More in the Way of Hands, Mechanical

Since I've been on the subject of waldos, and making things by hand, I might as well show a few of the myriad interesting images I've come across. The hand can be interpreted in so many ways.


First, an amazing clockwork hand manipulator, which I would love to have, even if it's really simply art for art's sake. However, imagine if this could read Jacquard cards (or complex cams) and thus make your hand move in specific ways. Gives a new meaning to the term "player piano" - or perhaps, "piano player." Which would it be?

And a YouTube video of how it works:




Shane Willis' cool Escher-inspired hands repairing each other.


Part of a school project where students had to build working hands out of popsicle sticks and strings as a study of engineering and physiognomy.


A Becker Lock Grip hand, modded by the writer of a blog on "Technical Below Elbow Amputee Issues." In fact, modded twice. Really a very nice hand to have if you need a prosthetic arm, because it is so moddable (and cool looking). An interesting discussion, too, of people's reactions to different prosthetics he's tried... And a neat video of him using it to chop tomatoes.



(Editor's note: Wolf Schweitzer, author of the Technical Below Elbow Amputee Issues blog, above, has written to tell me that I must include the beautiful Monestier-Lescoeur hand, made by a sculptor and automata maker who does very interesting work. He's right - check it out: you can see the video here)


Another school project, with instructions


Kroenen's Mechanical hand, a reproduction of the one in the movie Hellboy.


A cheap mechanical hand ($17) which I came across on BoingBoing

I wasn't able to get a copy of this amazing tattoo of a hand emerging from this person's flesh, but I encourage you to go look at it.


In the Waldo tradition, this person made an oversized wooden hand to fit on their arm


Lastly, Ambroise Pare's excellent rendering of a mechanical hand, made from the original but with metal parts inside. From a nice Timeline of Robotics website.

The picture at the top was in Google Images, but led to a site which proposed to scan my computer for viruses, and nothing more. So I snagged the image and got out of there...

Where's the Waldo?

Last night I had a dream where hands had become obsolete. For everything one wanted to do, one selected a tool that attached to one's arm, and then used the tool to do the activity. Golf clubs, oars, hammers, even cutlery -- they all had little slots in various walls; and when you wanted to do that activity, you simply stuck your (obsolete, apparently) hand into the ends that stuck out, and they would click onto you, becoming part of your body.

This is, of course, ridiculous, because hands and arms are one of the most amazing examples of evolutionary engineering that one can find in nature. Ultimately, a huge number nonrotational mechanical devices -- pliers, pistons, and even backhoes, to name a few -- are directly related to the structures of our hands. Why (as in my dream) would anyone make tools that bypass that extraordinary usefulness?

But it was just a dream.

In 1942, Robert A. Heinlein published a story called Waldo, about a man who is weakened by disease who invents a device (nicknamed a "Waldo") which allows him to magnify his own manual strength: the movement of his own hand would direct the device, which was also hand-like.

The Giant Hand, which is waldo-driven and was also at Maker Faire - and anyone could sit in the driver's seat

Since then, of course, remote manipulators (actually called waldos) have become common, especially for magnifying size and strength or reducing movements to microscopic size. For the most part, they have been used to reproduce hand movements; but this has progressed to things like powered exoskeletons, a la Ironman or Aliens (curiously, some of the real life ones were actually inspired by Heinlein, again - this time the book Starship Troopers). True, the contemporary exoskeletons can only walk a mile in half an hour, and their power packs don't last long; but someday, of course, we'll all be fighting wars with faceless super-soldiers.

Cyrano de Bergerac must have had a good sense of smell

Much of the funding for exoskeletons has come from places like MIT and the Pentagon, homes of ubergeeks and soldiers -- thus the dream of making oneself superstrong and impervious. True, the appeal of Ripley in the cargo loader in Aliens saying "Get away from her, you bitch" is enormous. But why can't we create waldos for other uses, perhaps to enhance more peaceful parts of us? I'd like to see sensory enhancement, not just moving and lifting. Waldo noses, for example, that allow you to smell better or in weird and interesting ways -- imagine smelling the difference between oxygen and helium, or being able to have a nose like a hound dog! I'd love to be able to become a SuperTaster , like in the They Might Be Giants song. Or perhaps someone could make Steampunk-like eye enhancers, like in City of Lost Children, that let you see infrared, ultraviolet - or even (gasp) real X-Ray specs?


There are actually waldo noses, although sadly they do not connect to anyone's sense of smell. And of course, visual enhancers have been around for a long, long time (say, three thousand years or so?). At Maker Faire two years ago, too, I saw Elly Jessop's wonderful Opera Glove, which she developed in MIT's Media Lab. This shoulder-length Glove was a sort of Voice Waldo, allowing her to catch her voice and manipulated it with an interactive glove. Very cool! In fact, a nice note (sic) to end on:



Links:

How to see if you're a Supertaster

Diorama Extravaganza

Long, long ago, Nicholas Clayton wrote in to tell me this:

"Going off-post to point you to something that should intrigue any enquiring mind that is prepared, as yours evidently is, to be delighted. I can't find any note of it in your blog: the London Diorama.
Sitting in a taxi I saw the name blazoned on the pediment of the Nash terrace at Park Square East. This led to a fascinating article (The Diorama in Great Britain in the 1820s).

And the Diorama structure of building is still there behind the facade as can be seen on the Google satellite view [see picture]. I have yet to visit to find out how accessible it is to the public."




The diorama was a sensation in the early 1800s, the brainchild of Louis Daguerre, as in (you guessed it) the daguerrotype. Having apprenticed in architecture, theater design, and panoramic painting, M. Daguerre was a natural talent with a true skill for theatrical illusion. He became famous for his electrifying theater design, and at the age of 35 opened his first Diorama in Paris in July 1822.


"...the Diorama was a theatrical experience viewed by an audience in a highly specialized theatre. As many as 350 patrons would file in to view a landscape painting that would change its appearance both subtly and dramatically. Most would stand, though limited seating was provided. The show lasted 10 to 15 minutes, after which time the entire audience (on a massive turntable) would rotate to view a second painting. Later models of the Diorama theater even held a third painting.


The size of the proscenium was 24 feet (7.3 m) wide by 21 feet (6.4 m) high (7.3 meters x 6.4 meters). Each scene was hand-painted on linen, which was made transparent in selected areas. A series of these multi-layered, linen panels were arranged in a deep, truncated tunnel, then illuminated by sunlight re-directed via skylights, screens, shutters, and colored blinds. Depending on the direction and intensity of the skillfully manipulated light, the scene would appear to change. The effect was so subtle and finely rendered that both critics and the public were astounded, believing they were looking at a natural scene." [wiki]

Here is part of a review of one of the dioramas shown in London, from The Times, 4 October 1823:

“The warm reflection of the sunny sky recedes by degrees; and the advancing dark shadow runs across the water – chasing, as it were, the former bright effect before it. At the same time, the small rivulets show with a glassy black effect among the underwood; new pools appear which, in the sun-shine, were not visible; and the snow-mountains in the distance are seen more distinctly in the gloom. The whole thing is nature itself; – and there is another very curious sensation which this landscape-scene produces on the mind. The decided effect of the thing is, that you look over an area of twenty miles; the distant objects not included. The whole field is peopled: a house, at which you really expect to see persons look out of a window every moment – a rill, actually moving – trees that sem to wave.

You have, as far as the senses can be acted upon, all these things (realities) before you; and yet, in the midst of all this crowd of animation, there is a stillness, which is the stillness of the grave. The idea produced is that of a region – of a world – deserted; of living nature at an end; – of the last day past and over. Silence, in spite of Ariosto, seems to have found a resting-place – nay, at last, an empire – upon earth.”




The diorama in London was built the year after the first one in Paris, in 1923.

I did a bit of web-burrowing and came up with this information:

Arthur Gill (who throughout the 1960s and 1970s wrote a regular column in The Photographic Journal of the Royal Photographic Society) recorded an account of a visit he made to the Park Square East/ Peto Place building at a time when it was empty in the mid–1970s. He found what seemed to be the remnant of a filled-in well of about twelve feet (3.7 metres) diameter which he thought was originally used to contain the turning shaft on which the Diorama saloon had turned. A few years before, when the building housed a department of the Middlesex Hospital, the well had been filled with warm water and used for hydrotherapy of disabled patients. Mr Gill explored fully the empty building and “tried to imagine what the aspect would be like if the circumferential rooms and offices were absent... However, try as I would, my imagination was unable to sweep away the modern amendments and adaptions, and recapture the Diorama. Except for that concrete–filled well ... everything has gone beyond recall”. (Arthur Gill, ‘The London Diorama’, History of Photography, January 1977, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.31-36)

In the early 1990s it was being used to house the Diorama Arts centre, but later it became part of the national headquarters of The Prince's Trust charity. Lord knows what's inside the structure now.

Daguerre went on to build other dioramas, the last one being a diorama in a church in Bry-sur-Marne, just outside Paris, where he lived. Last time I was in France I tried to get there because they still have one hanging in the church; but apparently it was poorly restored over the years, and now they are trying to restore it from the restoration, so to speak, having lost a good deal of the transparency and effect in the previous restoration.

Daguerre, of course, was fascinated by visual representation in all forms, and ways of reproducing the reality of the world in a more permanent, frozen form. It was not surprising, then, that he became involved in the first photographic process:

In 1822 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced the world's first permanent photograph (known as a Heliograph). Daguerre partnered with Niépce three years later, beginning a four-year cooperation. Niépce died suddenly in 1833. The main reason for the "partnership", as far as Daguerre was concerned, was connected to his already famous dioramas. Niepce was a printer and his process was based on a faster way to produce printing plates. Daguerre thought that the process developed by Niepce could help speed up his diorama creation.

Daguerre announced the latest perfection of the Daguerreotype, after years of experimentation, in 1839, with the French Academy of Sciences announcing the process on January 7 of that year. Daguerre's patent was acquired by the French Government, and, on August 19, 1839, the French Government announced the invention was a gift "Free to the World."
Daguerre and Niépce's son obtained a pension from the Government in exchange for freely sharing the details of the process.

The Wikipedia article on dioramas says that Daguerre was a manufacturer of mirrors, which is interesting for several reasons. One is that the plates on which the daguerrotypes were developed used a silvered surface; another is that his cameras depended on taking the light that came through the camera's lens and reflecting it with a mirror onto the plate, very much like a camera obscura. He never developed this camera much, and depended on this same essential concept for his patent. All part of the smoke and mirrors of good theatre, I suppose.


Many thanks to R.D. Wood's extensive work on the history of the diorama.

Social Sewing and Networked Objects

My friend Gwyan sent me a link (via O'Reilly Radar) to a project developed for Microsoft Research's Design Expo, wherein a group of students came up with a wonderful networked object which is designed to be a comfortable improvement for a grandparent. The project is called Social Sewing, and was designed for Despina, grandmother to one of the people in the design group.

Despina was a dressmaker before she retired, working in a shop with several other people, all sewing and gossiping together as they worked. She did this for many years, until it became too hard to get to the shop. Apparently she is still working, but now does it from home – and finds it incredibly lonely work. So the group designed three little sewing-machine-like-objects, with different colored fabrics on each one, which are networked with her friends' sewing machines. When her friends are sewing, the needles on the faux machines go up and down and the wheels go around - with apparently the right sound - and a light goes on to illuminate the fabric, just like in a real machine. When Despina sits in her sewing chair, communication is activated by her weight, and she can talk to whichever friends are sewing at that time, thus making her sewing the interesting gossip-and-sew experience it used to be in the shop. Apparently the friends are all such good seamstresses that they can tell, just by listening to the sound of the others' sewing, what the others are making. By making the devices familiar in shape and sound, the group have enhanced Despina's life dramatically without making her learn anything outside her comfort zone.

For years people have been talking about humanity getting wired into the world, wearing earrings that talk to the bus (and pay the fare) and so on. But I think that is largely chatter. The real impact is going to be in ways like this, where individual people find ways to make their lives better in ways that corporate entities could never imagine. How well would a device like this sell - or perhaps I should ask how many people out there are retired seamstresses? Not many. And yet people like this group, and many of the people who come to events like Maker Faire, are finding incredibly individual and creative ways to use technology - including, as in this case, networking everyday objects so as to make them familiar and fun, without all the learning involved in a designed corporate interface. As far as I'm concerned, this is where combining humanity and technology will have real impact, when we have the tools to design our own technological objects, when the tools are in our own hands to make what we please, in much the same way we knit sweaters or design our own websites. We are all different from any other person; and so, too, should our technology be different. And part of our everyday world, not as "technology", like cell phones or the Internet, but incorporated into our clothes, our knitting needles, the things we like to do. It's where all the personalized interfaces are trying to go, but in a much better, much more interesting way.

(PS. I'll be posting about Maker Faire in the next few days, I hope).

News: Museums as Social Network

I just got an email this morning about a new social networking place called Creative Spaces, which looks like it's going be a really splendid and inspiring. Nine British museums have banded together to create a sort of Facebook/Flickr type of place where you create an account and then build collections of your own from the collections of some of the most famous museums in Britain. You can add comments, network with other people and start groups - and upload your own pictures and videos to your notebooks.

So, in a sense, you can become a virtual curator.

The project is part of the UK's National Museums Online Learning Project:

"The project aims to get partner museum websites better used, engage new audiences and transform the way they think about and use existing digital collections. We are developing a range of innovative and exciting online learning resources across the nine websites for pupils, teachers, and lifelong learners. These resources will provide greater access and usage of the museum partners' online collections, and utilise new technologies to encourage and support user participation."

The NY MOMA has something similar, but it's small and not very well worked out, and you can't add your own stuff. Plus it's just one museum. This one is much more well-thought-out and proves the British are, once and for all, no longer the hidebound Empiricist nation that they once were.

The project is still in serious beta, and it's apparent that a great deal of things are not quite there yet. The Search feature, for example, is not all it should be, and a great deal of the online collections are not quite as accessible as I would like. And I don't see a system for simply browsing as of yet. I do dearly wish the Science Museum were part of the list.

Still, it pleases me. It pleases me that I could have an online place to collect my favorite images, where I can see other people's choices; and I can download from the Mutter Museum, say, and then mingle them with the many things I find here, to share them with other like-minded people. Keep an eye on it, and wait: at some point, it will be less fledgling, and we can all get together and share.

I Love New Scientist (fan post)

Sliding on a frozen lagoon, Venice, 1709

I have to be careful not to visit the New Scientist website. It's one thing for my household to get literally stacks of a weekly magazine that is unfailingly fascinating, whether you're a scientist or not, but when the articles from that magazine are available in a nonlinear form... well, it's just easy to get lost in Fascination Soup.

Here are a few articles I came across tonight, by accident:

1709: The Year That Europe Froze - What happens when Europe experiences the coldest winter in 500 years: "The sea froze. Lakes and rivers froze, and the soil froze to a depth of a metre or more. Livestock died from cold in their barns, chicken's combs froze and fell off, trees exploded and travellers froze to death on the roads." Wow!

Nanoplumbing: More than Just a Pipe Dream - When a scientist tries to reproduce tiny pores that regulate the flow of water into a cell in order to understand them better, he finds himself with much bigger fish to fry: "Nanotubes have not only helped researchers like Hummer understand water flow in proteins, but they are also enabling scientists to devise a host of nanoscale plumbing parts - such as molecular pumps, gates and valves - capable of moving and filtering everything from salty water and hydrocarbon fuels to gases such as carbon dioxide. It seems that these humble tubes could hold the key to cheap desalinated water, better fuel cells and new strategies to tackle global warming."

Genetic Roots of Synaesthesia Unearthed - I've always been interested in synaesthesia (here's a past post on the subject). Now they think they've found the genetic area where it lives: "A region on chromosome 2, which has been associated with autism, exhibited the strongest link. This is particularly intriguing: the autistic savant Daniel Tammet, for example, possesses extraordinary abilities and also has a combination of the two conditions, as do some other autistic savants... The region is also thought to be involved in epilepsy - which Tammet also suffered from as a child - and this could indicate that the three conditions may share some underlying genetic or neurological mechanisms."

How the "Mouse Man" Changed Medical Research - "'The "Mouse Man', as he was known on campus, was trying to create the first inbred lab animal - a strain of mouse whose genes would be stable and identical. Such a mouse would allow biologists to reliably replicate their experiments for the first time. His professor said it couldn't be done, but the Mouse Man proved him wrong."

Ten Extinct Beasts That Could Walk The Earth Again: It's true that sequencing the DNA of extinct creatures is fraught with difficulty. But, says the author, not impossible. It may even be fun: "Assuming that we will develop the necessary technology, we have selected 10 extinct creatures that might one day be resurrected. Our choice is based not just on feasibility, but also on each animal's "megafaunal charisma" - just how exciting the prospect of resurrecting these animals is... Of course, bringing extinct creatures back to life raises a whole host of practical problems, such as where they will live, but let's not spoil the fun..." Then he goes on to list ten possibilities in a very interesting way. How fun is that?

This is just a random sampling from this week's website. It goes on and on! The thing I love about the way it's written is that, unlike many scientific magazines, it's lively, it has actual art, it only talks about interesting things, and (best of all), it has a sense of humor. They don't shy away from puns, for one thing (always endearing), and they have silly articles sometimes which are, despite their silliness, hooked into real science. At the back there is the Last Word, where people can ask questions that seem obvious but nobody's ever thought of (such as one child who wrote in wanting to know "When will Fluffy be bones?"), and the "histories" section is really quite amazing. I could do a blog post on nearly every one of them.

And, unlike many pay-to-view websites, they actually tell you something about the subject before they cut you off. So even if you're not a subscriber, it's pretty interesting.

Ada Lovelace Day

A friend just sent me this:

"At least one study, and plenty of anecdotal evidence, suggests that women need female role models more than men need male role models. While it's not the only problem facing women in technology, it's a relatively easy one to address.

Suw Charman has put out a call for everyone - women and men - to "come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let's create new role models and make sure that whenever the question "Who are the leading women in tech?" is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues."

She's looking to get 1,000 people to blog about a woman in technology - whether that's IT, publishing, animation, any area of technology! - whom they admire, on March 24th.

Sign up to participate here, or read more about the idea here."

I think this sounds like a very interesting idea. Years ago, when I worked as one of the Webmasters and content writers of a large startup website called Girl Tech (now mostly defunct as far as I can tell), part of my job was hunting down women who made a difference in technology and interviewing them, so that girls ages 8-14 could see how many different kinds of tech jobs were out there. It was great stuff, talking to astronauts and women geologists; completely absorbing. I'd love to revisit it.

Ms. Charman has apparently already reached her goal, but that doesn't mean we can't blog on that topic. I'm going to do it, with or without the pledge. Anyone else?