Justine Haupt is an astronomy instrumentation engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and has created an open source rotary cellphone. What does that all mean? Haupt designed, fabricated, and built a fully functioning cellphone that uses a rotary dialer. Then went the extra step of open sourcing all the plans.
In her own words:
Why a rotary cellphone? Because in a finicky, annoying, touchscreen world of hyperconnected people using phones they have no control over or understanding of, I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile, while also giving me an excuse for not texting.
This is an amazing piece of technology and engineering. It is not something the average person could ever build or attempt to built. And it's not the kind of technology that any big tech company would make commerically available. So how do you get your own?
Luckily a small company has come in to help as much as possiby by selling kits with some of the more difficult parts done for you.
You can pick up the kit on Skysedge (currently $170). If you are brave enough and able to make your own, pleaes share a picture of your creation with us on Instagram or Twitter.