Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1960 the colour in cloth was decided by a man holding a wet sample against a reference at a north-facing window, working from recipes written in his…
Maya Linton
A modern car will park itself, watch the lane markings, brake on your behalf and tell you the tyre pressures.
The thing it does about the sun is a flap…
For most of the twentieth century, small birds opened milk bottles.
They would land on a bottle left on a doorstep, peck or tear through the foil cap, and drink…
There is a pointed roof on the top of a milk carton, and most people have assumed for their entire lives that it is a spout.
It is not. The…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1960 a zoo was a civic amenity that nobody questioned, stocked by buying animals from dealers who caught them in the wild, and housed in tiled rooms…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1960 a shoe began as a hide cut by hand with a knife by the highest-paid man in the building, because the value of the whole operation…