BEHEMOTH photo by Mel Lindstrom

The most amazing thing about this article is the photo, which was taken in the Palo Alto studio of Mel Lindstrom. Painting with light, he bid me hold still on a platform in front of a white sweep… then cut the room lights and opened the shutter of a 4×5 camera. He held blue/violet gels…

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The photo above was taken while BEHEMOTH was under development in the Bikelab at Sun Microsystems (clues include the Zzipper fairing instead of the fiberglass one custom-molded to the console, and the lack of cable harness connectors at the four Lemo sockets on the underside). Details Magazine August, 1991 Steven Roberts was bored and unhappy,…

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This publication of the Los Angeles Macintosh User Group was a great venue for this general overview of the whole bike epoch (which also appeared in similar form in my various self-published pieces like the later From BEHEMOTH to Microship book). With a Mac Portable embedded in the bike’s console, controlled by ultrasonic head mouse…

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Steve Roberts with BEHEMOTH - Discover and Teekniikan Maailma

This one was a hoot, and really captured the buzz of the developing BEHEMOTH project at the Bikelab hosted by Sun Microsystems (in building MTV4). The photo session was amusing… that big green shot spanning the first two pages was a complex setup by Christopher Gardner, with a smoke machine and fancy lights all arrayed…

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by Steven K. Roberts Silicon Valley, California June 22, 1991 “You know you’re going slow when you’ve got dead bugs on the BACK of your bike.” — the always-quotable David Berkstresser, watching me trundle up his driveway during a test ride. It’s getting close. Suddenly all priorities have changed — the things that distracted me last…

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by Steven K. Roberts Silicon Valley, California May 28, 1991 “Daddy toys!”— concise assessment by Julia Selfridge, age 2,upon being introduced to BEHEMOTH for the first time. Well, there are now 49 days to departure, and I’m in the D phase of the PFD phenomenon that most concisely describes my work habits (Procrastination Followed by Despair).…

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David Berkstresser and Cecil be da Mill

Photo: David Berkstresser at Cecil, the Rockwell milling machine in the Bikelab. (Cecil be ‘da Mill) 3:15 AM. It’s becoming a familiar time — a favorite one, even. This time of day, there are few commercials on the radio to disrupt the back-to-back jams. There are no phone calls, few stray beeps from the SPARC,…

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The blur of late nights and frenzied days since the last report in this series has yielded a hinged mezzanine in my RUMP, new wiring harness headers, a nifty mounting tower for the RUMP control processor, progress on the new seat/steering system, and countless little nudges of recalcitrant hardware toward the Road. The ROAD. It’s out…

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Economist Magazine cover, Feb 2, 1991

This article appeared as BEHEMOTH was being feverishly readied for departure from the Bikelab hosted by Sun Microsystems. A couple of the mentioned items were not completed by launch time (the shocker to the seat and the variable-reluctance motor-generator that I was planning to use for regenerative braking), but this is a pretty level-headed magazine…

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The cardboard-core fiberglass packaging technique discussed here, originally suggested by David Berkstresser, has been such a popular subject that it long ago landed on its own page… even though it was originally part of this Bikelab Report. I’ll leave it over there for now and devote this post to the actual implementation of that space,…

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