve jobs speech ever (videos) | best time machines | best travel gadgets | big fun alarm clocks | biggest apple design ripoffs | biggest gimmick bottle openers | biggest tech product failures | bizarre drawing contraption videos | bizarre pedal powered things | black rat bikes | blatant ipod iphoneys | boombox bikes | brick sized cellphone ads (videos) | bubble cars | buildings in converted silos | buildings in old planes | bus stops as architecture | bus stops as art | cardboard robot costumes | cars from classic 80s movies | cars in space | ces video roundup | chinese factories | Chip Burka People | classic car user interfaces | classic gerry anderson scifi toys | classic microphones | classic pininfarina designs | collapsible gadgets | Collections of Insects | collectors with their collections | concept folding bikes | construction of the burj dubai | control rooms of all types | cool aircraft interiors | cool pocket sized gadgets | coolest vintage phones | craftsy weapons | crazy about tetris | crazy bicycles | crazy floating buildings | crazy japanese watches | crazy tesla coils | daredevil walls of death | dazzle ships | definitive list of subway architecture | dental chairs through history | depressing million dollar london property | different types of galvanometer | Disappearing Icons: Helter Skelters | diving helmets | diy frankenstein lab items | drug smuggling submarines | earliest wrist watches | early warning systems | election broadcast technology through history | equipment to conquer everest through history | every postwar olympic stadium | evolution of the New York skyline | examples of instant architecture | exoskeletons | extraordinary armor | extreme kitchen gadgets | extreme vietnamese street cabling | famous les paul guitars | famous writers typewriters | fantastic vintage tvs | Fascinating Domino Toppling Videos | ferocious oil drill bits | First images from atoms to the universe | flash flashlights | flying helmets | flying machines | flying saucers | formula 1 user interfaces | futuristic biometric devices | futuristic cellular structure architecture | futuristic german car factories (videos) | futuristic interfaces | futuristic megastructures | futuristic ross lovegrove design | geek hall of fame apple users | general store architecture | ghost particle detectors | giant airship hangars | giant cranes | giant molten steel handling equipment | giant screens | graffiti covered | great climbing walls | great diy lighting ideas | guess the airport from the aerial view | gun shaped non guns | handmade super mario bros | homage to the chrysler | homage to the light bulb | homemade helicopters | IKEA in Hell | images of the worlds largest crowds | impressive moving bridges | Impressive Parkour Videos | inappropriate rocket powered items | incredible listening devices | incredible planetarium projectors | Incredible Roller Coasters | incredibly compact apartments | Incredibly Rare Classic Cars | industrial crushing machines | innovative lights | insane asylum plans | interesting balloons | interesting false teeth | interesting soapbox derby racers | Intimidating Samurai Armor Sets | inventors laboratories | ironic gun advertising | items to build an apple store | jailers key guns | jet engine test videos | jumping off notable architecture (and surviving) videos | Knock-off Game Consoles | Kowloon Walled City Guide | laptop stands | Lavish Home Theaters | lego like modular gadgets | life with a gas mask | light pipe architecture | linotypes from hell | lookout towers | lots of yellow submarines | macys parade ideas | massive record collections | mathematical lighting | mechanical animals | mechanical horses | mechanical marvel calculators | mechanical planetary models | medical manikins | memento mori timepieces | mercury arc rectifiers | mind reading devices | miscellany october 08 | mobile media devices | monster 80s boomboxes | most beautiful airport terminals | most beautiful land speed record vehicles | most beautiful spiral staircases | most blatant ipod copies | most complex watches | most extreme clothes | most extreme speakers | most extreme turntables | Most Interesting Scrap Yards | most wonderful telescopes | Movies of moving picture machines (videos) | moving walkways of note | musical instrument mashups | naked gadgets | nasty nerf weapons | nerds on segways | New York Retro Futurism | non Apple minimalist gadgets | nuclear powered transportation | odd spy cams | oil boom diamond kitsch | oil crisis car ads | oil spill cleanup technologies | old shoes | oobject 2012 holiday gift guide | oobject search for web birthplace at CERN | Oobjects perfect gadget bag | people riding bombs | Peoples choice CES 2008 day 1 | peoples choice gadget of 2007 | physical cutaway models | pictures of the lego house construction progress | pissoir designs | planetariums around the world | Pneumatic Trains | post modern cuckoo clocks | preposterous 18th century wigs | pressure suits | programmable roller coasters | radar consoles | radioactive products | real gotham city | real life video game scenes planes in the jungle | really cool pools | resqtec emergency devices | retro electronic board games | retro saturday morning cartoons | retro videophones | revolting gold gadgets | revolutionary arcade cabinets | Rock Cut Architectures | Rocket Sleds | Rope Bridges From Around the World | Santa Tobacco Ads | sci-fi costume fails | sextants | Shanghai vs Beijing architectural bakeoff | ships out of water | sinister bbc spy vehicles | Sky Captain gadgets & vehicles | skyscraper infographics | snowmobiles through history | soviet fighter plane monuments | soviet moon shot hardware | soviet satellites | space junk | spaceship like hot tubs | spectacular sewers | spectacular wind tunnels | star wars fanatics | start up sequences | stereo cameras | Steve Jobs vs America since 97 (videos) | strange musical instruments | stunning ray guns | stunning streamlined trailers | submarine construction and decommissioning | super sewer robots | Superhero Debuts In Comic Books | surreal underwater technology | survival kits | sword and gadget canes | tattoo machines | technology hq architecture | terrifying mining gear | The 10 most important examples of neon signage | the architect of detroit | The architecture of bunkers | the best designed toolboxes | the best of the hubble telescope | the escapades of steve ballmer | The Extreme Architecture of Lighthouses | the extreme hardware of oil and gas | the genealogy of fixies | the golden age of american concept cars | The Great SMS Swindle | The Life of the Nintendo 64 | the perfect laptop stand | the pigeon net | the wunderkammer through history | things made in suburban garages | thrones | time lapse wii videos | tiniest gadgets | top 10 interesting tool chests | Top 10 Moon Rocket Models | top 10 oddball foosball tables | Top 10 Soviet Technology Ripoffs | top 10 unusual burglar alarms | top 12 harley earl designs | top 12 videos of creepy automata | top 15 classic calculator watches | Top 15 modernist gas stations | top 9 examples of technological regress | top circuit bent kids toys (videos) | top supercomputers | towers of babel | toy robot commercials through history (videos) | trading places | transparent glass stairs | tricked out gadget suitcases | tube testers | typology of milk floats | ultimate headphones | ultra zoom cameras | unreadable minimalist watches | unusual gas masks | unusual rubber duckies | unusual suitcase kits | victorian submarines | video list of 3D printers in action | videos of extremely loud car distorting stereos | videos of plane landings from the cockpit | videos of self assembling machines | Vintage Analog Lie Detectors | vintage analog synthesizers | vintage erector sets to buy | vintage fans for sale | vintage hairdryers | Vintage Lunch Boxes | Vintage Massage Gadgets | Vintage Portable Televisions | vintage ventriloquists dummies | watches worn in space | weird lights | weird outlaw radio transmitters | wonderful altoids hacks | wonderful tensegrity structures | wonderful welding masks | world changing gadgets | worlds greatest elevator rides (videos) | worst general lee | worst keytar (videos) | WW1 Armor | Zeppelins under construction | zoobject cryptozoology quiz |