Volume of original epicycloidal designs made by Dr. E.W. Alabone probably from 1900-1912

Alabone was a medical doctor specialising in the treatment of consumption. His spare time was spent with his epicycloidal geometric chuck, currently in the Mathematics gallery, described as ‘the greatest, the most costly and the most wonderful of all the machines’. For him ‘more has to be done than to swing two pendulums as in the Harmonograph, or to turn a handle, as in the Geometric Pen’. The book, which has many beautiful coloured images, went into a second edition in 1912, having aroused considerable interest.