The Tesla turbine is a bladeless centripetal-flow turbine invented by Nikola Tesla in 1913, using the boundary-layer effect rather than having a stream of gases or a fluid impinge on …read more
Remember those brick cellphones in the 1990s? They were comically large by today’s standards. These phones used the 1G network to communicate and, as such, have been unusable for decades …read more
Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they cover their favorite hacks and stories from the week. The episode kicks off with some updates about Hackaday Europe and …read more
After the previous attempt of running a PC off AA cells got a lot of comments, [ScuffedBits] decided to do the scientifically responsible thing and re-ran the experiment with all …read more
When Friday the Thirteenth and Patch Tuesday happen on the same week, we’re surely in for a good time. Anyone who maintains any sort of Microsoft ecosystem knows by now …read more
ArcaOS is an operating system you might not have heard of, but you will recognize it when we tell you that it’s the direct descendant of IBM’s OS/2. It’s just …read more
Fruit bowls have an unavoidable annoyance– not flies and rotten fruit, those would be avoidable if your diet was better. No, it’s that the bowl is never the right size. …read more
America knew it as the Nintendo Entertainment System, but in Japan, it was the Family Computer (Famicom). It was more than just a home console—it was intended to actually do …read more
Last year, we brought you a story about the BhangmeterV2, an internet-of-things nuclear war monitor. With a cold-war-era HSN-1000 nuclear event detector at its heart, it had one job: announce …read more
Air hockey is one of those sports that’s both incredibly fun, but also incredibly frustrating as playing it by yourself is a rather lonely and unfulfilling experience. This is where …read more
Sound! It’s a thing you hear, moreso than something you see with your eyes. And yet, it is possible to visualize sound with various techniques. [PlasmatronX] demonstrates this well, using …read more
The early history of colour TV had several false starts, of which perhaps one of the most interesting might-have-beens was the CBS field-sequential system. This was a rival to the …read more
Classic Mac OS was prized for its clean, accessible GUI when it first hit the scene in the 1980s. Back then, developers hadn’t even conceived of all the weird gewgaws …read more
Released in 2016, Pokemon Go quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Even folks who weren’t traditionally interested in the monster-taming franchise were wandering around with their smartphones out, on the hunt …read more
While working on a project that involved super-thin prints, [Julius Curt] came up with selective ironing, a way to put designs on the top surface of a print without adding …read more
Phased-array radars are great for all sorts of things, whether you’re doing advanced radio research or piloting a fifth-generation combat aircraft. They’re also typically very expensive. [Nawfal] hopes to make …read more
When building a radio transmitter, unless it’s a very small one indeed, there’s a need for an amplifier before the antenna. This is usually referred to as the power amplifier, …read more
Ever since 3D printing has become a popular tool, the question of waste has been looming in the background. The sad reality of rapid prototyping is that you’re going to …read more
Old-school diving helmets are deceivingly simple, even if they are – as [Hyperspace Pirate] puts it in a recent video – essentially the equivalent of an upside-down bucket with an …read more
Cycloidal drives are a type of speed reducer that are significantly more compact than gearboxes, but they still come with a fair number of components. In comparison, the harmonic pin-ring …read more