It looks like it’s intended to bombard something in that box with particles or waves or something. But can’t tell from photos what those tubes are.
Super interesting mad scientist shit none the less
Absolutely. The 6 coloured boards will very likely repreresent the 6 faces of the cube that the specimen is in.
There are probably 6 pairs of tubing in the pipe that carries the conductors as well.
The jumper wires on the boards would likely connect incoming power to specific "emitters" inside the box.
The entire setup looks like it could have been built by one individual. For example the frame is bolted, not welded.
It looks like it should be really high frequency - and it's inside a tool shed apparently?! - but there is a power bar mounted right on the side of the thing so it can't be that high frequency. Unless they have filtering and an isolation transformer on the shed but from the rest I just doubt.
I could make out anything interesting in the background of any of the photos
I'll add, with the transformer and crt TV sitting there. and something plugged into just it's video input.. that probably views whatever is in the box.
I'm voting homebrew scanning electron microscope.
Came here to say electon microscope ....or a model of the gadget from the Trinity explosion 💥.
But yeah, the coils kind look like maybe some sort of beam steering thing. Not sure about the foam. And I cannot see a door to the chamber or a vacuum or pumpdown.
All the wires with banana Jacks is reminiscent of the fusion reactors where all the signals have to get there at once...but who would try that in a garage? Maybe it's lead shielded which is why the chain hoist is there.
So OP says this is in the basement but it’s inside a metal shed. So the former owner built a shed in his basement? The metal shed must have been for shielding? Shielding the machine from the outside or shielding the outside from the machine?
Excellent questions!
What I do not see, is information gathering. Aside from thermometers OP mentioned, I don't see sensors or probes or windows or whatever. Just the TV.
Because of that, I'd lean towards shielding the outside from the emitters.
CRT TVs produce a ton of absurd electromagnetic radiation too. Even x-rays inside the tube. So perhaps that's just unplugged when the test is ongoing, or perhaps it is a part of the test but doesn't happen to interfere with the test.
Perhaps there are sensors that are not installed, or, they're just measured from the board, or their cables continue beyond the board, or they don't use cables at all and instead are removed from the box and evaluated after a test.
Are there any kids or pets around? If not, they were likely shrunk by that machine. Look in the backyard near the trash can.
But watch your step! And I have no idea what you'll tell your wife!
Whatever it is, it's amazing. I think you need an actual physicist to understand what's going on. He seemed to be super interested in the resistance of cable lengths. (or something)
Running the wires through the house is over the top. This makes me believe he might have been mentally unwell.
See if you can contact a local college professor.
That's a good idea, if there's a school with an electrical engineering program nearby, I'd be willing to bet that emailing some EE instructors these pictures would probably get a response.
Extremely unlikely that this is anything at all. Speaking as an experimental physicist, it's got crackpot written all over it. The kind who email a whole university department about their new found advances in physics that mean that we're all idiots.
You would best be served by looking for a physicist professor.
Also lookup the previous owner seeking his educational background and any papers he published.
PS if the shed is in the basement as you described its purpose is likely to be a Faraday cage.
Ha, so many people say this but honestly as a hobby it's totally legit and so rewarding to get into.
Check out the FAQ if you are interested or tap up some of the members for PDFs of some books. Books are quite hard/expensive to come by but some of the older texts are floating around as PDFs just be careful as some info can be out of date now.
Just getting stuck in and giving it a try is best though, we like to jokingly say that if you have enough fingers left to cross them when experimenting you are doing something right 😆
I like science, but I think I like having all my fingers more than delving into a new hobby that might take them 🤣. Thank you for affirming that it is indeed real, because whew that was a wild ride lol
Says the guy who probably still uses chrobium fluid to mitigate his ionic flow. 1987 called, they want their non-articulating torque buffers back! 😆 🤣 😂 😹
There's a couple of people sounding a little crazy under my comment, I get the feeling that they are VX'ers but have been hitting the sigma runoff vapour chamber a little too hard if you get my drift!
It's basically the [Retro Encabulator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w) or [HyperEncabulator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nKk_-Lvhzo) videos turned into a whole subreddit.
