Author Archives: The Old Wolf

Raymond Loewy

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Thanks to the power of the internet (not the least of whose forces of awesomeness is Matt Inman of The Oatmeal), more and more people are becoming acquainted with Nikola Tesla, and realizing that he was one of the most gifted, visonary and unsung scientists to ever walk the earth.

Inman just ran an indiegogo campaign to raise $850,000 toward purchasing Tesla’s last lab im Shoreham, New York, and converting it into a Tesla museum; he actually raised $1,370,511.00.

Yeah, Tesla is awesome, and Edison, who boinked Tesla in the bung, laughed about it, and took all the credit for alternating current, is somewhere on the awesomeness scale right next to Christopher Columbus, who boinked an entire population into the grave (with due respect to all my Italian relatives who still love him.)

But there are other awesome people in the world whom we also haven’t heard much about unless we happen to be internet addicts, and Stumble across an interesting fact at 3:00 AM because we can’t sleep.

Raymond Loewy is just one such engineering wonder.

Loewy’s designs are everywhere, and when you see them, they’re unlike anything else in their field. In the 1930’s, he designed the PRR S1 steam locomotive that looks like it came out of the year 2155;

Found at Frog Blog

He designed pencil sharpeners that look like TOS Phasers:

CocaCola dispensing machines upon which 1960’s toys were modeled:

And more cool stuff than you could shake a stick at.

Although the 1953 Studebaker Starliner designed by Loewy’s firm (which was the inspiration for later Mustangs) was largely designed by Robert Bourke, Loewy was later called back to Studebaker to supervise and inspire the team that designed the 1963 Avanti.

This particular model was spotted at a Mobil station at 236 Route 15 in Sturbridge, MA on June 20, 2012. It caught my eye even before I even knew who Loewy was.

Read about him here; you can see more pictures of Loewy’s swooshy stuff at SuperRadNow.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The World’s Largest Gold Ingot

Posted on by The Old Wolf

At today’s gold spot prices, 250 kg of gold would be worth $12,503,668.00. This bar, about 17″ long and manufactured by Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, is on display at the Toi gold mine. At 550 lbs, even without all the security measures that must be in place, they don’t have to worry about a single individual trying to haul this off.

In retrospect, this Lao Fu Zi cartoon makes a lot of sense, given the weights involved:

The large ingot must weigh over half a ton; in the days before the internet, I always wondered why wealth was represented by that strange hat-like object.

Shown above, an imperial gold sycee.

The internet is a massive time-sink for the undisciplined soul such as I, but it also feeds my thirst for knowledge. Trouble is, it’s like feeding from a fire hydrant.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Lovely architecture

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Strange is good. Conventional is boring.

From 150 Strange Buildings of the World comes this collection of eye-openers.

The Free Spirit Spheres always make me think of Riven whenever I see them.

See the rest of the collection here.

One of my favorite examples of brilliant creativity is Vienna’s Gas Tank City. Constructed in1896, and used to store the gas that supplied Vienna, these four giant gasometers are now used as modern and original living spaces.

These places always reminded me vaguely of the concept of arcologies, most prominently featured in SimCity 2000.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Bricks of Wine

Posted on by The Old Wolf

On the subject of “don’t do this,” a more humorous example is found during the Prohibition era.

Section 29 of the Volstead Act allowed 200 gallons of “non-intoxicating cider and fruit juice” to be made each year at home.  Initially “intoxicating” was defined as anything more than 0.5%,  but the Bureau of Internal Revenue soon struck that down and this effectively legalized home wine-making. Vintners increased their output drastically, and products like the above “grape brick” soon saw wide popularity.

The bricks came with a warning label that said, “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine” or in the case of the brick pictured here, “To prevent fermentation, add 1/10% Benzoate of Soda.”

Remember that.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

 

 

Be sure not to do this to bypass federal law

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This post started with a memory. I was thinking about a vacation trip my wife and I took this summer, and a humble motel in South Paris, Maine. I wrote about Goodwin’s Motor Inn over at Yelp, and one of the things I said was:

“The bathroom was well-cleaned. The shower head must have been installed back in the days before the government took to shoving its nose in everyone’s business, and to Pluto with water-saver fixtures, thank you… the absolutely Amazonian cascade of hot water that greeted me when I turned it on was enough to make me cheerfully forgive any other shortcomings the room might have had.”

It really was nice. And I’ve never liked water-saver shower fixtures from the time they became federally mandated; you can certainly get clean with 2.5 gallons per minute, but most of the time I just don’t feel like I’ve had that real cascade experience I grew up with in the 50’s.

I know I’m not the only one. Here’s a shot from the instruction sheet of a WaterPik shower head:

Other companies have tapped into consumer frustration with low water flow; Zoe Industries, realizing that the DOE regulations were written on a per head basis, began manufacturing some lovely multi-head devices, some with up to eight nozzles.

Unsurprisingly, the government was not happy with this arrangement, and not only did they re-write their regulations to bypass the per-head loophole, they levied fines of close to half a million dollars against Zoe for non-compliance. Even though that particular emmerdement was “settled” and Zoe only had to pay around $30,000, the company will have to stop manufacturing its multi-head fixtures at the end of 2012, and the company is fighting for its life. If you want one, you’ll have to hurry.

There’s something fundamentally annoying about government interference in private life and private business; an early cartoon dealing with income taxes still resonates today:

In the case of water, however, it’s quite plain that more is at stake than just personal convenience, because water is a global concern.

The special Water Issue is available online.

71% of earth’s surface is covered with it, yet wars are fought over access to enough. As the population of our planet continues its more than exponential growth, ensuring access to clean water for the world’s population will continue to become more difficult.

As Americans, we belong to the 8 nations that consume over 50% of the world’s fresh water resources:

That usage is not just based on personal consumption, but also on the amount of water required to produce food and other products; our hunger for beef and other meats is responsible for a large percentage of our overall use, as outlined in an article Treehugger.

In the case of water, the science is clear; we have to conserve, or we’re going to run out; living in a desert state drives that message home on a daily basis.

Coming full circle, technology is doing all it can to produce products that save more water without sacrificing performance; the EPA’s WaterSense program is just one example.

I understand the need for conservation, but dang, that shower at Goodwin’s was nice.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Heiligenblut and Großglockner, Austria, 1975

Posted on by The Old Wolf

In a previous post I put up some Austrian travel posters; one of them focused on Heiligenblut,  a town in northwest Kärnten in Austria, nestled at  the foot of Großglockner, the highest mountain in that country.

On May 29, 1975, I had a chance to visit the town, and I can say without reservation that the place is truly stunning.

St. Vincent Church, Heiligenblut. The Großglocknerspitze (the summit) was hiding behind the clouds, and as the day progressed the clouds increased, so I felt fortunate to get this shot.

This is probably one of the most picturesque (or, as I think it should be pronounced, “picture-squee” places in the world.

The Old Wolf has spoken.