The Seven Discs

A laboratory at a university in California late at night, the room dark except one small desk lamp, on a bare workbench a pneumatic arm about forty centimetres tall, a two-step base of bright aluminium, a round drum on a wide disc, a short column, above it a stack of seven round perforated aluminium discs with grey braided rubber bellows between them, the stack bent steeply to one side, at its top a thin pointed metal rod carrying a tiny glowing bulb, about two dozen thin amber air tubes fanning down from the discs to the base, a black television camera on a tripod aimed at the glowing point.