Nobody thinks of them as equipment, which is what they are. Here are eleven jobs.
1. Trapping a Layer of Still Air
Most of the insulating effect is not the…
Almost everyone pictures an anchor as a heavy thing dropped on the bottom, holding a boat by sheer mass. If that were how it worked, no ship could carry an…
It stopped being alive and it never stopped moving. Here are fifteen.
1. It Is a Bundle of Tubes, Not a Solid
Wood is built from long hollow cells that…
Almost everything that makes a chair comfortable or unbearable was decided by a handful of measurements, and they interact. Here are fifteen.
1. Seat Height Decides Everything Else
The distance…
Corrugated board is one of those inventions so completely ordinary that it is hard to see as an invention at all. Something like a hundred billion boxes are made from…
There is a category of object assembled entirely without fixings, and basketry is the oldest and most widespread example.
Almost everything else made of many parts is held together by…