When we put out the call to show us your best superhero costumes, we knew Wired.com readers would be up to the task. And we weren't disappointed: From the Thing to the obscure Scarlet Spider, it's clear that you people know and love your superheroes. And apart from a slightly odd fascination with Edward Scissorhands (who was represented in two separate entries -- and who is really only a superhero among the emo crowd), we're completely cool with that.

Left: The winning entry is "Used Electronics Man," by Ryan Peters. Peters built the suit out of old electronics parts while taking summer school in college, and wore it to class one day. Peters' creation combines the aesthetic of Robocop with the ingenuity of Peter Stark's Iron Man suit, so although it's not strictly speaking a superhero costume, it's a worthy champion for the Gadget Lab contest.

Justin Fields' amazing custom-built costume is an incredibly faithful tribute to Marvel's super-strong, scaly behemoth. The Thing was a close second to Used Electronics Man when the Gadget Lab polls officially closed, although subsequent, unofficial voting has since propelled him to the top of the reader's choice list.

Thomas Boggs' entry is an obscure Spider-Man clone known as the Scarlet Spider. Yes, folks, this is an actual superhero -- a supervillain, actually -- not just some failed attempt at a Spider-Man costume. Boggs' effort includes an impressive pair of web-shooters.

Jessica Hurst's costume is an over-the-top tribute to a British cartoon that came to life in a quickly-forgotten 1995 movie of the same name. The only thing missing from this awesome getup? A mutant kangaroo sidekick.

Never fear, the "comfortably armored superhero of softly padded justice" is here! Reader "JD" submitted this entry, which is made entirely of industrial-grade carpet underlayment, found in a local dumpster. Now that's recycling, folks.

Crystal Foley sent in this photo of herself as one of the X-Statix, an attempt by Marvel at creating a more poppy, cynical brand of superhero. "I even made the stuffed Doop!" Foley writes.

David Martindale writes, "This is me when I'm super." We give him points for chutzpah: Since his "costume" exists entirely on the Photoshop plane, it's a dubious entry for this contest. The bike is amazing, though.

One of two submissions in the Scissorhands category, this one was sent in by Robert O'Brien. One criticism: The blades look a little dull.

Ed Steel's costume owes more to the classic, 1960s-era TV show than the more recent Heath Ledger reinterpretation of the Joker in Dark Knight. Still, we like it: He's got the demonic grin down pat.

Marc-Antoine L. Frenette and companion pose as Captain Jack Sparrow, a superhero among pirates.

Clare McDermott strikes a pose as Barbarella, complete with futuristic ray gun. You go, girl!

Wikipedia defines an aquitard as "an impermeable layer along an aquifer." It's not clear to us how that translates into bicycle helmets and spandex, but it must make sense to Sarah Crane, who submitted this photo with the note, "We are aquitards. Our super power is the ability to stop water."

You don't have to trek out to the dusty hell of Burning Man in order to see inspired feats of mechanical art and engineering. In fact, the back rooms and museums of your hometown may conceal feats of industrial genius that would put any steampunk artist to shame.

Take San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. Tourists know it for picturesque views of the bay, vendors selling clam chowder in bread bowls and bad street-corner buskers. But tucked into the corners of the San Francisco waterfront are such marvels as the most advanced mechanical computer ever made, prototypes of a gigantic clock intended to run for 10,000 years and a working steam engine three stories tall.

"It just occurred to me -- the most mechanical geek I know -- that if I didn't put these things together, the rest of San Francisco didn't either," says Alexander Rose, one of the organizers of a one-day, self-guided tour of San Francisco's mechanical marvels.

The tour, dubbed Mechanicrawl and sponsored by the Long Now Foundation, where Rose works, will take place on July 12. Wired.com got an early preview of some of the day's attractions, which include special access to exhibits at the Exploratorium, the Long Now Foundation's offices, a World War II submarine and Liberty ship, and the Musée Mécanique.

Left: One of the stops on the tour is San Francisco's hands-on museum, the Exploratorium. During the tour, volunteer docents will point out exhibits that are particularly interesting to the mechanically minded. Here, kids pedal to generate electrical power in an exhibit built by museum founder Frank Oppenheimer. The generator is mounted on an early 20th-century cast iron lathe.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The Exploratorium's "Catch a Falling Spark" exhibit gives visitors a chance to turn a hand-cranked grinding wheel, spinning it against a thick piece of twisted steel cable to generate white-hot sparks and a distinct odor of burnt clutch. Although the sparks are 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, they're so small that it's safe to let them bounce off your bare hand.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The Exploratorium's "Rope Squirter" is a simple powered flywheel that throws a loop of rope into the air, forming an appealing curve of string that you can play with.

