Wearing an old-fashioned diving suit, William "Diver Bill" Walker worked in 14 feet of murky water beneath Winchester Cathedral, digging out the old timber and peat foundations and replacing them with bags of concrete cement and concrete blocks. Staying underwater six hours per day for five years (1906-1911), Diver Bill moved 25,800 bags of concrete and laid 114,900 concrete blocks, saving the Norman building from certain collapse. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Apr 9, 2008 - 38 comments

The hard drive celebrates its 50th birthday Timothy Prickett Morgan reviews the history of the hard drive, introduced to the world in September, 1956 as the IBM 305 RAMAC . Imagine life without the hard drive, without the ability to store and quickly access bootlegged MP3 and video files and pr0n large data collections. (To anticipate, yes, Mr. Morgan may know the history of technology, but firearm nomenclature, perhaps not so much.) Also Tom's Hardware Guide interviews Seagate's Senior Field Applications Engineer, Henrique Atzkern, on the hard drive's future.
posted by mojohand on Oct 12, 2006 - 19 comments