Welcome to Five Finds, your trusted source of infinite curiosities.

James Moylan's memo to Ford

Gas cars can have the fuel filler on either side. If you're in a rental approaching a gas station and don't remember, all you need is to look at the fuel gauge and there will be an arrow pointing in the right direction (or a left direction).

This arrow is there because in 1986 a Ford Motor Company design engineer named James Moylan sent a memo to his boss proposing this exact idea that has become an industry standard. Mr. Moylan passed away in December of 2025 at the age of 80.

How did the Lunar Roving Vehicle work?

Great video on the Lunar Rover used in Apollo missions to the Moon.

I wonder if Rover had a Moylan's indicator?

Climate changes pushes vineyard to the north

One bonus of the climate change is we will now have British wine (not sure if it's a good thing actually).

In fact, many of the European regions that weren't suitable to producing wine in 1960 can now house vineyards.

Lego announces Smart Brick

They made Lego smart.

Lego’s new Smart Brick is a tiny, firmware‑updatable computer packed into a classic 2x4 brick, with NFC tags, light/sound, motion and light sensors, Bluetooth mesh, and wireless charging.

With three new Lego Star Wars kits you will be able to trigger dynamic actions. Imagine humming lightsabers, engine roars, crash effects, character‑specific music, basically everything we had to voice ourselves as kids will now be done by machines.

Bell Labs vs Texas Instruments

This is a fun apocryphal story on why digital keyboards look like they do. Buttons on phones go from 1 to 9. Buttons on calculators go from 7/8/9 to 1/0.

Unfortunately, the story, while entertaining, is a myth, because Bell introduced push-button phones in 1963, and TI's first handheld calculator launched in 1972. The reversed layout was simply inherited from 19th-century mechanical adding machines.