No-tech magazine, Airships Past and Present, 1908.  Look especially for details on Parseval and Sigsfeld, drachenballoon developers. There is an inflatable airship designed for logging.  then in Belgium, horse-borne air war.  In america, an early aircraft carrier with a balloon dome. Glamor shots reveal a counterweight in the rigging. The priapism of war.

http://www.pdx.edu/art/mfa-lecture-series

Sketch of an elliptical kite balloon like the Allsopp Helikite constructed with a rolling heat sealer (on left).

Jeffrey Warren and I discussed these kite balloon designs when I was at his studio.  Southern Balloon Works, where a lot of spherical Grassroots Mapping balloons come from, makes a similar kite balloon with a drag rather than lift structure for stability. John Borden of Peace River Sudios loaned me the roller sealer. I showed Jeffrey, he found one for sale at retail, and Dan Beavers found an online store that sells roller sealers.

Bruce Perens & John Wilbanks echoed each other:

“IP is a disease, good open licensing and prior art databases can innoculate the future against it.

John Wilbanks

freedom doesn’t come from the barrel of a license.  decide on the values underlying the license.

Nina Paley:

“Copyright is like kids, you don’t own ‘em.”

Business Forum

Successful Open hardware projects are awesome but their businesses are boring- 40% markup, good relationship with shipping, quality, trademark protection, insurance, accounting.

Had a great talk with Britta Riley, Jeffrey Lipton, and Chris from Netduino about licensing mechanical and analog devices.  I’ve been thinking of  a way to frame the problem, and I think I’ve got a helpful case-study, the miter box:

Designed to replicate exact and consistant angles, a new miter box can be cut using an existing miter box as a guide.  It is also a simple enough object that whenever it’s used, it’s ability to copy itself is implied.  Instructions can be written, but they really aren’t necessary.  I think it can be said that the miter box  contains it’s own instructions.

I don’t know what our open licenses should look like, but I think they aught to account for objects like a miter box.

Talked to Chris Anderson about flying safety and PET film.  In Grassroots Mapping we’ve been discussing making to PET  balloons, and we’re trying to decide between aluminized (less helium loss) and uncoated PET for balloons. Chris’s company DIY Drones sells a mylar UAV blimp kit.   Chris’s advice: go with uncoated PET, aluminized balloons can short out power lines if they break free.

the newest airship, the Bullet 580 designed as a “stratellite” I love the design because it has an incredibly simple gore pattern.

DIY balloon photography of the Gulf disaster. Great helium balloon photography on the cheap.

the first artificial-muscle actuated fish airship. scroll down 3/4 of the way

Kris often finds works from another age whose techno boosterism is familiar, but whose object is odd to a contemporary reader. From the height of airship mania ( Zeppelin’s commercial air transport service was established a year later) and before airplanes proved themselves in the skies, Airships Past and Present (1908) is a fantastic snapshot of globalized tinkering and ingenious innovations:

In 1792, Uyton de Morveau recieved official instructions from Napoleon to develop military balloons.  Morveau developed a team with chemist Lovoisier and physicist Coutelle,  and together they developed a novel hydrogen generator that used a hot iron with steam passing over it, and a novel means of sealing silk balloons with 5 layers of linseed oil based varnish.  The varnish was particularly effective, holding hydrogen in the balloon for upwards of 2 months, but the recipe is lost to history.  The envelope of a hydrogen balloon capable of carrying 2 passengers to 1600ft  would weigh only 180-200lbs, in line with early 20th century numbers (134).

OR:

My favorite balloon of the period, the Parseval-Sigfeld, featured with hard numbers on wind speed (66ft per second).  Parseval invented the “sausage” balloon design that once refined was deployed by Germany, France, and to great effect Belgium in WWI.  But this text is of course from before the war (209, 211, 274).

Make: NYC meeting 16
Thursday, November 12th, 6:30PM
Bug Labs
598 Broadway at Houston, 4th floor
New York, NY 10012