The museum's "head explainer" Ken Finn says he took this exhibit to a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where it sparked a controversy about whether the shape of the rope's arc is parabolic or not. Of course, the exhibit is equally appealing to children, making it a good vehicle for stimulating mechanical imagination in young and old alike.

"My six-year-old can enjoy it and I can watch geophysicists argue about it," says Finn.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The Exploratorium's Kenn Finn shows how the museum's "Oscylinderscope" works: An oversized "guitar" with extra-long nylon strings is set up in front of a spinning drum that has alternating bands of black and white. As the drum spins, you can actually see the vibrating strings' waveforms against the moving stripes. Pluck the strings closer to their middles and you get nice, round sine waves; pluck them closer to the guitar's bridge and you get sharper saw-tooth waves that correspond to the harsher sound.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

At the offices of the Long Now Foundation, visitors check out some of the foundation's recent work. The foundation is designing and building a clock intended to run for 10,000 years -- an engineering challenge that requires designers to anticipate problems like the accumulation of dust and the fact that ball bearings will freeze up if they sit for long periods without moving.

In the middle of this picture is a mechanical orrery -- a kind of planetarium -- designed to show the current positions of the six planets visible to the naked eye.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The mechanism of the Long Now Foundation's orrery lies underneath the model planets. It consists of a stacked set of geared wheels. The rotation of each wheel corresponds to the rotation of one of the planets in the orrery above.

The orrery's mechanism is a binary mechanical computer with 28 digits of precision for calculating each planetary period. The wheels and levers of each layer comprise a mechanical code for calculating the rotational speed of each planet (for example, 224.68 Earth days for Venus, 11.862 Earth years for Jupiter).

The gear-and-lever design of the orrery resembles that of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, although the Difference Engine operates on decimal (base 10) numbers instead of binary (base 2).

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Some early clockmakers used a kidney-shaped cam to convert between clock time and solar time. That's because the Earth does not revolve around the sun at a constant speed, so solar noon (when the sun is at its highest point) varies from clock noon by as much as several minutes, depending on what time of year it is. The shape of these cams was governed by something known as the equation of time.

The Long Now Foundation's clock uses an equation of time, too, because it resets itself daily based on local solar noon, ensuring continued accuracy over the millennia it will be working. However, the Earth's orbit varies slightly from year to year. For a clock that's expected to run for 10,000 years, those differences mean that a single cam would be reasonably accurate only for a relatively short time (just a few hundred years at most).

To overcome that problem, the clock's designers came up with a three-dimensional cam, whose cross-section gradually changes shape along its vertical axis. This complex, compact shape enables the clock to compute the difference between solar time and clock time for every day over a period of 12 millennia (there's a grace period of 1,000 years on either end of the cam's expected useful life). The numbers along the cam correspond to years (02000, at the bottom, is the year 2000).

The Long Now's Equation of Time cam is available in the foundation's gift shop for $500.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Volunteer docent Richard Pekelney shows off the torpedo data computer (TDC) aboard the U.S.S. Pampanito, a World War II-era diesel submarine docked on San Francisco's waterfront.

The TDC was built in 1943. It was -- and may still be -- the most-sophisticated mechanical computer ever made. It used a combination of clockworks, electric motors, dials and levers to compute the angles at which torpedoes should be launched in order to hit their targets.

Torpedo targeting wasn't the only computation-intensive problem at the time. High-powered naval guns developed in the early 20th century proved difficult to aim, because of their long trajectories, the effects of wind and even the Earth's rotation. As a result, research into mechanical and electronic computing proceeded hand-in-hand with weapons research throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

"Most of what we consider early computing was driven by the need to aim these long guns," says Pekelney.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The Pampanito's torpedo computer was hand-built in the 1940s in New York, primarily by Jewish émigrés from Germany, says Pekelney.

"What you've got here is the precision of a fine Swiss watch," says Pekelney.

