Help with a Commercial Luger

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by Ron Wood

I am really happy that my "Rube Goldberg" comment triggered some great responses! Thank you guys for supporting my nostalgia.
Ron

Ron, here's another for ya.

Below is a pic of George Rhoads' "Odyssey of the Spheres." I spent almost ten years as a technician building this kind of thing for him. The uninitiated would invariably cite Goldberg when they saw one of these machines--"rolling ball sculpture", "audio-kinetic art."

Goldberg's most recognized works are not like these machines, though, because the former are a one-shot deal with a beginning, and an end after the complex actions and reactions have run their course--more like one of those domino projects that are touched off and do their thing once.

Our work would run as long as the motor was on to return the balls to the top. But they weren't boring because a certain amount of unpredictability was designed into their operation--sometimes a ball would take one track, sometimes another, as it made its way through the structure, dinging dingers, whacking whackers, bouncing and being caught, chiming chimes and ringing bells, etc. along the way. There is a legend about one of the mid-sized ones in Boston's Logan Airport, that a pilot was so engrossed while observing it that he missed his own flight.