Thank you. I was getting kind of twitchy reading this thread and nobody mentioning the good ol’ goony bird. I remember some time back (1985?) Nova had a program on the aircraft’s 50th anniversary. It was touching watching these tough old pilots get all misty-eyed talking about them.
Being a railroad buff, I’ll nominate my favorite locomotives (and copy your categorizing technique).
Steam: Southern Pacific’s GS4
-The skyline casing and the skirt adds just enough streamlining to make it look good, not gaudy.
Electric: Pennsylvania’s GG1
-Did Lowe design anything that looked bad? And a 50 year lifetime for the design.
Diesel: Alco’s PA (and B)
-A lashup of three or four on point is near perfection for reciprocating power.
Coiled telephone cord
Walther PPK
The Great Pyramid
iPod
Vinyl LPs
Lava Lamp
The 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. Less than a hundred were made. My father spent three years restoring this car. It is his love, it is his passion…
…it is his fault he didn’t lock the garage.
Just out of interest which Bugatti Royale?
They all have different coachwork, I have seen pictures of maybe three all very nice (though the black one with open driver section and enclosed passanger section is a bit morose for my liking)
Cheers, Keithy
Whoever said the space shuttle, I considered that one but thought the space shuttle suffered too many problems/mechanical failures to really make the grade.
Apple Computer’s Macintosh System 1, i.e., the original, complete with pop-down menus, a trash can and icons that open when you double-click them, drives/disks on the Desktop, the Apple Menu, the ability to copy and paste between different programs, resizeable windows, icon or list view of your files, and Y2K compliance in January of 1984. A graphical user operating system on a 400K floppy along with a word processor, paint program, and room to store your files.
Now that MacOS 9 is “officially dead”, look back upon this sucker, of which 9 was just the final iteration, still going 18 years later. If you could snatch a Mac System 1 user from that time and plunk them down in front of today’s Mac running MacOS 9, you could just leave them there and they’d know how to use it because the fundamentals haven’t changed.
I’ve seen that photograph, but only because Gunslinger showed it to me in an attempt to edify me on the subject of Weegee at one point. I’d never seen it in any other situation.
He has three Speed Graphics now, two 4x5s and a 3x4 that’s basically a paperweight due to the lack of available film for it. I know the little one’s an Anniversary and the better of his two big ones is a Pacemaker, but the second big one I’m not sure about - I don’t think he uses it, because it’s in worse condition.
When you see a guy holding a Speed Graphic, that automatically says “Press Photographer!”
I could do seven just on chairs. But anyway, my criteria are something beautiful, practical, durable and (preferably) inexpensive. All of these apply to Coke, Zippo and Levi.
The Breuer Chair, Marcel Breuer, 1928. Hard to believe that this design is almost 75 years old - it’s completely unremarkable now, which is part of what IMHO makes it so effective.
The Sony TPS-L2 - the original Walkman (although not yet called that, apparently).
Although the Super Connie was among the loveliest things ever made (I have a wonderful vintage Air Algerie poster of one, ca. 1954), I’d have to demote it in favor of the somewhat less elegant 707. Twice as large as the latest (trouble-free) Comet, the 707 pointed the way to mass jet travel.
The Bic Crystal pen - the first cheap, high-quality, mass market ball-point.
I hope it’s not too chauvinistic to prefer the Model T to the Volkswagen - in many respects the former was the model for the latter. The T’s robust, inexpensive design created the mass auto industry. (Indeed, the fact that almost every young American man had at least a little familiarity with cars would prove a significant advantage to the Allies - see Why the Allies Won, Richard Overy.)
The Diner’s Club card, the first card to offer revolving credit to multiple locations. The magnetic stripe, which a couple of sites I found claim was invented in 1970, is of course a major help, too.
The Macintosh. I see the OS and various elements have been nominated previously, but I think the whole package was crucial.
