The opportunity to catch a glimpse at life in a long-ago era in 3D is rare indeed, but thanks to the stereoviews taken by photographer T. Enami, Meiji Japan in the early 1900s momentarily appears vivid and immediate. Enami was Japan’s most prolific stereo-photographer, and his stereoviews have appeared in National Geographic Magazine and many books.

Each pair of images captured by Enami, ranging from landscapes and sedate scenes of country life to humorous photographs of beefy men bathing nude, has been assembled in a Flickr gallery by Okinawa Soba and transformed into animated GIFs by Pink Tentacle.

In traditional stereoscopic photography, a three-dimensional illusion is created from a pair of 2-D photographs that represent two slightly different perspectives of the same object or scene. The deviation between the two photographs is similar to the perspectives that both eyes naturally receive in binocular vision.

Such images are normally viewed in 3-D using a stereoscope, but ‘freeviewing’ is also possible, with a process that involves putting one’s eyes directly over the images and slowly backing away while focusing on the single merged, out-of-focus picture that appears.

Enami was an enigmatic figure for many decades after his death, but information provided by his descendents in 2006 helped bring together a stunning collection of work. The online archive of his photographs represents only a small fraction of his remarkable legacy.

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Photographs of Japan from the Meiji and Taisho Periods (1868-1926) have captivated viewers around the world since they were first circulated. One photographer in particular captured Japanese life so beautifully that his work has been seen by countless people all across the globe. Until very recently, though, his name was virtually unknown. Now we know that the prolific photographer’s name was T. Enami – or rather, that was his trade name. He was born Enami Nobukuni, and his work made a deep and far-reaching impact on photography.

Some of T. Enami’s most popular and memorable works were his stereograms: two nearly-identical 2D images taken from slightly different angles that, when viewed together through a stereograph, appear three-dimensional. Here they are animated to give the 3D effect, but all of the originals can be seen on Okinawa Soba’s Flickr collection.

Enami started his career as a traditional photographer, but later embraced the more “modern” stereoviews and lantern slides. Judging from his carefully staged stereograms, he approached his work with a great deal of attention to detail. The colors on these stereograms were all hand-painted, and the resulting product was sold around the world. Today, collectors treasure these exquisitely detailed antique images.

T. Enami ran a photography studio in Yokohama until his death in 1926. His work spanned a multitude of areas, including postcards, large-format prints, private portraits, glass transparencies, photo processing and print-making, and numerous commercial photography projects. His photographs have appeared several times in the pages of National Geographic, a true honor for any photographer. One of his half-stereoview images was even used on the cover of their 100th-anniversary book Odyssey: The Art of Photography at National Geographic.

Despite his monumental contributions to early Japanese photography, T. Enami’s identity was not widely known outside of Japan until around 2006, when his descendants shared information about him with biographers and collectors. He was the only photographer of his era known to work in all contemporary commercial and artistic formats, and it can be said that his work has been seen by more people than that of the more established “masters” of his time.

The appropriate credit is now being given to thousands of Enami photographs that were previously unattributed or simply attributed to the wrong photographer. Enami is now, finally, in his rightful place amongst the most influential early Japanese photographers. A detailed biography of T. Enami can be found at T-Enami.org, and even more of his animated stereograms can be found at Pink Tentacle.

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Stairs aren’t just a boring, utilitarian part of our homes and public buildings. They’re an opportunity for an architect to really make a statement and do something bold and distinctive. From staircases that float to stairs that fit in impossibly tiny spaces to staircases that go nowhere, this often-overlooked part of everyday architecture is being rethought by many designers and architects. You’ll see no beige-carpeted run-of-the-mill staircases here; these are some (more!) of the best, strangest, and most beautiful staircases in the world.

