Erich Weidenhammer

Used to take forever. 8 to 12 weeks is an eternity to wait for a windsurfing G.I. Joe when you're ten.

Vaguely recall being shown Arachnophobia in the school gym of my Catholic elementary school.

A glass instrument mounted, a low pressure mercury lamp, on a white stand. The instrument consists primarily of two interconnected mercury-filled bulbs with appendages for electrical leads and the attachment of a water supply to the internal cooling channels. A narrow, tubular section is presumably where the incandescing mercury vapour supplies the light. At four points along this tubular section, the artifact is cradled in the stand and secured with clear fishing line.

A similar mount for this locally developed "Toronto" mercury lamp from the 1950s- a monochromatic light source for spectroscopy. 3d-printed vertical pieces have channels for fishing line to secure the artifact, which is very front heavy due to the mercury. Do not drop.
#Histsci #3dprinting

YouTube video by Jerome JCVD TEASER Van Damme

When JCVD came out they released a teaser trailer in which Van Damme shows up to the casting, interrogates the casting director, then decides that he's going to play himself and tells all of the auditioning actors to get lost.

youtu.be/p6VxMKrDONg?...

Andouillette

An very old, very worn handcart marked "GEOPHYSICS". The bed is formed by wooden planks. It has a sturdy metal handle. There are several deep scorch marks in the upper half of the wooden deck.

I'd love to know the story behind the deep scorch marks on this handcart from the old geophysics program.
#HistSci #artifact

Photo shows a cordless drill with a 3/8" wood bit mounted. It also shows an unpainted length of MDF baseboard with a 3d-printed jig. The jig has two holes to guide the drilling of holes to mount lengths of dowel. A length of 3/8" dowel has been placed on the piece of baseboard.

These are straightforward to make. The base is a length of MDF baseboard. The 3d-printed guide and 3/8" bit shown here is used to make holes for mounting lengths of hardwood dowel. You glue the socketed, 3d-printed element onto the dowels. This arrangement is standard across several mounts.

A close image of a white mount placed on a white exhibit shelf. The mount supports one end of a long and narrow glass instrument. It is cradled in a concave element/

An overall view of a long glass He-Ne laser held in three similar mounts.

Here's a pretty basic reinforced mount. I made three of these to support a long and delicate '60s He-Ne laser that forms the top edge of the glass-themed display. That thing was not easy to get into place past all the supporting wires.
#histstm

A glass display case, built into a wall, containing several adjustable white shelves. Columns of shelves are mounted on vertical cables, with one cable passing though each corner. The shelves contain glass artifacts, several of which are cradles on custom made white mounts.

Cases and shelves are white. I tried to colour match the mounts to the cases and to keep the shapes simple and rectilinear so that the artifacts stand out.

A series of white-painted artifact mounts of various sizes and shapes arrayed on an extremely red table.

I've been making various artifact mounts for a forthcoming science exhibit. These are basic 3d-printed fixtures, often mounted on lengths of MDF baseboard and reinforced internally with dowels. Thought I'd share some tips and solicit suggestions.
#histsci #histtech #3dprinting

Episode 1: Linux Installation & First Reactions Podcast Episode · Dual Boot Diaries · 08/29/2025 · 1h 7m

The first full episode of Dual Boot Diaries is up now. We talk about how our installs went, dip a bit into dual booting, and share our first thoughts about our new OSes of choice:

Embodiment of the no-bullshit aesthetic of the first rate Chinese restaurant.

History of Nutrition | RI History | SickKids Learn more about nutritional innovations at SickKids.

There's a children's hospital in my city that started a milk homogenization and distribution program in the early 20th c. specifically because so many children were being killed by unsafe milk.
www.sickkids.ca/en/research/...

YouTube video by Rawnboy RON SINGS "SULTANS OF SWING" WRITTEN BY MARK KNOPFLER

In honour of Mark Knopfler's birthday
Ron sings "Sultans Of Swing" RS
youtu.be/MnLxtG39fNM?...

Late 1990s they played a Canadian govt. anti alcohol abuse PSA before some movie. It showed a couple of teenagers making submissions to a govt contest before meeting at the mailbox. They smile at each other and leave. Some goof shouts "If they'd been drunk they'd be together!". Theater cracks up.

That's U of T physics prof Stephen Morris. They set up that demo for the science outreach day in the summer.

If there's a tiny upside to this Trump debacle it's that more good people are becoming Canadian.

📌

You can hit the gravestones in the C64 port of Ghosts 'n Goblins as many times as you like but you will never turn into a frog. I guess the C64 lacked the horsepower to make that happen. Still a great port.

