The painted stripes across a pedestrian crossing are so familiar that they look like the obvious solution. They were not the first attempt.
The original crossings were marked by rows…
There is a wire coat hanger in almost every house, and nobody bought it. They arrive with dry cleaning, they accumulate, and they are the only household object most people…
Postal codes feel like infrastructure - something that was always there, like street names. They are not. Most of them arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, they were introduced against…
The complaint that women's clothing has no usable pockets is old, correct, and usually explained badly.
The usual version is that women were deliberately denied pockets to keep them dependent.…
A light bulb attaches to a fitting in one of two ways. It either screws in on a threaded base, or it pushes in against a spring and twists a…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1960 an officer walked a fixed route alone for a whole shift, with no radio, contactable only at a locked post on the street with a lamp…