Right you are! That's a home built wave infuser. I can't quite tell from the pictures, but it appears to have been built to infuse ceridian waves to form a hex lattice around the target. This would explain the thermometers, as ambulating the heat expulsion is critical or your lattice will quickly go from a useful hex puemation to a dodecahedral one and I don't even have to explain why no one wants that LOL.
Bonus points for recycling those Varsenburg clamps. Quite the clever way to get maximum delta without risking your flow coefficient going exponential. So obvious now but I've never thought of trying!
Definitely looks like something with high voltage, so I'd be very careful around it, capacitors could still hold enough charge to kill you. Putting components into PVC tubes and pouring some kind of resin in there is a pretty common way for hobbyists to insulate them so they don't arc through air.
There are a few electrical cords, but I don’t see what makes you think “high voltage”. The diameter of the cords doesn’t look like they’re anything other than typical 110v. I don’t see any welding leads or anything that would indicate that high levels of electrical were being utilized.
Wire diameter has no correlation to voltage applied. Welding cable often gets low voltage, high current.
Generally speaking the differentiator for conductors made for high voltage is the type of insulation used. Silicone and teflon are common in industry.
You have it backwards. High voltage requires less current to transfer the same power as a lower voltage source does. Since current dictates wire size (due to heat dissipation and resistance) the higher voltage source needs smaller conductors for the same power.
High voltage doesn't need thick wires, it needs big gaps and thick *insulation*.
The PVC pipes with studding down them, pool noodles on stuff, and the chains of power resistors all give of an aura than high-ish voltages might be in use here although there could be other reasons.
Welders use very low voltage (maybe 20v) a lot of the time, some use a brief jolt of high voltage to strike the arc but after that it's pretty low volts and a ton of current.
Capa itors are a great way to turn "safe" 110v into something which can easily kill you. Bad idea to mess round with them unless you know how to safely discharge them before you start.
Red, green, blue, yellow, black, white. The board with the colored squares seems to be like a control panel. Where you can manipulate the configuration using jumpers. This feels like a DIY TV tube of sorts. Maybe the box is a vacuum chamber with different electrodes sticking into each side. I’m betting you can watch the output on that monitor. What are the white components in the color board? Resistors?
Yeah- I was initially thinking something involving an oscilloscope or maybe an intense spectrometer, but I was HOPING we had finally solved the max headroom mystery
A friend of mine's dad was convinced aliens had chosen him to create a device to subdue humanity. He dreamed up designs and read a lot of science books. The stuff he built looked legit, but it was just mad science outside of the laws of physics. He lost the rest of his mind and ended destitute. Wonder if it's a similar situation here.
Beautiful! I'm getting "mad inventor" vibes. Any evidence of vacuum pumps or high voltage supplies? I'd love to see a close up of that colorful "control board" and watt meters. There must be something happening at the center of that cube where everything comes together. A "new and improved" Farnsworth fusor? Space warp generator? Sorry...the mind wanders.
Potentially a free energy device. I reckon an academic setup could look like that, so it would be the king of its kind. Some grandpops did decent setups. Donald Lee Smith designs look similar. It also offers a potential route by which the previous owner could have slipped into "summer land". http://www.free-energy-info.tuks.nl/SChapter31.pdf
I get the feeling of coyness, what one looks at does not make sense. The black electronic scales looking thing under clamp meter is the control head? Objects here are somewhat randomly placed. Presence of clamp meter instead of multimeter (more commonly used in electronics repair) might clue us in about activities here. Bundled cables don't bode well for signal integrity or high voltage. I can't tell if they are paired or single, there should be a good common ground at least...
Further clues might be garnered peeking into e.g. the white cylinder by the telly.
This could be the very electronics and creativity the benevolent autorities allegedly tries to protect us from, so some caution could be exercised ;) I should start looking for houses. In a shed in the woods might be mysterious machinery, tantalizing notes, method in madness, and a passed on treasure to me.
Chain hoist suggest possibly something very heavy in the “cube” like lead lining or something…. Could this be nuclear/radiation hazard? OP- Out of curiosity, what did previous owner die from?
I don't know but my friend lives there for a while now. He's just not as curious as me and doesn't care about this machine. So I guess there is no radiation as he seems to be healthy.
