Model 23 Trinitite Box
Completed January 1997
Price list
This is was first WPS product. The heart of the
device is a tiny diorama, water
colors on lead, with a reactor-shielding lead glass window,
revealing a view, north and east, from the stolen McDonald Ranch,
towards the Oscura Mountains, not quite north enough to encompass
the Trinity Site; the soil and rock in the foreground is a
recently-native form of man-made rock called trinitite. It is
mildly radioactive (only four times average background radiation at
sea level; quite safe within or without its little box). In the sky
is the window of a Geiger-Mueller tube; with each disintegration of
Cesium-137 within the trinitite a beta particle is emitted; those
that reach the G-M tube cause a small spark within the tube, made
audible with electronics inside the Model 23. Each same spark,
processed by other electronics within, triggers one view of each of
the frames on the film strip, projected badly on a tiny viewing
screen visible in the viewing hood, after the red start switch is
pressed. Some of the front-panel controls affect operation of the
device.
The housing is a found box, once
hosting a dew-point measuring instrument, which coincidentally
required a tiny amount of Radium for its operation. The front panel
is a quarter-inch slab of brass, reverse-etched in an eight-hour
process to leave raised lettering, the varied colors due to copper
and zinc dissolving in the etchant at different rates. The images
are on a continuous loop film strip, a fractional-horsepower motor
and a dog clutch advance the film strip one image or so at a time,
triggered by trinitite disintegration. An 18-inch long optical path
is folded within the machine. The knobs are half-century old
bakelite, the controls themselves of the utmost quality, chosen for
tactile feel. The G-M tube and it's high-voltage supply were
scavenged from a Canadian military radiation survey meter; the rest
of the electronics are of modern design.
WPS HOME
This is was first WPS product. The heart of the
device is a tiny diorama, water
colors on lead, with a reactor-shielding lead glass window,
revealing a view, north and east, from the stolen McDonald Ranch,
towards the Oscura Mountains, not quite north enough to encompass
the Trinity Site; the soil and rock in the foreground is a
recently-native form of man-made rock called trinitite. It is
mildly radioactive (only four times average background radiation at
sea level; quite safe within or without its little box). In the sky
is the window of a Geiger-Mueller tube; with each disintegration of
Cesium-137 within the trinitite a beta particle is emitted; those
that reach the G-M tube cause a small spark within the tube, made
audible with electronics inside the Model 23. Each same spark,
processed by other electronics within, triggers one view of each of
the frames on the film strip, projected badly on a tiny viewing
screen visible in the viewing hood, after the red start switch is
pressed. Some of the front-panel controls affect operation of the
device.