In this map, which takes into account all the documented nuclear tests since 1945, two things really stand out. The few days in 1945 that saw the only use of nuclear weapons on humans register, when measured on the unfeeling scale of kilotons, as two small blips, aberrant in their location but unremarkable in their size. Then you see the key: The scale is not linear. If it was, the larger explosions would cover most of the map. That's the thing with nuclear weapons: It's easy to lose your sense of scale when it comes to how powerful they are, or what havoc they can wreak.

It paints (or visualizes) an unflattering portrait of the fifties and sixties not as golden years of postwar recovery and American prosperity, but as the years that the US and the Soviet Union, in blind competition with one another, spent all their time and untold amounts of their money blowing their own countries up. History! [DataVis]

UPDATE: Swapped image for original infographic, from Radial Cartography—Thanks, Adam!

Here's a brief history of cellphone cases. In the mid '90s, cases were bringing in a 45% profit margin for manufacturers, and were made of leather and worn either on a belt or hanging from a purse or wrist.

When clamshells became popular in the early to mid 2000s, cases became more-or-less obsolete, as the keys and screen were on the inside of the phone instead of the concrete-shock-absorbing outside. But iPhones and other touchscreen phones make the need for a case more relevant for people who tend to drop their phones.

I'm of two opinions on this. The first is that I have never dropped my phone, or dropped it so badly that it actually broke. But I do know a lot of people who do, so it's hard for me to say that cases aren't necessary for them. So while I may hate cases and think they cover up the nice industrial design of whatever your phone is with an ugly, rubberized finish, it's necessary for people who smear their hands in butter before they take a call. [Slate]

About six months ago, those Styrofoam dominoes were sent all around to world and painted by school children and artists. Today they were reunited in a 1.5km line where the Berlin Wall once stood. And just like the wall did so many years ago, they fell to deafening cheers. [Dominoaktion and news:lite]

The Guardian has put together a fantastic year-by year slideshow, including video clips and factoids, about how the Internet we know and adore came to be. Check it out and be sure to share your favorite parts. Mine is in 1971 in the form of the first computer virus, the Creeper. That and the fact that there's some disagreement about which day should actually be celebrated as the Internet's birthday.

But before you run off to explore history, how about a nice and loud "Happy Birthday!" for our darling? [Guardian]

Send your best entries to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Pizza Man in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I'll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

Using camouflage netting and trompe l'oeil, they brilliantly disguised the enormous plant as something completely benign. Just look at these before and after pictures! Fortunately, it all ended up being unnecessary, but what a cool example of creative thinking in a time of crisis. [Think or Thwim, Thanks, Jason!]

One look at this television and it's no surprise to learn that its designer was also responsible for the distinctive Citroen DS which was first produced in 1955. It features a 19-inch screen with white mask, in a tapered-hood case in deep purple with a gold trim. The controls and speaker sit in the rectangular box below and the screen can be turned independently through 150-degrees as well as angled vertically.

The set is also "dual standard", with capability to show 441 lines (which became the standard from 1952) along with a high definition facility of 819 lines, meaning it is high-definition even by today's standards. This system began in France in 1949 but never really got off the ground. Bennett-Levy speculates that Teleavia may have been trying to "future-proof" the P111 in case the French government decided to resurrect the service.

This bad boy sold for $3,825 at auction, and it doesn't even have HDMI in. Good luck hooking an Xbox 360 up to this thing, sucker! [GizMag via NotCot.org]

It was about freaking time. Turing, a father of computer science and WWII code-breaker, confessed to having sex with a man, was prosecuted by the British government for being gay, given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment" and then committed suicide in 1954. Ridiculous, is right.

So after thousands signed the recent petition, UK PM Gordon Brown had this to say:

While Mr Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.

Brown is dead on. It can't be changed. Nothing will change the fact that this man was physically harmed for his sexual orientation, but acknowledging it happened and saying sorry for it is a step in remembering this incredible geek and his legacy. This seriously makes our day. [BBC]

Turing committed suicide two years after his prosecution in 1954. He is most well known for his Nazi enigma code breaking work for the British during the second World War and his helping establish a test to measure the intelligence of a machine which is now known as a Turing Test.