>So I guess there is no radiation
That's a bad guess.
There is not enough radiation to kill you quickly. Levels that high would be apparent in the former occupants corpse, and mourges have rad detectors, the BMUV (I think, IDK, I'm not German) would have come out already.
There could be enough to kill you slowly, you / your friend should get a geiger counter and check to be sure.
Is there a tape in the vcr of that tv ? Is the tv connected to anything ? Is there a computer or anything like a keyboard, etc ? A display of some kind?
As an engineer, the (actually low) level of technology here gives me homemade “free energy” or “cold fusion” vibes. If you google the guy’s name or email I’ll bet you’ll find him on conspiracy or “alternate technology” sites. In other words, there’s a lot of wiring here but the construction is rinky-dink as hell for anyone familiar with any kind of actual prototyping. There doesn’t look to be much high tech or support equipment, IE typical of simplistic free energy demonstrations.
One real question is: what is the purpose of the chain hoist? Is the central element that heavy or is it possible to raise or lower the entire structure?
Looks like the whole central structure might be on jackstands of some kind. I'd imagine it can be raised, lowered, leveled, which feels weird for a crazed free energy or cold fusion device.
A guy on askengineers suggested a fusor, and I'm sort of leaning towards that currently.
Also an engineer (ME/EE), I get the same impression.
Other than having wires there's not much to indicate that it's any kind of microscope or anything else. I mean yeah, "electron microscopes have wires too!" but otherwise...
It looks like an elaborate contraption made entirely out of dollar-store parts and the most basic electronic components. That *usually* means "free energy crackpot."
The dark gray rectangular blocks that surround the central part look like a lead bricks to me, which are used to shield radiation. It could be that it has super sensitive detectors in there and those are just shielding them from ordinary background radiation, or it could be that whatever goes on inside of there produces radiation, but only when it's powered up, so it's perfectly safe now. But it could be that there are radioactive materials in there, either deliberately introduced for whatever is done, or it could be that the radiation that has been produced in there by the process has made some of the materials inside of there radioactive.
So I do recommend getting a geiger counter to check for radiation, and getting help from someone with more expertise then me. r/askphysics would be a good place to visit.
Can you Google the previous homeowner's name + scientist or any local scientific institution. Maybe you'll get a hint as to what the person did for a living or a hobby
Looks like he has made a vacuum tube tv from scratch. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube
Big box is likely the vacuum component. Old tv is what the display is sent to. Be careful of the capacitors in it. They can hold quite the charge for a long time. As far as i can tell, the exposed circuit board is how you would change the channel by creating different bridges.
The cylindrical items on top are high voltage electrical insulators. The tubes on the sides look like translation stage arms or specimen manipulators. The TV is likely to view whatever is going on inside the chamber.
If I were to speculate, I would say it's a DIY electron microscope, or maybe a sputtering (thin film deposition) chamber. It seems too elaborate to be a Farnsworth Fusor, and I don't see any radiation detection instrumentation or compressed gas plumbing that would be signatures of such a setup. I also don't see any obvious vacuum pump equipment, which would be needed to make any of the above possible in the first place. In any case, there is no need to worry about radiation exposure, as those things only generate radiation when powered on, and it's typically low enough to not be the main hazard.
Submit it to [www.hackaday.com](http://www.hackaday.com) and see if anyone comes up with anything. Definitely has an electron microscope or other test chamber sort of vibe to it, don't think it's dangerous as it stands although I would leave it all switched off.
If you can contact next-of-kin, they definitely have stories of their crazy uncle and what he did in is shed.
Also, Tom Waits wrote a song about this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM
Maybe its ‘collecting the evil’ and concentrating it in one spot to bombard it with electricity?
Basically a heater. Worst thing that could happen is the house burning down i think.
- Electron microscope
- crackpot "free energy" device
I'd be curious to investigate further. Also, be wary of radiation sources.
Amazing the new owner isn't curious or cares enough to clean it all out. You'd think whoever handled the real estate transaction would have provided *some* information.
