The mechanism known formally as the Trammel of Archimedes (Wikipedia) has practical application, when fitted with a drawing or cutting tool, as an ellipsograph. Otherwise it is fascinating but generally useless, and these qualities have earned it a variety of approximately affectionate epithets: “do nothing machine,” “nothing grinder,” “BS grinder,” and “Kentucky do-nothing” are a few I’ve heard. Recently, I was thinking about building one as a gift, and found this great tutorial by Instructables user perry112358.
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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.
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