The timber railroad bridge was once a common sight across the landscape of North America. For over a century, these wooden structures provided a crucial link in the transportation of goods and people, spanning rivers, canyons, and valleys to connect communitie…
The Bathysphere was a spherical submersible device designed to take humans to the depths of the ocean for the purpose of exploration and scientific research. It was created in the early 20th century by American naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton…
It is said that the washing machine did more to liberate women in the 20th century than the pill or the right to work or vote. Before the advent of the washing machine, laundry was often done in a communal setting. Villages across Europe that could afford i…
This photo collection shows cool and vintage gadgets from the past invented to improve the smoking experience and provide solutions to mundane problems. Inventors introduced and advertised several cigarette accessories, such as automated lighters, remote sm…
Founded in 1903, Harley-Davidson is one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression along with its historical rival, Indian Motorcycles. The company has survived numerous ownership arrangements, subsidiary arrangements, pe…
Before modern air travel and first-class suites, the grandest thing in luxury air travel was the German Zeppelin airship. The Hindenburg was designed to ferry passengers across the Atlantic in serenity, with the dirigible floating smoothly through the c…
In the early 20th century, companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Co., sold tens of thousands of mail-order kit houses. Available in a variety of styles and at a range of price points, these DIY kit houses would arrive via railroad boxcar as precut and then t…
The name Titanic derives from the Titans of Greek mythology. Built in Belfast, Ireland, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, RMS Titanic was the second of the three Olympic-class ocean liners—the first was RMS Olympic and the third was HMHS Brit…
The notion that sex sells tech was exploited to grotesque ends during the era of the early gigantic computer systems. These vintage pictures scanned from old magazines and newspapers of those bygone decades, depict attractive women wearing as little clothin…
Henry Ford was not the first to create the assembly line, but his car and moving assembly line were certainly the most successful and memorable. After creating his version of the automobile in 1896, Ford moved workshops first to Mack Avenue and later to Piq…
Bugatti was founded in 1909 in the then-German city of Molsheim, Alsace, by the Italian-born industrial designer Ettore Bugatti. The cars were known for their design beauty and for their many race victories. Famous Bugatti automobiles include the Type 35 Gr…
These photos show bizarre vintage inventions that quite often never caught on, but sometimes, they actually did. The weird inventions demonstrate ingenious efforts from the first half of the 20th century (and later) that helped people manage the pressures o…
This photo collection of vintage ads gives a glimpse into how the computer industry developed in the early 1980s. Magazines were rife with these types of ads emphasizing a few particular selling points such as the new computer tech being educational, wo…
Medical sciences in the early parts of the 20th century were far advanced from the medieval days of leeches, but still, most of the treatments and medical devices were misguided and often even barbaric by our modern standards. Seeming to mean well, biza…
The Dornier Do-X was the largest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it was produced by the Dornier company of Germany in 1929. With a wingspan of 157 feet (48 meters) and length of 130 feet (40 meters), the Do X was powered by 12 eng…
At the beginning of the 1900s, leisure travel in general was something experienced exclusively by the wealthy and elite population. In the early-to-mid-20th century, trains were steadily a popular way to get around. Through these vintage photos, we can see …
The Bonneville Salt Flats are in Utah, USA, near the border with Nevada, and as the name suggests it's a very big and very flat area of land. Speed freaks began using the terrain for racing way back in 1912. Since 1935, Bonneville's been one of the prim…
In this collection, we will dive into vintage advertisements and take a look at car advertisements between the 1900s and 1950s. The very first and simple car ads were a sign of times that emphasized the fact that cars were the ultimate luxury. The first…
In the 1950s, visionary business entrepreneur Lawrence Freiman opened a new concept store that tried to reinvent the way people purchased things. "Vis-O-Matic" was the Amazon Prime of its era: a store equipped with televisions where customers sat down, orde…
The Ericofon, created by the Swedish phone giant L.M. Ericsson in the 1950s was the lightest phone on the market at the time of its introduction. It revolutionized the look of this common household object by concealing its dial on the bottom of the base, ma…