Sit down, if you can, and read this study about what it takes to get a folding plastic chair to the point where you can sit in it: “A study of design demand of applying quality function deployment in plastic folding chairs,” Chun Tung Chen, Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 284, pp. 3632-3636. The author, […]
Our beloved graphic designer, the modest and sublime Geri Sullivan, is retiring. We at the magazine Annals of Improbable Research are looking for an improbably great graphic designer to join our gang. The main duty is to lay out each of the six new issues we create every year. (One of those six issues focuses […]
US design patent 720760S1 for a “Bagpiper Thumb Drive,” was granted to Thomas Paul Caldwell and Thomas Paul Caldwell, on January 6, 2015. The patent document explains: “[This drawing of the] ornamental design for a bagpiper thumb drive… [shows] a lower section disconnected to reveal a Universal Serial Bus (‘USB’) connector protruding from beneath a kilt […]
Different engineers have different ways of having fun. This is one way: The design engineer, Julijonas Urbonas, gives it a simple description: “Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetic death machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being.”
