A year after a controversial assisted-dying device was used for the first time, its inventor says he is preparing a new version designed for two. The Sarco pod, a 3D-printed capsule that allows a user to trigger a nitrogen release, entered the global spotlight in 2024 after a 64-year-old American woman used it in Switzerland. … Read more
Fifty years ago, as he sat in his mother’s apartment in Budapest, Hungary, young professor, Ernő Rubik, finally finished the prototype of his “Magic Cube.” A teacher at the Department of Interior Design, Rubik was fascinated by geometry but his attempts to create a solid, 3D structure with movable and interchangeable layers had frustrated him. … Read more
Remo Saraceni, a sculptor, toy inventor and technological fantasist best known for creating the Walking Piano that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced on in a beloved scene of the hit 1988 movie “Big,” died on June 3 in Swarthmore, Pa. He was 89. The cause was heart failure, said Benjamin Medaugh, his assistant and … Read more
Allan Alcorn was desperate when he hired a young college dropout named Steve Jobs. Atari, the fledgling computer games company he worked for, was scrambling to staff up after the sudden success of its first game, Pong. Now, here was a young hippie in sandals, waiting in reception and asking for a job as a … Read more