“It is easy to invent a flying machine,” said the 19th century aviation engineer Otto Lilienthalmore, “[and] difficult to build one; to make it fly is everything.” The challenge of air (and later, space) travel began not with building aircraft, but with building a realistic simulation machine in which to test those…

Google's been logging data about hot trends ever since you started tip-tapping search terms into its front page, but now it's gone and made it look damn pretty with it.

The nebulous territory of “good” and “bad” taste have always confused me. Who are you to tell me what completely unaffordable couch I should or shouldn’t buy, well-meaning Architectural Digest editor? Well, back in 1909, a German art historian named Gustav E. Pazaurek devised a system to help us all out. Let’s call it …

Worker compensation is a fairly new thing, dating only back to the Labor Movement in the early 1900s. Before that, injuries on the job were usually treated with either indifference or cheap payoff—after all, the average factory worker was making mere cents a day, so half a year's pay was chump change for large…

ICFF—or the International Contemporary Furniture Fair—is one of the biggest furniture shows this side of Milan. And like its Italian rival, ICFF is closely watched by critics, who see it as a gauge of broader cultural trends. For example, the glitzy 2000s correlated with escapism from political turmoil and war. The…

Paolo Soleri, who died last month at 93, transformed the way people imagine cities of the future. You've probably seen some of his concepts without realizing it. He even built an experimental city in Arizona, called Arcosanti. We've got a gallery of his drawings and designs, some of which have never been online…

When Microsoft introduced Kinect three years ago, it brought pervasive computing into many homes for the very first time. Today, with the announcement of Xbox One, it's poised to pull millions of Americans into the era of the truly connected home. And we're all going to look damn good getting there.

How do you build the next generation of an iconic gaming console—and controller? How do you create something that fans both recognize and are inspired by? Wired got some exclusive alone time with the people who brought Xbox One to life. If you like prototypes, you'll love this.

Are you ready to have your heart broken? The GIF-TY camera, designed and built by Jiho Jang as part of his college thesis, is an adorable Polaroid-like snapper that captures animated GIFs and actually prints them out as tiny flipbooks on instant Z-ink paper. Except that for the time being, you can't buy one.

Thelma's, an Iowa-based cookie delivery service named after the founder's great-grandmother, contracted Saturday MFG. to create this utterly brilliant packaging that not only keeps the treats warm, but also gives the impression that they're fresh from the oven.