If you enjoy graphic novels, you’ll be interested in Lynd Kendall Ward, who was born June 26, 1905, and kind of invented (or at least heavily influenced) the genre. He was born in Chicago, and named after Lyndhurst, the English town his father had lived in before emigrating to the US. He decided to become… Continue reading

On June 23, 1884, Frederick Wellington Taylor was born in Ontario, Canada At least we’re pretty sure it was June 23; there’s a bit of uncertainty about the exact date. His father sold farm equipment, but the family was relatively poor, so Frederick left school at 17 to work in a piano factory to help… Continue reading

Most of the “history” you see about computing, at least in the US, mentions either the Atanasoff-Berry computer or the English Colossus computer at Bletchley Park as the first modern programmable computer. Neither of those are true. Konrad Zuse, who was born 123 years ago today, invented the first modern programmable computer in Germany in… Continue reading

Architects and engineers are looking for new solutions to environmentally-friendly building, urban planning, and energy use. But Paolo Soleri, who was born June 21, 1919, was there decades ago. He was born in Turin, Italy, studied architecture, and in the mid-1940s spent more than a year in a fellowship at Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture school… Continue reading

To be successful, any product not only has to be invented and manufactured, but also sold. Alexander Winton, who was born 163 years ago today, didn’t invent the automobile (although he was involved very early) but when he sold a car he had made in 1898 for $1000 (a pretty high price back then), it… Continue reading

I think most people have heard of the idea of the “invisible hand” of markets. It’s an idea that came from Adam Smith, an odd and somewhat mysterious person whose birthdate is unknown, but he was baptized on June 16, 1723. He was born in Scotland and raised by a single mother; his father had… Continue reading

Half a millennium ago, European scholars were under some flawed impressions, including that the earth was the center of the universe (or at least the solar system, which I guess they would have called the “earth system” or something). But if you look a bit further than our typical eurocentric history tends to, you’ll find… Continue reading

On June 13, 1928, John Nash was born in West Virginia. If life was a zero-sum game, that would have meant that somebody else would have died at the same moment, but luckily for everybody, life is more like an n-player non-zero-sum non-cooperative game that instead has a Nash equilibrium in mixed strategies. Yeah, that’s… Continue reading

“Street photography” doesn’t really have much to do with streets; it’s candid, in-the-moment photography that usually has to do with people and usually happens in an urban environment (since that’s where most of the people are). It’s like photojournalism, but without any notion that the images are “news” in any way. It’s just recording ordinary… Continue reading

Everybody, I assume, is aware of “educational toys.” They’re things that are not just supposed to entertain children, but cost more than regular toys. No, wait, I mean they’re supposed to help children learn — by which we mean “learn the things we want them to learn” rather than everything else they’re learning anyway. But… Continue reading