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<\/a><\/p>\nMy father had a subscription, and by the time I learned to read, there were a hundred back issues with the latest news in cars, airplanes, electronics, atomic power, and the exploration of space. \u00a0I got a chemistry set for my 10th birthday, and had a lab under the basement stairs with a slop sink in the laundry room.<\/p>\n
The basement was finished, with a large chalkboard and bench seating that ran around two sides of the room. \u00a0My friends and I started\u00a0a science club, and we moved the meetings from house to house.<\/p>\n I started making things from wood about the same time. \u00a0Every issue of Popular Mechanics had lots of articles: \u00a0Shop Hints, plans, how to use tools.<\/p>\n A few years later, I joined a science club at the Jewish Center where I learned electronics and Morse Code while studying\u00a0for a Novice ham radio license: \u00a0WN8NRP. \u00a0My friend Stuart and I built our own radio transmitters from scratch, buying components from the Fairchild Electronics factory outlet a few blocks away and went on the air.<\/p>\n I had received a subscription to Scientific American for my Bar Mitzvah. \u00a0In 1966, there was an article in the column Mathematical Games about Soma Cubes, a puzzle invented by Piet Hein. \u00a0I showed it to my friend John and he made one piece by unfolding the shape and cutting it from cardboard. \u00a0I made\u00a0a set by cutting cubes on a table saw and gluing them together.<\/p>\n In high school I sold Soma Cubes to friends for 75 cents a set.<\/p>\n (these I made about five years ago; the sets in high school were made of pine and glued up from blocks)<\/p>\n John and I would collect the solutions people had made on 3 x 5 cards cut in half. \u00a0We collected\u00a0about a hundred different solutions.<\/p>\n I took a computer programming class in the 11th grade. \u00a0Cass Technical High School had leased an IBM 1620 computer: \u00a0it was used to take attendance, and I was in the second programming class offered. \u00a0The computer had a Winchester;\u00a0what we today call a hard drive. \u00a0The Winchester was bigger than a 2-drawer file cabinet and had\u00a0a clear cover; you could watch the arm move over the spinning disk.<\/p>\n I had a friend who lived down the street, David Lipson, who was really smart; \u00a0he once asked me, “Why is the square root of two equal to the fourth root of four?”<\/p>\n I was elected president of the Math Club. \u00a0I started working on David’s problem. \u00a0My solution required raising a number to a power an infinite number of times, and decided to use the computer to do this. \u00a0I went to a local IBM shop and explained what I wanted to do, and they gave me three manuals. \u00a0I studied the manuals and wrote the program. \u00a0The calculation took a long time: \u00a0I rewrote the program to allow an interrupt, so I could go to the computer room first hour, punch the interim results to a card, and go to class second hour. The next day I’d load the program from the Winchester and read in the card. \u00a0The calculations took 28 hours of computer time.<\/p>\n It turns out, for every number greater than one, there is a pair of nth roots. \u00a0The only number without a pair is e, the base of the natural logarithms. Starting with the larger n, the program could calculate the smaller n.<\/p>\n With 2 the only integer between one and e, it was reasonable that it would have\u00a0an integer dual: \u00a04.<\/p>\n I wrote an algebraic proof of my results and discovery: \u00a0the eth root of e is the largest value of the nth root of n. \u00a0This became my science fair project, and I won a first prize at the 1968 Metropolitan Detroit Science Fair in the category Mathematics and Computers.<\/p>\n Forty years later, I discovered I’d solved Steiner’s Problem.<\/a><\/p>\n I attended Wayne State University to major in mathematics but left after three years to go to New York.<\/p>\n In New York I worked as a scenic carpenter, building sets and props for photographers and off-broadway productions. \u00a0In addition, I built furniture for sale. \u00a0In 1975, I got a contract to write a book for apartment dwellers who wanted to build their own furniture: \u00a0this was published in 1977 under the title The Apartment Carpenter<\/a>.<\/p>\n After twelve years of professional woodworking, I left the scenic carpenter business and in 1986 became a Computer Operator at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, part of NYU. \u00a0This was the same year the punch card readers were retired, and personal computer labs were opened. \u00a0A few years later I was managing the computer labs, and gave weekly tutorials on computer topics to students and staff.<\/p>\n In 1995 the School of Continuing and Professional Studies hired me to teach Introduction to the Macintosh courses for their digital media department. \u00a0I did this for two years. \u00a0In 1996 (ten years before youtube) \u00a0I produced and hosted 26\u00a0weekly half-hour television shows for public access called MacTalk where I explained how to use the Mac.<\/p>\n Unicycle Basics<\/a> is a video where I explain how to ride a unicycle. \u00a0It has had over 100,000 views.<\/p>\n I’ve been interested in Astronomy since reading The Golden Book of Stars and Planets. \u00a0In 1999 I bought a good telescope, a Meade ETX-125 f\/15 Maksutov-Cassegrain with go-to and tracking capability. \u00a0After seeing the pictures of Mars after the 2003 opposition taken with computers and webcams, I got a webcam and started taking pictures of the moon. \u00a0You can see more at finkh.wordpress.co<\/a>m.\u00a0 I am currently a member of the Amateur Astronomers Association and do sidewalk astronomy at various locations around New York City.<\/p>\n In 2008 I won Time Aloft at the New Millennium Paper Airplane Contest.<\/a>\u00a0 Later that same year the Crane paper company (they make the paper for US currency) hired me to conduct a paper airplane contest in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. \u00a0Many children did not know how to make paper airplanes, so I would show each one how to make a paper airplane. \u00a0(I’d done this with a daycare class years earlier.)<\/p>\n In 2009 the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched. \u00a0One of the goals of the mission was to gather topographic data accurate to 10 meters for the entire surface of the Moon. \u00a0NYU had recently purchased a 3D printer, so I decided to make models of the lunar surface using data from the LRO.\u00a0 I first built a kit CNC, then purchased a larger CNC router and started making molds.<\/p>\n These were then duplicated on a vacuform machine I had built to make copies. \u00a0The shading you see is applied with an airbrush. \u00a0I attended\u00a0the 2015 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference as a vendor.<\/p>\n In 2010, I turned 60. \u00a0My mother and sisters got me an iPad, which had been released a month earlier. \u00a0I wanted to build a stand so I could read lying down. \u00a0I put a hole in the stand to hear the music, and it amplified the sound. \u00a0A professor I had helped with Mathematica programming suggested there would be a better acoustic match if I used a megaphone. \u00a0The result was the Sounder. \u00a0I sold about 300 on etsy, until the landlord decided not to allow any more woodworking in the basement.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0(30 years on, still used in advertising at setshopwest.com)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n Wooden model of Harpalus Crater 10″ square.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n