Almost every design feature on an aircraft has a reason, and most of them are invisible to passengers. The window shape is the exception: it is the one piece of…
What makes a canal worth travelling is that it goes somewhere slowly and levelly, through country that roads avoid. Here are fifteen worth a few days.
1. The Canal du…
The difference between a preserved windmill and a working one is the noise. Inside a mill under sail, the whole building shakes, the gears roar and flour comes out warm.…
Source: Wikipedia
Look at a map of Britain or northern Italy and certain roads stand out immediately. They run straight across the landscape for miles, ignoring the contours, occasionally kinking at…
These are not clocks with decoration added. They are astronomical instruments that happen to display the hour, built when the position of the sun and moon mattered to planting, sailing…
An aqueduct is mostly invisible. The famous arched bridges are the short sections where a valley had to be crossed; the great majority of any system ran underground or along…