In a world where new technologies are more often developed by multi-national corporate task forces rather than mad geniuses in their garages, James Dyson is one of the few remaining celebrity inventors. Father of all sorts of fancy vacuum technologies (if you have a bagless cleaner at home, you have Dyson to thank) and futuristic hand-dryers, perhaps his most appealing creation is the above-pictured crazy upward fountain. Wrong Garden is based on a logic-defying lithograph by M.C. Escher: the famously paradoxical Waterfall.
Simulating the same sense of gravity-defying perpetual motion as Escher’s illustration, Dyson’s fountain relies on a series of underground air pumps and diversionary bubbles to trick onlookers into thinking they’re seeing something they’re not. Check out this 2003 article from the BBC for a full explanation of the trickery at work.
Via Make.
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