Out of Site
A Minimalist Quiz
Donald Judd or cheap furniture?
Print, Fold, Paste
Dozens of downloadable paper cut-outs to make
Stealing Beauty
Trailer for Guy Ben-Ner's family sitcom shot in Ikea during store hours
GI Pamphlets
Preparing US soldiers for the postwar world
A History of IBM Typewriters
Ralph Ellison, John Irving and David Sedaris all used the IBM Selectric! Ready to start fetishising typewriters?
A Protein Primer
An epic on the cellular level
A Treatise on the Astrolabe
Chaucer's 1391 masterpiece-- an early example of the technical manual genre
This Truck Makes Wide Right Turns
"An incomplete look at the role of variation in capitalist society." Or...a big collection of those signs on the right rear bumpers of big trucks.
A Financial History of Art
"Art as an investment and the underperformance of masterpieces": an historical study comparing the performance of art and more traditional markets (free registration required).
A European Cycling Holiday, 1953
Diaries, photos, and other documentation of a cycling tour, a half-century later.
Dutch Comics
"Illustrated sequential narratives" from the middle ages to the present.
Women in WWII British Posters and AdsDig For Victory! Women! Farmers can't grow all of your vegetables! You must grow your own! ... Etc. Etc.
Roadside Peek
Disappearing architectural wonders of the American road.
Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope Construction Kit
DIY at its best.
Build Your Own Balancing Scooter
DIY Segway, and (slightly) less annoying. Just don't drive it anywhere near us on the sidewalk...
Rolling Ball Sculptures......
and other curious machines, automata, and kinetic art. Exhibitions and links.
Surf Movie Posters of the 1960s
Slippery When Wet, and other classics.
French Proverbs of 16111,
552 of them, with translations. All taken from Randle Cotgrave's famous 1611 French/English dictionary.
Trans-Atlantic (Model) Flight
1900 miles from Newfoundland to Ireland on 5.5 lbs of fuel. Impressive!
The Films of Thomas Edison
341 downloable motion pictures (courtesy of the Library of Congress and the public domain).
Lyre Bird
A bird that mimcs all sounds
Dead Logos
A cemetery of logos, and a book of condolences where you can let them know they're mourned.
When Only Screaming at a Human Being Will Do
A cheat sheet for how to talk to humans at various companies
The Iowa Electronic Markets
A classic site-- bookmark it if you haven't already.
American Idol
A cockatoo dances to Backstreet Boys
Heraldic Dictionary
A complete guide to emblems, chargers, achievements, and all the other myriad mysteries of heraldry.
How to Create a Golem
A complete guide to everything you'll need, except how to achieve a pure heart.
American Architecture
A digital archive of American architecture from the 17th century to the present.
Dirkon—The Paper Camera
A functioning cut-and-paste paper camera, reprinted from the 1979 Czech original.
This Is Not a Handle!
A gallery of bad designs.
New York Underground
A guided tour for infrastructure fans.
Girl Scout Calendars - 1944 to the Present
A history of girl scout marketing, and uniforms.
Seeing Double
A history of photographic dopplegangers.
Military Maxims
A library of (public domain) military classics, collected and annotated online.
The Imperial War Museum
A link to the war museum's online collections, which include photographs, essays, and lots and lots of archived audio-recordings of oral histories of British soldiers.
An Infinite Regression of Cats
A mise-en-abyme involving kitties!
Ellis Island Passenger Arrival Records
A no-cost searchable database
Russian Aviation
A photographic history (care of the Moscow House of Photography).
Play the Rhythmicon
A playable simulacrum of Theremin's 1931 synthesizer.
How can I encourage my cat to paint?
A pressing question for troubled times.
Hitler’s Mountain Home
A puff-piece from Homes & Gardens magazine, November 1938. Creepy.
Dead Man Eating
A recipe guide to last meals
Impressionism, 1874
A reconstruction of the original group Impressionist show.
Church Plans Online
A searchable archive of over 15,000 church plans.
Flash Mobs
A strange phenomenon, or is it really a phenomenom at all? Either way, cheesebikini has lots of information.
Project Horizon Report
A U.S.Army study for the establishment of a lunar outpost (9 June 1959).
Video Game Fonts of the 1980s
Downloadable, in case you've been feeling nostalgia for the classic 8-bit fonts of yesteryear...
American Social Hygiene Posters, 1910 - 1970
Enough said. (Brought to you by the University of Minnesota.)
