A Chinese Junk Story

John Rawlings was a clever British born mechanical engineer who worked on Hexagon in its early days. He loved to tinker and build models using his old European Mecano set, similar to the  American Erector set.

One of the scale models he made was of the hexagon camera assembly rotating in its frame. The model was shown at various meetings. For fun John attached a coin slot to the model that required putting a quarter coin in it to turn it on. One tine he actually made Chester Nimitz, Jr. our CEO, to put a coin in so he could see it in motion.

John did well making his models, but he had less success with the Chinese Junk that he owned and sailed in Long Island Sound. I and several other engineers were invited one time to go for a sail on it. We were lucky as it performed ok during a two-hour sail. The next time John went out with some other PE staff, when they arrived at the dock the Junk was gone. It had sunk right at the pier. He apparently was not able to prevent a boat leak but he could build complicated models. His Chinese Junk is shown here with some lucky sailors.