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

The Old Car Manual Project
posted by anastasiav on Jun 1, 2004 - 5 comments

The first 50 years of Fiat advertising images. Fiat has been a pioneer in the development and management of its corporate image through advertising. Famous artists as Dudovich, Codognato, Casorati and De Chirico have created beautiful posters and designs for this Italian giant of which 100 from the 1899 to 1950 period have been selected for their online historial archive. The oldest being this fantastic “Fabbrica Italiana Di Automobili” poster from 1899.
posted by riffola on Jun 8, 2003 - 7 comments

History lesson time. With all the Amazon patent hubbub, I thought it'd be nice to remind people that the same thing happened in the beginning of the automobile industry. (6th paragraph) Let's hope history repeats itself again, and a few large corporations are put in cha . . oh wait.
posted by alan on Mar 6, 2000 - 2 comments