The Bait Car
Entrapment?!?
The Nature of Chance
Essays brought to you by Innumeracy.com
The Value of the Public Domain
Ever wonder why everybody these days is so worked up about the public domain?
Industrial Art Gallery
Everything from measuring instruments to practical descriptive geometry.
Knitwear Everywhere
Everything must be cozified
Victorian Robots
Featuring Steam Man (1865), and more.
The Robot Hall of Fame
Feel free to make nominations (fictional and real robots are equally welcome).
The Virtual Color MuseumFifty-nine different color theories, explained and illustrated.
Chess Boxing
Fight for two minutes, play for two minutes, and repeat, and repeat some more. Mind boggling.
The Gutenberg Bible
Finally available in its entirety in a more up to date digital medium.
Illuminating the Renaissance
Flemish manuscript painting, 1470-1560.
The Museum of Marine Timetables
For when your trainschedulespotting days are over.
Aerial Photography
From kites. A primitive tradition, updated.
Transit Posters
From the 1920s, commissioned by the Chicago Rapid Transit Corporation.
Ghosts on Film
From the American Museum of Photography, a collection of early spirit photographs.
West German Bunker
From the Cold War Archives.
Anarchist Texts
From the Friends of Durruti to the Krondstadt Committee, and much more. A great site.
Ted Nelson’s Computer Paradigm Expressed as One-liners
From the inventor of hypertext.
Old Computers
From the pages of the obsolete technology website. The computer ads from the 70s and 80s are particularly entertaining...
Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
Get your latest hurricane research (and maps) here.
Visual Index of Science Fiction Cover Art
Goes way beyond Amazing Stories. An impressive archive.
Finnish Last Names
Guess which one is Cabinet's favorite.
Plush Uterus safety recall
Hazardous! Ovaries fail pull test!
For Our Matchless Friends
Highlights from the golden-age of the matchbook as advertising medium.
Knitting Hyperbolic SpacesHow to knit mathematics' most convoluted topologies
Vintage Paperbacks
Hundreds of paperback covers of the 1940s-1960s, searchable by author, artist, genre, etc.
The Center for Land Use InterpretationIf you can't make it to Utah anytime soon, check out their exhibits here.
The Skyscraper Page
If you like photos and diagrams of really tall buildings, here's where to go.
The 1910 Paris Flood
Il faut un pont
The Statute of Anne, 1710I
mages and transcription of the first copyright act. See where all the fuss began.
German Imperial Standards, 1871-1918
In case you've been having trouble keeping track of the Hessian, Saxon, Prussian, and all the other flags that circulated in Imperial Germany. Our favorites: the flags to signal the emperor's various indispositions.
The Circus of Disemboweled Plush Toys
In the stuffed animal kingdom, life is nasty, brutish, and short.
Diderot's EncyclopediaIncluding advertisements and errata, all searchable via the PhiloLogic tool.
Cabinets of Curiosities (XVI - XVII centuries)Interesting. More interesting if you can read French, but the pictures are pretty too, and we've always thought of these as precursors to Cabinet.
Convict Internet
In-the-pen pals
The Scottish Ordnance SurveyLarge scale town plans, 1847-1895.
The Mercury Theatre on the Ai
rLegendary radio play producer of the 1930s-- War of the Worlds and many more classic broadcasts available here as audio downloads.
International MarsWatch
Linking amateur and professional Mars watching communities.
Webcollage - Exterminate All Rational ThoughtLooking for a continuously updating collage of visual links from the web?
The Avalon Project
Looking for old laws, treaties, declarations of war? Find them here.
Explorers’ Web
Looking for the latest weather on K2? The news from Antarctica?
Antique Seed Packets
Lost treasures...
The Library of Congress Map Collections
Lots (and lots) of beautiful maps.
TV Ads From the 1980s
Lots and lots of them to download and enjoy. Too bad none (well, almost none) of the products are still for sale.
The Golden Age of Comics
Lots of covers.
The Internet Public Library
Lots of links, on many subjects.
The World Processor
Lots of lots and maps, graphs, and data about the world—and it's really nice looking.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871
Lots of maps, essays, and galleries of photographs (before and after). A fascinating site.
Optical Illusions
Lots of them-- guaranteed nausea if you spend too long here.
Great Buildings
Lots of them-- photos, 3-D models (free viewer download), and essays.
