CASTLES—ROB’S, LUDVIG’S, SCOTTY’S AND WILLIAM RANDOLPH’S
NOT COUNTING my visits to castles actually occupied by royals (I’ve been to Windsor), I’ve visited four castles, each memorable in a different way. One of its owners I’ve known … Continue reading
RING, RING. PLEASE ANSWER THAT
FOR SOME unstated reason, wife Dottie and I have been known to answer phone calls from each other in manners other than a straightforward “hello.” I believe part of this … Continue reading
KLEMANTASKI’S FINE EYE
LOUIS KLEMANTASKI produced fine photography of the greatest eras of motorsport. The period 1935 – 1939 had Tazio Nuvolari contesting (and finally joining) the Third-Reich-sponsored mights of Auto Union and … Continue reading
FLYING AROUND THE WORLD—IN 1920?
A WONDERFUL poster came my way through Facebook car/aviation colleague Tom Heitzman. The Lake Aero Corporation of Bridgeport, Connecticut, proposed an ambitious plan to fly around the world—in 1920. Lake … Continue reading
FOLLOWING A SCENT
SHERLOCK HOLMES used his highly perceptive senses as essential tools in his deductions. His chronicler Dr. John H. Watson often praised Holmes’s uncanny ability of identifying a culprit’s features or … Continue reading
ARTS AND CRAFTS IN CALIFORNIA
ARTS AND CRAFTS didn’t originate in California, but the movement reached a local high in that state at the beginning of the 20th century. The residential architecture and furnishings of … Continue reading
COMBED COCONUTS HAVE COWLICKS
I FIND comfort in fixed point theorems. Briefly, these mathematical verities say that, under certain conditions, some things don’t change: They are fixed. A comforting thought. The more general the … Continue reading
FUN (AND UTILITY) WITH SCIENCE
PUNCH CARD Programmable Microfluidics holds the promise of bringing more science out of the research lab and into the developing world. It could also be a lot of fun encouraging … Continue reading
BUGATTI U-16 ENGINE
ONE OF Ettore Bugatti’s more exuberant engine designs had logic, if not luck, in its favor. This engine was a U-16, a pair of Bugatti inline-8 designs aligned in two … Continue reading
THE FUTURE AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE
FUTURISTS HAVE a real challenge: Aim too high, and people ridicule their “Tomorrow everyone will helicopter to work.” Aim too low, “Speaker phones will be all the rage!,” and their … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 