#cardboard — Public Fediverse posts

Even in the Simplest Moments
flic.kr/p/2sq2NnH
#cardboard #windowsill #blackandwhite #photography

Even in the Simplest Moments
flic.kr/p/2sq2NnH
#cardboard #windowsill #blackandwhite #photography

Made a new set of stackable cardboard cases for my notebooks today. Previously, I was exploding a single long box.

#cardboard #notebooks

Made a new set of stackable cardboard cases for my notebooks today. Previously, I was exploding a single long box.

#cardboard #notebooks

Made a new set of stackable cardboard cases for my notebooks today. Previously, I was exploding a single long box.

#cardboard #notebooks

Made a new set of stackable cardboard cases for my notebooks today. Previously, I was exploding a single long box.

#cardboard #notebooks

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple”*…

Jason Toon on a man whose applied creativity birthed not one, but two major industries…

Global canned food sales are now more than $210 billion annually. The average American eats about 200 pounds of canned food every year. Meanwhile the worldwide paper industry has seen steep falls in the production of newsprint, printing paper, and writing paper since 2010, but the rise in paper and cardboard packaging has more than made up for it. The paper industry is bigger than ever, with revenue of $485 billion in 2025.

For better or worse, our world would simply not look the same today without these two industries. And one person was the key figure in starting both of them. Bryan Donkin can legitimately claim to be the “father” of the canned-food industry and the paper industry as we know them. So who was he, besides one of the very few guys named Bryan in the 18th century?

Born in northeastern England in 1768, Bryan Donkin went into the same business as his father: real estate. But it didn’t speak to him. So in 1792, at the rather ripe age of 24, he became an apprentice to John Hall at Dartford Iron Works to pursue his true calling as an engineer.

At the time, all paper was made by hand, more or less the same way it had been done since the Middle Ages. Cotton and linen rags were soaked in water and beaten into a pulp. A shallow, rectangular mold with a screen bottom would be dipped into the liquid slurry and shaken. A thin layer of the macerated fibers would settle on the screen; when dry, you’d have yourself a single sheet of paper.

Donkin started his post-apprenticeship career making these molds. But around 1801, he got connected to the Fourdrinier brothers, who produced stationery in London. They’d made a deal with a French inventor, Louis-Nicolas Robert, to bring a new paper-making machine to Britain. At the time, between the post-revolutionary turmoil in France and England’s more advanced industrial base, the latter seemed to hold more lucrative prospects for the new invention.

Unlike the laborious single-sheet, mold-based method, this new “Fourdrinier machine” used a cylinder to continuously produce rolls of paper. A mechanism called the “shake” agitated the conveyor belt at a high speed, to spread the wet pulp fibers in an even layer. Unfortunately, this rapid movement put a lot of strain on the mostly wooden machine. One of Donkin’s improvements was to use metal parts instead, for improved stability and precision.

Another refinement of his was adjusting the rollers that squeezed the water out of the paper, to maximize contact between them and the paper, to dry the paper more quickly and thoroughly. This and other improvements turned the Fourdrinier machine from an interesting prototype to a viable technical advancement.

It quickly became the industry standard, and remains so over 200 years later. The publishing boom of the late 19th and early 20th century wouldn’t have been possible without it. Those big machines you see today producing rolls of paper are most likely Fourdrinier machines. Donkin also made some key advancements in printing technology, so the Pulitzers and Murdochs of the world owe him double gratitude.

His fortune secured, now the head of a company bearing his name that still exists (these days they make gas valves), Donkin’s restless mind turned to another puzzle: the preservation of food. Like too many technological quests, this one was spurred by military needs. Best frenemies England and France were both spreading their empires around the planet, frequently clashing, and looking for ways to keep their troops fed. In such wide-ranging conflicts as the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), far more sailors died of malnutrition than in combat.

It seems yet another French inventor had visions of pounds sterling dancing in his eyes. Philippe de Girard had come up with a method of preserving food by putting in inside a sealed tin container, then boiling the container in water to sterilize it. Or maybe he swiped the method from another French inventor, Nicolas Appert [see here]. Or maybe they were in cahoots. What we do know is that in 1810, de Girard went to London and engaged a merchant named Peter Durand to be his frontman for getting a British patent, which de Girard would not have been eligible for since Britain and France were at war.

Durand was duly awarded the patent in his name. Ever since, he’s been often called the inventor of the tin can, despite having nothing to do with inventing it, and doing nothing with it except selling the patent for £1,000 in 1812. The buyer? Bryan Donkin’s old apprenticeship master, John Hall.

Now on equal terms as budding titans of industry, Hall put up the money and Donkin provided the brains along with a third partner, John Gamble, to bring tin canning to an industrial scale. Again, it took a couple of years, but Donkin and Gamble steadily refined the process. One of their major innovations was to use iron coated in a thin layer of tin, combining the strength of the former with the non-reactive properties of the latter for an imperturbable can that could survive the longest, roughest ocean voyages.

For the second time, a French invention plus Donkin’s enhancements equaled le jackpot. After getting the likes of Queen Charlotte and the Duke of Wellington hooked with some free samples of canned beef, the firm of Donkin, Hall and Gamble received an order for 156 pounds of canned food from the Admiralty in 1813. That grew to 2,939 pounds the following year, increasing annually to 9,000 pounds by 1821.

Having bested the canning challenge, Donkin again wandered off in search of other worlds to conquer: helping Charles Babbage with the “difference engine” that would eventually become the computer, consulting on bridge and canal projects, inventing the first metal pen and a screw-cutting machine, being a founding member of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Astronomical Society.

He died in 1855, an esteemed eminence in Victorian scientific and engineering circles. Today Bryan Donkin’s impact is out of all proportion to his memory. On a visit to his grave in London, the BBC found, [there was] no mention of his achievements. Cemetery staff didn’t know who he was.

I can sense the question from some quarters of the audience: are Bryan Donkin’s achievements worth celebrating? Not only did canned food help enable imperial conquest and war, it also led eventually to the mass industrialization of food production, with its attendant crises of public health and monocultural farming, and our psychological distance from our food supply. And one look at any municipal dump will show you how much paper and cardboard waste still goes into landfill, even in a supposedly “paperless world”.

Those points are well taken. But it’s easier to dismiss these advancements when you live in a world that’s always known them. Over the last century or two, large-scale paper production enabled the rise of mass literacy, from only 10% of the world’s population being literate in 1820 to 90% today.

And it’s not just British seamen who eat better because of canned food. A 2011-2013 National Institutes of Health study found that people who eat six or more canned items a week “consume more nutrient-dense food groups such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and protein-rich foods, and also have higher intakes of 17 essential nutrients” including potassium, calcium, and fiber. Canned food has helped overcome the tyrannies of distance and time to get more nutrition to more people.

From the perspective of people in 1810, both food canning and mass paper production were immense steps forward. We can’t lay our subsequent inability to maintain some equilibrium at their feet. It’s true that Bryan Donkin didn’t invent the machines he perfected. Both industries probably would have happened, in some form, eventually, without him. But in being the first to perfect them for large-scale use, and granting all the downsides they’ve brought along with them, he hastened the coming of a less hungry, more educated world. Not bad for a guy named Bryan…

How one genius fathered both the canning and paper industries: “The Lives of Bryan,” from @jasontoon.bsky.social.

* Willy Wonka (in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

###

As we devise, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to Dan Bricklin; he was born on this date in 1951. An engineer, he was the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Known as “the father of the Spreadsheet,” he was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc and was one of six people spotlighted when “the Computer” was named “Machine of the Year” by Time magazine in 1982.

Neither Bricklin nor Frankston reaped huge financial profits from their spreadsheet program, though it sold over a half-million copies by 1983. At the time, copyright protection was not generally sought for software; their company was subsequently acquired by Lotus 1-2-3, which became the new spreadsheet standard (until, of course, Excel).

source

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple”*…

Jason Toon on a man whose applied creativity birthed not one, but two major industries…

Global canned food sales are now more than $210 billion annually. The average American eats about 200 pounds of canned food every year. Meanwhile the worldwide paper industry has seen steep falls in the production of newsprint, printing paper, and writing paper since 2010, but the rise in paper and cardboard packaging has more than made up for it. The paper industry is bigger than ever, with revenue of $485 billion in 2025.

For better or worse, our world would simply not look the same today without these two industries. And one person was the key figure in starting both of them. Bryan Donkin can legitimately claim to be the “father” of the canned-food industry and the paper industry as we know them. So who was he, besides one of the very few guys named Bryan in the 18th century?

Born in northeastern England in 1768, Bryan Donkin went into the same business as his father: real estate. But it didn’t speak to him. So in 1792, at the rather ripe age of 24, he became an apprentice to John Hall at Dartford Iron Works to pursue his true calling as an engineer.