Bureau D’Etudes
Mapping bureaucracies, and other networks.
The Secret Life of Numbers
Mapping the popularity of integers
Alan Smithee discusses his oeuvre
Mario Garcia Torres helps Smithee garner some recognition for his 40-year career
Designing War of the Worlds
Martian evolution in a nutshell: 126 book covers, from 1898 to 2002. Via MoOM.
The Birdhouse Network
MENSA members, the Goddess Athena, and Chris Marker all check this site on a regular basis
Paper Sculptures
Modernist origami
Greasel.com
Modify your diesel SUV so it runs on waste kitchen grease!
The Gallery of Monster Toys (1960s - 1990s)
Monsters for every taste and age.
Railroad Maps, 1828 - 1900
More fun from the Library of Congress collections.
The Geometry Junkyard, Sorted into Piles...
More geometry than you can shake a stick at (or a sphere, or a cone, or a cube...).
bios [bible]: The Bible Scribe
My, that robot has good handwriting
The Erotics of Type
Naked word smiths.
The Insect Company
Normally we try to avoid linking to commercial sites, but the thousands of photographs here were just too nice to pass by.
The Watergate Tape
sNot suitable for children... (but perhaps they should be required listening anyway...)
The Evolution of Alphabets
Obviously, a core concern of ours.
Romance Book Lovers
One perfect night, the passion Navy SEAL Jack Singer had felt for Melanie Patterson had burst the seams of his restraint...
Corporate Board Member Cluster Diagrams
Or, Monopoly the board-game!
Making Animals from the AlphabetOr, When graphic designers are out of work.
FEMA for KidsDisaster Masters!
Famous Curves IndexOur favorite: the Cissoid of Diocles.
The California CoastlineOver 12,000 photographs, documenting the California Coast in its entirety (well, they're not quite done yet, but they're working on it).
Naval Aviation in World War IIPaintings from the naval historical center.
The World in a FramePhotographs from the age of exploration, 1865-1915.
Ship TrackerPiracy in the Age of Technology?
Lego for Fans of Social Theory
Play with Michel Foucault in his San Francisco S/M dungeon. Discipline and Punish!
Decade of Protest
Political posters from the US, Cuba, and Vietnam, 1965-1975.
By the People, For the People
Posters from the WPA.
Spam
Prepare to meat your maker
How Stuff Works
Pretty self explanatory, and very informative.
Flying Machines of the Past
Preview one of Cabinet's themed obsessions!
Stair Dismount
Push the Stickman down the stairs! (Free Download)
Health Physics Historical Implementation Collection
Radiation for everyone!
Shocking People
Reactions to receiving a mild electric shock!
Stewardess Uniform Collection
Really comprehensive. Almost frightening.
The Ancient World Mapping Center
Refresh your memories of Aegean political geography.
The Particular Judgment
Register with the White House as a US patriot
The Origins of Modernity
Reproduced plates from classic books—check out the Francis Bacon.
The Essential Vermeer
Reproductions, essays, timelines, even fakes.
Rocking Chairs
A visual history.
A History of Sampling
A visual representation of a cultural trend
Public Lettering
A walk in central London.
Drainspotting
A website devoted to manhole covers.
Aviation Museums
A whole summer vacation's worth of virtual tours, all gathered together in one handy site. Check out the Aviation Armaments Museum.
Flight Aware
An American aviation farm
Graffiti Archeology
An archive of time series photos
Cease and Desist
An entertaining gallery of cease and desist letters, along with helpful commentary and notes on copyrights, file sharing, and a host of related subjects, brought to you by the Berkman Center for Law and Society.
Modernism
An illustrated timeline.
Find a Grave
An indexed photo archive of more than five million graves.
Public Library of Science
An ongoing experiment in open-access scientific publishing. Just the kind of thing we like to see.
Ancient Manuscripts From the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu
An online exhibition from the Library of Congress.
Paper Wizardry
Animation using paper and only paper
The Museum of Anti-Alcohol Posters
Apparently all-Russian, some great designs.
The Blackout History Project
Archives from 1965 and 1977; they're already gathering material on 2003.
Commercial Animation of the 1950s and 1960s
Art from Ray Patin Studios
Lost and Found Sound
Artifacts gathered by NPR in its quest for rare recordings.
WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, 1976-198
1Bare bones archive of the late 70s LA avant-garde magazine
Virtual Drum Set
Be sure to pump up the volume. A sense of rhythym doesn't hurt, either.
