Decorative tiles made from natural cork material

Putting a Cork in It: In Construction, That Is

The bark of the evergreen oak Quercus suber has been used for millennia as a construction material. Could it be our answer to sustainable buildings?
Tyler S. Sprague

Tyler S. Sprague on the Intersection of Structure and Design

An interview with Tyler S. Sprague, a historian of the built environment whose work depends on multidisciplinarity and a deep knowledge of structure and materials.
stone wheel in a cave

How Was the Wheel Invented?

Computer simulations reveal the unlikely birth of a world-changing technology nearly 6,000 years ago.
A demonstration of Radiovision in Charles Francis Jenkins’ laboratory in Washington, D.C., 1925

Phantoscopes, Radiovision, and the Dawn of TV

After creating a projector called the Phantoscope in 1895, C. Francis Jenkins successfully tackled the problem of transmitting motion pictures through radio.
The Pantheon, Rome

One Thousand Years of Domelessness

For more than 900 years, between the fifth century and the Renaissance, Romans didn’t cap their buildings with domes. Why?
Grace Hopper at the UNIVAC keyboard, c. 1960.

Talking with Machines: Computer Programming as Language

The proliferation of different types of computing machines in the 1950s enabled—or perhaps forced—the creation of programming languages.
Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), demonstrating his pile (battery) to Napoleon in Paris, 1801.

Electric Fish and the First Battery

Allesandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, the earliest electric battery, in part because of his investigations into the torpedo, an electric ray fish.
Elisha Gray

Gray’s Music: Over the Telegraph

Inventor of the telephone Elisha Gray also pioneered the world’s first purpose-built electric musical instrument.
Operation Morning Light team members, dressed in specially designed arctic clothing, begin the painstaking process of searching the area with hand-held radiation detectors.

The Trouble with Reentry

Reentry of space junk in the 1970s forced First Nations communities into a reckoning with Cold War geopolitics and a burgeoning envirotechnical disaster.
People working with digital database, organizing files in folders on laptop.

Expanding the Possibilities for Preservability

A new tool from NYU Libraries helps authors, publishers, and preservation specialists assess the preservability of evolving digital scholarship.