Reviving the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

1029 Internet years ago, in 2003, I started something called the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. It compiled “wacky, bizarre, surreal and otherwise strange examples of technical documentation”, collected from my own travels and through user submissions.

I think of the Hall as the first thing I ever created that the Internet liked. It was covered in Boing Boing, and images from the Hall appeared in the great British show, The IT Crowd.

As often happens with Web projects, I moved on to other distractions and a redesign of this site killed the wonky gallery software I was using to run the Hall. It’s been offline for three or four years now.

It occurred to me the other day that Pinterest would make a convenient and reliable new home for the hall. It seems like the natural environment for vaguely-amusing technical drawings and signs. And I found some free time to set up a board and start posting images.

Witness the revival of The Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness, 2012 edition.

“When boxing up your baby, ensure the lid securely fastened.” on Pinterest

I’ve got about 100 images to upload, so I’ll get the rest up over the coming days. New Hall submissions are always welcome.

UPDATE: Eight years later, Boing Boing wrote about the Hall again. Ah, the circle of geeky life.

UPDATE: I meant to credit the Wayback Machine, which managed to preserve my captions.