WOW - The Wintergatan Marble Machine

All I can say is WOW!  Rube Goldberg eat you heart out.

INNOVATION - The Smart Cane

"Smart cane may help visually impaired navigate more terrain" PBS NewsHour 8/26/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A high-tech upgrade to the traditional white cane may help blind and visually impaired people be more confident about navigating the world independently.  The NewsHour's April Brown reports from France.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Now an innovation that may help the blind become more independent.

It’s a new take on the familiar white cane that the visually impaired have been using for decades.

The NewsHour’s April Brown reports from the northeast region of France for the latest in our Breakthroughs series on invention and innovation.

APRIL BROWN (NewsHour):  Lysiane Perney doesn’t see the world the way most people do.  In fact, she doesn’t see much of it at all.  Perney, who lives in the city of Nancy in Northeastern France, suffers from retinitis pigmentosa.  Photoreceptor cells in her eyes, the rods and cones, have been dying.  And that causes the gradual loss of everything but central vision, and also the ability to see colors.

LYSIANE PERNEY, Visually Impaired (through interpreter):  When you move around in a city when you are visually impaired, it is very stressful, knowing where you are, having some landmarks, knowing this is the right bus line.

APRIL BROWN:  Nevertheless, Perney is a busy, independent woman, an elected city council member and an advocate for the disabled.  She moves around with the help of a few smartphone apps and a white cane, the kind the visually impaired have been using for decades to avoid obstacles.

But, soon, she may be able to buy a new kind of cane, one that will tell her a lot more about her surroundings.

FLORIAN ESTEVES, Co-Founder, Handisco:  You can have real-time information during your walk, like you can have information about public transportation, about the shops, public places.  You can have at what time the shop opens.

APRIL BROWN:  Florian Esteves and Mathieu Chevalier are engineering graduates turned budding entrepreneurs who are developing an intelligent white cane.  They have created a high-tech box that fits on a traditional white cane and uses infrared and ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles, triggering the handle to vibrate.

TECHNOLOGY - Searching for the ripple effects of history-making tech

This reminds me of the 1978 TV series "Connections" by James Burke.  He had the same idea, showing the surprising sequence of historical (not seeming to be reverent) events that lead to today's innovations.

"Did air conditioning play a role in Reagan’s election?  Searching for ripple effects of history-making tech" PBS NewsHour 10/15/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Finally, an unconventional look at big ideas and how they lead to unintended and transformative consequences.

That’s the subject of a new book and PBS series that debuts tonight called “How We Got to Now.”

The host is a popular science writer, author and theorist, Steven Johnson.

Here’s a clip from an episode about what air conditioning set into motion after Willis Carrier designed the first modern system.

STEVEN JOHNSON, Author, “How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World”: In 1951, Carrier’s company introduces an air conditioning unit that is miniaturized and affordable for a mass market.

And that’s when A.C. starts to go crazy. Now, just see what this does to where people are living. Tucson, Arizona, grows 400 percent in 10 years, Phoenix 300 percent, Tampa, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, population double, triple. And it’s the same story everywhere you look. Carrier’s invention is circulating people, as well as air, changing lives, changing America.

But then something even more interesting happens. You see, people moving to the hot states are older and tend to vote Republican. And the growing population in the conservative South means more Electoral College votes there. So, check out what happens to the political map of America. Between 1940 and 1980, Northern states lose an incredible 31 Electoral College votes, while Southern states gain 29.

GWEN IFILL:  Hari Sreenivasan sat down with Johnson recently in our New York studios.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The book is called “How We Got to Now:  Six Innovations That Made the Modern World.”

Steven Johnson, why did you pick glass, cold, sound, clean, time, light?  What is it about these innovations?