Philosophy vs engineering

Work continues on the new - well, newish - research project, studying the relationship between the falling annular disc and the helical column. Or the washer and the threaded rod if you prefer. And it must be acknowledged that the museum's strength, such as it is, lies more with the electrical than with the mechanical.

As noted last month, we achieved some success in the electrical circuitry for retrieving the washer. (With thanks to our leading consultant who having helped with our problem is now solving Belgium.) The next step was the design of the lift mechanism and the sliding magnet carriage.

First design of the lift used a continuous up/down loop, not unlike the string that once moved the pointer on the radio dial, when we had mechanical devices like knobs and those nice multi-plate variable capacitors where if you looked closely you could almost see the electrons leaping the void... but I digress. Well it seemed like a good idea at the time but the string wanted to migrate along the shaft which would have led to longer paths and tensioning devices and all in all mitigated against a compact design.

So now we are trying the fishing reel model - wind it up, let it down. Stay tuned