It pays to go to garage sales sometimes,
Fallbrook resident Bill Warren said.
He should know. Warren might turn a $5 buy into $70,000 after finding what appears to be the pelt of an extinct Tasmanian tiger at a garage sale — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Giotto’s 14th century masterpiece, the Ognissanti crucifix, has been put back on public display in Florence after a seven year restoration — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Sewing Machine War was the first instance of what is today called a patent thicket
. The disputes prevented Singer from selling his invention, and tensions ran high in and out of court: When Howe personally called on Singer, Singer threatened to throw him down a flight of stairs.
But there’s a happy ending to the story, as your machine-stitched clothes evince. The Sewing Machine War ended with a just and lasting peace in 1856, when Orlando B Potter–a lawyer representing one of the plaintiffs — suggested a solution that Mossoff calls groundbreaking but also breathtakingly simple
: The patent-holders would combine their patents in a patent pool
and share the profits from selling the machines. The patent pool participants lived happily and wealthily ever after — or at least until 1877, when the last patent expired — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Ethiopian Caterpillar is an exquisite automaton from 1820 going to auction at Sotheby’s November sale in Geneva. The automaton is attributed to Henri Maillardet — creator of the famous drawing automaton now at the Franklin Institute — via redwolf.newsvine.com
When watchmaker Jan Silva got his first glimpse of the innards of the A Lange & Söhne Grande Complication 42500 pocketwatch, made in 1902, his heart sank. He saw that restoring them to anything resembling a working movement would be a Herculean labor.
The year was 2001. The watch had been brought to A Lange & Söhne’s headquarters in Glashütte, Germany by a married couple at the request of the watch’s owner, an elderly ex-housekeeper who had received the watch more than 50 years earlier as a gift from her employer. The owner wanted to know if it were worth repairing: time had turned it into a gunked-up, rusted mess — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Archaeologists on Orkney are investigating what is thought to be a 5,000-year-old tomb complex — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Hamilton Watch Company was founded in 1892, to build only watches of the highest quality
. Their pocket watches became known across America for reliability, but it was the 1917 introduction of a military wristwatch that truly established them. Those early wristwatches used tiny 0-sized 17-jewel movements originally designed for women’s pendent watches.
The company went on to produce the world’s first electric watch in 1957, but they faced increasing competition from Japanese watchmakers. In an attempt to compete, they teamed up with Ricoh to produce electric mechanisms in their Lancaster, Pennsylvania factory which were then sent to Japan for final assembly. The venture failed, and Hamilton acquired Swiss watchmaker Bueren in an attempt to fight the Japanese onslaught with quality. It didn’t work, forcing the American factory to close in 1969 — via Retro Thing
Leading members of Germany’s foreign ministry were deeply involved in the Holocaust, according to an official report published yesterday which blew apart decades of diplomats’ denial they had played an important role in the mass murder of European Jews — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A camera which was lost on the ocean floor for almost four years has been found with its dramatic images still intact — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Evidence has been found of a massive asteroid impact near the Queensland-South Australia border more than 300 million years ago.
The asteroid, which produced a shock zone at least 80km wide, could be the second-largest asteroid ever found in Australia — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Dead Sea Scrolls, among the world’s most important, mysterious and tightly restricted archaeological treasures, are about to be Googled — via The Sydney Morning Herald
Archaeologists have uncovered a site that may house Britain’s earliest known hospital. Radio carbon analysis at the former Leper Hospital at St Mary Magdalen in Winchester, Hampshire, has provided a date range of AD 960-1030 for a series of burials, many exhibiting evidence of leprosy — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A register of around 20,000 artworks looted by the Nazis in World War II from Jewish families has been put online in the hopes of reuniting the paintings and objects with their rightful owners — via redwolf.newsvine.com
As WikiLeaks prepares to release 400,000 Iraq war documents, two former government security officials argue that WikiLeaks could have prevented 9-11, if the website had been around in 2001.
The two ought to know: Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis FBI agent who tried to sound the alarm a month before 9-11, and Bogdan Dzakovic, a special agent for the FAA’s security division, who was a leader of the agency’s Red Team
that was warning officials about vulnerabilities in airport security just before 9-11 — via redwolf.newsvine.com
State-of-the-art X-ray scans have revealed the internal mechanisms of a corroded, barnacle-covered pocket watch recovered from a seventeenth-century wreck. The watch looks little more than a lump of rock from the outside, but the scans show that the mechanism inside is beautifully preserved, from delicate cogwheels and Egyptian-style pillars to the maker’s inscription — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Analytical Engine – conceived in 1837 – remains one of the greatest inventions that never was as Babbage died before he could see out its construction.
However, John Graham-Cumming, a programmer and science blogger, now hopes to realise Babbage’s vision by raising £400,000 to build the giant brass and iron contraption — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The FBI has seized a set of John Lennon’s fingerprints from a Manhattan memorabilia shop — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A bid by a Cumbrian museum to buy a rare Roman helmet and keep it in the county has failed after an anonymous phone bidder bought it for £2m — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In the early 1970s, three men working for the British Government developed an encryption system that – almost 40 years later – underpins every transaction on the internet. There was only one problem: they couldn’t tell anyone about it.
Between them James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson invented Public Key Cryptography, a system that permits secure communications and electronic transactions without the prior exchange of a secret key. Their work was used to secure Government communications – and naturally their bosses at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) wanted to keep their discovery top secret — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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