At the time, all paper was made by hand, more or less the same way it had been done since the Middle Ages. Cotton and linen rags were soaked in water and beaten into a pulp. A shallow, rectangular mold with a screen bottom would be dipped into the liquid slurry and shaken. A thin layer of the macerated fibers would settle on the screen; when dry, you’d have yourself a single sheet of paper.

Donkin started his post-apprenticeship career making these molds. But around 1801, he got connected to the Fourdrinier brothers, who produced stationery in London. They’d made a deal with a French inventor, Louis-Nicolas Robert, to bring a new paper-making machine to Britain. At the time, between the post-revolutionary turmoil in France and England’s more advanced industrial base, the latter seemed to hold more lucrative prospects for the new invention.

Unlike the laborious single-sheet, mold-based method, this new “Fourdrinier machine” used a cylinder to continuously produce rolls of paper. A mechanism called the “shake” agitated the conveyor belt at a high speed, to spread the wet pulp fibers in an even layer. Unfortunately, this rapid movement put a lot of strain on the mostly wooden machine. One of Donkin’s improvements was to use metal parts instead, for improved stability and precision.

Another refinement of his was adjusting the rollers that squeezed the water out of the paper, to maximize contact between them and the paper, to dry the paper more quickly and thoroughly. This and other improvements turned the Fourdrinier machine from an interesting prototype to a viable technical advancement.

It quickly became the industry standard, and remains so over 200 years later. The publishing boom of the late 19th and early 20th century wouldn’t have been possible without it. Those big machines you see today producing rolls of paper are most likely Fourdrinier machines. Donkin also made some key advancements in printing technology, so the Pulitzers and Murdochs of the world owe him double gratitude.

His fortune secured, now the head of a company bearing his name that still exists (these days they make gas valves), Donkin’s restless mind turned to another puzzle: the preservation of food. Like too many technological quests, this one was spurred by military needs. Best frenemies England and France were both spreading their empires around the planet, frequently clashing, and looking for ways to keep their troops fed. In such wide-ranging conflicts as the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), far more sailors died of malnutrition than in combat.

It seems yet another French inventor had visions of pounds sterling dancing in his eyes. Philippe de Girard had come up with a method of preserving food by putting in inside a sealed tin container, then boiling the container in water to sterilize it. Or maybe he swiped the method from another French inventor, Nicolas Appert [see here]. Or maybe they were in cahoots. What we do know is that in 1810, de Girard went to London and engaged a merchant named Peter Durand to be his frontman for getting a British patent, which de Girard would not have been eligible for since Britain and France were at war.

Durand was duly awarded the patent in his name. Ever since, he’s been often called the inventor of the tin can, despite having nothing to do with inventing it, and doing nothing with it except selling the patent for £1,000 in 1812. The buyer? Bryan Donkin’s old apprenticeship master, John Hall.

Now on equal terms as budding titans of industry, Hall put up the money and Donkin provided the brains along with a third partner, John Gamble, to bring tin canning to an industrial scale. Again, it took a couple of years, but Donkin and Gamble steadily refined the process. One of their major innovations was to use iron coated in a thin layer of tin, combining the strength of the former with the non-reactive properties of the latter for an imperturbable can that could survive the longest, roughest ocean voyages.

For the second time, a French invention plus Donkin’s enhancements equaled le jackpot. After getting the likes of Queen Charlotte and the Duke of Wellington hooked with some free samples of canned beef, the firm of Donkin, Hall and Gamble received an order for 156 pounds of canned food from the Admiralty in 1813. That grew to 2,939 pounds the following year, increasing annually to 9,000 pounds by 1821.

Having bested the canning challenge, Donkin again wandered off in search of other worlds to conquer: helping Charles Babbage with the “difference engine” that would eventually become the computer, consulting on bridge and canal projects, inventing the first metal pen and a screw-cutting machine, being a founding member of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Astronomical Society.

He died in 1855, an esteemed eminence in Victorian scientific and engineering circles. Today Bryan Donkin’s impact is out of all proportion to his memory. On a visit to his grave in London, the BBC found, [there was] no mention of his achievements. Cemetery staff didn’t know who he was.

I can sense the question from some quarters of the audience: are Bryan Donkin’s achievements worth celebrating? Not only did canned food help enable imperial conquest and war, it also led eventually to the mass industrialization of food production, with its attendant crises of public health and monocultural farming, and our psychological distance from our food supply. And one look at any municipal dump will show you how much paper and cardboard waste still goes into landfill, even in a supposedly “paperless world”.

Those points are well taken. But it’s easier to dismiss these advancements when you live in a world that’s always known them. Over the last century or two, large-scale paper production enabled the rise of mass literacy, from only 10% of the world’s population being literate in 1820 to 90% today.

And it’s not just British seamen who eat better because of canned food. A 2011-2013 National Institutes of Health study found that people who eat six or more canned items a week “consume more nutrient-dense food groups such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and protein-rich foods, and also have higher intakes of 17 essential nutrients” including potassium, calcium, and fiber. Canned food has helped overcome the tyrannies of distance and time to get more nutrition to more people.

From the perspective of people in 1810, both food canning and mass paper production were immense steps forward. We can’t lay our subsequent inability to maintain some equilibrium at their feet. It’s true that Bryan Donkin didn’t invent the machines he perfected. Both industries probably would have happened, in some form, eventually, without him. But in being the first to perfect them for large-scale use, and granting all the downsides they’ve brought along with them, he hastened the coming of a less hungry, more educated world. Not bad for a guy named Bryan…

How one genius fathered both the canning and paper industries: “The Lives of Bryan,” from @jasontoon.bsky.social.

* Willy Wonka (in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

###

As we devise, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to Dan Bricklin; he was born on this date in 1951. An engineer, he was the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Known as “the father of the Spreadsheet,” he was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc and was one of six people spotlighted when “the Computer” was named “Machine of the Year” by Time magazine in 1982.

Neither Bricklin nor Frankston reaped huge financial profits from their spreadsheet program, though it sold over a half-million copies by 1983. At the time, copyright protection was not generally sought for software; their company was subsequently acquired by Lotus 1-2-3, which became the new spreadsheet standard (until, of course, Excel).

source

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple”*…

Jason Toon on a man whose applied creativity birthed not one, but two major industries…

Global canned food sales are now more than $210 billion annually. The average American eats about 200 pounds of canned food every year. Meanwhile the worldwide paper industry has seen steep falls in the production of newsprint, printing paper, and writing paper since 2010, but the rise in paper and cardboard packaging has more than made up for it. The paper industry is bigger than ever, with revenue of $485 billion in 2025.

For better or worse, our world would simply not look the same today without these two industries. And one person was the key figure in starting both of them. Bryan Donkin can legitimately claim to be the “father” of the canned-food industry and the paper industry as we know them. So who was he, besides one of the very few guys named Bryan in the 18th century?

Born in northeastern England in 1768, Bryan Donkin went into the same business as his father: real estate. But it didn’t speak to him. So in 1792, at the rather ripe age of 24, he became an apprentice to John Hall at Dartford Iron Works to pursue his true calling as an engineer.

At the time, all paper was made by hand, more or less the same way it had been done since the Middle Ages. Cotton and linen rags were soaked in water and beaten into a pulp. A shallow, rectangular mold with a screen bottom would be dipped into the liquid slurry and shaken. A thin layer of the macerated fibers would settle on the screen; when dry, you’d have yourself a single sheet of paper.

Donkin started his post-apprenticeship career making these molds. But around 1801, he got connected to the Fourdrinier brothers, who produced stationery in London. They’d made a deal with a French inventor, Louis-Nicolas Robert, to bring a new paper-making machine to Britain. At the time, between the post-revolutionary turmoil in France and England’s more advanced industrial base, the latter seemed to hold more lucrative prospects for the new invention.

Unlike the laborious single-sheet, mold-based method, this new “Fourdrinier machine” used a cylinder to continuously produce rolls of paper. A mechanism called the “shake” agitated the conveyor belt at a high speed, to spread the wet pulp fibers in an even layer. Unfortunately, this rapid movement put a lot of strain on the mostly wooden machine. One of Donkin’s improvements was to use metal parts instead, for improved stability and precision.

Another refinement of his was adjusting the rollers that squeezed the water out of the paper, to maximize contact between them and the paper, to dry the paper more quickly and thoroughly. This and other improvements turned the Fourdrinier machine from an interesting prototype to a viable technical advancement.

It quickly became the industry standard, and remains so over 200 years later. The publishing boom of the late 19th and early 20th century wouldn’t have been possible without it. Those big machines you see today producing rolls of paper are most likely Fourdrinier machines. Donkin also made some key advancements in printing technology, so the Pulitzers and Murdochs of the world owe him double gratitude.

