Bridge Climb Report


Early morning, with my cousin in tow, I collected a couple of friends, and set across the bridge in the Morris Minor.

Crossing Sydney Harbour Bridge in a Morris Minor

But how to get to the top of the arch? There to cavort

X  On top of arch  wharves in background

and take in the view.

top of arch A and X

As to getting onto the arch: the direct route was blocked by a locked gate, about which was erected a barrier in the shape of a rising sun -- the Department of Main roads seemed to think every day was Anzac Day.

A and B climbing around the Rising Sun obstruction on compression arch

One had to swing out avoiding the train power lines.

But then it was really easy.



From the arch we watched ships passing underneath

Ship viewed from arch through the bridge structure

and

Ship viewed passing through the bridge cross strusses

and clambered over both arches and the painting cranes.

On the very top of the arch, there is a tower to climb.

Stepping from the arch onto the painters travelling plank, it paid to look at the camera rather than at the gap below one's feet.

B Clambering on Painting jig

In the background are the wharves to the west of the Harbour Bridge.

And after all that clambering about, time to dive in for a swim near Luna Park.

He never jumped

or maybe a ferry ride to Manly.

Manly ferry viewed from top of arch through strusses

But what's that east of the ferry -- its Benelong Point -- but no sails.


Benelong Point had for many years been the locale of a key city tram depot -- which was demolished to start construction of the Opera House. The last tram actually ran during 1961. The Opera House was finally completed in 1973.

This arch trip was the only such trip I lead in daylight -- all other arch trips were done at night. It was just a private trip. But later on in the same year I organised an evening arch tour for all the interested delegates to a university student conference -- that of the National Science Faculty Association, Undoubtedly the first organised arch tour.

DISCLAIMER: Since this era security cameras have been installed everywhere on the bridge. And Police comms are much improved. So don't even think of copying this action. Just pay your $$$ to the tourist operator.





The YoYo puzzles  of YOYO and yoyo
Dragons
Dragons are captivating problems in qualitative physics, which require at most high school mathematics for their solution , and mostly no maths. YoYo -- to left -- is an example dragon. Note conflicting heuristics.
Upper case = YOYO for a steady pull to the right- which direction does the YoYo go? YoYo rotates clockwise ??
Lower case = yoyo for a steady pull to the right- which direction does the YoYo go? In direction of pull?
The paper I wrote at MIT in 1974, Artificial Intelligence Lab memo 338 (1974) elucidates the Art of Snaring Dragons, and relates dragons in qualitative physics to the conservation puzzles such as the egg cup puzzle, and other qualitative puzzles Piaget used to explore the thinking of children.
The La Trobe Talking Communicator with monitor and 5-keyboard
The La Trobe Talking Communicator
The La Trobe Talking Communicator
1981 was the international year of the disabled, and it was also the first year a text to speech chip was manufactured, making possible very compact and cheap computer speech. I conceived of a project entitled "Computer Communication, Access, and Programming by Severely Handicapped (Non-Speech) Children. With funding from the Schools Commission, I put together a small group, and designed fabricated and programmed a battery of 10 microprocessor-based talking communicators, controllable via either single key or 5 key keyboards - meeting a long-felt need by the Yooralla Special School. Its notable that project was completed close to $20,000 under budget. However the School's Commission used the unpent funds plus later grants to fund a teacher controlled project at Yooralla -- so blocking further development of what had been a world leading project, even cited in the Hawke Government's Report on its First Sixth Months (p42)
OZNAKI System -  microprocessor Wizard's Box, Zonky robot, adapted TV as monitor
OZNAKI
The Oznaki Project 1975-84
In December 1975 I was invited to attend a NSF-funded "Loud Thinking Workshop" at MIT, and enroute I visited the worlds second computer store at Palo Alto. On my return I successfully sought funding OZNAKI - Polish for Symbol -was an educational robotics project that I ran from 1975-84. With research student the first Turtle robot outside the US was constructed. The first micoprocessor was only four years old, so software support was non-existent, requiring signal work in developing software development tools.
harveycohen.net/papers
PAPERS
A chronological listing of my published journal and conference papers on visual surveillance systems, image engineering and visual information systems, including image processing generally, and parallel processing techniques, together with some papers devoted to the design of image codecs, to aspects of satellite systems and to the education of engineers, from 1989 to 1997 and 2005. Plus the abstracts of my published papers in physics.