Early Chinese Mechanical Horse / Ox The wooden ox (木牛æµé¦¬ï¼Œlit. wooden ox flowing horse) was created by Zhuge Liang while he served Shu-Han. It was a thought to be either a mechanical, walking replica of an ox whose main purpose was to carry supplies such as grain to an army that…
Wooden Ox / Gliding Horse Zhu-ge Liang 230 AD Chu-Ko Liang's "Wooden Oxen and Gliding Horse" ( notice different spelling to Zhu-ge Liang ) See book "Reconstruction designs of lost ancient Chinese machinery" By Hong-Sen Yan (search google books) Models: see http://140.116.71.92/acmlab/newpage15.htm Wang-Chien Type Wooden Oxen and Gliding Horse (below)…
MECHANICAL RAT FINDS WAY IN MAZE - Popular Science Nov 1935 As if endowed with powers of reasoning, a mechanical “rat” devised by Dr. Stevenson Smith, University of Washington psychologist, threads its way through an artificial maze like those used to study the behavior of living rats. The three-wheeled, electric-powered device…
Why are all these names together in a post title? Well, one of the 1951 batch of 6 tortoises was sent off to a museum. Actually, is was on loan to Charles Eames (yes, the same Eames who was a designer, amongst other things) who was contracted to design and…
W. Grey Walter's early contact with Edmund C. Berkeley. Who is Edmund C. Berkeley? Probably more renowned for building what has been now considered as the first Personal Computer, called 'Simon' and construction details were published in Radio Electronics in 13 parts from 1950 to 1951. He wrote a book…
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition which opened in London and around Britain on 3 May 1951 and finished the end of September the same year. At that time, shortly after the end of World War II, much of London was still in ruins and redevelopment was badly…
This entry describes two references to transistorized versions of Grey Walter's tortoises. The second reference refers to people and organisations mentioned in another post on W. Grey Walter and Edmund C. Berkeley . 1957 Jan 25 [WGW response to letter.] The main difficulty is in the mechanical assembly, particularly the gearbox…
Machina Speculatrix - Festival of Britain Exhibition of Science 1951
Festival of Britain - Exhibition of Science 1951 page 51