His fortune secured, now the head of a company bearing his name that still exists (these days they make gas valves), Donkin’s restless mind turned to another puzzle: the preservation of food. Like too many technological quests, this one was spurred by military needs. Best frenemies England and France were both spreading their empires around the planet, frequently clashing, and looking for ways to keep their troops fed. In such wide-ranging conflicts as the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), far more sailors died of malnutrition than in combat.

It seems yet another French inventor had visions of pounds sterling dancing in his eyes. Philippe de Girard had come up with a method of preserving food by putting in inside a sealed tin container, then boiling the container in water to sterilize it. Or maybe he swiped the method from another French inventor, Nicolas Appert [see here]. Or maybe they were in cahoots. What we do know is that in 1810, de Girard went to London and engaged a merchant named Peter Durand to be his frontman for getting a British patent, which de Girard would not have been eligible for since Britain and France were at war.

Durand was duly awarded the patent in his name. Ever since, he’s been often called the inventor of the tin can, despite having nothing to do with inventing it, and doing nothing with it except selling the patent for £1,000 in 1812. The buyer? Bryan Donkin’s old apprenticeship master, John Hall.

Now on equal terms as budding titans of industry, Hall put up the money and Donkin provided the brains along with a third partner, John Gamble, to bring tin canning to an industrial scale. Again, it took a couple of years, but Donkin and Gamble steadily refined the process. One of their major innovations was to use iron coated in a thin layer of tin, combining the strength of the former with the non-reactive properties of the latter for an imperturbable can that could survive the longest, roughest ocean voyages.

For the second time, a French invention plus Donkin’s enhancements equaled le jackpot. After getting the likes of Queen Charlotte and the Duke of Wellington hooked with some free samples of canned beef, the firm of Donkin, Hall and Gamble received an order for 156 pounds of canned food from the Admiralty in 1813. That grew to 2,939 pounds the following year, increasing annually to 9,000 pounds by 1821.

Having bested the canning challenge, Donkin again wandered off in search of other worlds to conquer: helping Charles Babbage with the “difference engine” that would eventually become the computer, consulting on bridge and canal projects, inventing the first metal pen and a screw-cutting machine, being a founding member of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Astronomical Society.

He died in 1855, an esteemed eminence in Victorian scientific and engineering circles. Today Bryan Donkin’s impact is out of all proportion to his memory. On a visit to his grave in London, the BBC found, [there was] no mention of his achievements. Cemetery staff didn’t know who he was.

I can sense the question from some quarters of the audience: are Bryan Donkin’s achievements worth celebrating? Not only did canned food help enable imperial conquest and war, it also led eventually to the mass industrialization of food production, with its attendant crises of public health and monocultural farming, and our psychological distance from our food supply. And one look at any municipal dump will show you how much paper and cardboard waste still goes into landfill, even in a supposedly “paperless world”.

Those points are well taken. But it’s easier to dismiss these advancements when you live in a world that’s always known them. Over the last century or two, large-scale paper production enabled the rise of mass literacy, from only 10% of the world’s population being literate in 1820 to 90% today.

And it’s not just British seamen who eat better because of canned food. A 2011-2013 National Institutes of Health study found that people who eat six or more canned items a week “consume more nutrient-dense food groups such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and protein-rich foods, and also have higher intakes of 17 essential nutrients” including potassium, calcium, and fiber. Canned food has helped overcome the tyrannies of distance and time to get more nutrition to more people.

From the perspective of people in 1810, both food canning and mass paper production were immense steps forward. We can’t lay our subsequent inability to maintain some equilibrium at their feet. It’s true that Bryan Donkin didn’t invent the machines he perfected. Both industries probably would have happened, in some form, eventually, without him. But in being the first to perfect them for large-scale use, and granting all the downsides they’ve brought along with them, he hastened the coming of a less hungry, more educated world. Not bad for a guy named Bryan…

How one genius fathered both the canning and paper industries: “The Lives of Bryan,” from @jasontoon.bsky.social.

* Willy Wonka (in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

###

As we devise, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to Dan Bricklin; he was born on this date in 1951. An engineer, he was the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Known as “the father of the Spreadsheet,” he was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc and was one of six people spotlighted when “the Computer” was named “Machine of the Year” by Time magazine in 1982.

Neither Bricklin nor Frankston reaped huge financial profits from their spreadsheet program, though it sold over a half-million copies by 1983. At the time, copyright protection was not generally sought for software; their company was subsequently acquired by Lotus 1-2-3, which became the new spreadsheet standard (until, of course, Excel).

source

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple”*…

Jason Toon on a man whose applied creativity birthed not one, but two major industries…

Global canned food sales are now more than $210 billion annually. The average American eats about 200 pounds of canned food every year. Meanwhile the worldwide paper industry has seen steep falls in the production of newsprint, printing paper, and writing paper since 2010, but the rise in paper and cardboard packaging has more than made up for it. The paper industry is bigger than ever, with revenue of $485 billion in 2025.

For better or worse, our world would simply not look the same today without these two industries. And one person was the key figure in starting both of them. Bryan Donkin can legitimately claim to be the “father” of the canned-food industry and the paper industry as we know them. So who was he, besides one of the very few guys named Bryan in the 18th century?

Born in northeastern England in 1768, Bryan Donkin went into the same business as his father: real estate. But it didn’t speak to him. So in 1792, at the rather ripe age of 24, he became an apprentice to John Hall at Dartford Iron Works to pursue his true calling as an engineer.

At the time, all paper was made by hand, more or less the same way it had been done since the Middle Ages. Cotton and linen rags were soaked in water and beaten into a pulp. A shallow, rectangular mold with a screen bottom would be dipped into the liquid slurry and shaken. A thin layer of the macerated fibers would settle on the screen; when dry, you’d have yourself a single sheet of paper.

Donkin started his post-apprenticeship career making these molds. But around 1801, he got connected to the Fourdrinier brothers, who produced stationery in London. They’d made a deal with a French inventor, Louis-Nicolas Robert, to bring a new paper-making machine to Britain. At the time, between the post-revolutionary turmoil in France and England’s more advanced industrial base, the latter seemed to hold more lucrative prospects for the new invention.

Unlike the laborious single-sheet, mold-based method, this new “Fourdrinier machine” used a cylinder to continuously produce rolls of paper. A mechanism called the “shake” agitated the conveyor belt at a high speed, to spread the wet pulp fibers in an even layer. Unfortunately, this rapid movement put a lot of strain on the mostly wooden machine. One of Donkin’s improvements was to use metal parts instead, for improved stability and precision.

Another refinement of his was adjusting the rollers that squeezed the water out of the paper, to maximize contact between them and the paper, to dry the paper more quickly and thoroughly. This and other improvements turned the Fourdrinier machine from an interesting prototype to a viable technical advancement.

It quickly became the industry standard, and remains so over 200 years later. The publishing boom of the late 19th and early 20th century wouldn’t have been possible without it. Those big machines you see today producing rolls of paper are most likely Fourdrinier machines. Donkin also made some key advancements in printing technology, so the Pulitzers and Murdochs of the world owe him double gratitude.

His fortune secured, now the head of a company bearing his name that still exists (these days they make gas valves), Donkin’s restless mind turned to another puzzle: the preservation of food. Like too many technological quests, this one was spurred by military needs. Best frenemies England and France were both spreading their empires around the planet, frequently clashing, and looking for ways to keep their troops fed. In such wide-ranging conflicts as the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), far more sailors died of malnutrition than in combat.

It seems yet another French inventor had visions of pounds sterling dancing in his eyes. Philippe de Girard had come up with a method of preserving food by putting in inside a sealed tin container, then boiling the container in water to sterilize it. Or maybe he swiped the method from another French inventor, Nicolas Appert [see here]. Or maybe they were in cahoots. What we do know is that in 1810, de Girard went to London and engaged a merchant named Peter Durand to be his frontman for getting a British patent, which de Girard would not have been eligible for since Britain and France were at war.

Durand was duly awarded the patent in his name. Ever since, he’s been often called the inventor of the tin can, despite having nothing to do with inventing it, and doing nothing with it except selling the patent for £1,000 in 1812. The buyer? Bryan Donkin’s old apprenticeship master, John Hall.

Now on equal terms as budding titans of industry, Hall put up the money and Donkin provided the brains along with a third partner, John Gamble, to bring tin canning to an industrial scale. Again, it took a couple of years, but Donkin and Gamble steadily refined the process. One of their major innovations was to use iron coated in a thin layer of tin, combining the strength of the former with the non-reactive properties of the latter for an imperturbable can that could survive the longest, roughest ocean voyages.

