The weekly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly off to the side). Each Tuesday, we look at retro-tech, “lost” technology, and the make-do, improvised “street tech” of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. “Lost Knowledge” is also the theme of MAKE Volume 17 (due on newsstands TODAY, March 10, 2009)

In honor of MAKE, Volume 17, officially released today, I thought I’d post a couple of pages from the issue, from The Lost Knowledge Catalog, a piece I did, illustrated by the incomparable Suzanne Rachel Forbes. The whole issue was really a ball to work on, but I especially had fun doing this piece.

More:

• Lost Knowledge: The Antikythera Device
• Lost Knowledge: Village tech in West Papua, Indonesia
• Lost Knowledge: Neon lights
• Lost Knowledge: Reanimating Dead Media
• Lost Knowledge: Manual typewriters

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you’re already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene — makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

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St. Patrick’s Day is next week, and if you plan on celebrating you might be looking for something to wear that’s a bit more stylish than a green plastic bowler hat or leprechaun sweater vest. CRAFT is here to help! Here’s how to whip up a unique, vintage-style headband you can customize for any holiday.

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MAKE, Volume 17 is here (m4v video)! Get your spark on with Steampunk genius and cover star Jake von Slatt’s Wimshurst Influence Machine. Learn to build your own categorized cabinet of wonders to display your collectible oddities. Read all about William Blake, a poet who was actually a maker! Go inside a California steam-powered sawmill. Brew the smoothest cup of coffee with John Park’s siphon brewing apparatus. recreate a 1930s model airplane and give it an RC twist for the best toy flier in the sky. Build your own ball-bearing controlled tangible sequencer, plus lots more projects!

You can start reading MAKE right now if you’re a subscriber in our digital edition, or sign up and get going right away! Use code CMAKE to get $5 off!

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Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun

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Dana Mattocks has put together one of the coolest Steampunk Computers I have ever seen. Have a look at the pictures, there is intense detail on every inch of this beast of a computer.
"Intel CPU Duo Core 2 E6600
2x Western Digital 320 Gig drives
Linksys Wireless G
XFi-Extreme Gamer Sound Blaster
Corsair Dominator Memory XMS2 (2Gig)
3 […]

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I’ve seen a lot of fun uses for embroidery hoops, but I’m finding this one from Pam at Gingerbread Snowflakes especially charming. Using simple pearl embroidery floss, she’s attached her hoop to her chandelier and then, using ornament hooks and thread, she’s hung ornaments and trinkets for the season. Because they are not permanently attached, the ornaments can be rotated for different holidays or to suit your mood. What other fun uses for embroidery hoops have you seen around? Leave them in the comments!

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Last Friday was the premier of our new live talk radio show, Make: Talk. It was really a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to doing it again this Friday. In case you missed it, you can listen to the archived show below.

We also want to follow up each episode with Show Notes, links and information related to what came up in conversation. Here (belatedly) are the notes to last week’s show. From now on, we’ll have these up soon after the webcast.

Make: Talk Show Notes, Episode #001, March 6, 2009

• MAKE, Volume 17, The Lost Knowledge issue
• Steampunk magazine
• Sturgeon’s Mill
• Sturgeon’s Mill on Make: Online
• William Blake: Patron Saint of Makers Check out Blake’s relief-etching process as I attempt to recreate it.
• Capturing the Knowledge of Mill-Wrights
• The Wikipedia page on Electrochemical Machining
• RepRap site

Make: Talk, Friday, March 13th, 12:00pm PT, 3:00pm ET
This Friday, we’ll continue our exploration of Make, Vol. 17, the “Lost Knowledge” issue. We’ll chat with Heather McDougal, author of “Your Own Wunderkammer,” a how-to on building Cabinets of Wonders. She’ll explain how you can make a mini-museum of the awesome and the bizarre in your own home. For more on the subject, visit Heather’s blog: Cabinet of Wonders. Also, the hosts of Make: Talk will present their favorite tricks, tips, and tools for makers, and we’ll be giving away prizes!

And don’t forget, this is live, call-in radio. The show runs for 45 minutes. Call in during showtimes (12-12:45pm PT) and ask questions. The number is: (646) 915-8698. Dale, Mark, and I hope you’ll join us this Friday!

Make: Talk on Blog Talk Radio

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Cindy of Skip To My Lou shares her tutorial on how to make a felt brown bag lunch complete with sandwich, chips, and treats!

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Infrared sensors can give robotics projects useful data about nearby objects, but what if you want to actually see that data yourself? -

I recently acquired a few Sharp GP2Y0A21YK0F IR distance sensors. This is an inexpensive proximity sensor which can detect objects from 10-80cm. A nice tutorial on this sensor can be found at robotroom.com. These sensors only detect objects within a narrow beam, so I decided to mount mine on a servo, so that I could pan the sensor approximately 180 degrees, and take multiple readings to build up an idea of what obstacles are in front of my robot. I like to visualize things, so I decided to write a small program in processing to visualize the sensor data for debugging and to help me better understand what the sensor is seeing.

Though not scaled precisely to match, the above overlay illustrates how the outside world appears via sensor panning. This could prove quite useful for remote ‘exploratory missions’. Instructions and source code available at uC Hobby.

In the Maker Shed:
Make: Arduino

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Pump water with no electricity, no gasoline, just gravity!



Sound crazy or impossible? Don’t worry, it does obey the laws of physics, but I’ll try to explain the operation later. This instructable shows how to build a fairly simple water pump that needs no energy input other than water flowing from …


By: habolooby

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