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Non-Thorn Related / 'Court jester in the palace of science' on bicycle stability
« Last post by Andre Jute on Today at 07:48:50 AM »The Washington Post, in its obituary, quoted someone unnamed describing David E H Jones as the ’court jester in the palace of science’. That’s a witty description, but not fair, not exhaustive, not even comprehensive. David Jones did a lot of innovative thinking and writing for which other men took patents and even Nobel Prizes. An example is 3D printing, which Dr Jones laid out in New Scientist in 1974, 11 years before Chuck Hull ‘invented’ the process in 1984.
He was also a prime practical prankster, the inventor of fake but plausible perpetual motion machines, one of which is in the Technisches Museum Wien (Vienna). On the other hand, I can offhand, without blinking again, name three prominent scientists that I have known who would have given their eye-teeth to have NASA carry their chemical garden into space, as they did for Dr Jones.
But, arguably, Dr Jones’ most important work for the future of the world, was proving that a bicycle with a reversed fork is stable.
That in the process Dr Jones incidentally killed the mistaken belief that some mysterious gyroscopic force was involved in bicycles staying upright, is a bonus but not all that important.
Bad thinking on that subject had already resurrected itself after Francis Whipple of Cambridge University in 1899 proved conclusively in the rigorous mathematics of his algorithm now known as the ‘Whipple Model’ that a riderless bicycle is stable.
And bad gyroscopic claims will resurrect themselves after Jones — probably about now, as fifty to sixty years seems about a Kondratieff Cycle for delusions of gyroscopes. Watch this space.
Here’s the bibliographic entry and link for the article:
Jones, David E. H. (1970). "The stability of the bicycle" (PDF). Physics Today. 23 (4): 34–40.
The notation resolves to Physics Today, April 1970, pages 34-40. If the link above doesn’t work for you, here’s the link full out:
https://www.phys.lsu.edu/faculty/gonzalez/Teaching/Phys7221/vol59no9p51_56.pdf
There’s also a YouTube video about Jones and bicycle stability:
https://youtu.be/J5ICTbqKoEI?si=n5cQhf_KXDav0e9n
Here’s his brief biography at Wikipedia, coming with the usual warning about Wikipedia being a lowest common denominator source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._H._Jones
Hat tip to Danneaux, the confidant of AI, for the knowledge, the link, and a giggle besides.
He was also a prime practical prankster, the inventor of fake but plausible perpetual motion machines, one of which is in the Technisches Museum Wien (Vienna). On the other hand, I can offhand, without blinking again, name three prominent scientists that I have known who would have given their eye-teeth to have NASA carry their chemical garden into space, as they did for Dr Jones.
But, arguably, Dr Jones’ most important work for the future of the world, was proving that a bicycle with a reversed fork is stable.
That in the process Dr Jones incidentally killed the mistaken belief that some mysterious gyroscopic force was involved in bicycles staying upright, is a bonus but not all that important.
Bad thinking on that subject had already resurrected itself after Francis Whipple of Cambridge University in 1899 proved conclusively in the rigorous mathematics of his algorithm now known as the ‘Whipple Model’ that a riderless bicycle is stable.
And bad gyroscopic claims will resurrect themselves after Jones — probably about now, as fifty to sixty years seems about a Kondratieff Cycle for delusions of gyroscopes. Watch this space.
Here’s the bibliographic entry and link for the article:
Jones, David E. H. (1970). "The stability of the bicycle" (PDF). Physics Today. 23 (4): 34–40.
The notation resolves to Physics Today, April 1970, pages 34-40. If the link above doesn’t work for you, here’s the link full out:
https://www.phys.lsu.edu/faculty/gonzalez/Teaching/Phys7221/vol59no9p51_56.pdf
There’s also a YouTube video about Jones and bicycle stability:
https://youtu.be/J5ICTbqKoEI?si=n5cQhf_KXDav0e9n
Here’s his brief biography at Wikipedia, coming with the usual warning about Wikipedia being a lowest common denominator source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._H._Jones
Hat tip to Danneaux, the confidant of AI, for the knowledge, the link, and a giggle besides.