All Articles Tagged 'technology' (23)

Most dieselpunkers worth their salt are familiar with at least a few of the following radio companies: RCA, Atwater Kent, Addison, Belmont, Zenith, Philco, FADA etc. It wasn't until recently that I'd heard about the Sonora radio company.

Sonora began as the Sonora Chime Company back in the early 1900s, they made chimes for clocks. Later it became the Sonora…

Probably the best steam-powered car ever. Luxurious. Fast. Fuel-efficient. Terribly expensive. Extremely rare.

The Doble steamers of the 1920's were almost miracles of precision, workmanship, performance, reliability and power. They simply ran away from the best of the competition -- Cadillac's, Lincoln's, Packard's, Piercs-Arrows, Rolls Royce, or what have you.

As for durability and…

A lady and a car:

“Kiki de Montparnasse languishing in the passenger seat of Man Ray's Voisin 10 CV C7, 1928 (ca.) Kiki was Man Ray’s lover during the 20’s of the last century, and it is her back we see in Man Ray’s famous work ‘Le Violon d’Ingres’, 1924, (Getty Museum)." Well, Man Ray (who took this photo) surely deserves a special article, as well as his muse Alice Prin aka Kiki.…

The art of Frank Tinsley is a near-perfect visualization of Dieselpunk and accompanying sub-genres.

Last week we've seen his Bill Barnes covers, glorifying aviation and aviators. These "pulp" images made before the advent of toothbrush (not to mention computer graphics!) would make a lot of present-day "serious illustrators" bite their lips (and / or nails) in…

"The radio will be to the twentieth century what the press was to the nineteenth"

- Josef Goebbels, 1933.

The German Volksempfänger (People's Radio), VE 301 radio was Launched at the Tenth German Radio Fair in August 1933, the model number represented the day on which Hitler had taken power in January that year. Its Bakelite case was designed by Walter Maria Kersting…

Stumbled upon this story and had to share.

Story from The Telegraph

Today, a pair of Transatlantic liners, the first diesel-powered passenger ships of respectable displacement (27,000 grt) and the last built for the famous White Star Line.

When the Cunard Line and the French Line started off with their projects of building the Queen Mary and the Normandie, the White Star Line too wanted to compete. They presented plans of a ship with a thousand feet in length, and a speed to rival the ship’s two competitors. The ship was…

Has it ever occurred to you that home refrigeration became common (at least in the States) during our beloved Diesel Era?

The absorption refrigerator was invented by Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters from Sweden in 1922, while they were still students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It became a worldwide success and was commercialized by Electrolux. Other…