oddmart

RFT Industrial Clock

From the eBay UK auction: “Stunning large and sought after industrial clock from the East German electricals company RFT (Rundfunk- und Fernmelde-Technik). RFT was created when the Communist government seized control of all electrical manufacturers after the partition of Germany including parts of Siemens and AEG, and collectivised them into one entity. The tradition of quality carried through from AEG and other large German manufactures is evident in most of RFT’s output. This clock was made a time when the Soviet Bloc was desperate to prove to the West how modern and successful their production and consumer system was, and how advanced their technology.

Many German industrial clock designs are based upon the iconic Swiss Federal Railways clocks of the 1940’s designed by Hans Hilfiker (1901-93), featuring a simple pared down but graphically strong clock face, influenced by the teachings at the Bauhaus and the traditions of the Modernist Movement.”

The hexagon logo makes me think of a 1970s chemical company. Hrm… cheap cologne, chemical company? Maybe that’s not too far off.

From Jaunted || Favorite Souvenirs: Pereja Turkish Lemon Cologne.

City of Seattle(?) logo on a Metro substation, originally uploaded by afiler.

I saw this logo on the alley-side fence of a Metro electric substation on 15th in Seattle. The logo looks like the current Seattle logo, but with a green S instead of blue, and a red target in the center instead of Chief Sealth in black.

South Africa

Photos from flickr, by PanelSwitchman.

Older Nortel switch have some screaming 70s colors. The DMS-100 is the bigger of the two Nortel end offices, and it’s green. The DMS-10 is the smaller one, and it’s orange. My company uses DMS-10s, and we even have orange and brown Nortel touch-up paint.

I don’t know what color the DMS-200, DMS-250, or DMS-300 are, but I hope they’re equally as fabulous. I hear newer Nortel switches are grey, sadly.

Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), 21 August 1970, originally uploaded by allhails.

Map of Greater Winnipeg Proposed Rapid Transit Subways in Relation to Present Surface Transit Routes (1959), uploaded to flickr by Manitoba Historical Maps.

Winnipeg, like Seattle, has a plan for a subway that was never built. In 1959 the designer of the Toronto subway submitted a plan recommending the construction of a subway (over elevated rail, “mono-rail”, rubber-tired subway, or commuter rail).

Future Development of the Greater Winnipeg Transit System by Norman D. Wilson, 1959

Transit Rider’s Union of Winnipeg maps of the subway on modern (2009) maps

Over four years after I moved from Minneapolis to Seattle, my couch is finally moving too. It’s an extremely orange couch. Before I move the couch in, I’d like to paint the living room, and I really really really really want to paint it a mint/sea foam green. It seems like a fitting color for the Bauhaus/postwar modern building I’m in. Orange+mint seems like it could be rather loud, though, so I did a Google image search for those two colors. What I found was a color swatch and pattern with both colors I was looking for. And the best part? The name: “Odd”.

Palette and pattern by sugar! at COLOURlovers.com, swatch image by purplelemondesigns.com.