It’s likely that you’ve glanced at a seven-segment display thousands of times in your life without knowing what it was called, or even giving the design much thought at all. First invented in 1903 to help increase the speed of telegraph transmissions, in the 1970s the display began to appear on household devices, and persists on a great many household items today – even in the age of high resolution. In this video essay, the Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer offers a surprisingly fascinating dive into the history and design of segmented displays, which, designed to overcome technical limitations, exist at the intersection of form and function. In doing so, De Boer also dives into his lifelong quest to build a better segmented display than the ‘double square’ design that has become ubiquitous.
Video by Posy
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Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
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Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
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Architecture
The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating
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Anthropology
Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?
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Subcultures
Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community
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Wellbeing
Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest
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Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
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Rituals and celebrations
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Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
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