It began with Melville’s reference of a “cycloid” in “Moby Dick.” Do you know what a cycloid is? You can draw one. Secure a ruler to a piece of paper. Practice rolling a disc (a quarter ...

[InventorArtist] built a stepper-based cycloid drawing machine, and made use of a nifty little hack along the way. The machine uses a rotating turntable to spin a piece of drawing paper.

As the bike moves, the light rises and falls in a series of arches. A long-exposure nocturnal photograph would show a cycloid, the curve traced out by a point on a circle as it rolls along a ...