Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

The earliest video games like NIMROD, tic-tac-toe, Tennis for Two and Spacewar! were more like pet hobbies by MIT genius tinkerers than a mainstream entertainment discovery. They were born in the 1950s and 60s, out of basic radar display technology and consisted of an analog interface and vector-drawn dots. It wasn’t until the early 70s [...]

Seamingly Ordinary

Around the time when Samurai warriors last used metal armor in battle during the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, an entrepreneurial Norwegian fisherman named Helly Juell Hansen was busy creating another form of armor — oilskin jackets, trousers, sou’westers and tarpaulins to protect sailors from the cold and wet. Developed at first using coarse linen soaked [...]

Audio on another level

Audio manufacturers started using the term “high fidelity” in the 1950s as a marketing technique to help grow consumer interest in home stereos. Thanks to the new buzz word and a concerted industry push, the consumer home audio world soon entered “The Golden Age of Hi-Fi” in the 1960s. It was during this boom when [...]

Third Eye Refined

Some say the “Golden Era” of 3D cinema was in the 50s after Edwin H. Land developed a linear polarizing projection system and a set of companion glasses to view the format. The system used two projectors, placed behind different polarizing filters, to superimpose two images shot from slightly different perspectives onto the same screen. [...]

Clearly Ahead

Since its inception in 1851, Corning Inc. has always fostered a culture of creativity and risk-taking. The benefits of this mindset have proved invaluable throughout the company’s history, as it weathered a roller coaster of technological advances by developing everything from auto and railroad parts, to light bulbs, televisions, telescopes, kitchen wares, camera lenses, and [...]

Foot for your sole

At the start of the last century, mountain climbers wore what essentially amounted to wooden clogs on their feet. Soon, the first “tricounis” climbing shoe was developed, which featured a leather sole outfitted with steel cleats that improved traction on ice, but did little for rock climbers. To learn about how Vibram changed the footwear [...]

Drivers have their day

We approach track time like a fluffy white cat to Fancy Feast. That is, we lick our chops… which is exactly what happened in sunny Las Vegas on Superbowl weekend in the all-new 2013 Lexus GS and LFA supercar. With a bevy of Lexus staff and race car driver extraordinaire, Scott Pruett, we availed ourselves [...]

Canon, Cantons and Continentals

Sunday, 12:24pm | A hundred miles. It doesn’t sound like that much. Maybe a long round-trip commute or a weekend ride up to the grandparents. But take that same distance, move it 3,800 miles, and my, how things can change. If you’ve ever looked into great driving roads than you’ve undoubtedly heard that Europe is [...]

Blessed by the God of the Sea

In the 1960s, scuba diving’s popularity was booming, thanks almost entirely to one man: Jacques-Yves Cousteau. It was Cousteau who, along with Emile Gagnan invented the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) known as the Aqua-Lung. It was also Cousteau, whose French-accented voiceovers and globetrotting adventures on his TV series fascinated households worldwide. And as if [...]

Here’s a quick mental exercise for you. Imagine you were faced with a fight, in which you knew your opponent was bigger, stronger, more experienced, and had access to the best facilities, trainers, and coaches money could buy. Would you step into the ring? It’s a terrible analogy, but those kind of Rocky odds are [...]

Part trade show, part soiree, all business

Every year, 18 of the major Swiss watch manufacturers pack up their suitcases, shut down their ateliers and head to Geneva to participate in one of their biggest events of the year, the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH). Part trade show, part intimate soiree and all business, SIHH has, for the past 20 [...]

Peer into the future, without the crystal ball

We kicked off 2012 by visiting not-so-beautiful Las Vegas to attend CES, with the hope of getting a head start on the exciting new products that will launch over the coming year. While we’ll continue to highlight gadgets revealed there on a regular basis, one of the best parts about being on the ground at [...]

8 second showdown

Going into its sixth year, the Professional Bull Riders descended on the Big Apple earlier this month, and with it an abundance of leather, flannel and denim in tow. But the rough-and-ready horde didn’t come here to talk style, but instead demonstrated the brutally tough sport of professional bull riding. Kicking off a 10 month, [...]

All cylinders firing

Good news: we were on the ground at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show (aka North American International Auto Show). Bad news: our luggage wasn’t. Trying to put together any editorial on an auto show without photography can be, well, a challenge and the last time we checked, our court-room sketching skills weren’t really up to [...]

Further, farther, faster

Adventure filmmakers big and small have more tools than ever for producing their work in the wilderness, thanks in part to the continuous improvements of camera equipment and filmmaking technology. Of course, the vision wouldn’t be anything without the dedicated creativity put forth by the storytellers — the writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, and producers. Lastly, [...]