You know how annoying it is when you're trying to see something really, really tiny through your million dollar microscope and the subway beneath your building jostles the table just a little bit and then all of the sudden the nano-sized wire you were looking at goes completely out of focus? No? The tables that the Technical Manufacturing Corporation (TMC) makes are designed to, well, derail just that sort of situation. They stay absolutely still no matter what's going on around them, from your standard-issue elevator shaft problems to minor earthquakes.

If you look closely at the glasses above, you'll see that the one on the white counter is vibrating, while the one on the iron table is stable. TMC tabletops are steadied by pistons in the table's legs that dampen horizontal and vertical vibrations until they're almost undetectable. They operate in a variety of different ways: from using air compression to having pistons that use tiny pieces of expanding ceramic. Prices start at $4,000, which is a bargain if your microscope costs 100 times that. — S.E. Kramer

Via TMC