Designer radiator style

There are an awful lot of products that evolve, reach a state of acceptable completeness, and then stagnate.

If you think about it, most utility products fall within this category. They are developed and improved upon until an acceptable level of functionality is achieved, following which they hardly change for years, decades or centuries.

The radiator has, until quite recently fallen into this “stagnating” pigeon hole. It has been functional, application accepted, but aesthetically very unappealing. However changes have been a foot over the last one to two decades.

Many products like radiators, that once were accepted as “function only” products, now see a more demanding buyer who expects style, design, and the enhancing of an environment on visual as well as functional terms. This has led to many a restyling of conventional products among which is the designer radiator.

The designer radiator takes two forms.

The first is a purely aesthetic updating of a conventional liquid heating unit, but one that sees the radiator gain a stylish and even a sculptured appearance. E.g.s of these radiators include tower radiators and heated towel rails and there are many variations on these themes.

These designer radiators combine function and utility with room enhancing style and they result in the radiator being something to showcase as a feature, rather than to hide as an un-inspirational and ugly part of a heating system.

The second kind of designer radiator goes one step further. In this instance, the design seeks to include improved functionality, new materials, or new heating technologies, to make the radiator work.

These radiators are the next generation of heating units and their designs and constructions will influence how we heat our internal environments in the future.

As ever, here are a couple of websites with more information. The first offers several pages worth (1st site removed) and the second www.trendir.com/archives/001549.html illustrates a rather bizarre futuristic radiator.

Retro LED digital watches

I am old enough to remember and have owned several LED watches in the early to mid 1970’s. Unfortunately I was not longsighted enough to keep hold of any of them after their rapid rise was followed by an overnight decline.

These watches were one of the first commercial incarnations of the then new digital LED technology, but when Light Emitting Diodes were superseded by the liquid chronograph display, these watches disappeared – literally in weeks.

The big name (as I remember) in these watches was Pulsar who made a number of stainless steel stylish models. Some had a gun metal finish and the initial red displays were later supplemented with the alternative blue displays. Even Omega brought out an LED watch and anyone without one was seriously out of fashion.

Today the originals of all of these LED watches can fetch considerable sums of money, but there are alternatives for anyone seeking a retro copy.

A company called “Connect” manufacture copies of the most popular “Pulsar” model and other manufacturers do the same with a range of designs that replicate the watch fashions of 1971 to 1978.

If you want one of these watches, then the internet is the place to buy and they start at less than $50 (or £40) and arrive in a presentation box.

Here are a couple of links to sites offering these legacy products although most will be out of stock having just seen the Christmas rush.

They are, http://www.shopwiki.co.uk/detail/q=Retro+LED+Watch+-+Blue/d=Retro+LED+Watch+-+Blue/jumpToFirst=t/ and http://www.led-watch.com/index.htm - enjoy!