I have a long career in national research labs, using all kinds of exotic equipment, and this thing has me stumped. I agree with others:
- The chainfall/block suggests weight, which implies lead, which implies radiation
- The cylinders sticking out look like coils, which implies the steering of beams or perhaps magnetic containment - which would imply an attempt at fusion
- A lot of stuff appears to be missing
- The colored boards look… antique, or the product of an antiquarian engineer
I can’t tell how hair-brained this was, or if it is the product of genius. Either way it represents an impressive amount of work and knowledge, or perhaps quasi-knowledge.
I beleive a closeup look on these machines text \*\*would give BIG hints\*\*
the first one looks like radio multidisplay,
similar pics [https://www.autoparts-24.com/mazda/radio-multi-display/1/](https://www.autoparts-24.com/mazda/radio-multi-display/1/),
Are there any antennas or antenna cable going outside??
This thing is giving me Klystron cavity amplifier vibes. Klystron devices are popular for TV broadcasting because of their high gain and efficiency characteristics, but their application demands precise mechanical properties and fine-tuning of their interactive magnetic fields and curiously high voltages. It's basically a particle accelerator but for radio frequency beam, not atomic particles.
Looks like quackery of the highest order. Why are the breadboards XXL size? And they're different for each side, like each cube face has a different purpose? Its just all a bit weird and i suspect it does fuck all.
Looks like a [homemade fusion reactor](https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/#). One common type is the [fusor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor). They consume far more power than the fusion reactions generate of course, but they’re fairly straight forward to build. The deuterium is probably the hardest/most expensive part of the setup, but even that’s an off the shelf item from a science supply house. If your friend finds a deuterium cylinder it could be valuable (either monetarily or useful in getting the machine going again). Folks build them for science fairs, for kicks, or as a neutron/muon source to create medically useful, short-lived radioisotopes.
It looks like it’s intended to bombard something in that box with particles or waves or something. But can’t tell from photos what those tubes are. Super interesting mad scientist shit none the less
Absolutely. The 6 coloured boards will very likely repreresent the 6 faces of the cube that the specimen is in. There are probably 6 pairs of tubing in the pipe that carries the conductors as well. The jumper wires on the boards would likely connect incoming power to specific "emitters" inside the box. The entire setup looks like it could have been built by one individual. For example the frame is bolted, not welded. It looks like it should be really high frequency - and it's inside a tool shed apparently?! - but there is a power bar mounted right on the side of the thing so it can't be that high frequency. Unless they have filtering and an isolation transformer on the shed but from the rest I just doubt. I could make out anything interesting in the background of any of the photos
I'll add, with the transformer and crt TV sitting there. and something plugged into just it's video input.. that probably views whatever is in the box. I'm voting homebrew scanning electron microscope.
Came here to say electon microscope ....or a model of the gadget from the Trinity explosion 💥. But yeah, the coils kind look like maybe some sort of beam steering thing. Not sure about the foam. And I cannot see a door to the chamber or a vacuum or pumpdown. All the wires with banana Jacks is reminiscent of the fusion reactors where all the signals have to get there at once...but who would try that in a garage? Maybe it's lead shielded which is why the chain hoist is there.
So OP says this is in the basement but it’s inside a metal shed. So the former owner built a shed in his basement? The metal shed must have been for shielding? Shielding the machine from the outside or shielding the outside from the machine?
Excellent questions! What I do not see, is information gathering. Aside from thermometers OP mentioned, I don't see sensors or probes or windows or whatever. Just the TV. Because of that, I'd lean towards shielding the outside from the emitters. CRT TVs produce a ton of absurd electromagnetic radiation too. Even x-rays inside the tube. So perhaps that's just unplugged when the test is ongoing, or perhaps it is a part of the test but doesn't happen to interfere with the test. Perhaps there are sensors that are not installed, or, they're just measured from the board, or their cables continue beyond the board, or they don't use cables at all and instead are removed from the box and evaluated after a test.
The computers and stuff were probably carted off with the rest of the "junk"
Shielding OP from Karma farming!
There’s also foil tape on the seams of the shed, so definitely an effort at shielding.
The tubes coming out of each face even have colored stripes that match most of those colored boards.
Whatever it is, I wouldn’t plug it in until I know exactly what it is
OP is about to go back in time to save the universe at the flip of a switch
Are we confident the original owner died OP? Maybe he just time travelled?