In order to perform its calculations, the TDC incorporated data about the sub's location, bearing and speed as well as those of the target ship. The computation involved multiple differential equations, integrations and mathematical operations.

The TDC resides in the Pamapanito's conning tower, an area of the sub usually off-limits to visitors. However, it will be open to Mechanicrawl visitors on July 12.

For people interested in how the targeting computer worked, the complete TDC manual is available online. Archivists have also digitized rare audio recordings of a successful torpedo attack utilizing a TDC.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

World War II-era torpedoes could make a single turn, shortly after being fired from the sub, so the TDC computed the radius of that turn, then transmitted the setting to the torpedo by means of a remote servo before the torpedo launched. The servo controlled a small rod, which extended into the torpedo tube and connected with a mechanical linkage on the torpedo itself.

This image shows a close-up of the hatch on the back of a torpedo tube. The painted-on flag represents a Japanese ship sunk by a torpedo fired from that tube.

According to Pekelney, submarines were among the most dangerous places to work during World War II, but also were one of the war's most effective weapons. Submariners represented less than two percent of the fleet's personnel, but they were responsible for more than half of enemy ships sunk by the Navy.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

In the berth next to the Pamapanito floats the S. S. Jeremiah O'Brien, a World War II Liberty ship. This vast cargo ship has been restored to working order and the O'Brien now makes occasional fundraising cruises in the San Francisco Bay.

The O'Brien, like other Liberty ships, is powered by an enormous three-cylinder steam engine. It was designed to be very simple to build and very reliable.

This photo shows the engine's three cylinder heads. High-pressure, superheated steam enters the smallest cylinder on the right, then passes to a larger, lower-pressure cylinder in the middle, and finally goes to the largest, lowest-pressure cylinder on the left. This design, known as a triple expansion steam engine design, enables the engine to capture as much of the steam's energy as possible.

At cruising speed, the engine spins at just 76 RPM, pushing the metal hulk through the water at 7 knots. Although the ship will remain docked, the engine will be running during the Mechanicrawl event July 12.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

At least 2,715 Liberty ships were built; only a few survive. The Jeremiah O'Brien was restored in the 1970s but, says the Long Now Foundation's Alexander Rose, many of the people who restored the ship are no longer living.

Rose hopes that the Mechanicrawl will inspire a new generation to begin restoring and caring for mechanical treasures like the O'Brien.

"The steampunk crowd, they go all the way to the point of dressing up in period clothing and restoring old steam engines. It would be really awesome if they'd help the Jeremiah O'Brien maintain its steam engine," says Rose.

Plus, then they'd get to play with cool tools, like these enormous wrenches in the Jeremiah O'Brien's engine room.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The first spring-loaded Swiss Army knife, the Offiziersmesser, included a single knife blade, two screwdrivers, a can opener and an awl punch.

When it was registered as a trademark by Swiss-blade-craftsman Carl Elsener 111 years ago, no one would have believed that his simple multifunctional tool would dominate the survival/useful gadget market for more than a century.

Over the years, useful attachments ranging from spoons, forks, USB keys, toothpicks, lighters and compasses have all recessed quietly into the elegant steel handle with the familiar White Cross logo. What began with a few surgical instruments and razors led to a revolution characterized by three important qualities: Durability, portability and multiple-purpose utility.

Click through the gallery to see the Swiss Army knife's cultural impact and the current tools it inspired. (Do you have your own favorite multitool? Tell us about it in the comments.)

Left: The classic Swiss Army design for the 2008 collection contains a few more basic tools than the original design.

Cuban President Fidel Castro proudly holds up the Swiss Army knife he received as a gift from the Swiss Press Club on May 20, 1998, in the notoriously politically centrist city of Geneva, Switzerland. We’re guessing he used it to chop off the end of a fine Cuban cigar.

The toughest individuals in the world, as well as the not so rugged, carry Swiss Army knives. U.S. presidents have been known to cradle a Swiss Army in their pocket, and astronauts keep them in the space shuttle, just in case.

President Lyndon Johnson was known to commission thousands of personally engraved Swiss Army sets to be sent out to his friends and most loyal supporters.

Former President George Bush shows off the Swiss Army knife he received from Carl Elsener, chief of Victorinox, left, in Lugano, Switzerland, 2001. Carl is the descendant of founder Karl Elsener.

