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U&lc.
Illustrated by Murray Tinkelman, December 1979

I love machinery. I love drawings, photographs and diagrams of machinery, particularly diagrams. They look important, they demand respect, and they inspire confidence. How dare anyone doubt that those dotted lines, those beautiful arrows, and the mystically placed little uppercase letters indicate something of great but obscure significance? The blueprint also is a form of visual tyranny. It is yet another kind of icon to be revered by the mechanically sophisticated and looked upon with awe by the mechanically illiterate, such as myself. These drawings are my semi-respectful homage to all the model airplanes that I almost completed, and every printed-in-Japan set of instructions that led me astray. However, most of all, to those passionately sterile drawings and engravings that graced the pages of the dictionaries and encyclopedias of my youth. As far as I am concerned, a Steam-Driven Chameleon, A Tractor-Treaded Rhinoceros, a Diesel-Driven Guppy, and a Propeller-Powered Bass are at least as valid as all that other stuff. These too, are real.

"In this age of depressing social, political and economic events, it is a welcome pleasure to be exposed to the delightful wit of Murray Tinkelman and to sense the love he has for his subject matter. In this case, his subject matter is his Mechanimals, those superbly inventive inventions of his fertile imagination. Tinkelman's mechanical animals are the combined accomplishment of a creative mind and a dexterous hand, two characteristics so often missed in today's so-called 'art' in America. Murray Tinkelman's contributions to the graphic arts lend considerable luster to an already illustrious profession. More power to Murray Tinkelman and his pseudo-technological revolution. Enjoy!"

Quote from Herb Lubalin, former Art Director, U & LC.

Sourced from here.

Diesel-Driven Guppy

Motorized-Rhino

Treaded Armadillo

Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Murray Tinkelman's Curiously Creepy Mechanimals
In the 1980 book, "The Illustrations of Murray Tinkelman," the author writes that Murray's "Mechanimals" might have been "built by an obscure inventor who fancied himself a cross between Dr. Frankenstein and Henry Ford."

For his part as that "obscure inventor," Murray said, "I draw them strictly for myself, for sheer enjoyment."

"They give me a chance to grow, to experiment, and to make mistakes. Every artist needs to be able to make mistakes, but there's just no room for error when you're working on commercial assignments."

"They also keep me from stagnating. Since an artist is known for his former work, he can get channelled into repeating the same thing over and over. The Mechanimals help keep me flexible."

The fond memories of what Murray often calls his "misspent youth" have proven to be a wellspring of endless inspiration, fuelling a long and colourful career of cross-hatched creativity.

Murray's Mechanimals first appeared in print in 1979 in (legendary typographic designer) Herb Lubalin's "Upper and Lower Case" magazine. In his intro Murray wrote, "These drawings are my semi-respectful homage to all the model airplanes that I almost completed. Every printed-in-Japan set of instructions that led me astray."

"But most of all to those passionately sterile drawings and engravings that graced the pages of the dictionaries and encyclopedias of my youth."

Above sourced from here.

Loco Motoad

Syracuse Scholar made available to readers a limited edition of Murray Tinkelman's "Rail-Rhode Island Red" and " Iron Ram" offset lithographs of the artist's original ink drawings.

Above: Keith Clark demonstrates his design for an innovative end effector which would inflate inside, and so grip, a tubular truss structure.

Back in 1978, another type of end effector under study for the Space Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS) was actually a balloon. The sort of aluminium truss beams proposed for use in space construction are quite fragile, so Keith Clark of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center has proposed using a balloon that would be inflated inside the beam. As it expanded it would press gently and "grasp" the beam, distributing the load across the beam rather than crushing on one or two points. Such a tool could easily be used to grapple anything that had an opening. The balloon would probably be a bladder coated with Kevlar to protect it against sunlight and punctures.

Pneumatic inflatable end effector Keith H. Clark et al
See full patent here.  
Patent number: 4273505
Filing date: Sep 22, 1978
Issue date: Jun 16, 1981

Although inspired by Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" that had infantrymen wearing "power suits" that surround their bodies and amplify their movements, most of the Gundam mobile suits were of the "driveable robot" tradition, where operators sat in cockpits and manipulated levers and pedals.

The Gundam concept was developed in 1978, with the TV series first airing in 1979.

Mobile Suit Gundam statue erected in Japan.