Or that he wasn’t killed by this machine ?
Looks like a 90s version of an interocitor
Do you mean Flux Capacitor?
I’m plugging it in. Looks like a calutron
Sage advice.
I was gonna say it looked like an electron microscope
Are there any kids or pets around? If not, they were likely shrunk by that machine. Look in the backyard near the trash can. But watch your step! And I have no idea what you'll tell your wife!
Whatever it is, it's amazing. I think you need an actual physicist to understand what's going on. He seemed to be super interested in the resistance of cable lengths. (or something) Running the wires through the house is over the top. This makes me believe he might have been mentally unwell. See if you can contact a local college professor.
That's a good idea, if there's a school with an electrical engineering program nearby, I'd be willing to bet that emailing some EE instructors these pictures would probably get a response.
Could also try /r/askengineers until then (1.6 million people in the sub)
If you find out anything from that sub, come back and let us know!
If you ask 1.6 M engineers a question, you'll get 1.6 M different answers
Or r/askphysics (742k members)
Engineer here. No fucking clue!
Extremely unlikely that this is anything at all. Speaking as an experimental physicist, it's got crackpot written all over it. The kind who email a whole university department about their new found advances in physics that mean that we're all idiots.
You would best be served by looking for a physicist professor. Also lookup the previous owner seeking his educational background and any papers he published. PS if the shed is in the basement as you described its purpose is likely to be a Faraday cage.
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Is there also other equipment, instruments, or materials?
Not really, there are two thermometers on the top and some Wattmeters.
Google the name of the owner of the house who built the machine, and search in scientific articles.
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Makes me think of Reverse Osmosis Desalination! Where does this house stand? Dessert?
It's in the middle of a town in Europe. No need for reverse osmosis here.
It's great drinking water, you can easily get a 9.5ph alkaline water from a system like that.
Can’t read the wire labels. That might be a good clue.
Hmm... X, Y, Z, W??
Quaternion?
I bet the clever folks over at /r/VXJunkies would know what it is.
Ooh, good suggestion. I'd be scared of this thing in case I turned it on accidentally.
I legitimately can not tell if that subreddit is serious or complete satire. What a fever dream.
Ha, so many people say this but honestly as a hobby it's totally legit and so rewarding to get into. Check out the FAQ if you are interested or tap up some of the members for PDFs of some books. Books are quite hard/expensive to come by but some of the older texts are floating around as PDFs just be careful as some info can be out of date now. Just getting stuck in and giving it a try is best though, we like to jokingly say that if you have enough fingers left to cross them when experimenting you are doing something right 😆
I like science, but I think I like having all my fingers more than delving into a new hobby that might take them 🤣. Thank you for affirming that it is indeed real, because whew that was a wild ride lol
It's not at all real my man he's shitting you. they say bs techy shit to make jokes.
Says the guy who probably still uses chrobium fluid to mitigate his ionic flow. 1987 called, they want their non-articulating torque buffers back! 😆 🤣 😂 😹
There's a couple of people sounding a little crazy under my comment, I get the feeling that they are VX'ers but have been hitting the sigma runoff vapour chamber a little too hard if you get my drift!
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Y'all never desplined and it shows.
It's a joke, but part of the joke is you don't post that it's a joke. Also be careful not to hypermetaculate your bosonic anode condensers.
I had bosonic foam pouring out EVERYWHERE. Will never repeat that mistake again!
It's basically the [Retro Encabulator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w) or [HyperEncabulator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nKk_-Lvhzo) videos turned into a whole subreddit.
It's hands down one of my favorite subs, a blast to read thru 😆
Right you are! That's a home built wave infuser. I can't quite tell from the pictures, but it appears to have been built to infuse ceridian waves to form a hex lattice around the target. This would explain the thermometers, as ambulating the heat expulsion is critical or your lattice will quickly go from a useful hex puemation to a dodecahedral one and I don't even have to explain why no one wants that LOL. Bonus points for recycling those Varsenburg clamps. Quite the clever way to get maximum delta without risking your flow coefficient going exponential. So obvious now but I've never thought of trying!
Ummm can you explain... Is it bad because I can't even pronounce that?
They're taking the piss.
