A Daily History of Holes, Dots, Lines, Science, History, Math, Physics, Art, the Unintentional Absurd, Architecture, Maps, Data Visualization, Blank and Missing Things, and so on. |1.6 million words, 7500 images, 4.9 million hits| Press & appearances in The Times, Le Figaro, Mensa, The Economist, The Guardian, Discovery News, Slate, Le Monde, Sci American Blogs, Le Pont, and many othr places… 5000+ total posts since 2008.

Mall-Mortuary Faces on Robot Patent Drawings, 1936-1976

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1927

There is something that I’ve found in my time grazing through U.S.patent drawings–for the most part, if the device has a face, or is being worn/employed by some human with a face, chances are that this face will indeed have some high invasion of “Creep Factor” elements.  It is just so.  I’ve encountered this many times, and I think that it is possible that in these hundreds of samples that I have come across that these inventors (a) could not draw, (b) could not draw well, or (c) chose not to (a) and/or (b). It is too much to expect that these creepy faces are an expression of humor–that would be too much of a conspiratorial element for anyone to absorb.  It is just remarkable that these faces are time after time just so off, and soft-creepy, like a puffed-up rougey death mask found in a mall mortuateria.


1936

1938

1938

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