Annulations

Despite the apparent lack of activity here, the museum and its director have not been totally moribund. Research continues on the interaction between the flat annulus and the long helix. Motors have been tested. Prototypes - well, protoprototypes - have been cobbled together. Our engineering consultants have come forth with help and advice, not to mention brass and aluminium. Nevertheless we have to admit progress has been slow, due in part to the weather and recently the incessant
vernality.

None of this explains the plague of unwelcome and unsolicited comments that have populated this site lately, and one recent post in particular, so much so that we have had excise it (the bedpost, as it were, not the entire site obviously) in the hope this might stem the tide. But perhaps they will simply infest this one. We shall see.

Out of the mists

Some friends of the museum have expressed concern that the structure in the previous posting seemed a trifle inadequate. They ask for some show of progress towards a finished edifice. And so we offer this recent photo of what is believed to be the Museum's new home at a secret location.

Alert readers (and viewers) will notice that the building appears to be under attack by moles. A fair assumption if a tad far-fetched, moles being somewhat foreign to these parts. The truth as usual is somewhat more prosaic though not without significance The line of degrassed clay to the left of the picture indicates the location of the recently laid and long-awaited electricity cable. For what is a museum of electrical philosophy without electricity? (That's a rhetorical question. No need to write in and there are no prizes.)

Structural amendments

Although the Museum has been without a physical presence for several months now, there is hope that this unfortunate condition may change within our lifetime. Work has begun at a secret mist-shrouded site as evidenced in this photograph which was purportedly obtained by a lurking friend of MoEP recently. We confidently expect that the final structure will have not one but four walls and probably a roof. Confirmation of this will be posted in due course, perhaps. A completion date has not yet been announced.

Meanwhile the Director's temporary accommodation has itself undergone some degree of further change. Much of the Museum's priceless research material has been packed and transferred to a secure off-site bunker. And before too long the administrative functions may also be relocated, along with the Director and staff. Details may follow if we get round to it.

Regional Development

As the year draws to a close, and taking with it we hope the close of several of its less than affirmative developments, it can now be revealed that plans have begun for the Museum's next physical incarnation. Plans both concrete, as in lines on peper, and abstract as in visions.

On the concrete front - well not so much a front as a concrete base with a front more likely of wood - a plan of sorts has been submitted to our glorious local authorities for their approval. It is envisaged that this site will before too long be the Museum's first regional campus, its principal research facility where ideas can flourish and focus, can foment and ferment, and freely fertilized by salt air and the call of the cockatoo, find fruition.

Admittedly at the moment all we have what is what is known in the development world as a greenfields site. Which, thanks to all the rain we've had in recent months, is actually green, except for the small brown mounds that are ant nests. It is hoped that Al will be able to begin construction early in 2011.

In more abstract developments, it is intended that in addition to the regional R&D facility there will be a new display facility at an inner-urban location to replace in some way our former and lamented presence at the Nicholas Building. Details yet to be resolved will be communicated here in due course.

Noted

We don't get out much and so it has only just come to our attention that back in February the itinerant Melbourne art critic Mark Holsworth wrote some nice things about the Museum in his blog Melbourne Art and Culture Critic .

Thanks Mark. And even though we are no longer in the Nicholas Building, the spirit lives on and the physical manifestation will be returning before long.

But we do have Melbourne

Since his return to Melbourne in early July, the director has been engaged for much of the time in the relocation of the Museum - a dismal but necessary chore made necessary by unpleasant external forces which have been alluded to elsewhere.

Unfortunately the move has meant the Museum has had to suspend its popular display programme. Fortunately most of the completed works have been successfully relocated to temporary premises courtesy of the Kitchener Institute. Despite the current inconvenience there is nevertheless a small benefit to be found among all the disruption, in that the enforced furlough now provides an opportunity for maintenance and repairs which had been a tad neglected. There has also been a necessary culling of the museum's research material.

We no longer have Paris

Paris is still there of course but we - the Director and staff - aren't. News since the previous posting has been scarce for many reasons, mostly unconvincing. We could blame the limited computer facilities in Paris, or the limited spare time, or the limited subject matter, but it would all be somewhat specious and irrelevant.

As a postscript to the previous post it cannot go unremarked that M Gramme stands in bronze in the forecourt of the much-admired Musée des Arts et Metiers which the Director visited on several occasions during his research trip.

And there is much one could (and possibly will) say about le Musée des Arts et Metiers. For now we will merely record the satisfaction of seeing there a model of Henry Maudslay's steam table engine

Paris report

We are pleased to be able to report some observations from Paris where the director is currently engaged in further research and liaison with corresponding organisations.

We had hoped to renew a long-standing and valued association with the Belgian office of the Kitchener Institute, however it was not possible due to their principal's urgent departure to Melbourne. Ironic, some might say; others might see instead an elegant (even fearful) symmetry.

And speaking of Belgians (which we aren't very often) we were more successful with a visit to the memorial for Zénobe Théophile Gramme at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. M Gramme, who is credited with the first commercial dynamo, does not get about much these days. We understand he is also honoured at the renowned Musée des Arts et Metiers, which is also on the director's itinerary.