And when I discover that I've turned up to the interview with a tape recorder with flat batteries, and am, by the time a hotel employee turns up with spare ones, in such a fluster that I can't work out how to change them, I can only stare at the boyish creature, calmly flipping off plastic flaps, inserting fresh batteries, and handing the contraption back to me, with awe.
The orchestrion's odd combination of 21st-century technology and 19th-century aesthetics — the contraption harks back to orchestral simulators popular before the advent of recorded music — is sure to fascinate, he said.
O'Day may still be riding his contraption, and Chris Dickerson, back from the minors, is still riding his bike to the ballpark, helping to "reduce my carbon footprint," and Joe Hogarty, the team's strength coach, is pedaling around, too.
The description of the Dr. Seuss-inspired contraption in the back of the S.U.V. offered by the police suggests someone who tried to go to school on the Internet but didn't have the patience to complete too many classes.
I would not think twice about getting into the contraption and traveling back to my younger years in school.
As I exit the subway station, there's no mistaking which way I'm supposed to be headed: in front of me, a horde of kids pedalling single-wheeled contraptions are jolting back and forth as they try and balance themselves with their arms out.
We then ran the names through what I call the Cruel Nickname Generator, a mental contraption I'd created back in my days of terrorizing girls during elementary school recess.
This lock/case contraption will set you back about $50 and is available now.
After hovering for a while, he flies around the space, his legs dangling below him, supported by a jetpack; a giant glossy white and black contraption strapped to his back.
These were madcap contraptions whose cunning harkened back to a midcentury era of do-it-yourself ingenuity, to the days when weekend hobbyists routinely tinkered in basement workshops and a young mother sick of damp diapers invented the first disposable model.
Jobs, with incisive assistance from his design team, reshaped the personal computer from a wobbly, Professor Branestawm-like contraption lashed together at the back of a garage, or from an early Moog synthesiser lookalike, into a kind of digital jewellery.
