Posts Tagged ‘German’

1994 – Profi Bionic – Fischertechnik (German)

The 6 models one can construct with this set.

Source: Profi Instruction pdf here.

Box cover.

Source: Fischertechnik Online Museum here.

The gait pattern for each of the models.


 

(Google translation from German)

The new computing box 'Bionic Robots' builds on the 1994  PROFI  ' I'm walking' set . New in this case is that the models built so now the "catch curve", should read: they do not only run straight. By driving two power motors, the robot with 6 and 4 legs can not only forward and backward, but also to the left and right. But they also need a little brain in the form of INTELLIGENT INTERFACE, which is loaded with LLWin programs. Then take the machine running the true environment through various sensors.

The neologism "Bionic" is derived from the words "biological" and "Technic" composed and can perhaps with "art from nature" rewrite. It will not only learn the machine running, other solutions can be found by observing nature. The best known example is probably currently the self-cleaning surface coatings, modeled on the lotus leaf.

4 Models over 300 parts

See mpg here.


1810 – Automaton Trumpet Player – Friedrich Kaufmann (German)

The Kaufmann Trumpeter had leather bellows for lungs and reeds which imitated the sound of a brass instrument.

The Kaufmann family from Dresden. Friedrich id on the right. 

Text incorrectly dates the 'Robot' from 1910, it should be 1810. 

[Source: Popular Mechanics Aug 1950]

Trompeter

This is an example of a program (e.g. stepped drum) mounted into an automata to play a tune, like the European street organs. The notches mounted on the drum activated valves that let the air pass by 12 tongues. Which produced a kind of modulated sound. This sound will be modulated through a trumpet so it does sound like a trumpet The stepped drum and the bellows are powered by a spring mechanism that need to be wound up, observe the crank laying at the bottom. The height of this automata is apr. 180 cm.

From the Illustrated London News July 5, 1851. The centrepiece is Kaufmann's magnificent Orchestrion.

[Source: Clockwork Music, Ord-Hume]


The Trumpet Automaton is a figure not unlike Mario in the " Puritani," with the instrument at its mouth. It was invented many years ago by Herr Kaufmann, and won the admiration of Carl Maria Von Weber. What is most remarkable and inconceivable in this extraordinary piece of mechanism, is, that it produces double sounds of equal strength and purity, and flourishes in octaves, tierces, quints, Re., are heard. Perhaps this acoustic curiosity may supply some key to Vivier's wondrous horn effects, certain notes accompanying particular chords. If this discovery should be established, that one instrument can do the same with equal perfection as two instruments, it may lead to something, as natural intonation may surely effect what a piece of machinery can do…….To construct such instruments without models, for they are quite original, the maker must be a musician, a mechanic, a mathematician, and a philosopher.

[Source: Clockwork Music - Ord-Hume]


Carl Maria Von Weber

By John Hamilton Warrack 

He also paid a visit on his friend Friedrich Kaufmann, whose latest nvention was a mechanical trumpeter in Spanish costume which played two simultaneous notes at set times.(2)

(2) Subsequently this Hoffmannesque creature went off unexpectedly, knocking Kaufmann sensless and blinding him in one eye. Thereafter Weber took leasure in speaking of the trumpeter's sinister powers with his voice lowered.


The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : Wednesday 2 August 1933 page 3

NOTES

Hobart Concert Orchestra,

The Hobart Concert Orchestra, under Mr. David Feirclough, is busy rehearsing tor the next concert a programme of music never performed in Hobart before. It will include an Adagio and Rondo written in 1821 by Carl Marla von Weber for Friedrich Kaufmann, of Dresden, whose, Acoustic Cabinet had aroused the composer's interest to such a degree that he wrote a pamphlet for the purpose of directing the attention of wider circles to the triumphs of craftsmanship shown there, including a trumpeter playing his instrument. But more than by the musical automatons the interest of the master was captured by the harmonichord, invented by Kaufmann in 1810, and the forerunner of the
harmonium. As independent as the organ or the pianoforte, it allowed the player to utter his thoughts and feelings most effectively. With the eye of genius Webér recognised the capacity and character of the new instrument, and saw that it must have a future. Fully worthy of Weber and a model for later composers is the style that delights the hearer of the "Adagio and Rondo for the Harmonichord (Harmonium) with accompaniment of the orchestra."
 


Enchanted wanderer: the life of Carl Maria von Weber

Lucy Poate Stebbins, Richard Poate Stebbins – 1940 – 345 pages

In Dresden, Weber inspected the workshop of his Munich acquaintance, Friedrich Kaufmann, who had invented a mechanical trumpet which would play two notes at once "so clear and equal in volume that one would swear he heard two trumpets.


