Before You Get Any Ideas
No! This Intro is nothing to do with the disease, you disgusting perverts. That title will lead, inexorably, to the meat of the matter I'm musing on. Art!
That's the closest you'll get to a Thermonuclear Thrush.
Here an aside. Conrad, when much smaller, used to possess a novel of "The Man From Uncle" series called <thinks> "The Diving Dames Affair" GET YOUR MINDS OUT OF THE GUTTER! all TMFU novel titles ended in "Affair" so no, it's not about married ladies cheating. Art!
Stop traducing my Aside.
ANYWAY as I'm sure you recall, the chief antagonist of U.N.C.L.E. ("United Network Command for Law Enforcement") was THRUSH, although I believe in the pilot episode they used the acronym WASP, which is kind of an aside to the aside. In the DDA THRUSH had managed to utilise an artificial lake to construct a Sekrit Layr - sorry, that slipped through - a Secret Lair, to house a ballistic missile submarine. Whose ballistic missiles were armed with nuclear warheads, which is kind of close to a Thermonuclear Thrush.
PATIENCE! We're getting there. Art!
Behold the wonder and terror of the Iron Chicken. This is clearly an AI-driven autonomous robot, quite possibly powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator for purposes of longevity and reliability. Halfway towards an Atomic Rooster. Quite an achievement for the Clanger civilisation, because although they do have opposable digits, they're not especially gifted in the technology arena. Perhaps it's of extra-Clangerial origin?
Which is where we come to where I wanted to be. Take a closer look at the Iron Chicken. To Conrad's eyes it more closely resembles a Nickel-Plated Steel Chicken, which is admittedly more of a mouthful, and in fact it looks like it was put together with - Art!
MECCANO!
Go on, deny it if you can. The studio that made "The Clangers" could only imply, as the name is trademarked.
This whole Intro was sparked by Conrad's curiosity about Meccano and whether it was still going or not. Yes, I had a basic Meccano set when I was reading "The Diving Dames Affair" for your information.
It transpires that Meccano has a lot more history to it than Your Humble Scribe realised, since it was invented in 1901. So nearly a century and a quarter ago. It wasn't until several years later that it moved from tin to nickel-plated steel. Art!
The thing about Meccano is that the models you made were all recyclable, since they were put together with nuts and bolts - visible in the central plastic box above. The models you see on the box lid are quiet achievable, unlike other romantic pictures you can find about more ambitious structures. Art!
This advert is from 1920, so no snivelling nonsense about equality of the genders present here; this is a BOY'S toy and silly frilly girlies can only look on in awe and wonder. If we put aside the rampant sexism, this transporter-bridge would require an enormous amount of Meccano to complete, not to mention days to put together. You'd probably have to do it in sections and would need an entire room dedicated solely to the bridge. Art!
This advert is from 1956, which is probably also the number of pieces of Meccano you need to construct this walking dragline. It is, once again, an enormously large project that would consume both boy's pocket money for several years. One wonders if, by this date, they had electric motors for construction sets? Or do you have to do all the hard work of moving this beast around by hand? I did a bit of digging and -
They also appear to have had clockwork motors before the electric ones and in both cases little Timmy would need to save up his pocket money for months to be able to afford one. Art!
For smaller children. Or girls.
If you, the parents, didn't trust your sproglet with metal pieces, there was a Junior version of Meccano which was all plastic. You could probably dissolve it with acetone, you just couldn't scratch all the paint off Daddy's nice new Austin Morris.
Well, there we go. O by the way, Atomic Rooster's glory days were the early Seventies, but there is an iteration of them still knocking around.
Look What I Found!
Conrad still remembers when he was trying to find a picture of the interstellar starship we see for a few brief scenes in "Avatar" and not having much luck. Well, it turns out that the "Interstellar Research Centre", for whom Project Icarus is only one of several projects ongoing, has a set of Galleries. And what do we see there? Art!
The ISV 'Venture Star'
This beast is a behemoth. The picture above doesn't really give a sense of scale, so have a closer examination. Art!
There you can see the planetary shuttles, cargo and crew compartment, all safely distant from the power plant. Art!
More details of the three-lobed crew compartment section. Note also that this is protected in flight by the forward shield, visible in the first picture, because of the micrometeorite threat.
This is one Gallery of many, so you may get more of these. No promises.
"City In The Sky"
I'm afraid I was naughty yesteryon, I read on and finished the whole fan fiction. O well.
Arcology One is being de-orbited.
Without
warning to most of the sphere’s crew, the shuddering stopped as if
commanded. What they didn’t know was
that MEV had disengaged and the conducted vibration of the nuclear power-plant
was now a forgotten memory.
Blessed
silence and stillness was not to last long.
Within thirty minutes a faint and ghostly whispering could be heard: the
sound of the incredibly thin and attenuated planetary atmosphere exerting a
drag on the sphere’s exterior. Slowly
and remorselessly the whispering became a thin shrieking, that became a subdued
roar. Vibration arrived anew, shaking
everyone and everything. A thousand
objects not properly secured or glued began to rattle and work loose, adding to
the general din.
This trial
by noise did not diminish over time.
Quite the opposite. It got worse.
An hour after entering orbit, Arcology One resembled a flaming torch
scorching the heavens, girdling Earth in a complicated spiral pattern.
For Davy,
the hardest thing to cope with was smell.
He could understand that his own pocket world, held aloft in the heavens
since day one, was able to move and vibrate and endure severe thermobaric
stress whilst remaining intact, but – the smell!
"The War Illustrated Edition 188"
As you may have gathered from the pictures already posted, a lot of the events concern the campaign in Normandy, which had actually ended by the time 188 got published. Art!
This is the newly-liberated city of Rennes, and as you can see, a few of the locals decided to come out to play.
This is what happens when the giant flying mallets of the RAF get turned onto your positions. In the first photograph the crash marks of V1 non-flying bombs can be seen. It's unclear if their launch ramp has been hit or not, but everything else associated with the site appears to have been obliterated.
In the lower photo you can see all the bother and expense the Teutons went to in order to protect a V2 storage and launch site in the Pas De Calais area, which sits underneath an enormous concrete dome. All for naught as the site was captured before it could be used. Tee hee!
More Mystery MacGuffins
Once again the advertising sidebar on "The Daily Beast" continues to generate baffling bargains that Conrad can only guess at. Art!
Yes, this finely-crafted, precision-engineered Sprong™ Blitzer can be yours for only £2.38, allowing you to effortlessly Blitz your Sprong™, the miracle substance for all your domestic and light engineering needs!
Apparently it's a 'Chamfering Knife'. Well, I'm glad that's cleared up.
Finally -
The sun's coming out again after being shy this afternoon, wonder if madam needs a Whisky Alpha Lima Kilo?
No comments:
Post a Comment