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Next!

Next! Comrades, let us not hold up the queue! Engraving by Jan Luyken from the frontispiece of Cornelis van Dyck's Osteology, 1680. A tortoise, a hedgehog, a rabbit, a dog, a horse and a camel are leaving the frame. It is no accident that the almost biblical scene

NB! · Museums · Science

A French Airman's Helmet from the First World War

Monarchies · Science · Humour

A resident of the Scottish town of Dunfermline invented a tripod with which one could walk on the surface of water

A resident of the Scottish town of Dunfermline invented a tripod with which one could walk on the surface of water. The three-legged conveyance rested on air cushions and was peerless for hunting. When William Kant was to demonstrate his invention to King George IV and set off across

Observations · Science · Society

Submersible Titan with five passengers still missing after dive to the Titanic wreck

The American research submersible Titan, which vanished on Sunday during a dive in the North Atlantic to visit the wreck of the Titanic with five people aboard, has still not been found. The air supply on board should last until the morning of Thursday. One fears terribly for the people

NB! · Archive · Science · Pop Culture

The blueprint of the geyser coffee maker that became a symbol of Italy, patented by the industrialist Alfonso Bialetti in 1933

Archive · Art · Books · Science

In the historic Herzog August Library in the German town of Wolfenbüttel is kept a mysterious sixteenth-century manuscript with numerous watercolour drawings of solid geometric figures accompanied by small beasts and birds, and entirely without…

In the historic Herzog August Library in the German town of Wolfenbüttel is kept a mysterious sixteenth-century manuscript with numerous watercolour drawings of solid geometric figures accompanied by small beasts and birds, and entirely without text, save for a few inscribed words: “Geometry and perspective. Regular solids.” There are

A music typewriter with a curved set of keys bearing musical symbols lies on a printed sheet of music with lyrics.

NB! · Archive · Science

Robert Heaton patented a typewriter for musical notation in 1936

A typewriter for music. Patented in 1936 by Robert Heaton

Faith · Art · Science · Nature

The Prophet Jonah and the Whale

The Prophet Jonah and the whale. By Tommaso di Antonio Finiguerra, an artist of the early Italian Renaissance and the Florentine school. It is curious that, in place of a whale, Finiguerra drew the heraldic dolphin of Florence, enlarged to improbable dimensions. As for the likelihood of surviving inside the

NB! · Archive · Geography · Books · Science

The first issue of the journal of geography, natural sciences, inventions and observations "Vokrug sveta" [Around the World], 1861

The first issue of the journal of geography, natural sciences, inventions and observations "Vokrug sveta" [Around the World], 1861. The journal is still published, with brief interruptions, and is the oldest regional studies and popular science magazine in the country

Science · People · Humour

After the Nobel Prize, Carlsberg gave Niels Bohr a house with a pipeline for beer

After 47-year-old Niels Bohr received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms", the Carlsberg brewery offered him an unlimited supply of beer. And so that Bohr might avail himself of the offer more conveniently, Carlsberg presented him

Books · Observations · Science

Beware of Things!

Beware of things! They enslave us very quickly and very firmly! So Ebenezer Sidney, the hero of Alexander Grin's novella "The Grey Motor-Car", warns his interlocutor as he reflects on the degree to which mechanical objects, or creatures, may be endowed with life. I recalled