The Bars Are Not the Code
The intuitive reading of a barcode is that each bar is a symbol, like a letter, and the sequence of bars spells out the…
Source: Wikipedia
The Problem It Was Invented to Solve
Source: Wikipedia
White paint on a road is nearly useless at night. A headlight beam strikes a painted line at a very shallow…
The Counterintuitive Fact at the Centre of It
For the first half of the twentieth century, cars were built to resist damage. A heavy chassis, thick steel, rigid construction. After…
A smoke alarm is a white plastic disc with a button and a battery, and the assumption is that something inside it can somehow see smoke. Neither of the two…
The height is the mechanism, not the storage. Here are sixteen.
1. The Height Is the Pressure
Water pressure at a tap comes from the vertical distance down from the…
The cheapest components on the building, protecting the most expensive ones. Here are eleven.
1. They Stop the Roof Edge Being Fed Into the Wall
A roof with no gutter…