And a bit about its history Anita Chowdry What is a HARMONOGRAPH and what does it do The Harmonograph is a pendulumdriven device that makes drawings The drawings are visual expressions of the combined frequencies of the pendulum oscillations ID: 579269
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Slide1
Designing and Building the Iron Genie Harmonograph
And a bit about its history
Anita ChowdrySlide2
What is a HARMONOGRAPH, and what does it do?
The Harmonograph is a pendulum-driven device that makes drawings.
The drawings are visual expressions of the combined frequencies of the pendulum oscillations.Slide3
This is the Iron Genie
The Iron Genie is a sculptural interpretation of the
Harmonograph
.
It makes really cool drawings, and it is totally analogue.
Completed in 2013
It took nine months to design, and nine months to fabricate.
It stands two metres high, and it weighs a bit.
It is made mostly of steel, brass and zinc.Slide4
The PendulumGalileo Galilei 1564 – 1642 was the first to make an empirical study of the pendulum and designed the first pendulum clock. Christiaan Huygens expanded on this and in 1673 published his studies in “
Horologium
Oscillatorium
”
Replica of the first pendulum clock, Science Museum, London
A
Pendulum
is a swinging device consisting of a weight or
Bob
on a rod or cable suspended from a fixed point or
Pivot
.
The time taken for each full swing of the pendulum is called the
Period
.
The
Frequency
at which the pendulum swings is determined by the distance of the
Bob
from the
Pivot
.
The mass of the
Bob
does not affect the
Period
.Slide5
The Blackburn PendulumInvented in 1841 by Hugh Blackburn while a student at Trinity College Cambridge.Professor Hugh Blackburn, Chair of Mathematics at Glasgow University 1849 - 1879
Blackburn and his friend William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin)
“..
swung on 'Blackburn's pendulum', an ingenious device with a double suspension, which could oscillate in planes at right angles to each other
.”Slide6
Lissajous CurvesJules Antoine Lissajous, Professor of Mathematics at
Lycee
Saint-Louis 1847 - 1874
In 1857
Lissajous
gave a series of lectures at the Royal Institution, with optical demonstrations of compound acoustic vibrations. These became known as
Lissajous
Curves
.Slide7
OscillationsThe Relationship between Sound Frequencies and Pendulum Frequencies
The compound frequencies of paired tuning forks placed at right-angles to one another, resonating at different notes, produced the images above.
Lissajous
Curves - Images of sound frequencies from the tuning-fork experiments
Pendulum Frequencies
The distance between the Bob and the Pivot determines relative frequenciesSlide8
Hubert Airy’s observations of a vibrating twig‘Pendulum Autographs’ Nature Magazine, Aug. 17 1871
https://archive.org/stream/nature41871lock#page/310/mode/2up
“It was a happy chance that directed my fingers...to the top of a stiff twig that sprang from the stool of an old acacia, and rose to a height of about three feet where it had been lopped by the gardener’s knife. Pulling the twig aside, and letting it fly back by its own elasticity, I noticed the path which its top traced in the air...”
Airy’s
diagram of the idealized trajectory of the oscillating twigSlide9
Hubert Airy’s experiments with pendulums‘Pendulum Autographs’ Nature Magazine, Aug. 17 1871
The results if
Airy’s
experiments with compound pendulum oscillations at different ratios.
Proportion 1:3
Proportion 2:5
Proportion 1:2Slide10
1893 H. Irwine Whitty published a book of figures made on a Twin-Pendulum Harmonograph he built for the Norwich Science Gossip Club
Whitty
described the tuning fork experiment of
Lissajous
, and the light-figures produced by the compound vibrations of two forks vibrating at different pitches...
“To render them permanent, and at the same time to reduce the rapidity of the vibrations, so that the movements can be followed throughout by the eye, is the object of the harmonograph..”
“The instrument was first constructed by Mr.
Tisley
, of the firm
Tisley
and Spiller, the well-known opticians.”
