Historical-Science wall art for school computer lab?

February 2, 2012 5:44 PM

Looking for affordable posters or other decorative artifacts, with a history-of-technology or retro-futuristic theme, for the stairwell and walls of our small elementary/middle school computer lab.

So far I've been looking for colorful, whimsical robot prints, along the lines of these by Eric Joyner, and I have gleefully purchased this one from the wonderful people at 826LA. But I'm not sold on the theme, and I'd like to go more Historical Science than Science Fiction if I can find similarly engaging / visually striking pieces. Can you recommend particular images, or resources, or even other physical objects suitable as wall decoration?

posted by unregistered_animagus to media & arts (5 answers total)

I don't know if they qualify for whatever your definition of affordable happens to be, but I adore these. They might be a bit artsy for little kids, or maybe not. I don't have much interaction with little humans!
posted by Zoyashka at 6:00 PM on February 2, 2012 [3 favorites]

What about old textbooks on amazon or at goodwill? You might be able to find some great pics in old computer manuals, or be able to remove and frame the covers of computer programming/computer science textbooks.
posted by shortyJBot at 6:07 PM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Try the Paleofuture blog for retrofuturistic images. They're now part of the Smithsonian website but most of their archived images may be on their old site.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/
http://www.paleofuture.com/
posted by Bwithh at 6:08 PM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Life Magazine had a retrospective of Fritz Goro's work on its website recently. Goro was a photographer who made his name in the 1950s-60s photographing scientific and technical subjects. Much of his early work looks "retro" now and might be the sort of thing you're looking for. Life's retrospective is no longer on their site, but the photos and text all seem to be archived here. A quick search reveals that there are some posters of his photos for sale around the web.

Also, you might try searching for scientific subjects (e.g. "chemistry" or "telescope") on Flickr Commons. There may be some that you can print in large format.
posted by paselkin at 9:59 PM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also - in the Institute of Technology here at UW Tacoma, we have an awesome set of drawings of computer cables and parts organized and drawn as if they are biological specimens. I'll see if I can find the artist and will post an update.
posted by paselkin at 10:10 PM on February 2, 2012 [1 favorite]