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When Air-Conditioning was a Treat

Stories from the early days of air-conditioning in New York City movie theaters, and reflections on the technology's impacts in across the American South.
via BackStory on August 17, 2012
American Flag with Stars replaced with atoms and stripes replaced by syringes and graduated cylinders

The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation

In the ’50s, America declared science an ‘endless frontier.’ We may be reaching the end of it.
by Carly Anne York via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 21, 2025
Map of Central Park.

How Central Park Holds the Answers to Big NYC Secrets

From ancient Native American trails to billion-year-old rocks, take an in-depth look at the thousands of years of history housed inside this iconic park.
via Architectural Digest on September 19, 2024
Karl Stoltzfus in front of the first Air Force One.

One Man’s Quest to Restore the First-Ever Air Force One

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s plane is starting to look like itself again.
by Eric J. Wallace via Atlas Obscura on August 1, 2024
An oil well at Signal Hill near Long Beach.

It’s Oil That Makes LA Boil

I never knew I lived in an oil town until I went looking for the concealed infrastructure of fossil fuel production.
by Jonathan S. Blake via Noema on July 30, 2024
An oblique view of Columbus Circle taken on Jan. 7, 1924 by the Fairchild Aerial Camera Company.

A Portrait of New York City by Air in 1924

Long before Google Maps, an intrepid inventor with three camera-equipped biplanes captured a groundbreaking view of Gotham in its Jazz Age glory.
by Thomas J. Campanella via Bloomberg on June 29, 2024
Barges on the Mississippi River.

The Quixotic Struggle to Tame the Mighty Mississippi

An epic account of a vital economic artery and our many efforts to control it.
by Lina Tran via UnDark on June 28, 2024
Man and woman testing buttons on machine at Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory

Tomorrow People

For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?
by Roger Luckhurst via Aeon on June 3, 2024
The Chesapeake 1000 crane at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point, Md., on Friday.

A Crane with Cold War CIA Origins Will Help the Baltimore Bridge Cleanup

The Chesapeake 1000, which can lift 1,000 tons, arrived in Baltimore on Friday. Decades ago, it helped build a ship for a CIA mission to recover Soviet secrets.
by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Praveena Somasundaram via Retropolis on March 31, 2024
Lined-paper illustration of Tom Watson Jr. and Sr.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’

What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us.
by Deborah Cohen via The Atlantic on December 13, 2023
Calculating machines.

Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control

The proto-Taylorist methods of worker control Charles Babbage encoded into his calculating engines have origins in plantation management.
by Meredith Whittaker via Logic on May 25, 2023
Child in iron lung.

How the Iron Lung Transformed Polio Care

In 1928, two Americans invented a large metal breathing device that would become synonymous with polio treatment.
by Hannah Wunsch via UnDark on May 19, 2023
An all-women team of aquanauts: Ann Hartline, Sylvia Earle, Renate True, Alina Szmant, and Peggy Lucas Bond.

The Forgotten Women Aquanauts of the 1970s

These scientists spent weeks underwater doing research—and convincing NASA women could also go into space.
by Amy Crawford via Atlas Obscura on March 24, 2023
A man scuba diving.

Filming the Deep: Underwater Film Technologies

The author of a new book, The Underwater Eye, discusses how film enables audiences "to connect to the most remote environment on the planet: the ocean."
by John Plotz, Margaret Cohen via Public Books on March 23, 2023
Chuquicamata in Chile

The Transformative and Hungry Technologies of Copper Mining

Our own world is built from copper, and so too will future worlds be.
by Robrecht Declercq, Duncan Money via Edge Effects on March 16, 2023
Technology and California graphic.

Blame Palo Alto

From Stanford to Silicon Valley, a small town in California spread tech’s gospel of data and control.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on February 6, 2023
original

Rainbows and Disappointments

There is a long and storied tradition of feeling underwhelmed by the natural spectacle of Niagara Falls. Still, the visitors keep coming.
by Ed Ayers on December 13, 2022
People gathered around an electronic contraption with lightbulbs.

Ideas of the PMC

A review of three new books that in various ways track the rise of the "Professional Managerial Class."
by Michael J. Kramer via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on March 6, 2022
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (detail), 1895, by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925); The Artchives/Alamy Stock Photo.

The Man Who Built Forward Better

Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, remain a vital part of our present.
by Witold Rybczynski via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2022
The picture is a photo collage of three men against the background of an atomic bomb explosion. Pictured from left to right is Ed Hall, Ted Hall, and former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

One Brother Gave the Soviets the A-Bomb. The Other Got a Medal.

J. Edgar Hoover had both of them in his sights. Yet neither one was ever arrested. The untold story of how the Hall brothers beat the FBI.
by Dave Lindorff via The Nation on January 4, 2022
Machine in a wooden box with 40 dials: an electromechanical machine used in the 1890 U.S. census.

How the US Census Kick-Started America’s Computing Industry

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.
by David Lindsay Roberts via The Conversation on December 1, 2021
Twin Towers at sunset

How To Remember Minoru Yamasaki’s Twin Towers

Remembered as symbols of strength after 9/11, the Twin Towers and their Japanese American architect were once criticized in racist and sexist terms.
by Alexandra Lange via CityLab on September 8, 2021
A 9/11 memorial

Relic Steel

After 9/11, hundreds of pieces of steel debris were catalouged. Much of it ended up in small municipal memorials and in other locations around the country.
by Max Holleran, Samuel Holleran via Places Journal on September 1, 2021
Biden in front of George Washington painting
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A Conflict Among the Founders is Still Shaping Infrastructure Debates in 2021

What role should the federal government play in building our infrastructure?
by Susan Nagel via Made By History on August 30, 2021
A firefighting tanker drops retardant over the Grandview Fire
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Drought-Related Crises Are Afflicting Millions. Desert Dwellers Can Offer Advice.

If we accept that we live in a desert nation, we can glean insights about how to live with aridity.
by C. J. Alvarez, Patricia Nelson Limerick via Made By History on July 19, 2021
Picture of intersections

What Infrastructure Really Means

Making sense of current fights over a word we borrowed from the French long ago.
by Peter A. Shulman via The Atlantic on July 13, 2021
Wally Funk today and as a pilot

Guess Who’s Going to Space With Jeff Bezos?

Wally Funk has been ready to become an astronaut for six decades.
by Marina Koren via The Atlantic on July 1, 2021
Man and woman researching using machines

Where Would We Be Without the Paper Punch Card?

An 80-by-10 grid punched into a paper card helped drive us out of the Industrial Age and into the Data Age.
by Caleb Scharf via Slate on June 23, 2021
Space Shuttle Challenger explosion

How Legendary Physicist Richard Feynman Helped Crack the Case on the Challenger Disaster

Kevin Cook on the warnings NASA ignored, with tragic results.
by Kevin Cook via Literary Hub on June 9, 2021
An aerial view of an interstate.

The Interstates: Planned Violence And The Need For Truth And Reconciliation

It is time to reckon with America’s racist legacy of Interstate Highway planning and engineering.
by Rebecca Retzlaff, Jocelyn Zanzot via The Metropole on April 7, 2021
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