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"QUANTUM SHOT" #670
Link - article by Avi Abrams
      

      The Mothers of All Messes (and maybe a few fathers, too)

      The goal of this series
      (other than to simply entertain) is to raise awareness about the abundance
      of various tangled messes in the world and to establish the humanitarian
      fund dedicated to eradicating this blight from the face of the Earth
      entirely. (well... maybe not, but in any case... take a picture of some
      private miserable mess which you face every day and send it to us!) 
      
      We'll start with a few simply very complicated wiring "landscapes", and will
      progress to nightmarish ones pretty quickly. Image below shows "Years of
      Progress"... Really? - New York in 1890:

      
      (image
        via)

      Support wires in the 1893 ferris wheel in Chicago (notice how small the
      people appear in this photograph):

      
      (image courtesy Brooklyn Museum Archives,
        via)

      Vintage supercomputer wiring ("intense" is the word here): on the left is
      The Collossus (the World War Two era computer,
      more info) and the Bombe, the machine designed to crack the Enigma code
      (right):

      
      (images credit:
        Mirjam Visser)

      Inside a vintage supercomputer: the unassuming front view, and... the peek
      inside -

      
      (images
        via)

      This is a sound console - "Nine Inch Nails" dimmer racks from the
      Australian SoundWave Festival - which has around 400 channels in all
      (ironically, all this gets controlled by one 5-pin DMX cable quarter-inch
      thick):

      
      (image sent in by Andrew Nissley)

      Some ugly telephone cabling work, sent in
      via:

      

      

      
      (images
        via)

      Nightmare Server Rooms, courtesy
      TechRepublic:

      

      

      

      

      

      
      (images
        via)

      Embryo of Transformer (waiting for the touch of AllSpark)? -

      
      (original unknown)

      Some crazy wiring in Bucharest, Romania:

      
      
      (sent to DRB by Jej)

      Something is not right here (found in Japan):

      
      (image
        via)

      -------

      Really Good Wiring Jobs

      We have to provide a visual relief to our readers, realizing that they've
      seen too much nightmarish wiring already. So here are most beautiful
      wiring jobs - the first of which belongs to the CERN's Hadron Collider
      (see the article showing this machinery in detail -
      click here):

      
      
      
      
      (images courtesy/copyright
        CERN)

      Another good organized switch board, all the way from the times of Cold
      War - from May 1959 General Dynamics brochure:

      
      (image
        via)

      Great wiring in art? Well, how about this "Wired" sculpture, by Jud
      Turner:

      
      (art by
        Jud Turner
        - "Wired")

      "Tangled" lamp design,
      Matthew Booth:

      
      (image credit:
        Matthew Booth)

      Troy Paiva, famous for his "Lost America" series of abandoned sites,
      lights up vintage cable and wiring with cool colours - making "Light
      Painting" art out of abandoned machinery:

      
      (images credit:
        Lost America)

      "Miles of wiring in a junk 60s jet airliner at Aviation Warehouse in El
        Mirage, CA, a Mojave Desert aircraft boneyard"

      And here is the Great Wiring: the "Wired" Magazine! -

      
      (image
        via)

      -------

      Passionate about their work

      An Iraqi electrician checks the wires leading to a block of flats, in
      Baghdad's Karrada district:

      
      (image credit: EPA/ALI ABBAS)

      These guys take risks, so that you could enjoy communication:

      
      
      (originals unknown)

      READ THE WHOLE "CRAZY WIRING" SERIES!

      READ THE PREVIOUS PART ->




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YOUR COMMENTS::

12 Comments:

Anonymous cthel said...

I'm sorry, but that's definitely not a bombe; the wires are obviously modern, and rubber was too valuable in WW2 to be used for rubber bands

___  
Anonymous johnp said...

The NIN picture is of their Lighting Dimming system, not anything to do with the sound system ("sound console"). The DMX cable provides the control signal, the dimmers translate that control into power for each light/circuit.

___  
Anonymous Bartek said...

The second to last image looks like it's from a tram depot. The title is correct, if communication = public transportation :)

___  
Blogger Martin Barry said...

@Bartek is right, the second last photo is the overhead wiring for trains or trams.

___  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@cthel

It is the rebuilt colossus that was completely quite recently. Hence the modern wiring and rubber bands.

___  
Anonymous keely said...

Love the images. But the second to last photo is incorrect. It's like wiring from trains

PS. I just started a new blog. You mind if you check it out? maybe even comment about it/pass it around if you can? It'd be awesome if you could

___  
Anonymous Phil said...

No, it's not Colossus: the rebuilt Colossus is grey. That's the internal view of the rebuilt Bombe in the museum at Bletchley Park, UK.

___  
Blogger Wayne D. said...

@cthel, @anonymous,

That is actually lacing tape, a waxed cotton ribbon used for wiring harnesses. It is still used in modern aviation due to it being less bulky than zipties and it will not chafe the wire insulation. Also rubber definitely would have been allowed to be used since these machines were critical to the war effort.

Lacing tape @ wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_lacing

___  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am a lighting designer and the NIN picture has nothing to do with sound! Those are lighting dimmers and 5 pin DMX is a control protocol for theatrical lighting.

___  
Anonymous delight said...

great compilaation, I remember once Prince Phillip the husband of the queen, visiting a factory seeing a messed up wiring and claimimg that the place look like it was built by an Indian. That caused a storm

___  
Blogger Unknown said...

That bombe image looks like it's a photo of the rebuild version you can see here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bombe-rebuild.jpg

___  
Anonymous Rebekah said...

This is awesome! I clicked on it because I thought it said "fantastically intense writing," but this is better. I really love this kind of quirky imagery.

___  

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