How something new is invented
Diagram of the operation of V. Bragin’s internal passage from an article in the magazine “Modelist-Constructor” No. 5 for 1975. Obviously, it works, since the vibrating walkers ride on brushes. But a piece of fur as a support seemed to me a completely unacceptable material!
Something happens that they say:
“look, this is new”;
but that was already centuries ago,
those who were before us.
Book of the prophet Ecclesiastes, 1:10
“look, this is new”;
but that was already centuries ago,
those who were before us.
Book of the prophet Ecclesiastes, 1:10
Memories of times gone by. And it so happened that in the recently published material about ancient migrants and migrations, there was a conversation on our website about “inventing something new” and about “is it worth being proud of the ability to present the old well”?
Well, I wrote that although I think that the popularization of any knowledge is a very important thing, I also came up with something new in due time. In particular, the “vibration walk from a soap box”. And then I received a couple of letters “in personal”, where one reader wrote that it was invented by a completely different person, and the second, on the contrary, asked to tell about how this happened, because “history Vibrokhod" he had the opportunity to read in various versions. And since this dates back to very ancient times, which today not everyone knows and does not remember everything, then... why not talk about it.
Moreover, the topic of creativity at VO is very popular, although it does not apply specifically to the military. But the adventures of the mind are always interesting, and most importantly, this story is a clear evidence of many interesting circumstances that, most likely, will never be repeated or, on the contrary... sooner or later, but will be repeated one way or another!
It all started in 1975 with an article in the magazine “Modelist-Constructor” No. 5 for 1975. There, on pages 33–34, an article by engineer A. Ratov “He invented... an internal passage” was printed, with a gorgeous illustration on a color insert. I read the article, looked at the diagrams from it, carefully studied the drawing of the “internal passage” on the tab, but as I read, I read it. Without consequences. I was not busy then: college, family, little daughter, in a word, I had no time for fraudulent technical ideas then. Then I came across articles in the same magazine (No. 12, 1975 and No. 6, 7, 1976), but again, I read, I read, but that was the end of it.
In short, in the very first article it was said that the engineer V. Bragin came up with an internal or self-propelled mechanism without wheels and tracks, but on a backing made of an old fur collar, and it worked! It was written that its design was easy to replicate.
“Take the gears from an old alarm clock,” the article said, “screw a nut to the edges of each. Install a micromotor on the board. Through small gears, bring rotation to the main gears. Glue a piece of an old fur collar with the pile smoothed to one side onto the bottom of the board. Turn on the motor. The plank will crawl forward.”
And in subsequent articles it was reported that “letters about new designs of internal passages, now developed by the readers themselves, continue to arrive to the author and the editor from all over our country and even from abroad.”
“Well, they do it and they do it, but what does it matter to me?” – I thought then, and, as it turned out, I was very mistaken. Because after graduating from the institute I had to go and teach in a rural school and there, in addition to all other subjects, I also taught labor and... a technical club, and all because “there should be one,” and “you’re young!”
And I had to conduct it, and in more than peculiar conditions, with the presence of workbenches, saws, axes and other carpentry equipment in the workshop. We made handles for brooms and shovels with all this “at work” regularly, but what about the circle? Aren't you going to make hands on it? In addition, it was necessary to provide a plan for the club’s classes, and it... had to be at least somehow interesting... to the authorities.
What about the children? Children... About children it was said this way: “Based on local conditions.” Well, I “started”, and this is how a good half of the models “from everything at hand” appeared, described in my subsequent books.
And then suddenly I read an advertisement in the newspaper about the All-Union Toy Competition. A competition for factories, factories and individual citizens for new samples of children's toys for our light industry. In the first year, I made an all-terrain vehicle on ball wheels, which could drive forward and backward and rotate the radar antenna. And... I received 150 rubles as an incentive bonus for it! There was even a factory that decided to produce it, but in the end it never released it!
