Friday, December 3, 2010

Harmonograph

I received an email from Craig Newswanger earlier today--he contributed his time and talents to The Tesla Project in July. Craig built a Harmonograph that is way super cool. Remember Spirographs from your youth? Kinda like that but with more engineering. Check out his website here. This picture was made using it, and it's pretty neat to see it in action, so do take a minute to watch his video. I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

3 comments:

Aine Scannell said...

Cathy you dear girl
I received my real post from you and am so pleased with that which you sent. I look forward to trying it out and shall of course posting to my blog about it.
We are utterly snowbound here in Scotland at the moment and cant use the car to even get to the supermarket!! Shopping has to be done on foot so nothing too heavy or frivolous.......which is trying as I do like my boiled sweets!!
Weather forecasters are being watched with keen eyes, waiting for news of when there might to be a an arrest to this snow.

pennykoby said...

Wow! That harmonograph demo was pretty awesome. This may be a silly question but do the designs all look pretty similar when complete?
I am a regular reader of your blog and I enjoy seeing your work.

Cathy Savage said...

@Aine--yay Aine! Glad it arrived. Sorry to hear you're so snowbound. It's hard to imagine such a scene here in Texas. We long for the snow and work and school stops for flurries. No kidding. Stay warm!
@Pennykoby--from a layperson's POV, the designs are all determined by the motion of the harmonograph which varies since it's randomly set by a human, so they are all a bit different. In the video I was amazed at all the directions the pen was taking. I wish I knew more about the elements of an ellipse. So much to know!