A Retired Engineer’s Cool Inventions

Seth Goldstein was a biomedical engineer at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland for 37 years. When he retired thirteen years ago, he needed something new to do.

So Goldstein, who has four degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, started making kinetic sculptures. Basically, these are machines that move.

One of Goldsteins inventions is the “Ro-Bow,” a device that plays a violin. Its repertoire consists of Hello Dolly a...