Awesome Vintage

Film company British Pathé dug into its archives for another series of footage from factories in the mid-20th century. Among the random assortment of wares you’ll see being made are medical skeleton replicas, miniature town models, papier-mache party hats, and boats made from concrete. We love the way those old newsreel narrators used to speak.

We love watching how factories make things. Archive film company British Pathé compiled this reel of vintage factory footage dating back to the 1950s. Along the way, you’ll see how they made jukeboxes, candies, model aircrafts, and more. It would be interesting to compare modern manufacturing processes to these to see how much they have changed.

In the 1930s, the Nairn Transport Company created a unique mode of transportation for crossing the Syrian Desert. The enormous 80-foot tractor-trailer buses carried 40 passengers at a time from Damascus to Baghdad and offered comforts like a kitchenette, beds, and air conditioning. Calum Raasay has the full story of this fascinating ride.

This cool retro LEGO kit is based on the design of a 1970s portable AM/FM radio. The 906-piece kit has working power and tuning dials, a movable antenna, and a carrying handle. It includes a Sound Brick with fun vintage radio sounds, and you can place your smartphone behind its speaker grille to listen to your own tunes. Drops 6.1.2024.

Old Things Never Die picked up a rare and rusty U.S.A.F. GEMINI X-5 toy spaceship on eBay. After disassembling all of its parts, he got to work sandblasting away the rust, polishing the plastics, and then painstakingly reapplying paint to make it look as good as new. He also had to replace its motor and rebuild its driving mechanism.

This unique desk clock combines vintage tech with natural looks. At its center is an exposed circuit board with vintage IV-9 Nixie tubes. A hardwood frame complements the warm orange glow of its tubes. Its circuitry includes a DS3231 clock chip and an ESP8266 wi-fi module to maintain accurate time via the internet. It measures 4.92″ x 4.92″ x 2.12″.

Designers and artists looking for a source of inspiration would do well to add Vault Editions‘ idea books to their library. This two-volume series features nearly 1000 engravings, etchings, and woodblock prints from the 17th through 19th centuries. It’s loaded with skulls, animals, and vintage objects and includes high-res downloads.

We don’t use pencils nearly as much as we used to, but we still enjoy sketching and drawing with a real-world writing instrument and not just on our iPad screen. This YouTube playlist of short videos from Rescue & Restore shows off a few very different antique pencil sharpener designs that date from the 1880s to the 1930s. Which is your favorite?

NASS took archival footage from Los Angeles and used digital restoration tech to sharpen, brighten, remove noise, increase frame rate, and add faux colorization. It’s a wonderful time capsule of life in a different era, from how people dressed to the cars they drove to how retailers marketed their wares. The footage comes from the Prelinger Archives.

Datcrazy dusted off the designs from a Victorian-era pencil sharpener to create a version using modern techniques. Constructed from precision-engineered metal and wood, this 6.6-pound, hand-cranked contraption is the ultimate conversation piece for your desk. It’s being made in batches of just 100 units.

Today, movie studios have powerful computers dedicated to creating visual effects. But in the early days of motion pictures, special effects had to be created practically, in-camera, or via editing. Film Riot looks back at classics like Metropolis and The Wizard of Oz to see how they pulled off their memorable illusions.

Player pianos have been around since the 1890s. Modern models use electronics and servos, but vintage ones use a pedal-powered pneumatic system that forces air through holes in the music roll, actuating pushrods that move its hammers. Chris Plaola shows off an example of this Victorian-era engineering genius.

Musician Hainbach got his hands on a 1930s recording device called a Kosmograph. This vintage dictation machine translates spoken vibrations through a tube directly onto a spinning celluloid disc. Its scratchy, low-fidelity recordings add an ethereal texture to music.

A modern milkshake mixer is a pretty uninteresting appliance. Apparently, it was much more entertaining to watch milkshakes being made back in the 1890s. Rescue & Restore shows us why with this video of a vintage, hand-cranked milkshake machine that shakes milk and ice like an earthquake.

We love watching videos of old things being made as good as new. In this clip, Old Things Never Die got their hands on a vintage mechanical soccer game, disassembled it, sandblasted off the paint and rust, fabricated custom replacement parts, and painstakingly repainted its playfield and players.

Hand Tool Rescue loves to take old patent drawings of unusual tools and recreate them in his workshop. This time, he made a wrench unlike any we’d seen before. It features a rotating jaw with grooves to help grip and turn tapered, smooth, and standard fasteners. The Canadian snow quench was a nice touch.