Comments on: SEEING SOUND With A Home-Made Oscillograph (Nov, 1936)

By: Randy

Randy — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:46:57 +0000

Toronto, I’ll add Full Metal Challenge to the TV list. I worked for a couple of years with a guy who was a team member on both FMC and JW.

And I’ll also nominate Good Eats, which I’ve said to my wife is like “French Chef meets Secret Life of Machines” Tonight on the GE 10th anniversary special, Alton Brown said his inspirations were “Julia Child, Mr. Wizard and Monty Python”.

By: Toronto

Toronto — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:39:37 +0000

Charlie: Very cool!

The original British “Scrapheap Challenge”, which morphed into “Junkyard Wars”, was also great. And “Connections” with James Burke, of course.

Jut to kick off a tangent, I’ll mention the books of Mike Wilks, such as “The Ultimate Alphabet.”

By: Charlie

Charlie — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:58:45 +0000

SLOM is one of my favorite shows. I looked for video tapes of it for years before it appeared online. The only place you could get them was an educational company in NZ and they were around $600. I actually met the host of the show last year at Maker Faire, he was really nice.

By: jayessell

jayessell — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:07:02 +0000

The Rooskies did something similar with microwaves.
The advantage is the ‘bug’ required no internal power source.

https://spybusters.com/Great_Seal_Bug.html

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:16:37 +0000

@10@9@2: Cat and mouse, it’s what makes the world go ’round (and advances technology…)

By: Jari

Jari — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:29:01 +0000

@9@2 I have a vaque recall, that as a countermeasure an offbalance electric motor was attached to the windows, which prevented evesdropping with lasers. And VERY heavy curtains also attenuate voices enough, that it cannot be detected by laser anymore.

By: Randy

Randy — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:48:22 +0000

Thank you, thank you for that streaming SLOM site, Firebrand38! That alone has made the subscription to this forum worth the price! Who can’t love a show that has Brubeck’s “Take Five” as the theme song…

@2: And, of course, a window can be used as a mirror to modulate a laser beam reflected from it, to listen in on voices vibrating the window from inside the building…countermeasure being to build a glass shell around the building and broadcast white noise in the intervening space…or maybe to move to an all-brick building without windows…

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:46:26 +0000

Toronto: I remember that show. They had a good approach to the history of things like the fax machine http://www.secretlifeofmachine.....hine.shtml

You can watch it here Season 3, Episode 1 http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/

By: Toronto

Toronto — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:08:30 +0000

There was a British show in the 1990s – probably BBC – titled “The Secret Life of Machines.” In one episode, they performed a ‘fax’ transmission using two drill presses and an ignition coil, if I recall correctly. The spark burned marks on paper on the receiving end, though I can’t recall how the transmitter worked.

They also transmitted a picture marked out with flour in a pasture, over a hill to another pasture, by waving a flag as a signal to dump or not dump flour as they paced across the grass. It was very fun to watch.

Actually, anyone who likes ModernMex would probably love that show.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:09:34 +0000

Paul: Share the patent with everybody, why don’t you? http://www.google.com/patents?id=ioZEAAAAEBAJ

That was more electro-chemical than mechanical.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:39:30 +0000

I’m always amazed by things done mechanically that I assumed could only be done electronically. Another example is a fax machine patented by Alexander Bain in 1843

By: Tracy B

Tracy B — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:51:30 +0000

Best of all, it’s an oscilloscope without the ‘scope.

By: Torgo

Torgo — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:38:33 +0000

One of the few home projects these magazines feature that could actually work and be interesting.

By: Tracy B

Tracy B — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:55:49 +0000

I’ve seen similar projects, where a mirror is bonded to the speaker cone to deflect a laser beam.

By: rick

rick — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:30:29 +0000

This is pretty neat! Just the sort of thing I would have attempted to make in my youth had I seen these plans.

Rick