A "Meccanograph" is any of a variety of mechanical drawing machines, usually (always?) employing "cranked rod" mechanisms, built using the Meccano® model construction system.
A sort of precursor to the Meccanograph was shown in the The Hornby System of Mechanical Demonstration (Liverpool: Meccano, Ltd., 1909) on p. 19 as Model 4 of Section B, "Tracing a Locus." A scan of this manual is online in the Gallery of the nzmeccano.com site, http://www.nzmeccano.com/image-44755 This mechanism was a simple cranked rod on a slider, intended to assist in the design of engine connecting rods.
The earliest reference I have found to a Meccanograph proper is in the booklet Meccano Prize Models: A Selection of the Models which were Awarded Prizes in the Meccano Competition, 1915-1916 . (NY: Meccano Company, Inc., [n.d., presumably 1916]), where a basic Meccanograph is shown on page 5. See Gallery of the nzmeccano.com site, http://www.nzmeccano.com/image-44755
It then appears in the 1916 Meccano manuals, several editiosn of which are online in the Gallery of the nzmeccano.com site, http://www.nzmeccano.com/image-44755. These list it as Model No. 316.
It appears as a "teaser" in the 1916 US edition of the No. 0 manual, which I've scanned and reprinted in ../../../ Construction Toys -> Meccano -> Literature.
Later, it appeared as Meccano "Super Model" No. 13. See the collection of Meccano Supermodel literature in the Gallery of the nzmeccano.com site, http://www.nzmeccano.com/image-18209.
Here it is from a later manual, Instructions, Book No. 1 of 1925.
This relatively simple Meccanograph is only the beginning, though. Searching the web for "meccanograph" quickly reveals a number of much more complex, exceedingly ingenious mechanisms.
The extracts here from the 1925 Meccano Instructions Book No. 1 are the public domain in Great Britain. Its initial term of copyright (50 years for a corporate anonymous work) expired at the end of 1975. On 1996-01-01 British copyright was extended retroactively to 70 years, but for this work its 70 year copyright would have expired the day before, at the end of 1995. In the US, this work is and has always been in the public domain. From 1925 through 1995 it was in the public domain due to failure to comply with US copyright formalities as then required. From 1996-01-01 it remained in the public domain as it was in the public domain in Great Britain on that day (when retroactive US copyright was imposed on all foreign works in copyright in their home countries on that day). The source from which I obtained these images, http://www.meccanopedia.com/ has imposed no new copyright on them.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2012 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
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