The Medici Archive
Been looking for The Massacre of the Innocents? Your search is over.
The Chicago 7 Trial
Bios, trial transcripts, and more! "We demand the Politics of Ecstasy! We are the delicate spores of the new fierceness that will change America."
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Brought to you by NASA.
The Solar System Generator
Brought to you by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (the rest of this site is well worth exploring).
Virtual Delft
Brought to you by the Johannes Vermeer House.
Zoomorphic Architecture
Brought to you by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Woof.
DIY gauss pistol
Buy a good pair of safety goggles before you try this at home! A variety of home railgun projects can be found here (includes photos).
The Car Free City
Cabinet doesn't like cars, even though our editor-in-chief drives one.
The Albert Einstein Archive
Cabinet likes Einstein.
Project Gutenberg
Cabinet likes free e-books!
The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata
Cabinet likes machines, particularly tiny and impractical ones.
Martian Atlas
Cabinet's land is there somewhere. Drop us a line if you find it.
Feminine or Masculine?
Cast your votes here.
CastlesCasteland-- "a virtual universe of French medieval castles".
Atomic Movie Posters
Celebrating the radioactive enemy.
Customized Classics
Classic paperbacks featuring your name instead of Captain Ahab, Ebenezer Scrooge, etc. Choice of two different happy endings for Romeo & Juliet. Custom photo covers $15 extra. Corporate gift discounts.
Banana Museum
Closed on Sundays?!?
Leaflets Dropped on Iraq
Collect and read every one-- scroll down the linked page for the images.
Prokudin-Gorskii
Color photography in Imperial Russia. Marvelous technology, and beautiful images (care of the Library of Congress).
America's Overvalued Real Estate
Consoling apartment renters and homebuyers throughout the country
A realtime map of Amsterdam
Constructed by tracing the collective GPS locations of volunteers going about their daily lives. Fascinating, and ominous when governments decide to get into this game.
Weight Watchers Recipe Cards of 1974
Cook them at your own risk.
Motel Postcards
Create your own 1950s family vacation.
Cartoon Research
Dedicated to cartoons, past, present, and future.
Morphases
Design a face.
City Creator
Design your own (tiny) city-- a little like Sim City, but faster, and without having to deal with budgets or those annoying Simpeople.
ImplosionWorld - Where Demolition Comes Alive
Designed for the professional...lots of fun for everyone else.
Traffic Simulator
Designing a highway system? Test it for bottlenecks first...
DIY Pulse Jets, and Other Projects for the Ambitious Garage Tinkerer
Detailed photos, plans and project diaries for things that go fast, all built with (relatively) unsophisticated materials.
The Museum of Unworkable Devices
Devoted to devices which amaze onlookers and annoy engineers. Or which would, if they actually worked.
The Optigan
Devoted to Mattel's 1970s foray into the optical organ business (actually, they invented the market, and it died when they abandoned it). Join the search for the elusive disk of sitar samples...
The Mannahatta Project
Resituating your urban-centric understanding of Manhattan
The Hermitary
Resources and reflections on the solitary life
Patricia Waller's Crocheted Objects
Return of the repressed in traditionally feminine crochet works
Robodex 2003
Roland Piquepaille reports on the latest in robot fashion. Lots of pictures!
Artificial Life
Set the rules of competition, then watch thousands of generations of high-speed evolution, all in a digital petri-dish.
The Microbial Evolutionary Net
So much more pretty than the evolutionary tree
Miniature Books
Some of them are quite old.
How big was that number?
Statistics made visual
The NYPL’s Digital Gallery
Stupendous collection of free images. Hooray for the NYPL for recognizing what the P in their name stands for.
Style
Stylish (and interesting) in every way.
Computer Magazines of the 1980s
Sweet nostalgia for the geeks among us.
Historical Fencing Manuals
Swordplay, all the way back to the Rennaissance and beyond.
Implicit Association Tests
Test your hidden assumptions, and contribute to an ongoing research project by Harvard, UVA, and the University of Washington.
Language Removal Services
Testing the boundary between static and ecstatic language...
Getting the Picture
The art of the illustrated letter (archive organized by senders, and by recipients, which makes us very happy).
A Human Clock
The best years of your life are being written away
The Jackson Sister’s Doll Games
The complete dossier
Frog Calls
The countryside beckons
Ghost Towns
The database of ghost towns is so impressive that we forgive this site its aggressively annoying popup ads.
