"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

The new Cox cylinder is for practice. Once I get this one working, and
possibly the TD 09, then I'm planning on building an Owens Mate (see
http://www.modelenginenews.org, look under "projects").

An interesting site. However, I have to comment on something that I keep
seeing in print that has been driving me nuts -- in the first article on
building EDMs, they say it was a Russian invention.

It was not a Russian invention. That baloney was perpetuated by
Charmilles EDM in the early '50s. It actually was invented by the
predecessor to the US company Elox, who sold two of their servo-type
tap-buster/square-hole-cutting eroders to the Soviet government two years
before we entered WWII. The Soviets claim they invented it in the early
years of the war.

Back in '77, when I wrote a lengthy article on EDMs for _American
Machinist_, I studied the history in great detail, and read the
translated papers by the Lazarenkos, who claimed the invention. They
added some minor twists but it was basically the proto-Elox machine.

Just setting the record straight. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Send him an email. He's a good guy, and enough of an academic that an
opposing view (particularly if you can back it with citations) will be
meat and drink to him.

Well, that would be very tough. I could give him leads but my guess is
they'd come up dry at this late date. I had access then to the McGraw-Hill
library, which was full of historical metalworking books and the entire
_American Machinist_ archives. I doubt if there is a complete set of those
anywhere now, except, possibly, in the Library of Congress.

I'll take a look at my old article and see what it says. We didn't use
references on those Special Reports, so I'd have to do it from memory.

--
Ed Huntress