There are three movements, controlled from 3 axles, and the gears on the axles have prime numbers of teeth (23, 43, 59). So technically the movements will only repeat every 58,351 turns of the small gear. There’s also a semi-random toggle on the head motion, so it will never really quite repeat. Almost all the parts press fit and/or lock together, so the whole thing can be disassembled to a pile of parts, then reassembled, adjusted, and set going again without tools.
That’s perhaps a bit unfair, as the PET from which designocrat Marcel Wanders’ prototype “Sparkle” chair is made may well come at least partly from recycled sources, for all I know. What I should say, really, is that the chair suggests direct recycling without actually doing so. It looks like it’s made from actual bottle parts, even though it isn’t. Which is a rather strange kind of eco-marketing, IMHO. Still, I like it as a purely aesthetic object. Is it because I’ve been programmed to desire bottled water, and thus respond favorably to an object that mimics its form even in a totally irrational way?
Maker Faire veterens ArcAttack recently persuaded Grant Imahara to enjoy one of their really high-voltage tunes from within an oh-so-cozy Faraday cage – looks like good times to me! [Thanks, Joe!] More: Happy Birthday Tesla – from ArcAttack (and MAKE too!) ArcAttack performs the theme from Doctor Who Talking gear with ArcAttack
The obvious caveat, here, is that these are CG renderings of a concept design. Even relatively simple devices and mechanisms tend to breed unexpected problems in the transition from virtual to actual, and, IMNSHO, the cat’s not really in the bag until you’ve made a real one in the real world. Still, pretty delightful mechanical design here. It’s called “Grand Central,” from Swedish freelance designers Sanna Lindstrรยถm and Sigrid Strรยถmgren. [Thanks, Billy Baque!]
Born on this date in 1874, Guglielmo Marconi (Wikipedia) was a prominent early inventor in the development of the technology, then called “wireless telegraphy,” that today we know as radio. Even today, Marconi is commonly remembered as “the inventor of radio,” although the priority of other inventors–notably Nikola Tesla–is fairly well established. The debate over who is rightfully credited for the invention of radio has become known as “The Great Radio Controversy” (Wikipedia). Even so, there is no debate that Marconi’s achievements as an engineer, inventor, and businessman are of historic significance. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.” Marconi died in 1937, aged 63.
Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck, theoretical physicist, was born on this day in 1858. He had a distinguished career as an intellectual, founding the field of quantum theory, supporting Albert Einstein’s work on Theory of Relativity, and winning the Nobel Prize in 1918. He was first recipient of the newly organized Max Planck Medal which […]
I seem to find myself saying something like this a lot these days: “We’ve seen this idea before, but, dang, this person is good at it.” Well, here goes again: We’ve seen this idea before, but dang, Andrea Petrachi (aka Himatic) is good at it. Andrea’s junkbot figurines are made from, well, junk, but he seems to have a particular flair for the use of old camera parts.
