It's a glass sculpture, part of a collection of amazingly lifelike glass sea creatures created by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka in the 1880's. In that era, according to the Design Museum:
Aquaria and natural history museums were then opening all over the world. As the techniques for preserving real plants or creatures were so rudimentary, they needed life-like replicas to exhibit and turned to Leopold Blaschka to provide them. During the 1860s, Leopold supplied glass sea-anenomes to museums, aquaria and private collectors all over Europe. He then added snails and jellyfish to his repertoire and in 1876 received a large order from London’s South Kensington Museum (now the Natural History Museum).
By then, Rudolf had joined his father in the workshop, where they worked alone without assistants. Some of their replicas were based on illustrations in natural history books, such as Philip Gosse’s 1853 A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast and G. B. Sowerby’s 1857 A Popular History of the Aquarium of Marine and Fresh-Water Animals and Plants. All the early sea-anenomes, for instance, were modelled on such illustrations.
Other replicas were inspired either by the Blaschkas’ own memories of seeing the real creatures - like the first jellyfish which Leopold remembered from a trip to North America - or by copying preserved specimens. In later years, as the Blaschkas became wealthier, they acquired live specimens to work from. These were kept in a specially built aquarium at their Dresden home.
Comments (7)
Anyhoo, I was just mentioning that I wish Dougall was my neighbor, I'd serve him a lifetime supply of pie to learn the craft...I also expressed my enthusiasm for Chihuly's work even though he's only directing his apprentices now (with only one eye, no depth perception makes glassblowing a hazardous undertaking)...and I was also wondering if anyone here is familiar with Paul Stankard's work?
http://www.paulstankard.com/
If you like stuff along these lines, you'll love Paul's glassworks as well! :-)
--TwoDragons
testing...testing...
--TwoDragons
It appears to be geared with the main rotor, but is likely pitched such that it doesn't provide any thrust to the left or right during flight. When the pilot wants to turn, he pitches the tail rotor blades to provide thrust.
If the tail rotor failed, the helicopter would be just fine, although it would have no ability to turn on its emergency descent.
actually it would start to spin uncontrollably with out the tail rotor, just because there is no powered axle between the main rotor and the main body of the helicopter doesn't mean that the friction from the rotor and where it is connected to the body isn't enough to cause it to start spinning. We don't live in a world with frictionless bearings. Also the fuel delivery system to the rockets probably add's a lot more friction to the main rotors axle.
It might not happen as quickly and violently as a normal heli would if it lost it's rotor, but if he were high enough, by the time he got the heli to the ground he could be spinning like a tea cup.
I like the noise of that thing- While most chopperbuilders work frantically on reducing or even cancelling the noise of their rotorblades as best as they can to make their choppers more useable in crowded areas, these guys come up with a system that wakes up the whole valley when they start up their machine. :-D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhpUJLhQfs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_Helikopter_Industrie_(NHI)
And an American prototype:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YH-32_Hornet
All designs failed...
The difference with friction as a force is two fold. First, obviously, is that it would be in the direction of the rotors, not the opposite direction. Second, we're talking an incredibly small amount of the output of the engine being transferred via friction (easily as low as .01%). Third, it takes much more energy to spin the heavier body of the helicopter than the rotors.
So it would take very, very little to cancel it out.