W-I-D-E on Wednesday: Mechanical

As soon as I saw Bobsblips's choice of theme for today's Widwed challenge, I knew what I should blip. As a kid I used to love making things with Meccano. Until I was about 10 we had trolley buses on our road - indeed I used to go school on one ("zero emission" transport isn't new - although I'm sure the power came from dirty coal-fired power stations!). So of course I had to build a working model one with Meccano. My Dad helped me as consulting engineer and we even managed to get it working by picking up power from twin wires with spring-loaded pickups (it only ran the length of my bedroom but at least it worked...and fear not, it ran on just 12 volts so it wasn't dangerous.)

My other favourite construction was a truck which could find its way unassisted across a room to a light source. I built this along with a school friend (the very friend with whom I went walking in September). It would seek the light by turning its front (steering) wheels until light fell on a photoelectric sensor attached to the steering mechanism - this would then operate a relay which switched off the steering motor and activated the motor driving the rear wheels. If it went off course the light no longer fell on the sensor so it stopped moving forward and started searching again. It was fun to watch it zigzagging across the room! (We're talking about 1966 or thereabouts - no AI available in those days, not even microchips!)

So as you can see I'm certainly a committed nerd. I'm not sure what happened to the actual Meccano I played with as a kid - I think maybe my brother got it when we divided up the toys...I got the Bayko. However many years back my parents-in-law picked some up at a church sale (as shown in this blip) - the sets are incomplete but at least we have a fair bit of it. Must have a go with it sometime.

(Of course back in those days, Meccano was made in England - and the instructions with the sets shown here are in 5 languages.)