telegraph

The 7/7 bombings, a series of suicide blasts that took place on London's public transport system on July 7, 2005, were among the deadliest terrorist attacks of the post-9/11 world. Since then, efforts have been made to mitigate the possible damage of future attacks on public transit, and a group of British engineers from Newcastle University is doing its part by designing blast-proof trains.

SecureMetro, a collaborative project funded by the European Union, launched three years ago with the goal of developing blast-resistant and fire-proof above-ground and underground metro trains that minimize death and injury in the event of a bomb attack.

The video below shows the progress on the project. First you'll see a decommissioned train, highlighting the potential collateral damage exploding trains can cause. Doors, windows, and pieces of the carriage fly through the air. The interior of the train is also demolished, as furniture and ceiling panels prevent any survivors from easily escaping the carriage.… Read more

This is one of the greatest technological anachronisms I've ever seen. The Victorian aesthetically-driven boys at the Steampunk Workshop have put together a telegraph clacker that sounds out RSS feeds. For those of you who were born after the death of the handlebar mustache, telegraphs were ways to electronically communicate information long before things like "computers" and "modems" were invented. Decades before even the telephone was invented, telegraphs were tapping out important information to important people in Morse code.

The Steampunk Workshop's RSS telegraph sounder brings the technology around full-circle. It converts the text … Read more