It’s not enough to come up with something new, how to bring it to the masses
Color illustration from the magazine “Modelist-Constructor” No. 5 for 1975 for the article “He invented the internal passage.” I didn't like the design of the model. Firstly, the drive is from the engine to one gear, and from it to another. Secondly, the location of the weights on these gears could only produce very weak vibration. Well, and thirdly, this is a continuous shaggy covering of the bottom from an old collar. Although the car is beautiful in appearance, you can’t say anything
"He is always and everywhere
and in hard work,
and in a severe struggle he will win!”
Screensaver song for the program “Pioneer Dawn”.
Music: I. Dunaevsky.
Words: M. Lvovsky
and in hard work,
and in a severe struggle he will win!”
Screensaver song for the program “Pioneer Dawn”.
Music: I. Dunaevsky.
Words: M. Lvovsky
Memories of times gone by. The previous material ended with the fact that the author began working for OblSYUT and, for the sake of temptation, made a “vibration walk from a soap box.” A trifle, a trifle, but it was precisely this trifle that made it possible to make this toy popular, which, however, I never dreamed of at that time.
I dreamed... of earning more money, because at SUT they paid little even for four hours of group work. This amounted to 16 hours a month, so there was no time for fat. But when leaving work on Lermontov Street, I always saw in front of me the lattice tower of the Penza television center and thought, why don’t I go work there as well?
I came, turned to the children's editorial office, and said: “I want to host TV shows for children like Skillful Hands.” They: “Have you ever led them?” I told them: “No, but I worked in a rural school for three years and after that I can teach anything!” We started haggling: they offer me 15 minutes, I demand 30, because for only 30 you can make a homemade product right in the studio and show it in action.
The editor thought and agreed to one program. Moreover, he warned that they have a special editor on duty who grades their programs. And if the broadcast goes well, I won’t see any work from them. But if it’s five, then “yours took it.” Just, he says, keep in mind that the broadcast will be in color, and therefore live, without recording. That's how you want it...
But this drawing is very... long-suffering or popular - it depends on who you are. It appeared in color in “Young Technique” in issue No. 6 for 1977, in an article that talked about models from the circle led by A. Senyutkin. Then in this version - in the book by V. Zavorotov, editions of 1982 and 1988.
There is nothing to do - he put his head in the noose. I went home and rehearsed everything from start to finish in front of the mirror. I wrote a script with a storyboard minute by minute and... went to buy point-and-shoot cameras, because it was necessary to show the assembly of the model in the process, with all the intermediate operations and, in the end, the finished model.
I came to the Main Department Store, bought three soap dishes, and then thought a little and went to see the director. I tell him that then my program will air on Penza TV, where I will make a vibrating walk from these soap dishes. That the children will simply be delighted with this and, in joy, will buy all these soap dishes from him. Moreover, I will tell you right from the screen where they can buy them. That is, he will receive free advertising. And he will fulfill and exceed the plan for them. But... I can now, before it’s too late, go to another store where the soap dishes are blue. And then the plan will be carried out there. And now I have a question - how can he thank me?
The director, I remember, grunted in surprise, but he saw that the matter was serious. He says: “If you were on staff, I would give you a bonus, but how can I thank you, we live in the USSR, not in America.” I tell him, just think about it, and I’ll sell you something more than once this way. Yes, you have a toy department, and in it DP-10 micromotors cost a ruble each, so you can also make money on them, because for this model you need two of them and four more toothbrushes...
We said goodbye, and I went to prepare for the transfer. And I was simply sure, I don’t even know why, that everything would work out great for me. And it worked!
But this is also a page from V. Zavorotov’s book. It is indicated here that these are all-terrain vehicles of V. Shpakovsky. And both of these drawings were taken from articles in some magazines, and I can’t remember which ones now...
I’m sitting, staring at the cameras, working with an electric burner, showing the magazine “Modelist-Constructor”, “Young Technician” No. 6 for 1977, telling me what the beauty of this homemade product is. At the same time I show what, how and where it is attached.
And behind the cameras a bunch of people gathered, free from work. Well, the man himself came, he never worked on TV for a day, he asked for 30 minutes and sits as if nothing had happened, doesn’t sweat, doesn’t stutter, in a word, everything happens as it should, although the broadcast is live, and you can’t hide the flaws here. And exactly at the 28th minute the vibration drive started working for me! So I had time to say goodbye and reminded “write letters” and exactly 30 minutes later the program ended!
They immediately invite me to the editorial office and say: “for the program “5”, we offer a contract for a year...” I told them, “I agree.” And that’s how my “television career” began.
