A stair is a compromise between space and effort, and the dimensions that make one comfortable are older than any regulation that now enforces them. Here are fifteen.
1. Every…
The air around you is holding water you cannot see, and the amount it can hold depends almost entirely on temperature. Cool it enough and the water has to go…
Both of these are recent inventions that look obvious in retrospect and took a very long time to arrive, and both do something more specific than they appear to. Here…
A balloon is a very thin sheet of stretched rubber holding back a pressure it can barely contain - and almost everything it does follows from that. Here are twelve.…
Everything difficult about a watch comes from being small, portable and attached to somebody. The timekeeping principles are the same as a clock; the conditions are entirely different. Here are…
The shaft is not holding the canopy up. A sliding collar pushes struts outward, those push the ribs out, and the fabric between them is stretched tight - which is…