Science and Technology

Silence Visible: This Is What the Sound of WWI's Ceasefire 'Looked' Like

By Ben Cosgrove

Anatomy of an A-Bomb Test, 1946

By Ben Cosgrove

Electric Cars: Just Around the Corner for a Long, Long Time

By Ben Cosgrove

LIFE With Hedy Lamarr: Stardom, Scandal and One Amazing Invention

By Ben Cosgrove
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Strangers to Reason: LIFE Inside a Psychiatric Hospital, 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt's photos from Pilgrim State Hospital in the late 1930s blended clear-eyed reporting with an almost palpable compassion.

By Ben Cosgrove

This Battery-Powered Prosthetic Arm Was a Postwar Tech Marvel

Photos of a postwar artificial arm and hand that ran on battery power, and was controlled by switches operated by the amputee's foot, 1950.

By Ben Cosgrove

Into the Black: Bruce McCandless Floats Free in Space, 1984

LIFE.com celebrates incredible photos of astronaut Bruce McCandless, taken by Space Shuttle Challenger's pilot, during the first "untethered space walk" in history.

By Ben Cosgrove

The Science Teacher You Wish You Had

LIFE.com pays tribute, in photos, to Hubert Alyea: a chemistry professor who made learning part-magic, part-mayhem for laymen and scientists, alike, with lectures that were often nearly as explosive as the science itself.

By Ben Cosgrove

Dancing for Gagarin: The USSR Celebrates the 'First Man in Space'

Victory meant quite different things at different times during the Cold War, a reality that LIFE photographer James Whitmore captured while on assignment in Moscow in the spring of 1961.

By Ben Cosgrove

Buoyancy and Bliss: A LIFE Magazine Editor Revels in Zero Gravity

In 1959, self-described overweight and out-of-shape LIFE magazine Science Editor Warren R. Young flew with aviators during early zero-gravity tests.

By Ben Cosgrove

What the Battle to Save Preemies Looked Like 75 Years Ago

In 1939, LIFE magazine took a look at the steps taken in one facility, the Boston Lying-In Hospital (founded in 1832), to care for premature babies.

By Ben Cosgrove

Alan Shepard: Classic Photos of the First American in Space

On the anniversary of Alan Shepard's historic 'Freedom 7' flight in 1961, LIFE features photos from that remarkable era. (Above: Shepard, c., with fellow astronauts Deke Slayton and Gus Grissom, after his flight.)

By Ben Cosgrove

Home, Sweet Home: In Praise of Apollo 17's 'Blue Marble'

No other photograph of planet Earth has ever felt at-once so momentous and somehow so manageable, so companionable, as NASA's gorgeous 'Blue Marble.'

By Ben Cosgrove

Orange Crush: LIFE With the Golden Gate Bridge

Classic photos of the grand, audacious structure that connects the city of San Francisco with the Marin Headlands to the north.

By Ben Cosgrove

Genius in the Details: Revisiting an Iconic Photo of Albert Einstein's Office

LIFE.com looks at a famous picture taken in Albert Einstein's Princeton office -- exactly as he left it -- mere hours after the great theoretical physicist and 20th-century icon died in 1955.

By Liz Ronk

The 'Knowledge Box': Picture an Early, Trippy, Analog, 3-D Wikipedia

A contraption built in 1962 predated the Web by three decades -- but it also hinted at information-gathering techniques that we all use today, everyday, online.

By Ben Cosgrove

Buckminster Fuller Forever: Salute to an American Visionary

Boing Boing co-founder David Pescovitz pays tribute to the American inventor, architect and engineer Bucky Fuller, and celebrates "the importance of unintended consequences."

By Liz Ronk

37 Weirdly Beautiful Old-School Science and Tech Photos

Photographs by some of history's most innovative photographers -- pictures that encompass the bizarre and often beautiful worlds of science and technology as seen in the pages of LIFE.

By Ben Cosgrove

Bad Robot! Sabor the Mechanical Man Terrifies a Toddler

A 1952 photograph of a wailing child and a seven-foot-tall robot in Hamburg, Germany, might be the funniest picture of a terrified toddler that any of us will ever see.

By Ben Cosgrove

Toys Were Us: Photos of Playful (and Creepy) Vintage Automatons

At the end of another year of dizzying digital advances, LIFE.com celebrates some singular (and creepy) little machines that were among the true tech marvels of their time.

By Ben Cosgrove
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