The curious design of the Herzmaschine prompted me to dig a little further into its background. It seemed slightly odd that the Metropolis power station wasn’t simply based on the appearance of a typical turbine & generator hall of the era. After all, these would have probably looked reasonably “modern” to 1920s audiences. Here is a typical example, which was build in 1922:  The set designer for the movie was an artist named Erich Kettelhut. It is now possible to see many of his original sketches for the Metropolis sets and models online. Interestingly, his original sketch for the ‘heart machine’ looked nothing like the final set:  Maybe director Fritz Lang wasn’t keen on this design, and asked to see something that looked a bit more “futuristic” instead.
In 1918 a short fictional story appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine, called “The magnetic Storm”. It was written by Hugo Gernsback – who was also the publisher of this, and several other “popular science” magazines. The story can be read here.It was also re-published in a 1926 edition of Amazing Stories – and both were accompanied by the following illustration:  Note that Nikola Tesla actually featured as a character in this story. He and Hugo Gernsback knew each other well, and Tesla regularly wrote articles for various of Gernsback’s popular science magazines. It seems that the story was also annoted with the following: “The above occurrences as well as the cited experiments and effects of the Tesla currents are
actual facts checked by Mr. Tesla himself, who saw the proof of this story.—Editor.”So it seems that there might be a distinct possibility that the design of the Herzmaschine could have been influenced by one of Hugo Gernsback’s “scientifiction” story illustrations - and so, indirectly, by Nikola Tesla. If you watch the movie clip, you will also see that during the destruction sequence large electric arcs are shown leaping between the coils, as well as from other parts of the machine. The scene is reminiscent of the famous photos taken at Tesla’s Colorado Springs laboratory. Whether Paul Baumann knew any of this when he came up with the basic layout of the Testatika is anyone’s guess.
« Last Edit: 2023-07-19, 15:48:20 by Havercake »
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…” --Isaac Asimov
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Topic: Herzmaschine (Read 531 times)