Vibrating walker from the magazine “Young Technician”. In the best traditions of children's technical creativity of those years. Cut out their plywood base, take old brushes that have become unusable, nail them... And yet, the homemade product as a whole looks good. And how good she looked in 1978!
Next year – another competition! It is clear that I decided to present my toy for him too. Here another magazine helped me very seriously - “Young Technician”, in which I saw a vibration walker with two brushes for clothes, proposed by some local SUT.
The design captivated me primarily because I could make such a vibration mover with my kids at school. There are jigsaws, there is plywood! You can buy motors for a ruble each in the city. Brushes too! In a word - take it and do it!
And we did, and not just made moving models of vibrating walkways on brushes. But they also staged a vibrator race in the school corridor “with a massive gathering of people” and everyone, including the school party organizer, saw that the young teacher “has a creative attitude towards the work entrusted to him, works with children at the forefront of science and technology, and relies on the latest materials in central magazines.”
The fantastic vibration drive, which was to be produced at the Penza toy factory, was almost entirely assembled from already produced parts. It was necessary to collect them all, put them in a box, attach instructions, polystyrene glue and... This is exactly what the company failed to do!
Accordingly, I submitted a fantastic vibration walker to this competition. And although he did not take any prizes, our specialists from the local toy factory noticed him and invited him to join them. And then they decided to release it altogether and in the end they didn’t release it either!
Although almost everything in it was already produced then! A souvenir box made of polystyrene from some Leningrad plant was used as a body: the spectacular pylons with fairings and motors were taken from a children's plastic model of the Glisser. The cosmonaut cabin had already been made at the Penza toy factory, but the brushes... Who didn’t make these same brushes for clothes back then? That's it, for some reason they were never in short supply in the USSR!
The same magazine “Modelist-Konstruktor” wrote in the spring of 1980 that the “toy” would be produced in Penza, but... He wrote something to write about, but that’s where the matter ended.
And then, already in 1982, at the next competition, where my Tanks have already taken 2nd place (!) at the All-Union competition, I heard a representative of one of our famous factories, which today produces what it produced half a century ago, say: “Why produce new toys when new children are born every year ?!”
And then in the fall, while continuing to work in a rural school, only closer to the city, I realized that... I had to work somewhere else so as not to live on one salary. It was then that an old two-story house caught my eye in the very center of Penza, where at that time, as well as now, our Regional Station for Young Technicians was and is located.
I came there and showed newspaper articles about our homemade products, and I was immediately accepted there as the head of a circle... “new types of toys” - that’s the unusual name his then director came up with for him. Work - two hours every Sunday. But the school year had already begun, there were a lot of kids being sorted into sections and clubs, and I needed something that I could immediately interest them in. Moreover, it is portable and fits in your pocket. After all, I couldn’t carry my vibrating walker made of a polystyrene box with me to schools?
And then in the Main Department Store I came across a bright red polystyrene soap dish with amazingly fantastic shapes. It turned out to be possible to turn it into a vibratory walker in exactly half an hour, after which I got a visual, so to speak, “seducer of children”, and also a rich bright red color, which, as you know, is loved by everyone... from young to old, because This is the most energetically saturated color!
A classic, one might say, vibrating passage from a soap dish: one soap dish, two DP-10 micromotors, four toothbrushes without handles, “costume jewelry for decoration”, wires and... that’s it!
And I went to schools, and everywhere this “machine” was simply an amazing success. True, in one school a physics teacher told me that it violates Newton’s law, and that I should not corrupt children with its help, but be that as it may, I then had no end to them, and I had to conduct not 2, but 4 hours, because I couldn’t fit everyone who wanted to study with me into one lesson.
This is how, in fact, completely by accident, and as it very often happens, out of necessity, that very famous “vibrating soapbox walker” was born, which to a certain extent became an integral part of Soviet culture of that time.
Well, how this happened and what consequences it had will be discussed next time.
To be continued ...
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