For the second time, a French invention plus Donkin’s enhancements equaled le jackpot. After getting the likes of Queen Charlotte and the Duke of Wellington hooked with some free samples of canned beef, the firm of Donkin, Hall and Gamble received an order for 156 pounds of canned food from the Admiralty in 1813. That grew to 2,939 pounds the following year, increasing annually to 9,000 pounds by 1821.

Having bested the canning challenge, Donkin again wandered off in search of other worlds to conquer: helping Charles Babbage with the “difference engine” that would eventually become the computer, consulting on bridge and canal projects, inventing the first metal pen and a screw-cutting machine, being a founding member of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Astronomical Society.

He died in 1855, an esteemed eminence in Victorian scientific and engineering circles. Today Bryan Donkin’s impact is out of all proportion to his memory. On a visit to his grave in London, the BBC found, [there was] no mention of his achievements. Cemetery staff didn’t know who he was.

I can sense the question from some quarters of the audience: are Bryan Donkin’s achievements worth celebrating? Not only did canned food help enable imperial conquest and war, it also led eventually to the mass industrialization of food production, with its attendant crises of public health and monocultural farming, and our psychological distance from our food supply. And one look at any municipal dump will show you how much paper and cardboard waste still goes into landfill, even in a supposedly “paperless world”.

Those points are well taken. But it’s easier to dismiss these advancements when you live in a world that’s always known them. Over the last century or two, large-scale paper production enabled the rise of mass literacy, from only 10% of the world’s population being literate in 1820 to 90% today.

And it’s not just British seamen who eat better because of canned food. A 2011-2013 National Institutes of Health study found that people who eat six or more canned items a week “consume more nutrient-dense food groups such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and protein-rich foods, and also have higher intakes of 17 essential nutrients” including potassium, calcium, and fiber. Canned food has helped overcome the tyrannies of distance and time to get more nutrition to more people.

From the perspective of people in 1810, both food canning and mass paper production were immense steps forward. We can’t lay our subsequent inability to maintain some equilibrium at their feet. It’s true that Bryan Donkin didn’t invent the machines he perfected. Both industries probably would have happened, in some form, eventually, without him. But in being the first to perfect them for large-scale use, and granting all the downsides they’ve brought along with them, he hastened the coming of a less hungry, more educated world. Not bad for a guy named Bryan…

How one genius fathered both the canning and paper industries: “The Lives of Bryan,” from @jasontoon.bsky.social.

* Willy Wonka (in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

###

As we devise, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to Dan Bricklin; he was born on this date in 1951. An engineer, he was the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Known as “the father of the Spreadsheet,” he was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc and was one of six people spotlighted when “the Computer” was named “Machine of the Year” by Time magazine in 1982.

Neither Bricklin nor Frankston reaped huge financial profits from their spreadsheet program, though it sold over a half-million copies by 1983. At the time, copyright protection was not generally sought for software; their company was subsequently acquired by Lotus 1-2-3, which became the new spreadsheet standard (until, of course, Excel).

source

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple”*…

Jason Toon on a man whose applied creativity birthed not one, but two major industries…

Global canned food sales are now more than $210 billion annually. The average American eats about 200 pounds of canned food every year. Meanwhile the worldwide paper industry has seen steep falls in the production of newsprint, printing paper, and writing paper since 2010, but the rise in paper and cardboard packaging has more than made up for it. The paper industry is bigger than ever, with revenue of $485 billion in 2025.

For better or worse, our world would simply not look the same today without these two industries. And one person was the key figure in starting both of them. Bryan Donkin can legitimately claim to be the “father” of the canned-food industry and the paper industry as we know them. So who was he, besides one of the very few guys named Bryan in the 18th century?

Born in northeastern England in 1768, Bryan Donkin went into the same business as his father: real estate. But it didn’t speak to him. So in 1792, at the rather ripe age of 24, he became an apprentice to John Hall at Dartford Iron Works to pursue his true calling as an engineer.

At the time, all paper was made by hand, more or less the same way it had been done since the Middle Ages. Cotton and linen rags were soaked in water and beaten into a pulp. A shallow, rectangular mold with a screen bottom would be dipped into the liquid slurry and shaken. A thin layer of the macerated fibers would settle on the screen; when dry, you’d have yourself a single sheet of paper.

Donkin started his post-apprenticeship career making these molds. But around 1801, he got connected to the Fourdrinier brothers, who produced stationery in London. They’d made a deal with a French inventor, Louis-Nicolas Robert, to bring a new paper-making machine to Britain. At the time, between the post-revolutionary turmoil in France and England’s more advanced industrial base, the latter seemed to hold more lucrative prospects for the new invention.

Unlike the laborious single-sheet, mold-based method, this new “Fourdrinier machine” used a cylinder to continuously produce rolls of paper. A mechanism called the “shake” agitated the conveyor belt at a high speed, to spread the wet pulp fibers in an even layer. Unfortunately, this rapid movement put a lot of strain on the mostly wooden machine. One of Donkin’s improvements was to use metal parts instead, for improved stability and precision.

Another refinement of his was adjusting the rollers that squeezed the water out of the paper, to maximize contact between them and the paper, to dry the paper more quickly and thoroughly. This and other improvements turned the Fourdrinier machine from an interesting prototype to a viable technical advancement.

It quickly became the industry standard, and remains so over 200 years later. The publishing boom of the late 19th and early 20th century wouldn’t have been possible without it. Those big machines you see today producing rolls of paper are most likely Fourdrinier machines. Donkin also made some key advancements in printing technology, so the Pulitzers and Murdochs of the world owe him double gratitude.

His fortune secured, now the head of a company bearing his name that still exists (these days they make gas valves), Donkin’s restless mind turned to another puzzle: the preservation of food. Like too many technological quests, this one was spurred by military needs. Best frenemies England and France were both spreading their empires around the planet, frequently clashing, and looking for ways to keep their troops fed. In such wide-ranging conflicts as the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), far more sailors died of malnutrition than in combat.

It seems yet another French inventor had visions of pounds sterling dancing in his eyes. Philippe de Girard had come up with a method of preserving food by putting in inside a sealed tin container, then boiling the container in water to sterilize it. Or maybe he swiped the method from another French inventor, Nicolas Appert [see here]. Or maybe they were in cahoots. What we do know is that in 1810, de Girard went to London and engaged a merchant named Peter Durand to be his frontman for getting a British patent, which de Girard would not have been eligible for since Britain and France were at war.

Durand was duly awarded the patent in his name. Ever since, he’s been often called the inventor of the tin can, despite having nothing to do with inventing it, and doing nothing with it except selling the patent for £1,000 in 1812. The buyer? Bryan Donkin’s old apprenticeship master, John Hall.

Now on equal terms as budding titans of industry, Hall put up the money and Donkin provided the brains along with a third partner, John Gamble, to bring tin canning to an industrial scale. Again, it took a couple of years, but Donkin and Gamble steadily refined the process. One of their major innovations was to use iron coated in a thin layer of tin, combining the strength of the former with the non-reactive properties of the latter for an imperturbable can that could survive the longest, roughest ocean voyages.

For the second time, a French invention plus Donkin’s enhancements equaled le jackpot. After getting the likes of Queen Charlotte and the Duke of Wellington hooked with some free samples of canned beef, the firm of Donkin, Hall and Gamble received an order for 156 pounds of canned food from the Admiralty in 1813. That grew to 2,939 pounds the following year, increasing annually to 9,000 pounds by 1821.

Having bested the canning challenge, Donkin again wandered off in search of other worlds to conquer: helping Charles Babbage with the “difference engine” that would eventually become the computer, consulting on bridge and canal projects, inventing the first metal pen and a screw-cutting machine, being a founding member of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Astronomical Society.

He died in 1855, an esteemed eminence in Victorian scientific and engineering circles. Today Bryan Donkin’s impact is out of all proportion to his memory. On a visit to his grave in London, the BBC found, [there was] no mention of his achievements. Cemetery staff didn’t know who he was.

I can sense the question from some quarters of the audience: are Bryan Donkin’s achievements worth celebrating? Not only did canned food help enable imperial conquest and war, it also led eventually to the mass industrialization of food production, with its attendant crises of public health and monocultural farming, and our psychological distance from our food supply. And one look at any municipal dump will show you how much paper and cardboard waste still goes into landfill, even in a supposedly “paperless world”.

Those points are well taken. But it’s easier to dismiss these advancements when you live in a world that’s always known them. Over the last century or two, large-scale paper production enabled the rise of mass literacy, from only 10% of the world’s population being literate in 1820 to 90% today.

