Love the logos, colors, and at the same time simplicity. These are so much more memorable than what you see today which I find to be bland or over the top “grafix”.
Seems some of them would get the key contact details "clipped" by the rolodex itself. Maybe a good design would put the phone number and address at the top.
> The rolodexes came from the now dispersed collection of former lab employee Ed Grothus, who operated a salvage company of lab cast-offs known as The Black Hole.
Many of my childhood science fair projects started at the black hole. You could always find something weird or interesting, and occasionally hot, while browsing through the place
"Blast-N-Peen" got a good chuckle out of me. On the other end of the spectrum, Ken Riddle at Electronic Memories was unsettlingly spare, a little bit sinister in its lack of graphic expression of any kind.
If the "Zero Blast-N-Peen" company operating out of "Hooker Circle" with the robot logo showed up in a Fallout game, it would be criticized as too over the top - breaks the immersion too much since it's so absurd.
I wonder how many of these were essentially 1-person consulting LLC's - which meant a probably higher degree of "whimsy", "sarcasm", or "whit" when naming... (and/or a little counter-culture rebelliousness thrown in where possible)
Came here to see if anyone mentioned Fallout and I'm pleased to see someone else made the reference. I presume it is notes and texts like this that inspired the narrative designers of the Fallout series. So cool!
Too good.
Am I understanding correctly?
No, wait, it doesn't, you'll find any kind of hot you like.
PS. I would like the record to show, excuse me for stating the obvious, that this was an actual place (!):
https://losalamosreporter.com/2025/06/29/black-hole-museum-a...
But then I remember that I know someone who worked at one of those companies.
If there were a Harbor Freight of nuclear techonlogy, that sounds like a name I'd expect to see.