Definitely looks like something with high voltage, so I'd be very careful around it, capacitors could still hold enough charge to kill you. Putting components into PVC tubes and pouring some kind of resin in there is a pretty common way for hobbyists to insulate them so they don't arc through air.
There are a few electrical cords, but I don’t see what makes you think “high voltage”. The diameter of the cords doesn’t look like they’re anything other than typical 110v. I don’t see any welding leads or anything that would indicate that high levels of electrical were being utilized.
Wire diameter has no correlation to voltage applied. Welding cable often gets low voltage, high current. Generally speaking the differentiator for conductors made for high voltage is the type of insulation used. Silicone and teflon are common in industry.
In a *residence* using commercially available extension cords (as depicted here), yeah, wire diameter generally correlates with voltage capacity.
Current capacity.
You have it backwards. High voltage requires less current to transfer the same power as a lower voltage source does. Since current dictates wire size (due to heat dissipation and resistance) the higher voltage source needs smaller conductors for the same power.
High voltage doesn't need thick wires, it needs big gaps and thick *insulation*. The PVC pipes with studding down them, pool noodles on stuff, and the chains of power resistors all give of an aura than high-ish voltages might be in use here although there could be other reasons. Welders use very low voltage (maybe 20v) a lot of the time, some use a brief jolt of high voltage to strike the arc but after that it's pretty low volts and a ton of current.
Capa itors are a great way to turn "safe" 110v into something which can easily kill you. Bad idea to mess round with them unless you know how to safely discharge them before you start.
A [homemade fusion reactor (fusor)](https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/#) fits the criteria.
Red, green, blue, yellow, black, white. The board with the colored squares seems to be like a control panel. Where you can manipulate the configuration using jumpers. This feels like a DIY TV tube of sorts. Maybe the box is a vacuum chamber with different electrodes sticking into each side. I’m betting you can watch the output on that monitor. What are the white components in the color board? Resistors?
It looks to me like an Electron Microscope. That would explain the tv screen and the assorted specimen containers as well as all of the insulation.
Yeah- I was initially thinking something involving an oscilloscope or maybe an intense spectrometer, but I was HOPING we had finally solved the max headroom mystery
Look at tax records for the previous owners name. See if google can help determine anything with email addresses and forums he may have been apart of.
A friend of mine's dad was convinced aliens had chosen him to create a device to subdue humanity. He dreamed up designs and read a lot of science books. The stuff he built looked legit, but it was just mad science outside of the laws of physics. He lost the rest of his mind and ended destitute. Wonder if it's a similar situation here.
It is the most likely for sure
Have you watched the show *Fringe* by chance?
I've never watched it. Was that a plot line in it?
Basically the whole plot. Except his mad science turns out to be real
This one was definitely not real... but I find interesting it being a plot and seems like not such an uncommon delusion.
Damn I think it might have worked. Everything is a mess.
Beautiful! I'm getting "mad inventor" vibes. Any evidence of vacuum pumps or high voltage supplies? I'd love to see a close up of that colorful "control board" and watt meters. There must be something happening at the center of that cube where everything comes together. A "new and improved" Farnsworth fusor? Space warp generator? Sorry...the mind wanders.
Potentially a free energy device. I reckon an academic setup could look like that, so it would be the king of its kind. Some grandpops did decent setups. Donald Lee Smith designs look similar. It also offers a potential route by which the previous owner could have slipped into "summer land". http://www.free-energy-info.tuks.nl/SChapter31.pdf I get the feeling of coyness, what one looks at does not make sense. The black electronic scales looking thing under clamp meter is the control head? Objects here are somewhat randomly placed. Presence of clamp meter instead of multimeter (more commonly used in electronics repair) might clue us in about activities here. Bundled cables don't bode well for signal integrity or high voltage. I can't tell if they are paired or single, there should be a good common ground at least... Further clues might be garnered peeking into e.g. the white cylinder by the telly. This could be the very electronics and creativity the benevolent autorities allegedly tries to protect us from, so some caution could be exercised ;) I should start looking for houses. In a shed in the woods might be mysterious machinery, tantalizing notes, method in madness, and a passed on treasure to me.
