Gear Patrol

It’s hard to believe the 2012 summer Olympics are already upon us. While this year’s events will feel familiar, the athletes and venues have unquestionably evolved. The same holds true for the technology used to capture, record and share their feats with the globe. Long gone are the games of stark naked athletes, replaced by…

The first lithium-ion battery was discovered around 35 years ago by an American chemist working for Exxon Research and Engineering. Their goal was to set out and create a new battery system for their fleet of specialized machinery. Little did they know, the discovery would eventually spark a global revolution for powering the mobilizing human…

The history of modern computing began in the 1950s with the development of reliable, discrete transistors, which were smaller, consumed less power, ran much cooler, and remained operational longer compared to the vacuum tube designs used in the first generation of computing. A true “explosion” in computing, however, came later in the 1960s during the…

The birth of the DSLR can be traced back to a little camera company called Nikkor, which eventually became Nikon, and its relationship with a small government agency known as NASA. One of Nikon’s first major successes, the 35mm Nikon F, gained popularity in the U.S. with photographers covering the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Soon,…

Protective eyewear dates back to prehistoric times when Inuit people created snow goggles out of flattened walrus ivory. The accessory, before it was an accessory, also made its way through the ancient Roman and Chinese cultures as unique visual tools. It wasn’t until the early-1900s when tinted eyewear stepped unto the style scene, thanks in…

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…

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 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…

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….

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…

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…

The spirit of innovation has almost always been about making life as we know it better, or at least a more pleasant experience. Sure, there have been some stutters like the weight-loss contraptions of the 50s, hydrogen blimps, and auto-tune, but these hysterical and sometimes horrific failures are mainly just bumps on a steady climb…