Download the book at http://www.anitachowdry.com/harmonograph-resources/4585944436Slide11
Harmonic Vibrations and Vibration Figures edited by Herbert C. Newton (c. 1909)
Benham’s
Triple-pendulum Harmonograph
Twin-Elliptic Harmonograph
Tisley’s
Rectilinear Harmonograph
Newton & co. traded between 1851 and 1950Slide12
Lateral and Rotary HarmonographBenham’s Triple-Pendulum Harmonograph is a
Rotary Harmonograph
: the drawings are the result of two rotary movements.
Tisley’s
Rectilinear Harmonograph
is a
Lateral Harmonograph
: the drawings are the result of two lateral movements. Slide13
Why were these devices invented, and what was their purpose?
They were philosophical toys and they served little practical purpose!
Born in the age of the scientific and industrial revolution, they were the outcome of the curiosity of practical men of science.Slide14
Harmonographs and geometric pensThe continuing appeal of the machines and their drawings
In the 1960s Desmond Paul Henry made drawing machines out of “bombsites” from decommissioned WWII fighter planes.
http://www.desmondhenry.com/
http://www.balintbolygo.com/index.php
2000s pendulum and mechanical pens by
Balint
Bolygo
2000s Photographic images made using a Blackburn pendulum by Paul Wainwright
http://www.paulwainwrightphotography.com/pendulum_gallery.shtmlSlide15
Why would a contemporary artist choose to focus on the harmonograph???
Art & Science – Art as a journey of discovery
“In watching a harmonograph in action, you can witness the unfolding of natural geometries that have always existed independently of us.
They are part of the dynamics of the universe. We cannot easily draw them without the aid of mechanical devices.”
2012 My prototype, based on
Benham’s
Triple-Pendulum Harmonograph
Instructions to build this at:
http://www.karlsims.com/harmonograph/index.html
“Harmonograph drawings in some way reveal structures in nature, and my work is all about exploring natural patterns and forms through geometry, fractals and drawing.”Slide16
Studying the development of natural formsSlide17
Form, Function and EleganceAnalysing and re-designing the structure of the prototype
Three pendulums look better arranged in a triangle.
In music and
geometry, triplets,
triangles and
tetrahedra
express dynamic energy.
Would the pendulums work together at a 60
degree
configuration?Slide18
Location, Context and Inspiration St. Pancras Station and Grand Hotel, London
Completed in 1873, this monument to Victorian ambition evokes the age of coal, steam, iron and state-of-the-art engineering on a grand scale.
It inspired the retro-futuristic design of the Iron Genie harmonograph – the aesthetics of
Steampunk
– “The future that never was” Slide19
Designing the Iron Genie
Technical drawings made using traditional drafting skills and 19
th
century drawing instruments.Slide20
FabricationLearning to work with steel at Central Saint Martin‘s, U.A.L.Slide21
Brass detailing and heat treatment to darken the steel Slide22
The Rooky and the Master at the Lathe
Keeping faith with the integrity of the work as it develops ....
I did not dare to insult the technicians or the sculpture with anything less than the finest engineering quality brass!Slide23
An ordinary mirror just won’t do!
The brass bezel was hammer-formed and hand finished.
The mirror is hand-gilded with palladium leaf.
Brass sheet annealed to make it more pliableSlide24
The etched zinc plates for the table-top
Fresh ferns pressed into soft ground creates an imprint of natural geometrySlide25
Prints from the etched plates
Nature’s Geometry
Fractal Self-Similarity
Harmonic FrequenciesSlide26
Filming in the Crypt
Video filmed by Josh Jones with Julia in the crypt of St. Pancras Parish Church, London.Slide27
The Iron Genie goes out on some hot dates
2015 - Dulwich Picture Gallery, London supporting “The Amazing World of M.C. Escher”
2014 – Museum of the History of Science, Oxford
http://www.anitachowdry.com/iron-genie