Lello Bookshop Stairs

These majestic and impressive stairs can be found in Lello Bookshop in Portugal. The sheer heft of this staircase is balanced nicely by the smooth flow of all of its shapes. The grand staircase begins as two sets of steps on the upper level, then the two become one when the entire staircase folds under itself to glide smoothly to the lower floor. The color and sturdy dimensions give the entire staircase an almost mouth-like appearance.

Steel Ribbon Staircase

This incredible design, believe it or not, is made from 10mm thick sheet metal, and there are no hidden suspensions keeping it aloft; just wall brackets and tension. The ribbon of sheet metal zigzags up the space to make the exposed staircase appear open, airy and mysterious. And best of all, the whole staircase is surprisingly sturdy. Designed by HSH Architects, the staircase is in the main living area of a home in Prague.

Umschreibung (Rewriting)

This crazy staircase to nowhere was commissioned by accounting firm KPMG in Munich in 2004. It was built by artist Olafur Eliasson and now stands in the courtyard of the KPMG building. Besides being an interesting focal point, it’s a functional staircase – if you consider traveling its pointless path “functional.” Although the stairs won’t actually get you anywhere, it’s probably a fun lunchtime break for the people who work in the building.

1M2 Stairs

For hopelessly tiny spaces where traditional stairs would take up too much precious floor real estate, EeDesign has a solution. These stairs fit into just over 1 meter of floor space to provide a passage to higher ground that’s basically like walking up a spiral ladder. They come in many colors and can be customized to fit each unique home and space.

The Gray Hotel Floating Stairs

The Gray Hotel in Milan is a stunning modern building designed by Florence architect Guido Ciompi. There are countless things to love about the building and its furnishings, but these floating stairs stand out. Obviously, one would need to be very careful when ascending them after a night of drinking, but their clean lines and unique design are unforgettable.

Staircase Slide

London architect Alex Michaelis may have discovered the quickest way to get the kids to come down for dinner: let them slide down. Alex let his kids have some input as to what features they wanted in the house he was building, and the staircase slide was one of them. It may not be the most practical design ever, but when the kids are happy, everyone’s happy.

Wheelchair-Accessible Stairs

For everyone who has ever gotten around in a wheelchair or pushed around a baby stroller, you know how frustrating it is to encounter a building with stairs and no ramp. Almost as bad are the steep, poorly-designed ramps that were simply tacked on later. The McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago made a stylish compromise between stairs and ramp with this staircase that incorporates a zig-zagging ramp with the stairs. Of course, it looks like it might take more energy making all of those twists and turns than it would to just go up an ordinary ramp, but aesthetically it’s very sharp.

Floating Stairs

Unlike other floating stairs, this staircase by Bernstein Architecture doesn’t rely on wall brackets to support the steps. Instead, it uses a network of cables to hold each one aloft and completely motionless. According to the architect, the stairs don’t move even a little when they’re stepped on, even though they’re subject to very heavy traffic in their home inside the There TV office in Chicago.

Bookcase Box Stairs

While such a precarious-looking alternating tread stair design would probably never pass building code in America, this ingenious bookshelf staircase makes very good use of a small space. It comes from Czech architects Adam Jirkal, Jerry Koza and Tomáš Kalhous and resides in a house they remodeled in Všenory, Czech Republic.

Wall Stairs

When are stairs more like a door? When they glide smoothly into the wall, disappearing to prevent unwanted guests from wandering up to your home’s upper level. Though it’s just a concept, this disappearing staircase from designer Aaron Tang would be the perfect addition to any international spy’s house. It operates on interior pistons that drive the whole assembly out from the wall, then help each stair lower gently in a wave-like motion. The touch of a button opens or closes the stairs from either end of the staircase.

Villa Glittenberg Floating Stairs

These stairs reside in Villa Glittenberg, a family home on the west coast of Norway built by Saunders Architecture. The staircase is made of 1 cm-thick steel and weighs close to one metric ton. It is so massive that it had to be lifted into the home through a skylight with a special crane. The results are simply stunning, though, as the white stairs hovers above the ground and the residents seem to float up to the upper level.