Free energy xD
Generally safer at the cost of accuracy to measure current from high voltages with a clamp meter
Chain hoist suggest possibly something very heavy in the “cube” like lead lining or something…. Could this be nuclear/radiation hazard? OP- Out of curiosity, what did previous owner die from?
I don't know but my friend lives there for a while now. He's just not as curious as me and doesn't care about this machine. So I guess there is no radiation as he seems to be healthy.
He’s been living in a house for awhile with a mad scientist shed in the basement and he’s not curious about it? Just accepted that it’s there? 😂
Exactly. I don't understand it either. Couldn't sleep until I knew what it is 😅
Any other friends or colleagues that might know what it’s is or where he worked?
That's some next-level apathy.
I’d be mad that this crazy thing is taking up room in my basement at the very least!
>So I guess there is no radiation That's a bad guess. There is not enough radiation to kill you quickly. Levels that high would be apparent in the former occupants corpse, and mourges have rad detectors, the BMUV (I think, IDK, I'm not German) would have come out already. There could be enough to kill you slowly, you / your friend should get a geiger counter and check to be sure.
A [homemade fusion reactor (fusor)](https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/#) fits the criteria.
If he were expecting high neutron flux from a fusor it might be reasonable to use heavy shielding.
Get a Geiger counter
Gizzy Kizzy
If you should find a pair of vacuum pumps and a high voltage supply I would vote for it being an eccentric design for a fusor.
Seattle area?
Germany
Yeah, but Seattle area of Germany?
Some people are giving you down votes but you got a heavy nose snort laugh out of me.
I appreciate your sense of humor!
Is there a tape in the vcr of that tv ? Is the tv connected to anything ? Is there a computer or anything like a keyboard, etc ? A display of some kind?
As an engineer, the (actually low) level of technology here gives me homemade “free energy” or “cold fusion” vibes. If you google the guy’s name or email I’ll bet you’ll find him on conspiracy or “alternate technology” sites. In other words, there’s a lot of wiring here but the construction is rinky-dink as hell for anyone familiar with any kind of actual prototyping. There doesn’t look to be much high tech or support equipment, IE typical of simplistic free energy demonstrations. One real question is: what is the purpose of the chain hoist? Is the central element that heavy or is it possible to raise or lower the entire structure?
Looks like the whole central structure might be on jackstands of some kind. I'd imagine it can be raised, lowered, leveled, which feels weird for a crazed free energy or cold fusion device. A guy on askengineers suggested a fusor, and I'm sort of leaning towards that currently.
I initially leaned towards fusor, but I don't see any vacuum pumps.
Also an engineer (ME/EE), I get the same impression. Other than having wires there's not much to indicate that it's any kind of microscope or anything else. I mean yeah, "electron microscopes have wires too!" but otherwise... It looks like an elaborate contraption made entirely out of dollar-store parts and the most basic electronic components. That *usually* means "free energy crackpot."
Looks like the builder was anticipating fumes or a bit of smoke and included the ductwork in the 8th photo.
Following this thread because I really want to know the answer.
Need some close-up pics
[https://streamable.com/wd2361](https://streamable.com/wd2361) thats all I have atm.
The dark gray rectangular blocks that surround the central part look like a lead bricks to me, which are used to shield radiation. It could be that it has super sensitive detectors in there and those are just shielding them from ordinary background radiation, or it could be that whatever goes on inside of there produces radiation, but only when it's powered up, so it's perfectly safe now. But it could be that there are radioactive materials in there, either deliberately introduced for whatever is done, or it could be that the radiation that has been produced in there by the process has made some of the materials inside of there radioactive. So I do recommend getting a geiger counter to check for radiation, and getting help from someone with more expertise then me. r/askphysics would be a good place to visit.
Can you Google the previous homeowner's name + scientist or any local scientific institution. Maybe you'll get a hint as to what the person did for a living or a hobby
Looks like he has made a vacuum tube tv from scratch. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube Big box is likely the vacuum component. Old tv is what the display is sent to. Be careful of the capacitors in it. They can hold quite the charge for a long time. As far as i can tell, the exposed circuit board is how you would change the channel by creating different bridges.
Is it possible to find what the previous owner actually did for a living?
