While we don’t like the idea of devastating nuclear weapons any more than anyone else, we have to admit that the tests conducted with them in the 50s were pretty spectacular. AtomCentral.com recently released remastered HD footage of several of the Operation Teapot tests which took place in 1955.

The explosions are vivid, violent…and kind of beautiful. In a sad, deadly way, of course. There are several blasts in the video below, and there are a couple of painfully bright flashes – so we don’t recommend watching in a dark room.

This footage was previously unreleased from tests conducted on the Nevada test grounds. These were some seriously massive bombs that created incredible explosions. The detonations are definitely amazing to watch…from the safety of 60 years away.

The post And…Boom: Amazing HD Footage of Atomic Bomb Testing first appeared on Gajitz.

Being fitted for contact lenses isn’t really a difficult or painful process. A few minutes in the optician’s chair and you’re out of the door with a prescription in hand. It definitely was not that easy in the early days of contacts, though. In the 1940s, those suckers were thick, made of glass, and came with an insanely uncomfortable-looking fitting process.

To get the shape of the lens just right, the optician had to smush some impression-forming slime right onto your eyeball on the end of a suction cup-type device. It was like having a dental impression taken, but on your eyeball. The actress in this newsreel video had to have been paid an awful lot not to scream in horror as that stuff was hardening on her eye.

After the impressions were made, skilled technicians went to work forming, sanding, and filing little discs of glass for wearers to shove into their eye sockets. The newsreel even refers to the lenses as “glasses,” and the model looks exceedingly uncomfortable wearing them. But, hey, guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, right? At least the external glasses that you don’t have to pry out of your eyes every six hours.

The post Cringeworthy Contact Lens Fitting Procedure of the 1940s first appeared on Gajitz.

In the 1960s, color televisions were gaining traction as the world’s premier form of entertainment. There were still some glitches, though, as frustrated lazy viewers worried about having to get up repeatedly to adjust the volume, channel, or picture settings. The very first television remote controls debuted in the mid-1950s, but this 1961 commercial from RCA made the concept seem downright sexy.

Full of dramatic flair and a lovely, enthusiastic model to demonstrate the thrilling technology, the commercial puts emphasis on how to work each of the controls. To a modern mind – one that has dealt with mega-remotes for years – the instructions are tedious and simplistic. But when the commercial was released, not many households had experience with such a luxury.

One of the features of the TV that we really love is the storage compartment for the remote. Just like everyone’s dad used to say, when you aren’t using the remote it should be on (or in this case, in) the TV so you can find it next time.

(via Wired)

The post A Very Dramatic Look at RCA’s ’61 Color TV Remote Control first appeared on Gajitz.

In 1979, the Xerox Alto was an amazing computer and the predecessor to the later commercial version called the Star. The Star would later fail miserably after the release of the Macintosh. But in this commercial, the Alto is depicted as a futuristic office machine that would change the way companies conduct business. Among the first machines of its kind, the Alto featured an easy-to-use graphical interface (GUI) and a mouse.

The Alto really could send and receive emails, send documents to a laser printer, and display reasonably high-quality images (which took forever to load, of course). Unlike in the commercial, however, the Alto didn’t actually have the ability to follow voice commands. What it did is lay the foundation for many generations of computers to follow. In fact, Steve Jobs was said to have visited Xerox’s research center and was given a copy of the Alto’s GUI. The Alto clearly influenced the designs of Apple and other computer companies, making it one of the most influential computers in history.

The post Xerox’s Alto Commercial Shows Off Historic Office Machine first appeared on Gajitz.

Robots have slowly crept into our daily lives and now do a whole spectrum of jobs from vacuuming our floors to building cars. The amazing technology we enjoy today wouldn’t have been possible without pioneers in robotics such as Charles Rosen. Rosen and his team developed Shakey, the world’s first moving, “thinking” robot.

Rosen wanted to make a robot with neural networks, the brain “circuitry” that allows humans to see, think, and respond to environmental stimuli. Although this technology wasn’t available in 1963 when Shakey was built, the robot did attract the attention of DARPA, the research wing of the US military. DARPA gave the project a grant of $750,000, which in today’s dollars would be more than $5 million.

Thanks to a video camera on its head and wiry “whiskers” near its base, Shakey was able to “see” and interact with its environment. It connected via a head-mounted radio antenna with its massive brain: a room-size mainframe computer. The computer programs used to control the robot allowed it to respond to the unexpected with a quick change in plans. Shakey is now housed in the Computer History Museum in California, but in its short life it was able to astonish humankind and inspire future generations of robotics scientists. As the first robot of its kind, Shakey helped to define the future of robotics.

The post Meet Shakey, the Very First Mobile Thinking Robot (VIDEO) first appeared on Gajitz.