Hidden Staircase Storage

Martino Gamper produces consistently elegant and distinctive custom furniture, and this under-staircase storage drawer system is a testament to his ability. In this beautiful English country home, Gamper installed an ingenious hidden storage staircase to give the occupants more room for storage and to use up some previously forgotten wasted space.

16th Ave Tiled Stairs

In the summer of 2005, the residents of the Golden Gates Heights neighborhood banded together to make a unique and long-lasting public art project: the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps. The risers of all 163 stairs (on city property) were decorated with mosaics that neighborhood volunteers assembled. The resulting mural is absolutely breathtaking, covering images from deep in the sea to high in the sky.

Wooden Library Stairs

These wooden library stairs are rich, full of character, and absolutely beautiful. The slats are made from spalted white birch and they were all cut from the same log. The cherry tree in the center is real, and it goes through the ceiling to emerge on the upper floor as the staircase’s newel post. The steel supports and mahogany handrails just add to the luxurious feeling of this amazing staircase.

Musical Stairs

Although it was only a temporary installation, these piano stairs deserve a mention based solely on the number of smiles they induced. The Fun Theory is a campaign from Volkswagen that’s focused on bringing a smile to everyday life. When they installed this piano keyboard in a Swedish train station, many more people than usual decided to take the stairs. The unexpected larger-than-life toy brought out the inner child of a lot of people during its short life.

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We geeks love our gadgets. We get bored with simple office instant messaging to co-workers. We get creative. But of course our creativity ties back into our computers and a USB port. It started with ninja-geeks and weapon-shaped USB flash drives. However, that was not enough to spice things up around the office. The USB arms race began and sneaky office warfare has never been the same. Some USB weapons are fun to shoot at your office buddy, but some are used to strike fear in your cubicle neighbor’s heart. Guard your office, guard your room, guard your computer. Here are 17 USB “weapons” made by geeks for geeks, from FAIL to fantastic.

USB Ninja

(image credits: geekstuff4ugeekstuff4u)

Awaken ninja-geek with these weaponized USBs. First there is a USB knife, a Kunai shaped USB thumb drive with 2GB of storage capacity, a great solution for the Ninja spy. Or how about a Shuriken shaped USB which also holds 2GB of storage capacity that you can sneak out of the building or can throw the star to kill your opponent?  These are perfect for the ninja-geek.

USB Bullets, Grenades, Chainsaws, Bombs

(image credits: walyou,gadget4all,i.Saw,ubergizmo)

These are a few more USB weapon wannabes. The flash drive shaped like a large caliber bullet offers geeks both fashion and 1GB of function, plus it might put a bit of a scare into those people who see it. As in don’t anger that geek!  More on the fail side are these brightly colored Grenade USB drives, but they do offer 4GB of memory. These next two should frighten your co-workers at the very least. The i-Saw is USB 2.0 compatible and offers a vicious five-volt trickle of destructive chainsaw power. The Bomb USB is one flash drive that we don’t think people would want to carry around in airports as they might actually get held up by airport security.

USB Tank Missile Launcher Steps Up Office Warfare

(image credits: OhGizmo)

There is no better way to annoy a co-worker than with a barrage of tiny foam missiles with a RC tank that can deliver a payload at a distance from up to 12 feet. It can also be remotely controlled via the included ‘USB Tank’ PC software that allows you to steer the tank and raise of lower the missile launcher. This might offer you some level of deniability since you’ll never be caught holding a remote. There’s no camera on board so you’ll need to have a line of sight in order to properly steer it into position, but it does have a wireless range of about 25 feet to give you a tiny head start when the inevitable and immediate retaliation begins.

USB Powered Gun

Here we begin a tour of USB-powered guns. Get ready to launch your flying foam missile attack on annoying co-workers. These do take some creative thinking, made by geeks to be appreciated by geeks. Those are some things all the USB weapons have in common. We’ll leave it up to you if a USB weapon is fantastic or fail.