Concept Spacecraft - Plastic Kits of the 1950s
The dawn of the golden age of imaginary spacetravel.
Today's Front Pages
The face of world news
Missing Masterpieces
The greatest art show you'll never see.
Mapping the Web
The holy grail.
Hollywood Babylon
The Kenneth Anger tour of Los Angeles
Paper Enigma Machine
The kids love playing Nazi Cyptologist
In Pursuit of Simplicity
The manuscripts of Edsger w. Dijkstra.
Extracting Video from the Brain
The neuroscience of mind reading
String Theory
The official website!
Leadholder
The online drafting pencil museum.
The Payphone Project
The place to go if you've ever wanted to call a passing stranger.
Quotation Marks Gone Wild
The proliferation of the use of quotation marks (for everything except citations, that is) is now well documented. "Enjoy".
Pick up the Phone Booth and Die!
The reductio ad absurdum of Zork. Not for the faint of heart.
Reverse Speech
The rhyme and reason of reverse speech analysis, along with a selection of famous (and not so famous) speeches played backwards.
Building the Chrysler Building
The social construction of the skyscraper.
Bus Stops of the Ukraine
The title speaks for itself.
The Basics of Type
The Typographer's Dream.
Fires
The U.S. Forest Service's active fire maps, updated daily.
Lots of Scrolling 360 Degree Panoramas
The view from the summit of Everest is impressive.
Centre for Global DevelopmentT
heir Commitment to Development Index is particularly eye-opening. Lots of other interesting material here, even for our readers who aren't economists.
Your Most Beloved Diamond
They were precious in life. So why not in death?
The Museum of Hoaxes
They're all true.
Eddy’s Ships in Bottles
They're very small. Those in the know call them SIBs.
Scale
Things compared to each other in size. Large things, small things, and really small things (and some even smaller than that).
Electronics Ads from the 1950s
Things have gotten much smaller over the past 50 years.
The Prelinger Archives
Thousands of ephemeral films-- ads, instructional videos, psa's, and more-- dating back to the early 20th century.
U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection: 1906-1971
Thousands of photographs, indexed by date and subject. Factory floors, industrial laboratories, corporate picnics, and more, all taken in and around U.S. Steel's plant in Gary, Indiana.
Historical Japanese Maps
Thousands of them, going back centuries. A beautiful site if you like maps (we do).
Institute of Holistic Computer Wellness
Throw away that old rubber chicken!
Fractal Growth in Bacteria
Timothy Leary meets Scientific America
The Elizabethan Costuming Page
The print-your-own Elizabethan dressup paper doll is particularly nice.
WordSpy
Track words as they first appear in the mass media. Learn about the leather spinster, the earworm, and more.
The Four Dimensional Rubik’s Cube
Try to beat the current record solution...of 495 moves.
The Toaster Museum
Until the museum finishes renovating in Charlottesville, its website is far and away the best place to learn all about toasters.
Zombie Infection Simulation
Urban planning meets Night of the Living Dead.
Under Foreign Eyes
US foreign policy from a foreign point-of-view
A Day in the Life of Air Traffic in the Continental US
Utterly mesmerizing animation
Cellular Automata
Watch tiny worlds come to life.
Table of Condiments that Periodically Go Bad
We had no idea that tabasco sauce in our office cupboard was still edible...
The Visigothic Code
We prefer to think of it as barbarian law.
Everything About Herbs and Spices
Well, maybe not quite everything, but lots and lots of information.
Herding Cats
We're not too sure how realistic the model is, but it seems to nicely capture the spirit of the exercise-- and Cabinet's predisposed to appreciate cat games.
Extreme Pumpkins
What can we say? They're in season.
A Case of Curiosities
Where art meets science...automata, taxidermy, reliquaries, and more.
Shiseido Women
Women's fashion in Japan, 1870 to the present.
Wharram Percy
Yorkshire's lost medieval village-- an online archeological and historical guide.
National Bureau of Economic Research
You all probably have this bookmarked already (well, maybe not)-- lots of fascinating material here.
Creative Commons
You all probably have this site bookmarked already, but just in case...
Safety Sign Builder
You can also build dangerous signs with this.
Procrastination Central
You could also look at this tomorrow
Atlas Obscura
A compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica
Just MagazineLiterature under severe constraint
© 2009 Cabinet Magazine