The Swiss Army knife was one of the first multifunction tools to be available to the public, and the knife's use on the battlefield contributed to its popularity, especially after World War II. The Victorinox Swiss Army Company is currently the most-recognized tool brand in the world.

The origin of the company’s success comes from an early modification by Karl Elsener. When building the first tool for the Swiss Army, he included a sharp-edged "erasing" blade that could be used to erase the pen handwritings of the Army officers. (He included the corkscrew later on, as a lifestyle-specific addition.)

Among the many top Swiss Army knives, the 24-tool Champion is often ranked among the most prized and efficient, but the craziest one of all has to be 2007's Swiss Army Knife XXL, left, (created by former rival Wenger, after its 2005 acquisition by Victorinox). Selected by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's Most Multifunctional Pen Knife, the XXL includes 87 tools and 141 functions. But doesn’t it defeat the spirit of the original's weightless portability?

One of the world's first true gadgets, the Swiss Army knife initiated the quest for the perfect multitool. Today, the dream of a unified tool is mostly fantasy, but there are tons of specialized innovations that follow in the spirit of the original Victorinox standard.

The Crank Brothers Multi-19 bicycle tool includes four different screwdrivers, a chain tool, seven different types of hex keys (all made out of superdurable high-tensile steel), a spoke and an open wrench. It's also ridiculously light at only one-third of a pound.

This type of tool is usually reserved for an emergency, but it’s indispensable for a quick adjustment or repair.

The Li'l Guppie looks like the metal, horror-movie version of the Nemo clownfish, but this little multitool is no joke. Based on a wrench platform and its older precursor, the Guppie, the Li’l Guppie is one of the most popular form factor tools today: keychain tools.

Even if you are disgusted by its unbearable cuteness, the number of features will undoubtedly win you over. Among its features are an adjustable wrench jaw, a blade made out of high-carbon stainless steel, a screwdriver tip, an additional Phillips screwdriver and a pocket clip. Not only that, but the tail end of the gadget serves as a bottle opener.

The Shopro multifunction hammer pushes the multitool outside the realm of knives, but also out of the realm of pockets. Not too many multitools provide the weight balance necessary to include a quality hammer. True, it won’t drive like a forged-steel sledgehammer, but it makes up for lack of strength with portability.

The Shopro is able to separate into two different sections, so when the torque (for the pliers) is applied to the connected sections around the handle, the grip functionality is transferred to the jaws. And it’s also very manageable -- it’s about the same size as a Wiimote.

The Shopro also includes pliers, a nail puller, large- and small-slotted screwdrivers, a serrated saw, a large and a small knife and a bottle opener.

The Leatherman is the brave multitool that dared to question the superiority of the Swiss Army knife as the best multitool out there, and lived to create its own niche. The four-inch long, 100 percent stainless steel Pocket Survival Tool was interesting from the beginning because it fit the needs of everyone from the construction worker to the weekend warrior, mainly because of the simple, durable pliers and the comfortable grip.

That first version also included wire cutters, a clip-point knife, a metal/wood file, a ruler, different screwdriver sizes and an awl punch -- all in a small container which rendered pocket-size the regular toolbox.

By the time Leatherman tools were selling over a million a year in 1993, and Keanu was using it to open elevator doors in Speed, the tool had become a household name.

Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor, shameless self-promoter, and masterful catnapper. Legend has it that he would sleep in his chair, holding ball bearings in the palms of his hands. After an appropriate number of z's, he'd relax enough to drop the balls, waking himself up. Then he'd go back to inventing lightbulbs and other bric-a-brac. In celebration of Edison's commitment to innovation and snoozing, we've compiled the most impressive-sounding nap-tech of the 21st century.

1 Sleeptracker Pro
Bully: "Hey, nerd, nice giant watch."
Geek: "You are mistaken. This is a sensor that wakes me at the optimal point in my sleep cycle."
Bully: "Huh?"
Geek: "It tracks movements to determine sleep stage."
Bully: "You have bested me!"

What would Edison think? "Even at $179, it beats my ball bearings."

2 Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi discovered that a magnetic pulse can trigger the same brain-wave activity that occurs during deep slumber. Can an electromagnetic nap-cap be far behind?

What would Edison think? "Does this Tononi have a patent?"

