The Stop Sign Wasn’t Always Red. Yellow signs were used before there was a way produce a reflective material in red that would last.
We have the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments to thank for the stop sign’s iconic shape. In 1923, the association developed an influential set of recommendations about street-sign shapes whose impact is still felt today. The recommendations were based on a simple, albeit not exactly intuitive, idea: the more sides a sign has, the higher the danger level it invokes.
[more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference
on Dec 13, 2011 -
109 comments
Evan Osnos joins a tour group from China as they traverse Europe. In the front row of the bus, Li stood facing the group with a microphone in hand, a posture he would retain for most of our waking hours in the days ahead. In the life of a Chinese tourist, guides play an especially prominent role—translator, raconteur, and field marshal—and Li projected a calm, seasoned air. He often referred to himself in the third person—Guide Li—and he prided himself on efficiency. “Everyone, our watches should be synchronized,” he said. “It is now 7:16 P.M.” He implored us to be five minutes early for every departure. “We flew all the way here,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.” [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty
on Jul 28, 2011 -
71 comments
In 2007, City officials convened a group of stakeholders, including representatives of taxi drivers, owner and passengers, to create a set of goals for the next New York City taxi cab, a project called the Taxi of Tomorrow.
posted by Joe Beese
on Nov 16, 2010 -
40 comments
When he was 32, his life seemed hopeless. He was bankrupt and without a job. He was grief stricken over the death of his first child and he had a wife and a newborn to support. Drinking heavily, he contemplated suicide. Instead, he decided decided that his life was not his to throw away: it belonged to the universe. Buckminster Fuller embarked on "an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity." If the architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist
Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller were still alive, he would be 115 years old today. Though he died in 1983, his legacy grows on through
recordings of his ideas and
the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 12, 2010 -
32 comments
"
Modes and Motors was a publication produced by General Motors Styling Section in 1938. It is reproduced here in its entirety because its message of what automobile and product design is supposed to represent is lost on today’s world. Modes and Motors is a snapshot into the way designers used to think about their profession."
So then
Dean's Garage would be the fat album of classic automobile styling and design from which it came, documenting a long, beautifully chromed age of optimism.
posted by carsonb
on Feb 21, 2010 -
7 comments
R.I.P., Arizona Parking Solutions. Guy parks car without displaying his pass.
APS boots car. Guy dollies car
into his garage and invites APS to reclaim their boots. Or not; their choice: either way, they can't tow, he won't pay the fine, and he really doesn't need to be driving the car. This catch-22 upsets the owner. And eventually
APS goes off the deep end, booting nearly everyone's car in the community. The media becomes involved. And we become witness to a business owner suiciding his own business.
posted by five fresh fish
on Jun 18, 2008 -
129 comments
In the U.S., motorists do not pay their way. The US government spends more on highways and other auto-related expenses than it receives from auto-related taxes, unlike almost every country in Europe. In a recent
report [pdf], Mark Delucchi calculates automobile-related costs and revenues in three different ways and concludes the subsidy is around 20-70 cents per gallon or $24-105 billion in 2002. But what are automobile-related costs, you ask?
[more inside]
posted by salvia
on Oct 2, 2007 -
99 comments
BeaterReview was formed to help the depreciation-averse enthusiast and automotive bottom-feeder alike find gold in them thar' mountains of rust.
posted by punkfloyd
on Sep 11, 2007 -
49 comments
For years,
MDI has been developing a car that runs on compressed air. Last month, they signed an
agreement with Tata Motors to produce the MiniCat - a zero-emissions vehicle that will travel up to 180 miles on $3 worth of fuel. See it in action
here.
(youtube)
posted by Afroblanco
on Mar 19, 2007 -
45 comments
Luigi Colani, Biomorphic Designer — This prolific
master of
plastic has been creating organically streamlined
planes,
trains,
automobiles,
trucks,
motorcycles,
ships,
cities,
homes,
computers,
cameras,
televisions,
furniture,
pianos,
ceramics,
shoes,
eyewearPDF,
pens,
airbrushes, and other wonderful
stuff (
including the
kitchen sink) for some
60 years. Wherever you need to
go, you can reach your
final destination in Colani style. More designs
here,
here,
here, and
here.
