Sliding House

The brief was simple: to build a house to retire to in order to grow food, entertain and enjoy the East Anglia landscape. The outcome was as unconventional as they come. A structure that has the ability to vary or connect the overall building's composition and character according to season, weather or simply a desire to delight. Wallpaper* took a trip to the site to capture the physical phenomenon in the only medium that serves it justice - film.

Light Transmitting Concrete.

Litracon as tough as concrete, yet light can get through it. Litracon is a combination of optical fibers and concrete. A wall made of Litracon has the strength of traditional concrete but thanks to an embedded array of optical glass fibers, which lets in the view of the outside world, such as the silhouette of trees, or passersby, that are displayed inside the building.
The glass fibers allow light to travel by points between the two sides of the blocks. Due to their parallel placement, the light-information on the brighter side of such a wall seems unchanged on the darker side. Also there is no change in the color of the light.
An array of thousands of optical glass fibers runs parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of each block. Theoretically, there is almost no loss in light up to 20 meters due to the fibers in such a block and hence a wall structure built from light-transmitting concrete can be several meters thick.
In 2001 Hungarian architect Aron Losonczi invented Litracon, the first light transmitting concrete and in spring 2004 he founded his own company, Litracon Bt., located in the Hungarian town Csongrád.

Smittens

What Are Smittens?
Smittens are mittens specially designed so that two people can hold hands inside of one mitten.


HOW IT ALL BEGAN:



I created the idea of Smittens while on a romantic walk with my husband. We were trying to hold hands through our bulky mittens, when it dawned on me to create a mitten that was large enough for both our hands. That way, I thought, we could truly hold hands.
WHAT’S INCLUDED:
One set of Smittens includes one pair of regular size mittens, and one oversized mitten for hand-holding (shown in photo).
http://www.smittens.biz/Smittens/Shop.html

Woody Norris: Inventing the next amazing thing

Woody Norris is a serial inventor of electronics, tools and cutting-edge sonic equipment -- such as the LRAD acoustic cannon.

Drinking Straws...

In 1888, Marvin Stone patented the spiral winding process to manufacture the first paper drinking straws. Stone was already a manufacturer of paper cigarette holders. His idea was to make paper drinking straws. Before his straws, beverage drinkers were using the natural rye grass straws.

Stone made his prototype straw by winding strips of paper around a pencil and gluing it together. He then experimented with paraffin-coated manila paper, so the straws would not become soggy while someone was drinking. Marvin Stone decided the ideal straw was 8 1/2-inches long with a diameter just wide enough to prevent things like lemon seeds from being lodged in the tube.

The product was patented on January the 3rd, 1888. By 1890, his factory was producing more straws than cigarette holders. In 1906, the first machine was invented by the Stone's "Stone Straw Corporation" to machine-wind straws, ending the hand-winding process. Later other kinds of spiral-wound paper and non-paper products were made.

In 1928, electrical engineers began to use spiral-wound tubes in the first mass produced radios. All made by the same process invented by Stone. Spiral-wound tubing is now found everywhere -- in electric motors, electrical apparatus, electronic devices, electronic components, aerospace, textile, automotive, fuses, batteries, transformers, pyrotechnics, medical packaging, product protection, and packaging applications.

Can openers invented 48 years after cans

Cans were opened with a hammer and chisel before the advent of can openers. The tin cannister, or can, was invented in 1810 by a Londoner, Peter Durand. The year before, French confectioner, Nicolas Appert, had introduced the method of canning food (as it became known) by sealing the food tightly inside a glass bottle or jar and then heating it. He could not explain why the food stayed fresh but his bright idea won him the 12,000-francs prize that Napoleon offered in 1795 for preserving food. Durand supplied the Royal Navy with canned heat-preserved food while Appert would help Napoleon's army march on its stomach.

Tin canning was not widely adopted until 1846, when a method was invented to increase can production from 6 in an hour to 60. Still, there were no can openers yet and the products labels would read: "cut around on the top near to outer edge with a chisel and hammer."

The can opener was invented in 1858 by American Ezra Warnet. There also is a claim that Englishman Robert Yeates invented the can opener in 1855. But the can opener did not become popular until, ten years later, it was given away for free with canned beef.

The well-known wheel-style opener was invented in 1925. Beer in a can was launched in 1935. The easy-open can lid was invented by Ermal Cleon Fraze in 1959.

Since 1972, some 64 million tons of aluminum cans (about 3 trillion cans) have been produced. Placed end-to-end, they could stretch to the moon about a thousand times. Still, cans represent less than 1% of solid waste material - about one quarter of all cans are recycled. Worldwide, some 9 million cans are recycled every hour. Which is good news, considering that it takes a can about 200 years to degrade if you bury it. It takes paper about a month to bio-degrade, a woolen sock about a year, and plastic hundreds of years.

Recycling cans saves 95% of the energy required to make aluminum from ore, or the equivalent of 18 million barrels of oil, or 10.8 billion kilowatt hours.

Used aluminum cans that are recycled return to store shelves within 60 days.

Canned petfood was introduced by James Spratt in 1865.

Plasic will replace paper