Wired History: Smithsonian Institute has a really cool interface

[Jerry]

The Smithsonian Institute has the coolest interface EVER!

Check it out:
http://historywired.si.edu/

(entry from Netsurfer’s Digest)

The Smithsonian's Visible Storage for the Ages

One of the coolest image maps on the Web greets you at a Smithsonian Institution site called HistoryWired. It's a model of user friendliness in face of enormous complexity - a wealth of artifacts (450, to be exact) not on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Necessity is the mother of maps, and the Smithsonian may well have had to create this masterpiece to visualize this inventory and help guide folks through holdings in broad categories. In Art, for example, a random sweep of our mouse discovered Abraham Lincoln's life mask, a bronze mask made from a plaster cast taken soon after Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency. In Sports, we found a baseball autographed by Babe Ruth, with links to related images and a RealOne audio of the crack of his bat and cheers from fans. One thing leads to another. And another. Interactive features such as a draggable timeline bar, a rating scale, and text search let you customize your views and find objects of personal interest. Tip: Click, zoom, and then shift-drag to move the map inside your browser window (try it and you'll understand what we mean). This warehouse is fun to explore. It fascinates with many instant rewards. Administrators of large museums without similar Web treasures are going to be envious as all getout.
http://historywired.si.edu/

[DaleDoe]

The thing that caught my eye was the 1928 Packard racecar. A 91 cubic inch motor producing 230 horsepower!  That's over 2.5 horsepower per cubic inch!!!:shocking:  It goes 143 MPH!:blink:  I challenge any auto manufacturer nowdays to produce 2.5 horsepower per cubic inch!  For comparison, most modern high performance engines produce in the neighborhood of 1 hp per ci.  If the engine in my car could achieve 2.5 hp/ci, the 440ci V8 would produce 1100 horsepower.

But that packard did all of that in 1928!  I'm going to have to look up the specs on that packard motor.

As Jerry mentioned, the interface of the website is very interesting.  I like the way you vote for how much you like something and it factors that into the size of that object (and I guess related objects) on the site.