360 DEGREES Weblog

A 1937 Bugatti Type 57S, originally owned by Earl Howe, is set to break new records when it goes under the hammer next month in Paris. The precious gift left behind by surgeon Harold Carr for his descendants remained undiscovered in a garage for more than 50 years. Finally, his nephew found it lying uncared for years in the garage and was amazed to learn that just 17 of its kind were ever made. The rare piece will go on auction next month at Bonhams’ Retromobile sale and is expected to realize more that €6.2 million ($8.7 million). Earl Howe, the first president of the British Racing Drivers’ Club, was the original owner of the car. Dr. Carr bought it in the ‘50s and locked it up in the garage before he passed away. After remaining untouched for more than half a century, the car is finally out to see the daylight on Feb 7th at an auction arena where it will provoke all buyers to call higher bids.

This silent Super-8 film of the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix is the perfect time warp to watch in contrast to the dazzling spectacle of the recent Singapore Grand Prix. The raw footage of the then-savage sport captures the essence of what a street-circuit F1 race was 40 years ago. For better or for worse, things have certainly changed. Graham Hill wins the 1968 Grand Prix in his Lotus-Ford. Only 5drivers end this race. F1 as it is supposed to be!

Acquadulza, Lago Maggiore, Italy.

German publisher teNeues’s amazing Cool series is impressive. Cool Restaurants: Top of the World, features over 100 incredible eateries scattered around the globe. teNeues selects only the best of the best for their “Top of the World” titles, such as Bale Sutra, the restaurant located in a majestic 300-year-old Kang Xi period temple at the exotic Hotel Tugu in Bali, pictured here on the cover. While New York City has the highest concentration of cool restaurants in any urban locale, and the U.S.A. the most for a single country, Europe has many more continent-wise. Dubai is putting itself on the culinary design map as well, with an admirable showing of four restaurants included in the book - as many as the UK.

 

1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen create a partnership called Micro-soft. It will grow into one of the largest U.S. corporations and place them among the world’s richest people.
Gates and Allen had been buddies and fellow Basic programmers at Lakeside School in Seattle. Allen graduated before Gates and enrolled at the University of Washington. They built a computer based on an Intel 8008 chip and used it to analyze traffic data for the Washington state highway department, doing business as Traf-O-Data.
Allen went to work for Honeywell in Boston, and Gates enrolled at Harvard University in nearby Cambridge. News in late 1974 of the first personal computer kit, the Altair 8800, excited them, but they knew they could improve its performance with Basic.
Allen spoke to Ed Roberts, president of Altair manufacturer MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), and sold him on the idea. Gates and Allen worked night and day to complete the first microcomputer Basic. Allen moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January 1975 to become director of software for MITS. Gates dropped out of his sophomore year at Harvard and joined Allen in Albuquerque.
Allen was 22; Gates was 19. Altair Basic was functioning by March. The “Micro-soft” partnership was sealed in April, but wouldn’t get its name for a few more months.
The fledgling company also created versions of Basic for the hot-selling Apple II and Radio Shack’s TRS-80.
Microsoft moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979. It incorporated in 1981, a few weeks before IBM introduced its personal computer with Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0.
The thriving young company moved again in 1986, this time to a new corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft stock went public in March 1986. Adjusting for splits, a share of that stock is worth almost 280 times its original value today (or more than 140 times, even accounting for inflation).

Flickr user Balakov recreated Charles Ebbet’s famous photo Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, c. 1932 with LEGO minifigs!

In this incredible night shot above, Eric Darnell throws his latest creation, a foam boomerang called the Scimitar outfitted with LED lights.

Shek Kip Mei Estate, Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate, is composed of 100 rooms, each closet-like in size at only 100 square feet and built in response to a devastating fire in the 1950s that left thousands homeless. In a new series of photographs called “100 x 100,” Michael Wolf captures the residents of this housing complex who are almost enveloped by the diminishing space around them, their belongings stacked to the ceiling.

As in Wolf’s earlier images of Hong Kong called “Architecture of Density,” this series presents an alternate and more human perspective on the socio-economic state of Hong Kong. The repetition of each resident’s expression mirrors the repetition of the building and the city itself, where people struggle for space in an overpopulated urban environment and redefine the notion of “modern living.” An interesting view for those of us living in large cities that require residents to live in smaller and smaller spaces.