Several of you have probably seen the video of the Wintergatan Marble Machine, from several years ago. The original machine was far too fragile to take on tour with the band. So Martin set about making a second gen marble machine, one that they could take on tour. I had not heard anything about the second machine in a while, until today, when I stumbled across a video of some other people with the machine. They were talking about Martin in the past tense. No. Martin is alive and well. After several years of work, he abandoned the machine.
The meat, and Musk content, of this video, is in the first 15 minutes. Martin discovers KISS, and realizes why his marble machine failed.
The original marble machine video, from 8 years ago.
Never heard of Mad Hatter Martin Molin, and I loved the crazy concert.
The Musk stuff transforming Molin’s approach from merely insane to brilliantly insane is precise, concise, teachable, and illustrates a lot of the better aspects of Musk’s character.
I heard a lot about KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) in college. Recall Harrison’s work with chronometers: insanely complex, and never really successful, then an abrupt turn to an overgrown pocket watch. Igor Sikorsky reconfigured the VS-300 repeatedly, adding rotors here, then there, adding complexity, until he stripped it all away, to the configuration we see today: single main rotor, single tail rotor, with cyclic and collective controls.
The story Musk told about the fiberglass mat on top of the battery in the Model 3 was hilarious. The battery guys said it was there for NVH. The NVH engineers said no, it was for fire protection. Turned out the mat served no function, so it was eliminated.
This must be the all-up run of the second generation machine that Martin was talking about. Yes, it looks cool. Planetary gearsets. with crankshaft and connecting rods, operating reciprocating, clear, plastic, trays, that boost the marbles to the top of the machine, instead of the simple conveyor the earlier machine had. The original objective, in building the second machine, was to build a machine that was rugged enough for the band to take on tour. He went so far down the “look cool” rabbit hole that it is even more fragile than the first one.