DIY USB-Controlled Servo Squirter Water Pump

Straight from a nerd-kit, here is a DIY USB-controlled water squirter weapon. The steps are laid out in great details when you watch the video. The main plus factor to this USB gun is that it does more than fire foam darts or missiles. For example, your co-worker would be surprised to be blasted with water. Or if you have a cat that won’t stay away from your computer, pow-squirt! Kitty should then run away.

Missile Laucher (Lanciamissili) USB

This is a Lanciamissili USB weapon. The USB missile launcher is remotely controlled by a PC with a web cam.That’s right, a barrage of foam missiles and then retribution will be forthcoming from your geeky co-workers. Basically, these USB weapons are all the same, point, fire and shoot. You are free to decide FAIL or fantastic.

Laser-Guided USB Missile Launcher

This USB weapon uses a laser pointer and a web cam. The software tweaked with some custom Visual Basic lines of code equal a laser-guided USB missile launcher.  When a laser pointer is moved into the field of the web camera, the gun turret will move to point and fire its missiles. A person might wonder why you are pointing your laser at them, but they won’t wonder for long  before your missiles attack them.

Wiimote USB Rocket Launcher

This USB weapon is a rocket launcher that uses the Wii remote tilt function to control the launching missiles. Whether or not that pushes this USB rocket launcher from FAIL to fantastic is not clear, but if you are a Wii gamer and would like a USB weapon, then this one might be for you.

Battery of USB Missile Launchers

Clearly this was devised by some ticked co-worker intending to exact a little vengeance. Not a mere USB weapon that launches deadly foam missiles, but instead an entire battery of USB weapons. This is moving closer to fantastic if for no other reason than the chaos it would clearly create in the office.

USB Machine Gun and Rocket Launcher

This modified USB rocket launcher shoots infrared machine gun rounds and foam missiles. One other major difference with this USB weapon is that it was created to do more than wreak office destruction or family chaos. The machine gun can be calibrated to shoot down any remotely controlled toy plane or helicopter.

USB Missile Launcher Pimped to be a Weapon

So we’ve tried to be nice and tried to be polite up until now. This one might have more potential to launch sharp pointy weapons. Put it near to guard your computer privacy and it might work as a deterrent. Yes it gets points for being a USB weapon. Otherwise, FAIL.

USB BB Gun Turret Demo

Straight out of the Virtual Crib is an active defense system. It’s close to deadly and USB-controlled. The creators of this USB weapon suggest that if someone is breaking into your house, you don’t wait for the police to arrive. Instead you drive the thieves out of your house with this USB BB gun. This is much closer to fantastic, shooting BBs and not mere foam projectiles, but the next one is a clear winner.

Auto Targeting Turret Sentry

Now this USB gun is awesome! This one is fantastic! Watch the video and then you too will be wanting one. Lucky you, there is still time before Christmas.

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The study of musical instruments (’organology’ – no, really) is the study of the human condition. Every culture is defined by its own distinctive set of trills, whistles, parps, honks and beats, and every corner of the world has evolved its own location-specific indigenous instrument to renew a sense of cultural identity through noisy self-expression. And instruments evolve – never more so than now, in the midst of a technological revolution that has opened up entirely new ways to make music. So settle back and compose yourself as we look at ten new instruments that look set to accompany us into the world of tomorrow.

1. Eigenharp

(Images via: Eigenlabs and engadget)

In development for 8 years with funding of over £10m / $16.5m, the Eigenharp is a slow-crafted technological marvel. 120 keys (each one tilting to give a flexible tone), percussion buttons, built-in sound management capabilities including recording, playback and looping, and a potentially limitless range of noises thanks to running on uploaded digitally sampled sounds. It is played via keyboard, tap-pad and mouthpiece – and the result is an instrument that sounds like a band.