And it’s not just British seamen who eat better because of canned food. A 2011-2013 National Institutes of Health study found that people who eat six or more canned items a week “consume more nutrient-dense food groups such as fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and protein-rich foods, and also have higher intakes of 17 essential nutrients” including potassium, calcium, and fiber. Canned food has helped overcome the tyrannies of distance and time to get more nutrition to more people.

From the perspective of people in 1810, both food canning and mass paper production were immense steps forward. We can’t lay our subsequent inability to maintain some equilibrium at their feet. It’s true that Bryan Donkin didn’t invent the machines he perfected. Both industries probably would have happened, in some form, eventually, without him. But in being the first to perfect them for large-scale use, and granting all the downsides they’ve brought along with them, he hastened the coming of a less hungry, more educated world. Not bad for a guy named Bryan…

How one genius fathered both the canning and paper industries: “The Lives of Bryan,” from @jasontoon.bsky.social.

* Willy Wonka (in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

###

As we devise, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to Dan Bricklin; he was born on this date in 1951. An engineer, he was the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Known as “the father of the Spreadsheet,” he was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1981 for VisiCalc and was one of six people spotlighted when “the Computer” was named “Machine of the Year” by Time magazine in 1982.

Neither Bricklin nor Frankston reaped huge financial profits from their spreadsheet program, though it sold over a half-million copies by 1983. At the time, copyright protection was not generally sought for software; their company was subsequently acquired by Lotus 1-2-3, which became the new spreadsheet standard (until, of course, Excel).

source

Vot! Jämäpahvia ja balsaa, kuumaliimaa ja talouspaperia: niistä on kätsyt ja halvat rauniot Frostgraveen tehty!

#Frostgrave #Osprey
#figu #figupeli
#kärhämä #skirmish
#pahvi #cardboard
#balsa #kuumaliima #hotglue
#tsi #diy
#wargame #miniatyyri #miniature
#28mm

Emily Makes....cardboard crapola | Part 2

https://makertube.net/w/vKo4gzDxK72fb6Va6UQhUp

Emily Makes....cardboard crapola | Part 2

https://makertube.net/w/vKo4gzDxK72fb6Va6UQhUp

Emily Makes....cardboard crapola | Part 2

https://makertube.net/w/vKo4gzDxK72fb6Va6UQhUp

Emily Makes....cardboard crapola | Part 2

https://makertube.net/w/vKo4gzDxK72fb6Va6UQhUp

Emily Makes....cardboard crapola | Part 2

https://makertube.net/w/vKo4gzDxK72fb6Va6UQhUp

BTS’s sold-out Las Vegas shows bring record level of visitors to Sin City

Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…
#EuropeSays #Korea #KR #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Cardboard #ColorImage #covid-19 #CutOut #Fan-Enthusiast #Horizontal #K-Pop #LasVegas #Nevada #Pandemic-Illness #people #Photography #Standee #USA
https://www.europesays.com/korea/70089/

eva jospin crafts entire worlds from cardboard, one cut at a time

eva jospin turns discarded cardboard to immersive landscapes   For decades, conversations about the future have been dominated…
#NewsBeep #News #Artsanddesign #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #AU #Australia #cardboard #CRAFTINGTHEFUTURE #Design #Entertainment #Innovation #interactiveinstallation #Materials
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/763823/

eva jospin crafts entire worlds from cardboard, one cut at a time

eva jospin turns discarded cardboard to immersive landscapes   For decades, conversations about the future have been dominated…
#NewsBeep #News #Artsanddesign #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #AU #Australia #cardboard #CRAFTINGTHEFUTURE #Design #Entertainment #Innovation #interactiveinstallation #Materials
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/763823/

A german tech news site has an article about the 30th anniversary of #Quake. They have a photo of all their assembled Quake media. A bunch of #CDs and #cardboard boxes. And now I am so nostalgic.

I want to buy a game in a #JewelCase or a cardboard box and be excited by the description and pictures on the outside having to carry it home before I can load it into my #PC.

Just a regular shopping experience.

A german tech news site has an article about the 30th anniversary of #Quake. They have a photo of all their assembled Quake media. A bunch of #CDs and #cardboard boxes. And now I am so nostalgic.

I want to buy a game in a #JewelCase or a cardboard box and be excited by the description and pictures on the outside having to carry it home before I can load it into my #PC.

Just a regular shopping experience.

A german tech news site has an article about the 30th anniversary of #Quake. They have a photo of all their assembled Quake media. A bunch of #CDs and #cardboard boxes. And now I am so nostalgic.

I want to buy a game in a #JewelCase or a cardboard box and be excited by the description and pictures on the outside having to carry it home before I can load it into my #PC.

Just a regular shopping experience.

Vot! Budjettimiehen väläys: neopreenisen pelialustan asemesta perustetaan Frostgrave-lauta Clas Ohslonin marmorikuviodulla vinyylitarralla pinnoitetuille jämämuovilevyille. Heti huomaa että KYLMÄ JA KUOLLUT KAUPUNKI ON TÄSSÄ.

#diy #tsi
#Frostgrave
#figupeli #figu
#miniatyyri
#Finnfoam #pahvi #cardboard
#GamesWorkshop
#Mordheim

Huomaa myös autoverhot!

How to get rid of garden weeds without spraying or pulling https://www.allforgardening.com/1799702/how-to-get-rid-of-garden-weeds-without-spraying-or-pulling/ #cardboard #CardboardHacks #garden #gardening #GardeningHacks #GardeningIreland #HowToStopGardenWeeds #LifeHacks #WeedRemoval #WeedRemovalHacks #weeds

How to get rid of garden weeds without spraying or pulling https://www.allforgardening.com/1799702/how-to-get-rid-of-garden-weeds-without-spraying-or-pulling/ #cardboard #CardboardHacks #garden #gardening #GardeningHacks #GardeningIreland #HowToStopGardenWeeds #LifeHacks #WeedRemoval #WeedRemovalHacks #weeds

I've been preferentially #recycling #cardboard & #aluminum for more than a decade. People who have known me a long time have pendant heard me talk about how #plastic is not currently realistic & #glass is break even. Thanks to @[email protected] I have some numbers!

A Rocket Exploded. We Need to ...

Cardboard Clean Series BoxIC G1 N1-4 #Box #Shipping #Warehouse #Shipment #Card #Crate #Assets #Cardboard #Props #Delivery #Pbr #Lowpoly #AssetStore

https://u3dn.com/packages/cardboard-clean-series-boxic-g1-n1-4-342628

Phonopolis: A Beautiful World of Constructivism and Cardboard 📦

10 years in the making, Amanita Design’s latest gem Phonopolis launched during the week! A game constructed entirely from cardboard, it’s a phenomenal artistic achievement.

It also tells a clever, funny dystopian story alongside the indie dev’s familiar mix of abstract puzzle solving. Oh, plus a new game from this studio means a new soundtrack from composer Floex. Lots to be happy about here!

Puzzles and Punishment in Phonopolis

Okay, this is out now but currently only on Epic Games, GOG, and Steam (as in, it’s PC only).

In classic Amanita style, this is a point and click adventure game with plenty of abstract/logic puzzles. Players take control of Felix who is a young binman in the city of Phonopolis. As the studio explains in a press release:

“In contrast to the majority of Amanita Design’s previous efforts, tackles more relatable, real-world themes and topics, focusing on manipulation and individualism, but still keeping the overall experience playful and light-hearted. Players will take on the role of Felix, a thoughtful young man who, along with his fellow citizens, faces the imminent threat of falling under the control of the dystopian city’s authoritarian Leader once and for all, effectively losing their humanity.”

By accident, Felix discovers his society is under threat and there’s a subversive underground movement to maintain personal autonomy. Pertinent themes then! Oh, yes.

As Felix goes on to highlight the inherent nature of totalitarian systems. The initial promised ideal of a perfect, pure society, inevitably followed by absurdity and dysfunction.

This is all expressed in an avant-garde style artistic extravaganza. A vibrant 3D world of cardboard, pieced meticulously together through cut-outs, painting, and digitisation. The goal was to make Phonopolis a hand-crafted world and Amanita has achieved that in empathic fashion.

Cardboard Constructivism

The art styles used are angle heavy (kind of like Wassily Kandinsky styled abstractions) and falls under:

• Constructivism
• Futurism
• Suprematism

Constructivism is the most apparent (for us, anyway) and you can see the style stamped all over the main marketing branding for the game.

Just compare it to this 1919 Bolshevik lithographic piece Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Клином красным бей белых!, Klinom krasnym bey belykh!) by Russian artist El Lissitzky.

If you buy the soundtrack on Steam, you get a free artbook. Lissitzky is referenced directly with one of his quotes:

“The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life.”

Then we see plenty of Amanita angles, so reminiscent of Soviet-era sharpness and attempted order.