[Brits and touristas take note: London's Design Museum will host a Colani exhibition, Translating Nature, from March 3 to June 17, 2007. Bibliophiles can check out the book Colani: The Art of Shaping the Future.]
posted by cenoxo
on Feb 18, 2007 -
14 comments
Broken Embargoes. Given the long amount of preparation required to print an automotive "buff book" (US examples include
Car&Driver,
Road&Track,
Automobile, and
MotorTrend), automobile manufacturers customarily provide them with access to concepts and new production vehicles months prior to the "official" public unveiling, requiring them to
abide by an embargo on the images and data until a certain date has passed, usually to accomodate a carshow or other media event. In these cases, it was to coincide with the
North American International Autoshow (NAIAS, aka Detroit Autoshow, 1/13-1/21), with the embargo lifted with either 1/7/2007 online publication or February print issues, which the buff books dropped the last week of a December. As soons as that happened, web outlets like
blogs and
various forums released their embargoed materials for each model. As a result, many manufacturers have had their marketing plans torn assunder (list and more background inside)...
posted by rzklkng
on Jan 4, 2007 -
12 comments
"We can run our car over any road that a man can take a team of horses and a wagon, providing we can get traction."
In 1903, to settle a $50 bet,
Horatio Nelson Jackson became the first person to
drive (and
push) a car (a used
Winton touring car, which had no roof or windshield)
across the United States, accompanied by mechanic Sewall Crocker and
Bud the bulldog. There were no gas stations, and there was less than 150 miles of paved road in the country. They blew a tire 15 miles into the trip and replaced it with their only spare.
Jackson's trip
inspired others. In 1909,
Alice Ramsey, accompanied by three female passengers, became
the first woman to drive (and
pull, and
push) a car
across the country. In 1915,
Anita King,
"The Paramount Girl," became the first woman to drive across the country
solo. "Her only companions will be a rifle and a six shooter." And in 2003, Peter Kesling
repeated Jackson's trip, in
a 1903 Winton.
posted by kirkaracha
on Sep 27, 2005 -
18 comments
Patent Room is a collection of early 20th Century industrial design culled from the archives of the U.S. Patent Office, featuring architecture, automobiles, toys, and trains.
posted by crunchland
on Aug 3, 2005 -
11 comments
Portable parking spaces are the mind-bending Atomic-age outcome of centuries of humankind's best technology: they enable a bike to occupy the same perimeter as a car. They're arts and crafts, they're couture, they're
vehicles of dissent [Flash, contains photos, project info, instructions on building your own PPS]. See the
movie [11MB QuickTime]. A
different take on the concept.
posted by Mo Nickels
on Aug 1, 2005 -
52 comments
Spray-on Mud - So you own a big 4x4, and you feel a bit stupid that you only use it to take the children to school. You want people to think you're a bit country - that you need 6 tonnes of car to get you from A to B because you like to take it off-road every so often. You need
Spray-on Mud apparently.
posted by The Ultimate Olympian
on Jun 14, 2005 -
101 comments
After an American car company
recreates its legendary
1960's Ferrari-beating race car, the first $150,000 2005 production car
sells at a charity event for $400,000 over sticker price, (to a
Microsoft-enriched individual, of course) and many months later, dealers are still asking up to
$200,000 over sticker, or at least
$150,000 over sticker. The "experts" at Edmunds say the car is selling for
about $100,000 over sticker (seeing their "True Market Value" requires a few clicks from this page), and the widespread belief is that these
admittedly amazing cars are virtually impossible to find and all selling for at least $100,000 over sticker.
But using publicly available data, including completed eBay auctions and
public documents, this
non-commercial site shows the truth to be very different than the hype.
posted by escorter
on May 13, 2005 -
32 comments
These
images
caused a great debate
among my antipodean circle in London whether they are real or have been
photoshopped. As far as we can gather it
does
exist. But it is surreal - and only in the UK surely would something like
this be real.
posted by Samuel Farrow
on Sep 8, 2004 -
85 comments
Do Cars force us to give up the outdoors? In jail, prisoners are stuck indoors and aren't allowed to go outside except for an hour at most. But are the car-driving residents of the average American suburb consigned to the same fate? "You go from the box garage in the house to the box car, driving down the street, not touching anything or being part of your environment" says Jessica Denevan. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007
on Sep 16, 2003 -
70 comments
