Ancient Web: Matthias Wandel’s Old Homepage Kept a Workshop of Odd Machines

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Matthias Wandel's old homepage looks like the contents of a busy workshop spilled into a links directory. A pipe organ sits near a CD changer; a scanner becomes a camera; a few clicks away are mechanical toys, photography, and opinions.

Visit Matthias Wandel's old Sentex homepage.

The heading explicitly labels this the old homepage and directs readers to his newer personal site and Woodgears woodworking project. Unlike a domain abandoned to an advertisement company, the older address still functions as a map of work produced in earlier years.

Machines built because they could be

The homebuilt CD changer is one of the more wonderfully elaborate ideas. Its page shows a mechanical device for moving discs and managing copying or playback tasks. Instead of treating a gadget as a finished consumer product, Wandel documented the underlying mechanism.

The scanning-camera project approaches another familiar device sideways. It explores the possibility of building a camera from a flatbed scanner, making an old peripheral do something its manufacturer never intended.

A separate pipe-organ section documents an instrument made by hand. The homepage also links software utilities such as Jhead, ftpdmin, and finddupe, alongside nighttime photography, blueprint-paper experiments, and visits to places ranging from caves to old tunnels.

The range is the point. This is a portfolio organized around one maker's curiosity, not a tightly branded product category.

An archive with deliberate exits

The old page does not pretend development stopped. It repeatedly tells readers where to find more recent work, and many project pages link further explanations on Woodgears. That makes the surviving Sentex address a useful historical starting point rather than a guarantee that all files and advice are unchanged.

One already-published Ancient Web article examines Wandel's separate stock-analysis essay. The old homepage is a broader and distinct subject: the unusual mixture of tinkering, family life, software, photographs and personal interests that a single webmaster once presented under one directory.

An algorithmic feed would likely split these interests into incompatible audiences. The personal homepage happily lets them coexist.

Browse Wandel's old project index and his scanner-camera experiment.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.