#This Must Be The Best Ruler Ever Invented If you're still using a basic ruler--the kind that's a stick with notches on it--allow us to introduce you to the future where our rulers will be crazy interactive devices that measure the angles on hand-drawn triangles and allow us to create our own Plinko games on the backs of receipts. Glassified a project from the MIT Media Lab is a ruler with a transparent screen on one end. A camera in the ruler can pick up on lines drawn on a sheet of paper and the ruler can project light that interacts with those lines. That can can make for a fun game or be used to track more complex measurements the ruler can apparently measure the angles on a hand-drawn triangle). Oh and all the lines you draw will be so straight. Creative Applications Network Great to see more ideas using the 4d systems transparent OLED display module! I really want to make a Heads-up display using a Raspberry Pi with this soon! Interesting thing would be nice wireless and if need a battery a transparent one. And pray tell why would I want to measure the angles of a hand-drawn triangle as indicated as one possible use for this contraption? Further if I recall --and I could be mistaken --but these pityingly limited rulers once built the great Pyramids of Giza the Temple of Artemis the Colossus of Rhodes the Acropolis the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon the Gate of Ishtar and in more modern times: the Roman Colosseum and aqueducts the Great Walls of China which I have on good account can be seen from space (one of a few really) Stonehenge the Hagia Sophia Petra Taj Mahal the Panama canal Machu Picchu the t. v. couch. If need be I can add more to this growing list but for now I rest my case: old tech will always be far superior. And what is so glamorous about straight lines; nature does everything in Curves.@@industrial. skyoh god lol. Old tech will always be far superior. So Slide-rules are superior to calculators abacuses are superior to computers gas lamps to electric lighting and so on? Also I don't believe rulers were involved at all in the making of any of the structures you listed because rulers didn't even exist until the 19th-20th century. They used mathematic calculations and probably marked ropes to calculate the length width and height of their structures (or they just measured it using the material it was made of ex. The Pyramid of Giza being x amount of slabs long. On a few other notes: The Great wall of china cannot be seen from space (confirmed by astronauts orbiting the earth at just 217 miles up) and this electronic ruler could have some use in the future and could end up being superior to a regular ruler just as a calculator is superior to a slide-rule.@@industrial skyi actually understand your point of view. New isn't always better. I have run into teenagers who can't do simple multiplication without a calculator. They also get bogged down by fractions. If a person becomes helpless without technology I am not sure I would say that the technology has made life better. I am not saying that this gadget isn't neat. It is really cool. Hopefully it is consistently accurate. However unless it can come down in price to match a good old fashioned ruler I doubt most teachers will spring for it. Something tells me the ruler will eventually be Wifi capable and then you will really see it become useless among teenagers. Instead of measuring angles with this new device they will be posting to Facebook. I am just being somewhat facetious here but not entirely. I always worry that these gadgets will be hacked someday by a foreign nation intent on ruining our technology from the bottom up. For example have the calculator say that the Cosine of 90 degrees is 1 instead of zero. Our tech-dependent teens have no clue that they are being duped. Next thing you know a missile ends up hitting one of our allies rather than one of our adversaries. Kevin your attack on the youth forgets some important things namely that as the requirements of an environment change old skills can become useless. You fear younger generations who can't do math in their head. I'm sure your grandparents feared younger generations that didn't know how to farm and rear livestock. Yes there are problems and dangers to not knowing these skills but only if our current environment falls backwards (always a possibility but improbable we'd fall too far back). And there is an assumption that people wouldn't pick these skills back up quickly once they were required. Overall I think the abundant existence of pocket calculators on phones and a computer at every turn means we'll be alright without everyone knowing how to do too much math in their head. We'll leave it to the engineers and specialists as we have many other skills throughout history.@@Metlman LOL right back at your ha. And lack thereof unfortunately. I would like to Extremely take great pains to point out to you that the precedent of using âÂ#Âoeruledã¢Â# devices --and the other tools of survey (for the ancients were more than anything else manically obsessed with the measurement of the land especially the ancient Egyptians who were worried forever about the River Nile flooding its banks since time immemorial) âÂ#Âcan actually go back to Pharaonic Egypt whereupon so-called'cubit rods'were found entombed with their very owners âÂ#Âthe architects and surveyors that you so profoundly overlooked. Egyptologists are also of like minds that the âÂ#Âoestaffã¢Â# that are so predominant in ancient murals depicted held in the hands of their deities and rulers may actually had held codified units of measurements the way we have our International systems of Measurement. Also may I also refer you to ivory relics dated to around 2600 B c. that were found in the Indus Valley (this is located in the NW regions of present day India by the way; hope you don't mind a bit of geographical lesson don't want to be assuming after all. The foks of the Indus Civilization were a few among the Bronze age peoples to have codified a standard system of weights and measures. Or would you also consign these object as religious relics or props to bring down the rains perhaps? Your kind usually does. And let us best compare apples to apples and not take things to extremes shall we as it becomes laughable. For why would anyone want to argue between a slide-rule to a pocket calculator or an abacus to a computer. Might be best to compare it in the ff manner: a lighted street to that with no lights at all. The gas lamp & electric lightning both serve useful similar function and to the pedestrian at night it would not matter nor care w c is the better no? Normally I would suggest to you and of similar kind who are so clearly easily blinded by the modernist view that âÂ#Âoemodern is great! âÂ# mentality it is not the devices by themselves that make them inherently great but only when handled in expert hands does their true usefulness and value come into play. The devices become great when they serve their purpose for a particular task. Or era. The stink of this post from Popular Science totally disrespects what has gone before. âÂ#Âoeold tech will always be superior. âÂ# for without these predecessors of your high-tech devices and the foundation of civilizations they created your modernist society will be none existent. And these gadgets in your hands what kind of foundation are you creating for the future when your battery-dependent generation cannot even solve your own problems in the present p. s. Let's not be petty with the Great wall of china. If you knew where to look for it and squint hard enough you know its there. At least NASA acknowledges that specific conditions have to take place like the angle for viewing the sun's position your altitude and such to eyeball it.@@Metlmanby the way..I happen to be an electronics engineer just to place my rebuttal to your comment in perspective.@@Metlmanor did you think the Bronze age started and ended in the 1800's because you did say because rulers didn't even exist until the 19th-20th century.@@Metlmanyou do know the difference between B c. and A d.?@@Metlmanhint: it's not a type of electrical power transmission...You see@Metlman adoration of our past is not healthy for one must live in the present-this i have learned -but it is best as well not to forget nor to underestimate ancient history.@@Kevin Elzinga 1new isn't always better. -never truer words said my friend. I too share the same worry about kids being too dependent on digital contraptions. True these devices were meant to alleviate other mundane tasks in order to move on or concentrate on the more complicated --but only when it applies for higher tasks at hand as for a major engineering construction civil works chem-engr'ng accounting and similar projects. Good to immerse students or introduce them early to the devices they will eventually use when they find professional work but perhaps not ideal to have them dependent so early on. It absolves them too early in the game so to speak of any attempt at training or developing mind skills that will remain unborn. In my time we were made to memorize whole multiplication and division tables through grade school and never saw the backside of a pocket calculator until the last three years of high school. The one effect it had was that the higher maths became less daunting and more friendly learning in the other subjects was also less stressful. Lastly this gadget may be cool to have--perhaps in the more advanced areas of the world w c for me are the minority but this would totally be out of place in the much more poorer regions of the world. There are still places out there wherein the classes are held still in session under trees and thatched huts. So all in all kudos to your perceptions o

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