The Bombe Clock

[Paul Parry]

Hi All,

I thought I would just share my latest clock - the 'Bombe' made as a tribute to Alan Turing and the work carried out at Bletchley park during WWII. Has the lovely Dalibor tubes on there, and mechanically 1:1 accurate from the original Bombe. The Welchman Trust, who re-built the Bombe at Bletchley were kind enough to loan me a set of drawings. The drums are powered by brushless motors, and it is silent in operation ( unlike the actual Bombe! )

Would like to thank John S. for laying out one of the PCB's and also Dalibor for making the tubes to go on it.

[Samuel G. Guss]

Greeings Neonixonians,

In a word, Gorgeous! Very, very nice work, Paul.

All the best,
Sam

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[robin bussell]

That's beautiful! I love the "Cherenkoiv radiation in water" blue shade
of the LEDs too.

What's the behavior of the drums? Do they permute properly?

Cheers,
Robin.

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[Paul Parry]

No, the drums don't rotate as per the original. The original has the drums index round - I could have done it with stepper motors, but gets noisy. These on the clock just turn at variable speed, there is a control panel on the side for each drum. However each drum has an embedded Neobendyum magnet at the 'A' position, and inside the clock is a hall effect sensor. Some very simple logic checks to see if all 4 drums are in exactly the same position and when this occurs, there is a mechanical chime inside that fires. In practice this means you get a random chime from the clock 3-4 times in a day. Not as Turing intended but a nice little touch as it appears to do something other than just spin the drums round.

 

On Wednesday, 9 November 2016 16:11:33 UTC, Zedsquared wrote:

That's beautiful! I love the "Cherenkoiv radiation in water" blue shade
of the LEDs too.

What's the behavior of the drums? Do they permute properly?

Cheers,
     Robin.

On 09/11/2016 15:49, Paul Parry wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I thought I would just share my latest clock - the 'Bombe' made as a
> tribute to Alan Turing and the work carried out at Bletchley park during
> WWII. Has the lovely Dalibor tubes on there, and mechanically 1:1
> accurate from the original Bombe. The Welchman Trust, who re-built the
> Bombe at Bletchley were kind enough to loan me a set of drawings. The
> drums are powered by brushless motors, and it is silent in operation (
> unlike the actual Bombe! )
> Would like to thank John S. for laying out one of the PCB's and also
> Dalibor for making the tubes to go on it.
>
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "neonixie-l" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:neonixie-l+unsub...@googlegroups.com>.

[gregebert]

Absolute work of art.

I hate to be a copycat, but since I'm working on a 7971 clock, adding some 'enigma rotors' would be an interesting feature. I'd probably have something go ka-chunk a few times when a word or phrase is displayed.

[Paul Parry]

Many thanks for your kind words!

I recon some Enigma rotors would go very well, or ( If I have spelt it correct ) one of those Strowger relays that they had at telephone exchanges before they went digital, certainly go ka-chunk and move about quite a lot too.. If only I had a couple!

[Quixotic Nixotic]

On 10 Nov 2016, at 08:37, Paul Parry wrote:

> Many thanks for your kind words!
>
> I recon some Enigma rotors would go very well, or ( If I have spelt it correct ) one of those Strowger relays that they had at telephone exchanges before they went digital, certainly go ka-chunk and move about quite a lot too.. If only I had a couple!

You could also consider decagon reels from electromechanical pinballs. These have the benefit of having an open at zero switch, for resetting to a known position, and a closed at nine switch for pulsing the next reel along. The plastic number reel can be replaced with something of your own devising. You could even use the reel to switch nixie tubes on and off.

John S

[blave]

Simply stunning.