Blast from the Past Archives | Page 2 of 6

Victorian Doctors Thought Reading Caused “Incurable Insanity”, Uterine Disease

24 March, 201626 March, 2016Blast from the PastLeave a comment

As History Buff informed us on Tuesday, Victorian-era doctors were convinced that reading novels could lead to incurable insanity in women, but that’s not the only ridiculous...

Pride, Prejudice and the Mutation of Zombies from Caribbean Slaves to Flesh-Eaters

19 February, 201619 February, 2016Blast from the Past, Book Culture7 Comments

When George Romero created what is now recognized as the first modern zombie flick in 1968, he hadn’t imagined his Night of the Living Dead zombies...

Q & A: Reviving/Recycling Old Sony Readers (and Other eBook Readers)

24 January, 201625 January, 2016Blast from the Past, Tips and Tricks23 Comments

The following plea was posted over on MobileRead Forums yesterday, and I’m reposting it here in the hopes that we can crowd-source the best solution and...

Making a Book from Scratch is More Work Than You Think (video)

16 January, 201617 January, 2016Blast from the Past, PaperOne Comment

Johannes Gutenberg is widely credited with making books easier to produce and thus changing society by making ideas easier to share, but as you will learn from the...

How Betamax Bit the Dust – and Other Tales of Forgotten Tech

4 January, 201612 January, 2016Blast from the Past24 Comments

Sony is to no longer make Betamax video cassettes – something that will come as a surprise to many people who thought that Betamax had long since...

This Book is a Camera (Literally)

6 December, 201528 October, 2016Blast from the Past, PaperOne Comment

Kelli Anderson is an artist who works in paper. She’s previously developed a pop-up book which turns your smartphone into a planetarium or a speaker. Her...

Flashback Friday: Amazon Kindle, Generation One

13 November, 201523 October, 2017Blast from the Past, e-Reading Hardware9 Comments

Next Thursday marks the eighth anniversary of the Kindle Store and the original Kindle, and in anticipation of that anniversary I thought it would be fun...

In Praise of the Alphasmart Neo

13 November, 201530 September, 2018Blast from the Past, e-Reading Hardware, Writing21 Comments

If you’re not familiar with the Alphasmart Neo, then check out this great overview from David Kadavy, or this historical review on Hack Education. It’s a...

Sony Retires the BetaMax After Forty Years – Will Epub or Kindle Last Half as Long?

10 November, 201510 November, 2015Blast from the Past, e-Reading Hardware4 Comments

The Verge reports that Sony is finally going to retire the videotape format that the Japanese tech company introduced close to 40 years ago. Of all Sony’s failed...

Copyright: Forever Less One Day (video)

2 October, 20152 October, 2015Blast from the Past, Intellectual PropertyLeave a comment

The following video details the history of western or English/American copyright law, and how it’s now being written for the benefit of corporations and not creators. image by JD...

Making a Book by Hand is Not a Completely Lost Art (video)

27 September, 201527 September, 2015Blast from the PastOne Comment

Book printing in the 21st century is so completely automated that the equipment can fit into a drug store or public library. But in spite of all...

Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Acceptance Letter is Going Up For Auction

21 September, 20159 May, 2016Blast from the Past3 Comments

How would you like an invitation to attend Hogwarts? It is nearly impossible to get into that exclusive magic school, but I know a short cut. Harry...

The End of Two Eras: Hot Metal Typesetting, and Phototypesetting (Video)

14 August, 201514 August, 2015Blast from the Past3 Comments

Getting a book printed in 2015 is such a simple task that it is easy to forget that the printing process used to require a staff of...

Author Bruce Sterling Predicted the Web and World of 2015 – in 1993

13 August, 201514 August, 2015Blast from the Past3 Comments

In 2015, the web is a wild and chaotic place. Few could have predicted that it would come to epitomize the saying that we cannot live with...

Why Play Half-Life on Your Smartwatch When You Can Play Doom?

24 July, 20154 September, 2015Blast from the Past4 Comments

There’s a story going around today about a new hack for Android Wear smartwatches, but it has me less than impressed. Kotaku reported earlier today that an...