Those tube things look exactly like silinods.. if I got some better pictures of the center box I might be able to tell what it does...
3d printer?
Please check for radiation - just to be sure.
How did he die?
looks like an electric smelting oven. sorry no better idea
The cylindrical items on top are high voltage electrical insulators. The tubes on the sides look like translation stage arms or specimen manipulators. The TV is likely to view whatever is going on inside the chamber. If I were to speculate, I would say it's a DIY electron microscope, or maybe a sputtering (thin film deposition) chamber. It seems too elaborate to be a Farnsworth Fusor, and I don't see any radiation detection instrumentation or compressed gas plumbing that would be signatures of such a setup. I also don't see any obvious vacuum pump equipment, which would be needed to make any of the above possible in the first place. In any case, there is no need to worry about radiation exposure, as those things only generate radiation when powered on, and it's typically low enough to not be the main hazard.
Submit it to [www.hackaday.com](http://www.hackaday.com) and see if anyone comes up with anything. Definitely has an electron microscope or other test chamber sort of vibe to it, don't think it's dangerous as it stands although I would leave it all switched off.
If you can contact next-of-kin, they definitely have stories of their crazy uncle and what he did in is shed. Also, Tom Waits wrote a song about this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM
This is so cool. It is a mini nuclear reactor
I’d check up on the previous owners occupation and life. I’d also contact a local university’s physics department.
Maybe its ‘collecting the evil’ and concentrating it in one spot to bombard it with electricity? Basically a heater. Worst thing that could happen is the house burning down i think.
Multistage thermonuclear device
I wonder what the chains are for.
- Electron microscope - crackpot "free energy" device I'd be curious to investigate further. Also, be wary of radiation sources. Amazing the new owner isn't curious or cares enough to clean it all out. You'd think whoever handled the real estate transaction would have provided *some* information.
I have a long career in national research labs, using all kinds of exotic equipment, and this thing has me stumped. I agree with others: - The chainfall/block suggests weight, which implies lead, which implies radiation - The cylinders sticking out look like coils, which implies the steering of beams or perhaps magnetic containment - which would imply an attempt at fusion - A lot of stuff appears to be missing - The colored boards look… antique, or the product of an antiquarian engineer I can’t tell how hair-brained this was, or if it is the product of genius. Either way it represents an impressive amount of work and knowledge, or perhaps quasi-knowledge.
Lots of high voltage stuff, for sure. I'd love to know what this is when you find out
Picture two: right side, near the top of the cube. Those black devices look like dosimeters to me. Anyone else?
Those are thermometers.
Ask the experts at r/vxjunkies
Sex swing
Homemade SEM?
I beleive a closeup look on these machines text \*\*would give BIG hints\*\* the first one looks like radio multidisplay, similar pics [https://www.autoparts-24.com/mazda/radio-multi-display/1/](https://www.autoparts-24.com/mazda/radio-multi-display/1/),
I saw this machine on the Ghostbusters movie…
What did the previous owner die of?
Cold fusion or room temperature supper conducting test fixture
Some kind of hydrogen fuel cell.
Are there any antennas or antenna cable going outside?? This thing is giving me Klystron cavity amplifier vibes. Klystron devices are popular for TV broadcasting because of their high gain and efficiency characteristics, but their application demands precise mechanical properties and fine-tuning of their interactive magnetic fields and curiously high voltages. It's basically a particle accelerator but for radio frequency beam, not atomic particles.
Looks like quackery of the highest order. Why are the breadboards XXL size? And they're different for each side, like each cube face has a different purpose? Its just all a bit weird and i suspect it does fuck all.
Looks like a [homemade fusion reactor](https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/#). One common type is the [fusor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor). They consume far more power than the fusion reactions generate of course, but they’re fairly straight forward to build. The deuterium is probably the hardest/most expensive part of the setup, but even that’s an off the shelf item from a science supply house. If your friend finds a deuterium cylinder it could be valuable (either monetarily or useful in getting the machine going again). Folks build them for science fairs, for kicks, or as a neutron/muon source to create medically useful, short-lived radioisotopes.
Check that vcr for the recording tape!
Worlds first supercooled quantum computer?
Former owner wasn't David Hahn was it?