Kaufmann's Trumpeter is in Deutches Museum. 

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/sammlungen/ausgewaehlte-objekte/meisterwerke-ii/trompeter

Using Google translation:

In the jargon of an empty museum curator, the mechanism of the machine described as follows: With the highly visible hand crank can be raised under the clothing of the trumpeter's two spiral springs, which drive the two Schöpfbälge and the spiral-tipped pen systems with two wooden drum stick. Four scanning lever and two toothed segments transmit the pulses of a pin system in two rotatably mounted brass drums that have plugged each 6 striking end tongues in the type of revolver drums. Each to blow off some tongue comes through rotation of the drum in front of one of the two valves are wind, whose motion is controlled by the second pin system (rhythm). The outlet openings of the drums lead into playing position in the mouthpiece of a natural trumpet that the ummoduliert Zungenton largely in a real trumpet. (Sequence of notes left drum: g C g h c f; right drum sound sequence: g E d e G a)

Trompeterautomat


2010 – Natwalk 2.0 Walking Skyscraper – Anton Markus Pasing – (German)

From eVolo Competition – 2010 Skyscraper Competition

Special Mention – Natwalk 2.0
 

Natwalk II or walking tall
Preface

” The sky switches on daylight for us – or the shower. We are small gods, mere gods of the machine which is our highest. Our universe is a huge motor, and yet we are dying of boredom. In the midst of fullness, there is an sinsidious dragon gnawing at our hearts.”

Freely quoted fram D.H. Lawrence

Story

Once upon a time, there was a picnic.
I clearly remember every detail of when we first saw one of them.
Nothing was as it had been before. All broadcasting stations were blocked. They beamed strange, seemingly organic, sounds into the ether. Some of them had bells in their huge feet.

When they reached the city, they held out their arms to us and lifted us up. Each one of them carried another world on his shoulders.
Every day their numbers increased, and the chaos in the city intensified.  Soon they covered the dark streets of our city – as if with a green puzzle …

Countless different plants grew on them. Some carried small lakes and others forests on their backs. Others resembled verdant meadows in spring.
Their bellies contained the most diverse biotopes and species from all the world and the air inside them was clear and full of oxygen…
It even seemed – impossible as it may sound – as if they were changing the air in the city with every day.

They showed us things which I no longer believed really existed because I had only seen them on television.
When they came to a standstill somewhere – anywhere – nobody could remove them any more. To this day, nobody knows where they came from, but everybody somehow grasped what they had to say to us.

I remember it as if it was yesterday: our first picnic was unforgettable. The people laughed for joy, and the leaves rustled in the wind.

I asked myself: will they stay or do they only say goodby.

I was just biting into a big apple when the traffic passing underneath me
broke down completely…

Forget Central Park, forget Copenhagen !

The End

———-
[RH cyberneticzoo- Reminds me of the Domes of Valley Forge in the movie Silent Running  melded with Syd Mead's Walking Cargo Vehicle (as used in Star Wars AT-ATs). See also Archigram's Walking City.]


All information and original images from here.


1965 – “Kunibert” – L. Hilderbrand (German)

Built by L. Hilderbrand, a German Radio-control enthusiast. Published in Radio Control Models & Electronics, May 1965.

See pdf

1920 – Electro-mechanical “protozoon” – Fritz Lux (German)

Lux' protozoon *

This device is a model of a unicellular animal: it consists of a short rubber cylinder with two slots (Fig. 98). According to the ideas of its inventor, it is anchored in a brook, half submerged in the water. The water in the "protozoon" is considered as the "food" it is in the process of digesting. If there is too much water in it (it is "overfed"), then the rubber cover distends and the lever, indicated by the broken line on the left, closes the lower contact at a and the small flap restricts the slot called "mouth"; in the case of too little water ("underfeeding") the slot is open wider because of the closing of the upper contact at a. This "protozoon" can even "learn" and "remember" according to a Pavlovian reflex process: if a bigwave dangerously distends the rubber cover, then the contact at b is also closed and the mouth is shut by the contactor actuated by the magnet c (unconditioned reflex), but, as the magnetization of c is preserved for a considerable time, if in the course of this time the photoelectric cell (whose circuit is not shown in full in the figure) perceives a big wave (by the glitter of the water!) it shuts the mouth in advance by means of the contactor d (conditioned reflex).

From Cybernetic Machines by L. Nemes, translated by I. Foldes (1969) (Hungarian original 1962).

* Lux, F.: Gehirn und Seele. (Brain and Soul) 1920.


Illustrations from Gehirn und Steele of which the above adaption developed from:

Photo-electric cell not activated by light as no wave to provide scattered light source.

Photo-electric cell now actived by scattered light from approaching wave.