True, they paid little, pennies, one might say: 40 were awarded and 36 in hand. But we still had to buy materials. Their payment was not provided. In order to somehow increase the efficiency of this work, I came up with the idea of writing each scenario in the form of an article for a magazine and at the same time a chapter for a book. I printed them myself, because in the same 1980 I finally bought myself a Yugoslav portable Traveler de Luxe typewriter, and finally scrapped my old Moskva.
And that’s how it went: the script was tested on a TV screen and while working with the guys at SUT, then an article in a magazine and a chapter in a book. Thus, by 1982 I had a book for children with 25 chapters ready, and it was possible to offer it for printing to a publishing house.
Yes, but how did it end with the Main Department Store?
Oooh, this is also worthy of a separate story, because, as I expected, all the red soap dishes and micromotors in it were sold out by the children literally in the next three days, and then, by the way, the blue soap dishes also all disappeared!
And this is what one of these same models looks like in my book “For those who love to tinker” published by the Prosveshcheniye publishing house in 1990
I come to the director, and he is happy - he even says that he didn’t expect this, he doubted it until the last moment, he invites me... to the fourth floor of the department store, to the special department, where mainly party state nomenklatura workers dressed and put on their shoes. Representatives of the hegemonic class and the working peasantry also come here when they go as candidates for a congress or somewhere else “for representation.”
“I can’t pay money,” he says, “but in gratitude... choose what you want!” I say, “I’ll call my wife now, let her choose.” She had to take time off from work at the museum, take whatever money she had at home, and there wasn’t much, and then urgently come to me... to the fourth floor.
True, the finances were only enough for a woolen blouse made of Indian wool, but for the price of just one gear. Well, we bought it, not being either delegates to the congress, who were dressed there from underpants to hats and shoes on their feet, or participants in international exhibitions, where ours also could not lose face in the dirt - but only at the expense of intelligence and ingenuity . She wore it for a long time, it was such good quality, and everyone asked her: “Where did you get it, where?” But it is clear that this very “where” was not mentioned to anyone then!
“Reindeer Walker” is not mine. From UT. But I made it and proposed to start producing it in the form of a toy at our Penza toy factory. And they didn’t manage to do that there either!
Articles about homemade products written on a “scenario basis” also came into use. Those that were made of paper in the form of color scans - “Hanseatic Cogg”, “Ship of the Island of Crete” and similar materials on the last page of the cover, began to be published in the magazine “Family and School” and were very much welcomed by them.
Homemade products with a motor were in demand by the magazines “Young Technician” and “Vocational Education”; something was published in the magazine “Modelist-Constructor” and even in such a specific publication as “Club and Amateur Arts”.
But it was not there. As it turned out, the publishing house “Prosveshchenie”, the most famous for such literature, was at that time busy publishing books by V. Zavorotov. And, it is clear that neither he nor the publishing house needed competitors. Well, I’ll talk about the problems with publishing children’s books on technical creativity some other time, but for now I should finish the topic of vibration walkers. I broadcast a program about them again in Kuibyshev, when I began studying there in graduate school, but before that, my acquaintance with this “technique” helped me once again.
And it so happened that when I started working in 1982 at the department Stories CPSU Penza Polytechnic Institute, I came across an announcement about an All-Union competition for the best solution for creating technical teaching aids and educational visual aids for vocational education institutions.
Of all the technical teaching aids, in addition to the old film projector, at our department there was only an overhead projector - a funny device that projects from a transparent horizontal screen onto a screen on the wall. It came with replaceable sheets of transparent plastic, on which you could draw with special felt-tip pens.
I really liked using it, so I thought, what if I made something specifically for the overhead projector. I thought about it and came up with a device for demonstrating Brownian motion using an overhead projector.
And here is a certificate for the vibrator for the overhead projector! To celebrate, the institute even gave me some kind of bonus. After all, it wasn’t an engineer who came up with it, but an assistant from the Department of History of the CPSU
It was a transparent plastic plate with sides 3 mm high, the outline of which represented the walls of the vessel. There was also a transparent lid on top of it, and inside there were transparent circles 2,5 mm thick, red and green, representing molecules. On the side, out of sight of the overhead projector, a plate with a micromotor and a rheostat was fixed. An asymmetrically fixed load was attached to the motor shaft, and... that’s it.
As soon as the engine was turned on, the vibration was transmitted to the plane of the “vessel”, and the “molecules” inside began to move chaotically. Moreover, it was not visible on the screen that any force was applied to them. It seemed that they were moving on their own, and it was like real magic.
In any case, the students to whom I showed it were completely delighted and for a long time afterwards could not understand “how it works.” The award from the organizing committee was a very pleasant reward, because it was very difficult to come up with such a thing.
To be continued ...
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