The World Machine

[David Morris]

http://kirchersociety.org/

Tucked behind the southern Austrian hills in a farmhouse outbuilding
sits the Weltmaschine (the World Machine). Created over 23 years by
Franz Gsellmann, the machine is made up of hundreds of separate parts,
including a ship's propeller, two gondolas, a Dutch windmill, a
Persian goblet, a salt and pepper set, five crucifixes, 560 wooden
beads, a glass Jesus and a glass Mary, eight lampshades and a
barometer, held together with a brightly coloured lattice of wire,
pipes and gear wheels. Once powered into action the 25 motors,
one-armed bandit, 64 bird whistles, 20 fan belts and 14 bells,
whistle, clang and whirr. The 200 coloured lights flash. The poky
Austrian farm building is filled with a blaze of noise, colour and
light.

The creator of the machine, Franz Gsellmann, grew up dreaming of
becoming an engineer, but with just four years of schooling, he seemed
destined to spend his life on the family smallholding. His life
changed in 1958: seeing an article in the local newspaper about the
Brussels Atomium, a huge structure symbolising a crystallised molecule
of iron, created by the engineer André Waterkeyn for the International
Exhibition, Gsellmann travelled out of Austria for the first time,
visited Belgium, and studied the architectural structure for himself.

Back home in Kaag, Gsellmann abandoned working on his family's
smallholding and began to construct his own machine, his own unique
engineering project. Starting with a model Atomium, constructed from
25 hula-hoops, he began to build in secret. For the first eight years
he offered his family no explanations, locking himself away each
morning and resurfacing exhausted at night, occasionally leaving the
house on trips to search out new components.

It took some time for other people to appreciate his work: neighbours
would often laugh at the tiny 90-pound man wheeling his barrow of
selected oddities, and his family would react with rage and shame. A
silent man, frequently reduced to tears, Gsellmann insisted that 'one
day it will be good for something', drawing courage from his faith
that 'God gave me this gift'.

He believed the machine had its own life. He cleaned his creation
every morning, breathing onto and polishing each tiny part. He
obsessed about its health, incorporating a 'computer', a counting
machine which was supposed to indicate malfunctions.