credit Courtesy of Sun Microsystems
James Gosling mans the T-shirt launcher during the JavaOne Conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco last July. Shown here are third-place winners the Caffeinators and their calibrated crossbow/slingshot. Gosling writes on his blog, "From an engineering point of view it was the simplest: a big elastic cord and a wooden frame. Nothing fancy. Nothing to break down. Simple to operate. While they came in last, they managed to fling more T-shirts to the audience than either of the other entrants. By a wide margin. Easily the most effective T-shirt-distribution mechanism of the lot."
credit Courtesy of Sun Microsystems
The winner was a machine that http://www.rube-goldberg.com
target="new Rube Goldberg would have loved: a bicycle-built-for-two with no wheels, connected to a flywheel that worked like a baseball-pitching machine. It had a "magazine" that allowed many rolled-up T-shirts to be quickly loaded and released. When it worked, Gosling said, it did a beautiful job of hurling shirts. But its drive chain snapped after only three T-shirts were launched. 
credit Courtesy of Ron Hughes
VisiComp’s nitrogen-powered T-shirt cannon is remotely controlled via a web-browser interface.
