Took some snaps of this ancient bit of kit at work. We use it for teaching Students about vibration, and damping. It was probably bought in the 1960's. Its so old that the accompanying electronic control box uses valves rather than transistors! Still goes, and the manufacturer still makes a near identical product. Of course the modern control box is minuscule compared with ours.

With the assistance of a Student, we (the mechanical tech, and I) did a modification to modernise the output, by linking it to a PC. It's worked well for over three years now, with the ability to record data in real time, as opposed to manually taking measurements from (expensive and awkward) thermal paper afterwards. Makes it much easier for the Students to understand what's going on too.

The sales rep for the manufacturer paid us a visit last week, and was impressed with the improvement. So we're sending them some information (photos etc) of how we did it, and some sort of similar mod may be made to the new versions. A new control box for us would be nice in return!

Suspect a little dusting would improve the photos...