Again, every single thing in the game was constructed with cardboard. In traditional point and click fashion you guide Felix around areas, resolve issues, and move the story along. This thing really needs to be seen in motion, it’s an incredible artistic achievement.

Due to the extensive effort of piecing the game together, there’s only about 2-to-3 hours of gameplay here. That may bother some gamers, but it didn’t with us. We appreciate the achievement and wanted to play it all over again.

Phonopolis is clever, funny, and so weirdly captivating.

Absurd humour is a big part of the experience. The little intricacies of the the (often slapstick, other times satirical) jokes can be missed easily. So, pay attention, citizen! 

But given the nature of Professional Moron here and our lampooning of social structures and capitalism (you might have noticed we’re not a fan of the latter), Phonopolis delivers the absurdity in delightful spades of visual gags.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cardboard. 

Something we see a lot of anyway as our cat, Susan, has an obsession with the stuff. Good to see it all in game form. It’s similar to Petums’ beautiful game Papetura (2021), which was made of paper and took the indie developer six years to put together. It also features a fantastic Floex soundtrack.

On that note!!! Here we have another magnificent Floex soundtrack in Phonopolis. It’s over an hour of new music from the Czech composer and it delivers his trademark catchy hooks and folktronica excellence.

Amanita Design has done it again here, crafting a mini-masterpiece that’s quite the artistic achievement. Anyone who still sneers at video games and thinks they’re “for kids” needs to play something like this, as there’s no denying its artistic brilliance.

Hey ho, the abstract nature of the puzzle solving won’t be for everyone

Yet if you’ve not played an Amanita game before, now is the time to put aside that grievous error and embrace the world of Phonopolis.

The Production of Phonopolis

The day before the game released, Amanita Design launched a full documentary on YouTube about the game’s lengthy production cycle. If you’re interested in game design, it’s well worth a watch.

It’s not in English, but you can turn the subtitles on (CC) for insights.

The studio’s last full title was the surreal horror romp Happy Game back in 2021. The concept for Phonopolis was actually by another studio (apparently called Hammeware, who we can find no information about online).

Jakub Dvorský (founder of Amanita Design) saw the game and quickly moved to get it in his development. The team began work on it in 2016, but didn’t announce it until May 2022.

Since then, fans have simply had to wait, wait, and wait some more. It’s been well worth it, though, as this is arguably the best thing the indie dev has ever done. It’s not to be missed.

Phonopolis: A Beautiful World of Constructivism and Cardboard 📦

10 years in the making, Amanita Design’s latest gem Phonopolis launched during the week! A game constructed entirely from cardboard, it’s a phenomenal artistic achievement.

It also tells a clever, funny dystopian story alongside the indie dev’s familiar mix of abstract puzzle solving. Oh, plus a new game from this studio means a new soundtrack from composer Floex. Lots to be happy about here!

Puzzles and Punishment in Phonopolis

Okay, this is out now but currently only on Epic Games, GOG, and Steam (as in, it’s PC only).

In classic Amanita style, this is a point and click adventure game with plenty of abstract/logic puzzles. Players take control of Felix who is a young binman in the city of Phonopolis. As the studio explains in a press release:

“In contrast to the majority of Amanita Design’s previous efforts, tackles more relatable, real-world themes and topics, focusing on manipulation and individualism, but still keeping the overall experience playful and light-hearted. Players will take on the role of Felix, a thoughtful young man who, along with his fellow citizens, faces the imminent threat of falling under the control of the dystopian city’s authoritarian Leader once and for all, effectively losing their humanity.”

By accident, Felix discovers his society is under threat and there’s a subversive underground movement to maintain personal autonomy. Pertinent themes then! Oh, yes.

As Felix goes on to highlight the inherent nature of totalitarian systems. The initial promised ideal of a perfect, pure society, inevitably followed by absurdity and dysfunction.

This is all expressed in an avant-garde style artistic extravaganza. A vibrant 3D world of cardboard, pieced meticulously together through cut-outs, painting, and digitisation. The goal was to make Phonopolis a hand-crafted world and Amanita has achieved that in empathic fashion.

Cardboard Constructivism

The art styles used are angle heavy (kind of like Wassily Kandinsky styled abstractions) and falls under:

• Constructivism
• Futurism
• Suprematism

Constructivism is the most apparent (for us, anyway) and you can see the style stamped all over the main marketing branding for the game.

Just compare it to this 1919 Bolshevik lithographic piece Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Клином красным бей белых!, Klinom krasnym bey belykh!) by Russian artist El Lissitzky.

If you buy the soundtrack on Steam, you get a free artbook. Lissitzky is referenced directly with one of his quotes:

“The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life.”

Then we see plenty of Amanita angles, so reminiscent of Soviet-era sharpness and attempted order.

Again, every single thing in the game was constructed with cardboard. In traditional point and click fashion you guide Felix around areas, resolve issues, and move the story along. This thing really needs to be seen in motion, it’s an incredible artistic achievement.

Due to the extensive effort of piecing the game together, there’s only about 2-to-3 hours of gameplay here. That may bother some gamers, but it didn’t with us. We appreciate the achievement and wanted to play it all over again.

Phonopolis is clever, funny, and so weirdly captivating.

Absurd humour is a big part of the experience. The little intricacies of the the (often slapstick, other times satirical) jokes can be missed easily. So, pay attention, citizen! 

But given the nature of Professional Moron here and our lampooning of social structures and capitalism (you might have noticed we’re not a fan of the latter), Phonopolis delivers the absurdity in delightful spades of visual gags.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cardboard. 

Something we see a lot of anyway as our cat, Susan, has an obsession with the stuff. Good to see it all in game form. It’s similar to Petums’ beautiful game Papetura (2021), which was made of paper and took the indie developer six years to put together. It also features a fantastic Floex soundtrack.

On that note!!! Here we have another magnificent Floex soundtrack in Phonopolis. It’s over an hour of new music from the Czech composer and it delivers his trademark catchy hooks and folktronica excellence.

Amanita Design has done it again here, crafting a mini-masterpiece that’s quite the artistic achievement. Anyone who still sneers at video games and thinks they’re “for kids” needs to play something like this, as there’s no denying its artistic brilliance.

Hey ho, the abstract nature of the puzzle solving won’t be for everyone

Yet if you’ve not played an Amanita game before, now is the time to put aside that grievous error and embrace the world of Phonopolis.

The Production of Phonopolis

The day before the game released, Amanita Design launched a full documentary on YouTube about the game’s lengthy production cycle. If you’re interested in game design, it’s well worth a watch.

It’s not in English, but you can turn the subtitles on (CC) for insights.

The studio’s last full title was the surreal horror romp Happy Game back in 2021. The concept for Phonopolis was actually by another studio (apparently called Hammeware, who we can find no information about online).

Jakub Dvorský (founder of Amanita Design) saw the game and quickly moved to get it in his development. The team began work on it in 2016, but didn’t announce it until May 2022.

Since then, fans have simply had to wait, wait, and wait some more. It’s been well worth it, though, as this is arguably the best thing the indie dev has ever done. It’s not to be missed.

Phonopolis: A Beautiful World of Constructivism and Cardboard 📦

10 years in the making, Amanita Design’s latest gem Phonopolis launched during the week! A game constructed entirely from cardboard, it’s a phenomenal artistic achievement.

It also tells a clever, funny dystopian story alongside the indie dev’s familiar mix of abstract puzzle solving. Oh, plus a new game from this studio means a new soundtrack from composer Floex. Lots to be happy about here!

Puzzles and Punishment in Phonopolis

Okay, this is out now but currently only on Epic Games, GOG, and Steam (as in, it’s PC only).

In classic Amanita style, this is a point and click adventure game with plenty of abstract/logic puzzles. Players take control of Felix who is a young binman in the city of Phonopolis. As the studio explains in a press release:

“In contrast to the majority of Amanita Design’s previous efforts, tackles more relatable, real-world themes and topics, focusing on manipulation and individualism, but still keeping the overall experience playful and light-hearted. Players will take on the role of Felix, a thoughtful young man who, along with his fellow citizens, faces the imminent threat of falling under the control of the dystopian city’s authoritarian Leader once and for all, effectively losing their humanity.”

By accident, Felix discovers his society is under threat and there’s a subversive underground movement to maintain personal autonomy. Pertinent themes then! Oh, yes.

As Felix goes on to highlight the inherent nature of totalitarian systems. The initial promised ideal of a perfect, pure society, inevitably followed by absurdity and dysfunction.

This is all expressed in an avant-garde style artistic extravaganza. A vibrant 3D world of cardboard, pieced meticulously together through cut-outs, painting, and digitisation. The goal was to make Phonopolis a hand-crafted world and Amanita has achieved that in empathic fashion.

