High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Current images of fusor efforts, components, etc. Try to continuously update from your name, a current photo using edit function. Title post with your name once only. Change image and text as needed. See first posting for details.
Post Reply
Leland Palmer
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2014 1:40 pm
Real name: Leland Palmer

High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Leland Palmer »

I recently visited the Farnsworth Archive in salt Lake City, Utah. I gathered lots of material there, including high resolution images of various fusors.

Here is a high resolution image of the Farnsworth Mark III fusor:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1H5fEq ... 8TZs2Q_VS-

Image

I've never posted an image on here before, so I don't know if this will show up. So this is a test post. Maybe I have to put this on a Google drive for it to show up?

I got lots of good stuff there at the Farnsworth Archive, and if anyone is interested I could post tons of it.

The Mark III image is high resolution enough to see that they used Varian Conflat flanges, which I think may be the same as the standard 2.75 inch flanges that Varian sells now. Using a program called GIMP, it is possible to measure distances in pixels and get a rough idea of the scale - it turns out that the whole thing fits into a cube maybe slightly larger than two feet across. If anybody has any conflicting information on scale, please let me know.

Testing, testing...
User avatar
Richard Hull
Moderator
Posts: 14992
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Richard Hull »

As you compose you post, down at the very bottom is "Attachments" use that to post images. Do this before you hit submit. Do not post super high res images. 1240 X 768 is the norm.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Leland Palmer
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2014 1:40 pm
Real name: Leland Palmer

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Leland Palmer »

Oh, great, thanks Richard.

Let's try that again:
P0437n01_13_003L.jpg
I reduced the image in size and went to grayscale to reduce the file size.

I'm trying to set up a Google Drive with the info gathered at the Mariott library Farnsworth Archive on it. There is a lot of info - technical papers, correspondence from and to Farnsworth and Hirsch, summary reports after the project was shut down, some notebook pages, and so on.

As I read through it, I plan to post some of it. If anyone has any special requests, please let me know. When the Google Drive is ready for prime time, I'll post the URL, and people can browse through it.
User avatar
Richard Hull
Moderator
Posts: 14992
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Richard Hull »

I have many original photos given to me by Team members when I visited them in 1999 and again in the early 2000s. The team had only a single camera owned and retained by ITT. No personal photos with a personal camera were allowed as ITT considered the work company confidential. That camera was controlled by George Bain, project head engineer. The camera was a common era 4 X 5 speed graphic with a polaroid back. Bain told me ITT had all the images sent to the head office, but he knew for a fact that other team members were taking duplicate photos for use within the team and assumes some went home with some of the members. Bain noted that he would turn the camera over to one of the technicians and see a table full of photos drying but was given a stack of only ten or twelve to send to the office. Meeks told me that Farnsworth would often see them on a table, drying and purloin some of them. Pem had a small photo album with the obvious polaroids in them. Bain said they went through a lot of polaroid film packs. Thus, original, separate, individual, unique polaroids are out there taken of the same item at the same time. There were no negatives!! All photos taken within the facility were only original unique images.

Every now and then, the company would send an internal photographer from the N.Y. office's advertising dept. He used a normal negative producing camera to take photos of the Fort Wayne activities. These, of course, were never given to the team as they were developed back in New York. The biggest splash was an announcement that ITT was working with fusion which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in the early 60's. I imagine this was used to increase their stock value, which it did for a while. This boost according to Bain made New York very happy and Admiral Furth used this to get more funding as the 60's budgets got a bit bigger each year.

The image you have shown above was of the "pit" fusor which was Farnsworth's fusor. Farnsworth's fusor was tended to and worked by Bain, Haak, and Jack Fisher. I have already posted the same image some years ago here in Images du Jour from my original polaroid.

According to Meeks and Blaising, this giant was a beautiful piece of crap and never did much fusion until Hirsch came along and got the team on D-T mix. The team jokingly referred to this monster as the "warp core" fusor..... Impressive, but not a winner nor the best of the many fusors built.

There is much more that could be told, but...

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Leland Palmer
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2014 1:40 pm
Real name: Leland Palmer

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Leland Palmer »

The notebooks seem to be full of images I have not seen before, likely from the polaroid camera you mention. The library staff there is willing to scan material, if you know what to ask for and pay them something like 10 cents a scan. I will clean up my index spreadsheet of the collection and put it in the Google drive.

Box 68 has Hirsch notebooks 1-4 and a George Bain notebook.

Box 69 has Hirsch notebook 6, George Bain notebook 9, and a Gene Meeks notebook.

I ran out of time to scan these but plan to ask the library staff to do that, pay them, and will post the scans in the Google drives.

I will try to find the webpage of the Farnsworth archive index, and will post that.
Leland Palmer
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2014 1:40 pm
Real name: Leland Palmer

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Leland Palmer »

Here is the Google drive location of the images, from the Marriott Library, Salt Lake City archive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... _twBZ5VjE2

The directory is called "PO437" - this is the name of the Marriott library archive.

Some of the images are almost ridiculously high resolution, and I will keep processing them - converting them to JPEGs and going to gray scale to reduce the file size and make them more manageable. I have been using Thumbs Plus and GIMP to work with them.

Using the GIMP measurement tools, distances can be measured in pixels. Assuming that most of the flanges are common Varian 2.75 inch flanges, the Mark III calculates out to fit in a cube slightly larger than 2 feet on a side.
Leland Palmer
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2014 1:40 pm
Real name: Leland Palmer

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Leland Palmer »

Here is the Google Drive link to the documents and personal correspondence I gathered on my pilgrimage to Salt Lake City:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 6DwYD-OGsK

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 5WwzWe-82K

The MyImg and MyImg2 Google Drives contain the documents and some notebook images I took while I was there. I plan to ask the library staff to scan some notebooks for me, and will post links to the Google Drive locations of these as they become available.
User avatar
Richard Hull
Moderator
Posts: 14992
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: High resolution images from Farnsworth archive

Post by Richard Hull »

Good Stuff...Nuff said!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Post Reply

Return to “Images du Jour”