Gravity (gravitational) force calculator

I love these rare, quiet evenings when a white sheet of thick paper is pricked in the middle of the table. The transparent moment of the drafting gravitational force instrument have stopped among the tangled lines. A cone of light, covered with a green cap, sways slightly above the table. The pencil has frozen on an unfinished sketch. Dozens, hundreds of fantastic options arise and slowly float along the rough sheet, and tired eyes reluctantly follow the strange interweaving of lines and numbers. The last chords of the anthem fall silent. 

 

I sit without moving to prolong these minutes when the thought has gathered, concentrated, and become tense, like a bowstring before pushing an arrow into flight. And then, among the kaleidoscope of fragmentary images, an ideal design appears for the gravitational force device. At first, it is a shapeless electronic vortex, a pulsating clot of electromagnetic energy. But its blurred contours gradually become more precise. A curved, corrugated shell of a resonance chamber appears around the electron cloud. Its outlines become sharper and more defined.

 

Only an accurate calculation can confirm the design. But it is boring to check all the sizes and proportions, divide, add, multiply, and pedantically find maximums and minimums. A sly thought leads away from painstaking, monotonous work. Somewhere far away, in the subconscious, unclear places are fading. How irresistibly attractive are these - the design's most important and responsible details! How new and understandable they are! In an instant, the entire technological process of manufacturing a new, unprecedented, super-powerful, ultra-high-frequency generator seems clear and simple. 

 

I am already in the workshop. The machines are running at full speed, making my dream come true. A fine-toothed disk cutter scrapes white scales off the blank of the lathe cutter and throws off red curls from a copper blank. My resonance shell is made of the purest electrolytic, hydrogen-heated pink copper, completely ready and finished. The tungsten cathodes are precisely adjusted to the place...

 

The last operation is assembly and welding. The violet flame of the gas burners licks the cylinder of thin quartz glass. Its fragile walls are filled with a ruddy heat. The heated glass loses its transparency. At first, it is still translucent, like a ripe cherry. Then, the glass becomes like dark cherry velvet. It is no longer brittle or ringing. The glass is now viscous and flexible. My old friend, the best factory glassblower, introduces a black graphite spatula into the burner flame. He smoothes the heated cylinder's thin edge, compressing and expanding it. He presses the softened glass to the sharp, thinned edges of the resonance chamber. The glass sticks to the copper, forming a dense, air-tight joint. The glassblower turns the taps and reduces the air and gas supply on the brewing machine. The flame weakens and changes its shape and color. It becomes yellow and smoky. The finished joint cools, and its cherry glow disappears. Now the noisy flame has died down, subsided. The dream is realized; before me, it is a ready-made device.

 

I raise the pencil and sketch the bizarre contours hastily and carefully so as not to frighten these fragile visions. The precise calculation I seemed to have gotten away from and dodged is now inevitable. Is everything adjusted? Is everything coordinated in this delightful engineering dream? No, there is no way to escape the calculations. How many of them are there, these merciless and inexorable judges? Electrical, mechanical, hydrodynamic, thermal calculations... Will the cathode screen, this insignificant auxiliary part, withstand the pressure of heat losses?

 

Will the metal-glass junction overheat during operation? A strict calculation delivers a verdict: the specific heat load is higher than normal. The screen must be expanded; the cathode must be moved.

 

A small, completely unnoticeable screw trembled and rolled. The parts slide and disappear into the darkness one after another. Their mutual connection disintegrates. All that remains is a pile of broken glass and dead, heavy, unprocessed copper. Then it disappears, and before me is only a chaos of pencil strokes and a yellow transparent shadow from me to the drawing of the perfect gravitational instrument.