We owe him so much for his work during the big war, and for what he's done for us as geeks. He was a hero in every sense of the word. So far more than 5,500 signatures have been collected on the Downing Street petition started by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. Author Ian McEwan put his John Hancock on the petition. I'd sign up but it looks like you need a UK address. So if you'd like to see Alan Turing get his apology, maybe you can leave a comment here as well. [BBC]

It happened back on August 6, 1997. The video is pretty amazing to watch when we've got more recent and triumphant Apple keynotes to compare it to. When was the last time the crowd seemed ready to jump on stage and beat Steve up? [9 to 5 Mac via CrunchGear]

I won't try to be elegiac here, since I only really remember CompuServe's service as that quasi-internetlike thing that my parents would let me use on our Gateway for about two minutes at a stretch, as we watched the minutely charges rack up and I desperately tried to figure out where the hell the games were. But those of you of a different generation vintage, with your own super-numerical email addresses, memories of horrifying, unexpected phone bills and bitterness towards the ungrateful kids of today with their "broadband" and "wireless," feel free to reflect in the comments. [Basex via Beyond the Beyond]

Using oral histories from those who experienced the creation and development of the integrated circuit, the Computer History Museum compiled a documentary on this invention that irrefutably changed the world. The year-long exhibit will feature examples of early transistors, the vacuum tubes they replaced, and early integrated circuits, as well as explaining who was behind the inventions, especially the so-called "Traitorous Eight" engineers that largely developed the IC back in 1959.

After departing from the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, engineer Jean Hoerni and the rest of the "Traitorous Eight" moved to Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. There, Hoerni developed the planar process which would become the foundation for the integrated circuit. The planar process involves using an oxide layer to protect the joining of the p-n semiconductors on a silicon chip, named because of the flat surface in which it results. The planar process is more electrically efficient than the then-common method of stripping the oxide layer for fear of contamination, but more importantly, the design allowed for a complete circuit to be built on a silicon chip.

Later in 1959, fellow "Traitorous Eight" member Robert Noyce demonstrated that the combination of the oxide coating and the flat surface allowed for a complete integrated electrical circuit, with diodes, transistors, resistors and capacitors, to be built within a planar chip. Simultaneously, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently developed a similar idea based on the planar process, though his was based on a germanium chip, rather than Noyce's silicon. This new integrated circuit, called the "monolithic integratic chip," is the basis for pretty much everything we love today, including computers, radio, television, audio equipment, cars and anything else that uses a microchip.

It's no exaggeration to call the IC an invention that profoundly changed the world. Microchip technology has exploded since its invention 50 years ago, and few (if any) other inventions have become so essential worldwide in such a short amount of time. The technology is kind of tough to wrap your mind around, but the Computer History Museum's exhibit sounds like an illuminating look at how Silicon Valley and our favorite hobby began. [Computer History Museum]

Send in your best efforts to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Ancient Video Games in the subject line. Name your files with a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with and save your files as JPGs, PNGs or GIFs. Send everything in by next Tuesday morning and then I'll pick my top three winners and show off the rest of the best in the Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

From the Altair to the IBM PC (my first computer), they have put together a closer look at the machines that shaped our home computing experience today. Taken as a whole, they found the most surprising thing to be the sheer variety that existed in the past. They argue that regardless of the hardware or software you use today, most computers are fundamentally the same—but in the days before the internet and the modern OS, computer hardware and software varied dramatically. If you are interested in a little history lesson, hit the following link for the full list. [Maximum PC]

It's the world's oldest camera, and it's on display at the "The Invention of Photography and the Earliest Photographs" exhibition in Macau.

On display alongside this great great granddaddy of photography are 250 additional pieces of photography history, as well as 180 photos from the same era. It was a simpler, more innocent time, completely free of the megapixel pissing matches that grip the industry today. [Xinhuanet via Engadget]

According to the article, the Notificator was placed in train stations—the depression-era equivalent of the internet, apparently—so that travelers could post ephemeral message for friends, families or passers-by.

I like to imagine 1935 Twitter as more charming and erudite than the 2009 Twitter, but I'm pretty sure it just had more messages about trains. [Infomark via AdamCrowe via Digg]

First Place — Dan Fruzzetti
Second Place — Ryan Warner
Third Place — N. Dwyer

Get creative with it, and send your masterpieces to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Historical Gadgets as your subject line. Save your files as JPGs, PNGs or GIFs and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention. Get your entries in to me by Tuesday morning, and I'll pick my three favorite winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!