2. Electric Violin

(Images via: Wired and Riverstring)

Similarly digitally enhanced are the electric violins, a family of new hybrid instruments that are sufficiently well-established to become a mainstay of the modern music scene. Thanks to electrical pickups inside or outside the instrument’s body, the violin’s vibrations are run through electronic processing and transformed into any sound under the sun – most effectively, the noise of an electric guitar. Witness the magic of Ed Alleyne-Johnson performing on the streets of Chester, England.

3. Tenori-On

(Image via: Yamaha)

No, this isn’t the first good-to-go version of Minesweeper: this baby is for making beautiful music with.  The 16 x 16 grid of LED lights on the Tenori-On responds to touch and to real-time looped programming, creating soaring, rippling compositions that mesmerise beginners and experts alike (Peter Gabriel is a fan). If you want a hands-on demonstration of its power, try Andre Michelle’s ToneMatrix, an online AudioTool-powered simulation.

4. Samchillian

(Images via: Eitan Shefer)

Musical instrument or chest expander? You’d be forgiven for asking – but the Samchillian is a new, ergonomic-minded take on the keyed instrument, with each key representing a relative, not fixed, note. As the musician plays, the function of each part of the instrument is constantly changing, allowing a full range of musical expression (provided the player has a really good memory, of course).

5. BeatBearing

(Images via: BeatBearing)

And moving further into the realm of instruments that look like anything but – we have the BeatBearing. Instead of generating noise itself, the BB triggers the timing of preselected types of percussion – simply drop a steel ball-bearing in the right slot to get the beat you want, when you want. The inventor isn’t interested in manufacturing his design: instead, he has published the plans on DIY-tech online magazine MakeZine to encourage people to build their own - and with more than 1 million views of the Youtube demo (below) at the start of this year,  we reckon there will be plenty of takers.

6. Hapi Drum

(Images via: Wikimedia Commons/OrangeHat)

At least the Hapi looks like what it is (well, kinda) – a steel drum with a hole in the base that allows the player to control the amount of noise emerging, using their lap. Since each key (or “tongue”) is part of the main body of the instrument, each note is accompanied by a subtle resonant harmony from other musically compatible notes. Time for a demonstration, methinks…

7. Electroencephalophone

(Images via: Glogger/Wikimedia Commons)

At first sight, you’re looking at a lady trying to listen to her iPod underwater, and a collection of buff young people stood up in a hot-tub. In fact in both pictures depict music-making, via an electroencephalophone – a device that converts brainwaves into sound (and therefore a quintephone). The lady is psychotherapist Ariel Garten participating in a concert performance – and the “hot-tub” trio are an electroencephalophonist and two assistants accompanying on electrocardiophones.

8. Hydraulophone

(Images via: wearcam)

Now to the merry, messy world of the hydraulophones. Water flows out holes in the instrument, and the player uses his fingers to block or divert each stream, triggering internal mechanisms – discs, shafts or valves – that produce sound. In other words, it works like a woodwind instrument, except the wind is replaced by water (which doesn’t directly create the sound).

9. Drawdio

(Images via: Jay Silver via Wired)

Daring you to not burst out laughing when it gets underway is the Drawdio, a homespun theramin. There are a number of ways to make one (cheaply and easily), but the working principle remains the same in all models – it runs a current through the graphite deposited from the end of your pencil (or any other appropriate medium, including yourself), and translates it through a synthesizer to create a noise like a kazoo in a gale.

10. Ocarina

(Images via: Smule)

But for breadth of lateral thinking, hats off to Smule, the inventors of the Ocarina iPhone application. Using the phone’s built-in movement sensors and touch screen, your phone becomes either a wholly keyed instrument…or a kind of flute, by detecting the passage of your blown breath and translating it into intensity of sound. Once you’ve finished your piece, upload it to the Ocarina online community and listen to the work of others. A virtual instrument that automatically shares its output online – can you get more contemporary than that?

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