Human energy expenditure can be measured in meaningful units, is one possible message of this May 1938 article in Popular Science: Meter Gauges Work in Bread-Slice Units How rapidly exercise uses up the energy in the food you eat is graphically demonstrated by a device called the “bread-o-meter” at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pa. […]
Tag: bicycle
The bricycle, a nearly unrideable bicycle/tricycle hybrid
This contraption, the bricycle, is in vital ways intermediate between being a bicycle and being a tricycle, it is adjustable to act as the one, or the other, or something inbetween (a better name for it might have been biandortricycle). The bricycle is said (and demonstrated here) to be almost unridable. Its the work of Owen […]
Partially-bicycle-powered espresso maker
This is a partially-bicycle-driven espresso maker and coffee vending cart called a velopresso. The prototype is on display at Conway Hall in London. The inventors describe it lovingly, in the engineering sense: Rear-steering and front-wheel drive give a very tight turning circle and optimal transmission arrangement. The transmission incorporates both roller-chains and belt-drives and a […]
Cutting Off the Nose to Save the Penis
A provocative study, from the American midwest, about safety: “Cutting Off the Nose to Save the Penis,” Steven M. Schrader, Michael J. Breitenstein, and Brian D. Lowe, Journal of Sexual Medicine, vol. 5, no. 8, 2008, pp. 1932–40. The authors, at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, Ohio, report [AIR 15:5]: “The […]