Cardboard Constructivism

The art styles used are angle heavy (kind of like Wassily Kandinsky styled abstractions) and falls under:

• Constructivism
• Futurism
• Suprematism

Constructivism is the most apparent (for us, anyway) and you can see the style stamped all over the main marketing branding for the game.

Just compare it to this 1919 Bolshevik lithographic piece Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Клином красным бей белых!, Klinom krasnym bey belykh!) by Russian artist El Lissitzky.

If you buy the soundtrack on Steam, you get a free artbook. Lissitzky is referenced directly with one of his quotes:

“The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life.”

Then we see plenty of Amanita angles, so reminiscent of Soviet-era sharpness and attempted order.

Again, every single thing in the game was constructed with cardboard. In traditional point and click fashion you guide Felix around areas, resolve issues, and move the story along. This thing really needs to be seen in motion, it’s an incredible artistic achievement.

Due to the extensive effort of piecing the game together, there’s only about 2-to-3 hours of gameplay here. That may bother some gamers, but it didn’t with us. We appreciate the achievement and wanted to play it all over again.

Phonopolis is clever, funny, and so weirdly captivating.

Absurd humour is a big part of the experience. The little intricacies of the the (often slapstick, other times satirical) jokes can be missed easily. So, pay attention, citizen! 

But given the nature of Professional Moron here and our lampooning of social structures and capitalism (you might have noticed we’re not a fan of the latter), Phonopolis delivers the absurdity in delightful spades of visual gags.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cardboard. 

Something we see a lot of anyway as our cat, Susan, has an obsession with the stuff. Good to see it all in game form. It’s similar to Petums’ beautiful game Papetura (2021), which was made of paper and took the indie developer six years to put together. It also features a fantastic Floex soundtrack.

On that note!!! Here we have another magnificent Floex soundtrack in Phonopolis. It’s over an hour of new music from the Czech composer and it delivers his trademark catchy hooks and folktronica excellence.

Amanita Design has done it again here, crafting a mini-masterpiece that’s quite the artistic achievement. Anyone who still sneers at video games and thinks they’re “for kids” needs to play something like this, as there’s no denying its artistic brilliance.

Hey ho, the abstract nature of the puzzle solving won’t be for everyone

Yet if you’ve not played an Amanita game before, now is the time to put aside that grievous error and embrace the world of Phonopolis.

The Production of Phonopolis

The day before the game released, Amanita Design launched a full documentary on YouTube about the game’s lengthy production cycle. If you’re interested in game design, it’s well worth a watch.

It’s not in English, but you can turn the subtitles on (CC) for insights.

The studio’s last full title was the surreal horror romp Happy Game back in 2021. The concept for Phonopolis was actually by another studio (apparently called Hammeware, who we can find no information about online).

Jakub Dvorský (founder of Amanita Design) saw the game and quickly moved to get it in his development. The team began work on it in 2016, but didn’t announce it until May 2022.

Since then, fans have simply had to wait, wait, and wait some more. It’s been well worth it, though, as this is arguably the best thing the indie dev has ever done. It’s not to be missed.

Phonopolis: A Beautiful World of Constructivism and Cardboard 📦

10 years in the making, Amanita Design’s latest gem Phonopolis launched during the week! A game constructed entirely from cardboard, it’s a phenomenal artistic achievement.

It also tells a clever, funny dystopian story alongside the indie dev’s familiar mix of abstract puzzle solving. Oh, plus a new game from this studio means a new soundtrack from composer Floex. Lots to be happy about here!

Puzzles and Punishment in Phonopolis

Okay, this is out now but currently only on Epic Games, GOG, and Steam (as in, it’s PC only).

In classic Amanita style, this is a point and click adventure game with plenty of abstract/logic puzzles. Players take control of Felix who is a young binman in the city of Phonopolis. As the studio explains in a press release:

“In contrast to the majority of Amanita Design’s previous efforts, tackles more relatable, real-world themes and topics, focusing on manipulation and individualism, but still keeping the overall experience playful and light-hearted. Players will take on the role of Felix, a thoughtful young man who, along with his fellow citizens, faces the imminent threat of falling under the control of the dystopian city’s authoritarian Leader once and for all, effectively losing their humanity.”

By accident, Felix discovers his society is under threat and there’s a subversive underground movement to maintain personal autonomy. Pertinent themes then! Oh, yes.

As Felix goes on to highlight the inherent nature of totalitarian systems. The initial promised ideal of a perfect, pure society, inevitably followed by absurdity and dysfunction.

This is all expressed in an avant-garde style artistic extravaganza. A vibrant 3D world of cardboard, pieced meticulously together through cut-outs, painting, and digitisation. The goal was to make Phonopolis a hand-crafted world and Amanita has achieved that in empathic fashion.

Cardboard Constructivism

The art styles used are angle heavy (kind of like Wassily Kandinsky styled abstractions) and falls under:

• Constructivism
• Futurism
• Suprematism

Constructivism is the most apparent (for us, anyway) and you can see the style stamped all over the main marketing branding for the game.

Just compare it to this 1919 Bolshevik lithographic piece Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Клином красным бей белых!, Klinom krasnym bey belykh!) by Russian artist El Lissitzky.

If you buy the soundtrack on Steam, you get a free artbook. Lissitzky is referenced directly with one of his quotes:

“The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life.”

Then we see plenty of Amanita angles, so reminiscent of Soviet-era sharpness and attempted order.

Again, every single thing in the game was constructed with cardboard. In traditional point and click fashion you guide Felix around areas, resolve issues, and move the story along. This thing really needs to be seen in motion, it’s an incredible artistic achievement.

Due to the extensive effort of piecing the game together, there’s only about 2-to-3 hours of gameplay here. That may bother some gamers, but it didn’t with us. We appreciate the achievement and wanted to play it all over again.

Phonopolis is clever, funny, and so weirdly captivating.

Absurd humour is a big part of the experience. The little intricacies of the the (often slapstick, other times satirical) jokes can be missed easily. So, pay attention, citizen! 

But given the nature of Professional Moron here and our lampooning of social structures and capitalism (you might have noticed we’re not a fan of the latter), Phonopolis delivers the absurdity in delightful spades of visual gags.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cardboard. 

Something we see a lot of anyway as our cat, Susan, has an obsession with the stuff. Good to see it all in game form. It’s similar to Petums’ beautiful game Papetura (2021), which was made of paper and took the indie developer six years to put together. It also features a fantastic Floex soundtrack.

On that note!!! Here we have another magnificent Floex soundtrack in Phonopolis. It’s over an hour of new music from the Czech composer and it delivers his trademark catchy hooks and folktronica excellence.

Amanita Design has done it again here, crafting a mini-masterpiece that’s quite the artistic achievement. Anyone who still sneers at video games and thinks they’re “for kids” needs to play something like this, as there’s no denying its artistic brilliance.

Hey ho, the abstract nature of the puzzle solving won’t be for everyone

Yet if you’ve not played an Amanita game before, now is the time to put aside that grievous error and embrace the world of Phonopolis.

The Production of Phonopolis

The day before the game released, Amanita Design launched a full documentary on YouTube about the game’s lengthy production cycle. If you’re interested in game design, it’s well worth a watch.

It’s not in English, but you can turn the subtitles on (CC) for insights.

The studio’s last full title was the surreal horror romp Happy Game back in 2021. The concept for Phonopolis was actually by another studio (apparently called Hammeware, who we can find no information about online).

Jakub Dvorský (founder of Amanita Design) saw the game and quickly moved to get it in his development. The team began work on it in 2016, but didn’t announce it until May 2022.

Since then, fans have simply had to wait, wait, and wait some more. It’s been well worth it, though, as this is arguably the best thing the indie dev has ever done. It’s not to be missed.

Phonopolis: A Beautiful World of Constructivism and Cardboard 📦

10 years in the making, Amanita Design’s latest gem Phonopolis launched during the week! A game constructed entirely from cardboard, it’s a phenomenal artistic achievement.

It also tells a clever, funny dystopian story alongside the indie dev’s familiar mix of abstract puzzle solving. Oh, plus a new game from this studio means a new soundtrack from composer Floex. Lots to be happy about here!

Puzzles and Punishment in Phonopolis

Okay, this is out now but currently only on Epic Games, GOG, and Steam (as in, it’s PC only).

In classic Amanita style, this is a point and click adventure game with plenty of abstract/logic puzzles. Players take control of Felix who is a young binman in the city of Phonopolis. As the studio explains in a press release:

“In contrast to the majority of Amanita Design’s previous efforts, tackles more relatable, real-world themes and topics, focusing on manipulation and individualism, but still keeping the overall experience playful and light-hearted. Players will take on the role of Felix, a thoughtful young man who, along with his fellow citizens, faces the imminent threat of falling under the control of the dystopian city’s authoritarian Leader once and for all, effectively losing their humanity.”

