Anyone else encountered this?
It was designed in 1970s by the late Professor Artur Fischer (who also invented plastic wall plugs); as an educational toy for children from age 8-10 upwards, aimed at the same market for Meccano and Lego Technic.
Outside DE it seems to be mainly grown adults with University level or equivalent knowledge who bought it (or understood how to put any of it together) – although a German friend told me in the late 1990s it was used a lot in high school, college and training courses for the public utilities.
I had forgotten about it myself until there was an obituary for Prof Fischer on Die Sendung mit der Maus earlier this year; and didn’t realise it was still popular although one big advantage is the models can scale up to and interface with much larger constructions made from aluminium rather than plastic)
Some of the best projects are published on these German language newsletters – I have linked to some pictures of an “electromechanical Internet with two servers” and an “all seeing eye” (description is in Dutch) so those who do not understand the language can still look at the pictures.
https://www.ftcommunity.de/details.php?image_id=35813
https://www.ftcommunity.de/details.php?image_id=39826
PDF downloads for the newsletters (auf Deutsch) are below…
https://www.ftcommunity.de/ftcomm.php?file=ftpedia
