tarinda uplifts avatar
+ Show First Post
Total: 1277
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Then she can get to the hall efficiently and a little ahead of time. There's paper and ink and wax cylinders and cloth and thread ready.

Permalink

She loads paper and thread and cylinders into her various devices.

Permalink

The room fills with about twenty people or so, all looking fairly important. The woman from yesterday gives a short introduction, announcing Tarinda as the foreign inventor, here to demonstrate her capabilities.

Permalink

"Hello everyone! Which invention would you like me to start with?"

Permalink

How about chronological order?

Permalink

Sure! Would anyone like to record themselves on the phonograph?

Permalink

An older man with a sword at his side volunteers.

Permalink

"On my signal," she says, and she cues him when it's ready to go.

Permalink

He presses a hand to the table next to the phonograph for balance as he recites a passage from a play lamenting the fragile beauty of spring.

Permalink

And when his time or his passage is up, whichever comes first, she makes the necessary adjustments to play it back.

Permalink

The audience is suitably impressed, and he returns to his seat. Where his hand was resting is a small tile with a picture of a flower on it. It's unlikely that anyone else can see it.

Permalink

She - well, Page - notes that but can't correlate it with anything and dismisses it for the time being. She opens up the workings of the phonograph, explains in broad terms what each section does.

Permalink

The audience is particularly interested in the mechanism driving the revolution of the cylinder.

Permalink

She's managed that by simple clockwork. It has to be wound every now and again.

Permalink

Notes notes.

Next?

Permalink

Here is the sewing machine! She passes the needle around so they can get a look at the double eye.

Permalink

Interesting. And what is the purpose?

Permalink

She opens the front of the machine and turns the wheel of the machine very slowly so they can see how the parts go, pointing them out as each enters play.

Permalink

Impressively intricate. How well do the mechanism scale?

Permalink

"I guess you could have big sewing machines but you'd have to turn the wheel pretty hard!"

Permalink

With an engine, perhaps?

Permalink

"I'd worry about getting your hands caught under the needle if you ran it with an engine!"

Permalink

Quite. Several of the audience smile.

Permalink

Typewriter! Here is how it works. Numbers, symbols for mathematical operations and currency and such, but she could make different kinds! Maybe one for musical notation!

Permalink

One with a specialized vocabulary, perhaps?

Total: 1277
Posts Per Page: