From the Tedium Archives: What a combination computer mouse/telephone tells us about innovation. 

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Booting Up The Cash Register

Computers didn’t immediately lend themselves to retail, but ambitious early computer retailers sold ‘em anyway. Eventually, they got trampled.

A Linux Labor of Love

The JingPad A1, a flashy new tablet from Linux-land, shows a ton of potential, though you might want to wait for a few rounds of software updates first.

Weapon of mass dimensions: Michael Pick, a.k.a. The Casual Engineer, has developed a gigantic Nerf gun that’s 12 and a half feet long and weighs more than 200 pounds. It is an impressive way to deploy Nerf darts as needed. Is your mind blown? Yeah, so’s mine. Be sure to check out my story for Vice on his giant Nintendo Switch.

The Can That Always Can

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over.

Dead on Archival

Considering the challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve.

Pushing Photos Through Wires

The technology used to distribute photos through news wire services inspired a whole bunch of innovations with use cases beyond newspapers. Like television.

Tuned Out

Why children’s radio—a format once important enough that Disney undermined a competitor to dominate the radio dial—has largely disappeared from the airwaves.

v4

Tedium has a new, fresher coat of paint, with a design intended to get you to dive in even deeper, if you so choose.

The Scrolling Orb

The evolution of the trackball, which is more than an upside-down mouse. It's the Royal Canadian Navy’s greatest gift to modern-day computing. Really.

Open To Conversion

From PCX to TGA to VRML, considering a number of image formats that the world forgot. Not every image standard is going to last, no matter how pretty it is.

Luster Lost

Pondering the way that physical objects, like newspapers and photos, degrade over time, and why digital objects won’t fade in exactly the same way.
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