"unusual forms"

This tag marks articles about physical objects that have unusual or interesting shapes, like septagonal or helical. Most people take for granted that all of the simple mechanisms that can be invented, have been invented, but as recently as 1966 a clever engineer at Sandia labs came up with a simple, useful, and entirely novel mechanism called a "Rolamite." It's easy enough to do new things when you've a billion transistors and a semiconductor fab to work with, but what about just simple physical parts? I maintain that there are infinitely many "simple" inventions remaining to be discovered, and thus whenever I encounter a mundane object that uses an unusual shape in a useful way I like to mark its passing and learn from it so that someday, hopefully, I can go and do likewise.

sean@seanmichaelragan.com

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