A Mobile Suit Gundam poster

WHAT'S gundam by Martin Ouelette
From the magazine "MECHA PRESS"

To understand the story and "raison d'etre" behind gundam, one must go back nearly thirty years, to the early 1960's and the start of the Japanese "Giant Robots" animation show tradition, "TetsuYin28" being the first one. The base story being, 99.9% of the time, the struggle for power between good and evil in the style of bad guys attack Tokyo (seemingly the only city on Earth!), killing a scientist in the process. Following that, the son or nephew of the scientist in question climbs into the brand new giant robot (with a suitably noble name, of course!) the dearly departed had just completed (in time for the invasion, it goes without saying!). Then he quite simply saves the world from destruction, while reading the instruction book, nonetheless!
But Yoshiyuki Tomino, an experienced animation director, was convinced that Japanese animation had more to offer. According to Frederik L..Schodt in his introduction to "gundam MS I AWAKENING (the first of a three books series on gundam MS), Tomino was partly inspired by the 1959 novel by Robert Heinlein "Starship Troopers" when he created a brand new approach to the "robot shows" with "gundam Mobile Suit". The Mobile Suit consists of a giant piloted mechanical suit, or exoskeleton, sporting sophisticated armament. In Tomino's viewpoint, mechanical designers had to keep the limits of credibility and the laws of physics in mind while creating the designs. Named "mecha" or "Mobile Suit", these machines looked realistic and didn't have the "principal character" aura the robots before them had. Like the "mecha", the characters created for gundam were much more complex than the ones from the earlier animations. He innovated in introducing characters which couldn't simply be considered good or bad. An example of this being the relationship between Char Aznable and Amuro Rey.
The first "gundam MS" television series, in 1979, did not meet the rating expectations of Tomino at first, but ended up as "the" sensation of the early eighties in Japanese animation.

See article pdf here.

Source: Byte August 1978

REPORT : An Inexpensive Turtle

BUILDING AN INEXPENSIVE TURTLE
by
Michael Folk
Mathematics Department
Drake University
Des Moines, IA 50311

Two years ago two colleagues and I set about developing a microcomputer controlled programmable robot for teaching¹ . The goals of our project were (1) to build a lowcost (less than $75 in parts) device ( "turtle" ) which could be programmed by children to perform " intelligent actions " as a robot does, (2) to build a low-cost ($400 or less) and portable " brain" for the robot so that it could easily be used in schools , and (3) to develop primitive software which would enable a user to program the robot (more sophisticated software was to follow) .
The turtle/robot system was first proposed in 1950 by Grey Walter, who built a machine which looked like a mechanical tortoise and had electronics built into it which enabled it to "behave" remarkably like a simple animal . In 1969, many generations of tortoises after Walter's first effort, Seymour Papert of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and Wallace Fuerzeig of Bolt, Beranek and Newman jointly headed a project to build a " turtle " much like Walter's tortoise, but with the additional quality that it was controlled by a computer program . The MIT turtle was to be used, together with a simple but powerful language called LOGO, to teach computer science to elementary school children .
I was fortunate to spend almost a year, off and on, using the MIT turtle to teach mathematics and computer science to elementary school children . It proved to be an effective device for motivating children to study mathematics and general problem – solving, but I felt it had three major drawbacks as an educational device : (1) It was expensive to build (about $1200 at the time) . (2) It drew its " intelligence" from a large computer, requiring either that it be located near the computer or that it be connected to the computer by phone . (3) It posed enormous problems in teacher training, as few elementary teachers could be expected to eagerly accept working with the system . All three drawbacks would contribute to inhibit the widespread use (or even trial) of the system in realistic school environments .
In 1975 we undertook the task of trying to solve the first two problems . The results have been promising, though by no means conclusive .
The turtle was built for less that $50 in parts–two-thirds of the target cost , and perhaps a twentieth of the cost of the model . Of course, the $50 cost does not include the costs in human time used to design, find materials, and build the turtle . (For instance, the gears alone, which cost $1 .47 each, were found only after examining scores of possible candidates from industrial gears to those used in children 's toys . A dozen man-days were probably expended just in finding suitable gears . ) Nevertheless, we believe we have shown that a turtle can be built which could be produced cheaply enough for most elementary schools to afford a few of them .
The second problem, that of freeing the system of the need for connection to a large computer, has not been completely solved, but major progress has been made . We were able to put together a microcomputer-based system small enough to fit into an attache case . We actually built not one, but three different systems before we felt we had a truely workable one . The first system cost about $400 in parts . The second and third "generations " were built with parts from the initial system plus generous donations from Motorola, Inc ., the company whose M6800 microprocessor we were using .
The final version is not only smaller than the original one, but more reliable, with more memory and capable of being built for about half the cost .
It is not enough to evaluate the project merely on the basis of cost . Just as crucial is the question of how well the system does what it is supposed to do . The system we have built is about as accurate as the one it was designed to replace . Our primary measure of accuracy is how well the turtle can draw figures on a paper on the floor . Our turtle drawings generally show an error of about 2%, as do those of the MIT turtle I used previously .
A much more important shortcoming of our system is that it does not support the sophisticated software of the MIT system . We did not intend to put the full blown software on our micro system–we were going to put it on our large CDC 6400 system , and we were going to put a skeletal " turtle-language " on the micro system . We have put the turtle language on the micro-system, but we decided about mid-way in the project that, with additional memory, we might also be able to put the sophisticated software on the micro-system . Our next major project will be to try to do this . Without it, we do not feel the system will be adequate for use by children .

¹Partial funding for this research was provided by the Drake University Research Council .