Man, out of curiosity, I went to the footy scran Instagram account where these were posted. 90% of the food looked delicious. These are just cherry picked to fit a stereotype.

This photograph shows the testing chamber with the lid open before cleaning. Pieces of brittle foam surround the integrated microphone within the chamber. This photograph was taken before the chamber was cleaned of loose material, but after the various accessories that had been stored in the chamber were removed. Those took a lot of cleaning as they were contaminated with bits of rotten foam.

It's a nice example, with a full set of accessories as well as forms and an instruction booklet. Unfortunately (like many artifacts of this era) the plastic foam lining of the testing chamber is decomposing badly. It took a lot of careful cleaning as the remaining material is very fragile.

A photograph of an FP20 Portable Hearing Aid Analyzer, a microcomputer-controlled instrument introduced in 1982. The unit is housed in a standard black Samsonite briefcase. This is open in this photo revealing the white-coloured console of the unit and the testing chamber. The lid of the testing chamber is closed.

Back in 2017, we collected this early '80s portable hearing aid analyzer from the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital/ Toronto Rehab. This was, apparently, the first of its kind—built into a suitcase with an integrated testing chamber.

utsic.utoronto.ca/wpm_instrume...

#DisHist #histmed #sts #UTartifact

My kid's kindergarten classes have been cancelled for the second day because of a lack of proper air conditioning. This is the case with six Toronto area French schools. Good thing we're spending 2.2 billion on a parking lot so that an Austrian developer can build a private spa.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on.

slate.com/technology/2...

Don't get it. Don't these people have dress uniforms? Don't they learn parade drill at some point?

I think that these are important local artifacts that ought to be studied. They can tell us about the process of developing a medical implant at a time when designs and materials were evolving quickly. Though the 1970s knee wasn't commercialized, unsuccessful projects are still very informative.

This image shows a prototype partial knee as depicted in a 1977 US patent assigned to the University of Toronto. One the left is a plastic (likely high density polyethylene) femoral component. One the right is a metal (likely Vitallium) tibial plateau.

At some point in the late 60s or early 70s, work began on a plastic femoral implant to match the MacIntosh tibial plateau. Besides a 1977 patent, there is little documentation about this work. The collection has several interesting experimental pieces.
utsic.utoronto.ca/wpm_instrume...

This image shows a collection of six MacIntosh implants of various sizes that are catalogued within the Jackson collection. Each implant is a metal piece that replaces the bearing surface of one condyle of the tibia. The photo shows the highly polished upper surfaces of the implants. The lower surfaces are textured to ensure a friction fit against the underlying bone. The MacIntosh implant was uncemented.

This image is taken from p. 248 of MacIntosh and Hunter 1972. It shows a series of four photos. The first is an image of a patient's legs with varus deformity due to osteoarthritis. The second image is an x-ray photo of the arthritic knee. The third image shows the corrected knee. The fourth image is a x-ray photo showing the MacIntosh implant in place in the corrected knee.

This development emerged from the MacIntosh knee, an early tibial implant used to correct valgus and varus deformities due to arthritis. The first example was implanted in 1954. The design evolved for years and was widely used. That history can be found here:
utsic.utoronto.ca/wpm_instrume...

A photograph of Dr. Peter Kopplin (left) and Dr. Robert Galway (right). They are standing in front of a table that holds an array of artificial knees and related items. These are arranged in chronological order. Dr. Galway was on staff at Toronto general when some of this development took place. Although he wasn't directly involved, he knows several people on the orthopedic community who may have some information.

I was grateful to meet with Dr. Robert Galway (beard), a retired Toronto orthopedic surgeon. We examined some curious prototypes of an artificial partial knee developed at Toronto General and the U of T. It was never produced. Only a few people alive know anything about it.
#Histmed #OrthoSky

A side view of a clear plastic hip implant with a vaguely mushroom-like form consisting of a partially hemispherical head (taking the form of the head of the femur) and a narrow stem, which is implanted into the neck of the femur. Visible within the clear stem is a metal rod that provides reinforcement and x-ray visibility. Visible within the head are metal x-ray markers for locating the prosthetic in an x-ray image. Portions of the interior of the head are cloudy, possibly due to deterioration with time. There is a chip in the lower edge of the head.

A front view of the Judet hip prosthesis giving a clearer view of the x-ray markers embedded in the acrylic head.

Here's an acrylic prosthesis collected by Toronto surgeon Robert W. Jackson. The Judet hip was first implanted by the French brothers Robert & Jean Judet in 1946. Their Parisian clinic became a popular stop for surgeons learning the technique.
utsic.utoronto.ca/wpm_instrume...

#Histmed #OrthoSky