3 Pzizz Energizer
By randomly playing music, nature sounds, Neuro Linguistic Programming (aka talking), and binaural audio tones (don't ask), this $30 app can create a near-limitless number of lullabies.

What would Edison think? "I particularly like the fact that you can export tracks to your iTunes player."

4 MindSpa
This "personal development system" combines white light and pulsating sounds to shift your brain waves into the alpha and theta — or la-la — frequencies.

What would Edison think? "Intriguing, but $280 seems a bit steep for a rudimentary drum machine and blinking sunglasses."

5 MetroNaps EnergyPods
Bosses, it's fatigue risk management. Recharge your drones in this $12,500 bed — knees level with heart to reduce back strain — until lights and vibrations nudge them back to the hive.

What would Edison think? "Only for those not ashamed to say, Me likey nap time.'"

What it is: Aesculap ScalpFix

What it's used for: Closing up gushing arteries at the start of a craniotomy

When sawing open someone's skull, it's best to be as efficient as possible. That's why scalp-clip guns like the $1,200 stainless steel ScalpFix are de rigueur on neurosurgeons' instrument trays, providing a quick and simple way to pinch off cranial bleeding. The ScalpFix can deploy its magazine of 10 plastic clips and then be reloaded in seconds. As the trigger is squeezed, a clip moves to the end of the barrel and opens. Upon release, the springy little plastic jaws grab onto the breached area of an artery, stanching the blood flow. After the operation, the doc just removes the clips with forceps, sutures the wound, and sterilizes the gun for the next head case. The 8-ounce device saves several minutes over the course of an hours-long operation. That may not sound like much, but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that when someone is bleeding from the noggin, every second counts.

Breaking up with your wireless provider just got a bit easier -- but as with the termination of any bad relationship, timing is everything.

Following a spate of announcements from Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile earlier this year, AT&T officially began pro-rating its early termination fees on Sunday. According to the company, instead of paying one single flat fee of $175 to jump ship, you'll now be able to shave off $5 from that amount for every month completed of your one- or two-year contract.

"We have not yet provided specifics on our new approach," an AT&T spokesperson said on Tuesday, "but we remain committed to the idea that wireless customers who leave their contract early should not pay a flat early-termination fee."

Unfortunately, this new policy does not extend to those who signed up for a contract prior to May 25, 2008.

So why the sudden change of heart? According to most wireless analysts, this newfound flexibility on the part of AT&T and the rest of the industry is largely the result of a number of pending class action lawsuits, in several states, by customers who claim they were either misled or charged excessive penalty fees.

"If you take a look at what AT&T did, they basically matched Verizon's current policy," says Current Analysis analyst William Ho. "You can argue that this is carriers being proactive against pending legislative penalties and the coming open access environment, but to me, this is really about staying competitive. With everyone else agreeing to pro-rate their termination fees, AT&T didn't want to be seen as the bad guy."

Verizon, which currently faces a $1 billion suit related to its early termination fee policy, is actually in the midst of proposing two separate remedies to the FCC, Congress and various other consumer groups.

The first is similar to what all major U.S. carriers are already planning on doing: pro-rating their ETFs over the course of a given contract. The alternate option would have carriers agreeing not to charge any termination fee during the first month of a contract; after that, all bets would be off.

Theoretically, these half-measures would give carriers some degree of wiggle room when it comes to any pending and future ETF-related lawsuits.

For years, U.S. carriers didn't seem to mind the "bad guy" label and justified early cancellation fees based on the fact that the majority of customers still purchased subsidized handsets.

Many customers rightly assume the cheap phone they get in the deal is a part of entering into a one- or two-year contract with a given carrier, but subsequently forget that breaking that contract can mean parting with a significant chunk of change.

"In essence, it's the carrot-and-stick approach," says Ho, "where the carrot is the subsidy and the stick is the early termination fee."

Things are starting to change, albeit very slowly. Currently, the ongoing ETF legal battles are being waged at the state level, but the FCC announced last week it will be holding its own hearing in mid-June to decide whether the government should in fact take over jurisdiction of the fees -- the theory being that one national policy applicable to all wireless carriers would eliminate much of the confusion and lawsuits.

In the foreseeable future, you can bet on one thing: If there's a contract or a subsidy involved when you sign up with a new carrier, expect to get whacked with some manner of ETF should you decide to walk away early. The only difference is it might not hurt as much as it used to.