Saturday, July 18, 2020
Trying to de-LSD-ize an invention
Another semi-real descendant of the Breguet family, and another link between several of my patient machine sets. In this case I've reimagined the original to work better, using techniques fully available and understood at the time.
This was invented by a Monsieur Regnard in 1855. It was clearly intended as an alternate receiver for the Foy-Breguet system, which was the French official telegraph in those years. I've rigged it to use the same code patterns.
Regnard was trying to show letters on a screen. He used two wheels triggered by the incoming pulses. Each wheel always turned clockwise, and the pointer on the screen was pushed and pulled by a complex lever arrangement between the two wheels. His screen, shaped to fit the vector sum of the levers, was just plain weird and hallucinatory. (I'm convinced that inventors and artists in the 1800s were influenced by ergot in the bread.)
See what I mean?
The same function could have been accomplished in a much neater way by thinking in three dimensions, using Azimuth and Altitude as in telescopes or cannons. The pointer would then look like a telescope or cannon. Or a toucan.
One of the two input signals would tick the pointer from side to side by rotating a horizontal wheel. The other input signal would tick the pointer up and down by rotating a vertical wheel.
With those two motions coordinated, the pointer could find grid locations on a square screen, or could find letters arranged in grid form.
A larger version with a pencil or chalk mounted on the pointer could transmit pictures.
Later, of course, the Gray Telautograph accomplished the purpose in a strictly 2D way, again using two pulse-controlled wheels. The Telautograph became the standard way of transmitting signatures and sketches from 1890 to 1970.
[I've shown magnets that would 'flip' the ratchets forward. This probably wouldn't work well in reality; a system more like the rack and snail that drives a clock chime would have worked much better. I didn't feel like forming the more complex details needed for that setup, since this is just an imaginary reimagining of an imaginary invention.]
See what I mean?
The same function could have been accomplished in a much neater way by thinking in three dimensions, using Azimuth and Altitude as in telescopes or cannons. The pointer would then look like a telescope or cannon. Or a toucan.
One of the two input signals would tick the pointer from side to side by rotating a horizontal wheel. The other input signal would tick the pointer up and down by rotating a vertical wheel.
With those two motions coordinated, the pointer could find grid locations on a square screen, or could find letters arranged in grid form.
A larger version with a pencil or chalk mounted on the pointer could transmit pictures.
Later, of course, the Gray Telautograph accomplished the purpose in a strictly 2D way, again using two pulse-controlled wheels. The Telautograph became the standard way of transmitting signatures and sketches from 1890 to 1970.
[I've shown magnets that would 'flip' the ratchets forward. This probably wouldn't work well in reality; a system more like the rack and snail that drives a clock chime would have worked much better. I didn't feel like forming the more complex details needed for that setup, since this is just an imaginary reimagining of an imaginary invention.]
Labels: defensible times, Entertainment, Morsenet of Things, Patient things
¶ 3:51 PM