By accident, Felix discovers his society is under threat and there’s a subversive underground movement to maintain personal autonomy. Pertinent themes then! Oh, yes.

As Felix goes on to highlight the inherent nature of totalitarian systems. The initial promised ideal of a perfect, pure society, inevitably followed by absurdity and dysfunction.

This is all expressed in an avant-garde style artistic extravaganza. A vibrant 3D world of cardboard, pieced meticulously together through cut-outs, painting, and digitisation. The goal was to make Phonopolis a hand-crafted world and Amanita has achieved that in empathic fashion.

Cardboard Constructivism

The art styles used are angle heavy (kind of like Wassily Kandinsky styled abstractions) and falls under:

• Constructivism
• Futurism
• Suprematism

Constructivism is the most apparent (for us, anyway) and you can see the style stamped all over the main marketing branding for the game.

Just compare it to this 1919 Bolshevik lithographic piece Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Клином красным бей белых!, Klinom krasnym bey belykh!) by Russian artist El Lissitzky.

If you buy the soundtrack on Steam, you get a free artbook. Lissitzky is referenced directly with one of his quotes:

“The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life.”

Then we see plenty of Amanita angles, so reminiscent of Soviet-era sharpness and attempted order.

Again, every single thing in the game was constructed with cardboard. In traditional point and click fashion you guide Felix around areas, resolve issues, and move the story along. This thing really needs to be seen in motion, it’s an incredible artistic achievement.

Due to the extensive effort of piecing the game together, there’s only about 2-to-3 hours of gameplay here. That may bother some gamers, but it didn’t with us. We appreciate the achievement and wanted to play it all over again.

Phonopolis is clever, funny, and so weirdly captivating.

Absurd humour is a big part of the experience. The little intricacies of the the (often slapstick, other times satirical) jokes can be missed easily. So, pay attention, citizen! 

But given the nature of Professional Moron here and our lampooning of social structures and capitalism (you might have noticed we’re not a fan of the latter), Phonopolis delivers the absurdity in delightful spades of visual gags.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cardboard. 

Something we see a lot of anyway as our cat, Susan, has an obsession with the stuff. Good to see it all in game form. It’s similar to Petums’ beautiful game Papetura (2021), which was made of paper and took the indie developer six years to put together. It also features a fantastic Floex soundtrack.

On that note!!! Here we have another magnificent Floex soundtrack in Phonopolis. It’s over an hour of new music from the Czech composer and it delivers his trademark catchy hooks and folktronica excellence.

Amanita Design has done it again here, crafting a mini-masterpiece that’s quite the artistic achievement. Anyone who still sneers at video games and thinks they’re “for kids” needs to play something like this, as there’s no denying its artistic brilliance.

Hey ho, the abstract nature of the puzzle solving won’t be for everyone

Yet if you’ve not played an Amanita game before, now is the time to put aside that grievous error and embrace the world of Phonopolis.

The Production of Phonopolis

The day before the game released, Amanita Design launched a full documentary on YouTube about the game’s lengthy production cycle. If you’re interested in game design, it’s well worth a watch.

It’s not in English, but you can turn the subtitles on (CC) for insights.

The studio’s last full title was the surreal horror romp Happy Game back in 2021. The concept for Phonopolis was actually by another studio (apparently called Hammeware, who we can find no information about online).

Jakub Dvorský (founder of Amanita Design) saw the game and quickly moved to get it in his development. The team began work on it in 2016, but didn’t announce it until May 2022.

Since then, fans have simply had to wait, wait, and wait some more. It’s been well worth it, though, as this is arguably the best thing the indie dev has ever done. It’s not to be missed.

Cardboard Cliffs https://britthub.co.uk/cardboard-cliffs/

I have a lot of cardboard, I enjoyed making this ripped piece into art. I used a combination of different paint markers for this. I bought some super cheap ones from a discount shop so that I wouldn’t worry about destroying the nibs. I need to do more.

#Sketchbook
#cardboard #landscape #PaintPens #texture

Cardboard Cliffs https://britthub.co.uk/cardboard-cliffs/

I have a lot of cardboard, I enjoyed making this ripped piece into art. I used a combination of different paint markers for this. I bought some super cheap ones from a discount shop so that I wouldn’t worry about destroying the nibs. I need to do more.

#Sketchbook
#cardboard #landscape #PaintPens #texture

Cardboard Cliffs https://britthub.co.uk/cardboard-cliffs/

I have a lot of cardboard, I enjoyed making this ripped piece into art. I used a combination of different paint markers for this. I bought some super cheap ones from a discount shop so that I wouldn’t worry about destroying the nibs. I need to do more.

#Sketchbook
#cardboard #landscape #PaintPens #texture

Crews respond to big rig on fire on I-5

Crews respond to big rig on fire on I-5 THIS IS KCRA THREE NEWS LIVE AT 4:30 P.M.…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #BreakingNews #App #bigrig #bigrigfire #cardboard #crew #download #fire #Headlines #i-5 #interstate5 #kcra #livecopter #pocketroad #smoke #southsacramento #subscribe #topcaliforniastory #Topstories #TopStories #tuesdayafternoon #video
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/640128/

Crews respond to big rig on fire on I-5

Crews respond to big rig on fire on I-5 THIS IS KCRA THREE NEWS LIVE AT 4:30 P.M.…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #BreakingNews #App #bigrig #bigrigfire #cardboard #crew #download #fire #Headlines #i-5 #interstate5 #kcra #livecopter #pocketroad #smoke #southsacramento #subscribe #topcaliforniastory #Topstories #TopStories #tuesdayafternoon #video
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/640128/

Floor Lamp Kit Market in Germany | Report – IndexBox

This report is an independent strategic category study of the market for floor lamp kit in Germany. It…
#Germany #DE #Europe #EU #Europa #Bedroomreadinglight #Cardboard-reducedpackaging #consumergoodsmarketreport #Corneraccentlighting #Dimmableplugcircuitry #floorlampkit #forecast #Homeofficetasklighting #LEDintegratedlightengines #Livingroomambientlighting #marketanalysis #Tool-freeassemblydesigns
https://www.europesays.com/germany/12608/

VR Interaction Pack for Unity #Vr #Unity #Cardboard #Gearvr #Googlevr #Vrinteraction #Animation #Physics #Texture #Material #Objectmovement #Teleportation #Uiinteraction #AssetStore

https://u3dn.com/packages/vr-interaction-pack-for-unity-88721

Michigan Science Center opens giant cardboard maze inspired by Detroit

Detroiters looking to get lost – on purpose – will soon have a new place to do it.…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #america #cardboard #detroit #MichiganCentralStation #MichiganScienceCenter #science #technology #unitedstatesofamerica
https://www.europesays.com/2981283/

Why Using Cardboard for a PC Case is a Chore

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/05/10/why-using-cardboard-for-a-pc-case-is-a-chore/

Why Using Cardboard for a PC Case is a Chore

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/05/10/why-using-cardboard-for-a-pc-case-is-a-chore/

OMG. This movie is actually 60min long & it's the best thing ever. 😂

▶️ I Recreated Star Wars out of Cardboard
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ulVscDewRPI&si=n51HssAhYh1iRiOH
#StarWars #humor #cardboard

OMG. This movie is actually 60min long & it's the best thing ever. 😂

▶️ I Recreated Star Wars out of Cardboard
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ulVscDewRPI&si=n51HssAhYh1iRiOH
#StarWars #humor #cardboard

OMG. This movie is actually 60min long & it's the best thing ever. 😂

▶️ I Recreated Star Wars out of Cardboard
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ulVscDewRPI&si=n51HssAhYh1iRiOH
#StarWars #humor #cardboard

OMG. This movie is actually 60min long & it's the best thing ever. 😂

▶️ I Recreated Star Wars out of Cardboard
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ulVscDewRPI&si=n51HssAhYh1iRiOH
#StarWars #humor #cardboard

OMG. This movie is actually 60min long & it's the best thing ever. 😂

▶️ I Recreated Star Wars out of Cardboard
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ulVscDewRPI&si=n51HssAhYh1iRiOH
#StarWars #humor #cardboard

YouTuber Recreates ‘Star Wars’ with Cardboard https://petapixel.com/2026/05/05/youtuber-recreates-star-wars-with-cardboard/ #Inspiration #cardboard #starwars #youtuber #zachking #News

YouTuber Recreates ‘Star Wars’ with Cardboard https://petapixel.com/2026/05/05/youtuber-recreates-star-wars-with-cardboard/ #Inspiration #cardboard #starwars #youtuber #zachking #News