Iconic innovations, humble origins

Updated on: 01 April,2014 08:45 AM IST |
Agencies |

Blueprints reveal start of the world's most life-changing inventions

Blueprints of inventions

London: Inventions from the Wright brother’s flying machine to Apple’s iPod are some of the most instantly recognisable in the world and even define eras. Now, a group of artists have sourced the patents for the game-changing gadgets and recreated their designs in a collection of stylish blueprints to celebrate the iconic designs.

The above picture shows the firing mechanism of a handgun, which was patented on December 6, 1881

They include inventions as simple as the Lego brick and other more complex designs such as the first typewriter or a Harley Davidson motorcycle. The designs were the idea of the Florida-based art company Oliver Gal Artist Co, whose works feature not only the intricate designs of the objects, but also the history behind each.

Blueprints of the Rubik’s Cube explain its fiendish difficulty to solve. In a classic Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers in white, red, blue, yellow, green and orange and an internal pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently to mix up the colours

The company hopes that in a world where inventions that are becoming ever more complex, the images will stand as a reminder of the thinking that went into each of the classic designs.

Harley Davidson Inc was founded in the first decade of the 20th century and was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression