4 Feb
2003
4 Feb
'03
2:42 a.m.
On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, John Allain wrote:
Agree completely. I took one apart years ago and deep
inside were two compound lever assemblies, which could
sound complicated, but what they did was find a kind of
This arrangement is called a whiffletree, and has been in use since
Antiquity - often to evenly distribute the tractive effort of teams of
draft animals. Also, pipe organs used them as a binary-to-analog
convertor, turning the small motions of several wind pouches into a
smooth-ish mechanical motion, eg. for swell shades, etc.
The Selectric was elegant as hell, but VooDoo nonetheless.
Cheers
John