Tom,
Congratulations! You found it!
I attended RPI from the fall of '72 until spring '75. The Chrinitoid became an old, mostly reliable friend. I say mostly because one day after a particularly windy session, we arrived to find one panel on the ground.
I cannot recall whether it was damaged or not. But it was soon back up.
I spent many, many hours underneath it, looking up, sometimes after tasty mind altering treats. There it went, round-and-round, quietly, wonderfully mysterious. Part of its mystique was the wind, part was the size.
I also recall not everyone was taken by it, but that did not affect the rest of us. I also went back around 1991-92, and it was gone. I hoped it may come back, but I recall thinking it may have suffered neglect and had to be removed.
Should a campaign to buy and restore it be organized, please get in touch with me for a donation! I don't see why it could not happen.

Sincerely yours,
Bruce Herring '75

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Tom,
I left RPI in Jan 72, but I remember the sculpture so it MUST have been put up before 1972.
Also the UBS website says that it is version III, made(?) in 1990.
Could it be that this is not the original? Maybe you need to keep searching??
-Anyway, a nice article in the Alumni Magazine.
John Dodds '70.

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Dear Tom,

I read your article on the chrinitoid in the latest alumni magazine with considerable interest. The chrinitoid has a special place in my heart.

I thought you might like to know of the genesis of the name. Way back in high school, a friend of mine used the word to refer to unspecified internal organs (e.g., "uhgg, he got me right in the chrinatoids"). When I went to RPI, the first club I joined was the humor magazine, _Unicorn_. I came up with an idea for a fake Reader's Digest article, of the sort that were running at that time (this was 1972, mind you). I borrowed my friend's word, drew a small picture and wrote part of an article about it. The first JPG file I've attached shows you the result. (Note: the afterword was added by someone else!)

For some reason, the _Unicorn_ staff took the idea and ran with it, basing practically the whole issue of the magazine on the idea (see second JPG file). Inexplicably, they spelled it wrong -- that is, if it is possible to misspell a neologism that has no real meaning.

And, to coin a phrase, the rest is history. The word caught on around campus, and the Rickey sculpture was never called anything else. I suppose "chrinitoid" was easier to say than "Two Rectangles, Vertical Gyratory Up, Variation III."

I'm glad you found the sculpture lurking in Europe. I've wondered where it'd got to.
If you want to use the attached pictures on your website, feel free.

Best wishes,
Sandy Stewart, '76
www.funnysf.com

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Hello Tom,

My name is Martin Royer and I graduated RPI class of 1982 (BA Computer Science). As I was reading your article I was just feeling awful to learn that it was decided to do away with the Chrinitoid. I remember talking about it with other students in the lounge of Nugent Hall (Or did that take that away too?) and how cool it was. The idea that they would take it away is SO FAR from what I would think would be "intuitively obvious to even the casual observer". I have not been back to the campus since I graduated, but knew that I would always look forward to seeing the Chrinitoid again whenever I visited the campus and how seeing it would help me reconnect the dots of my memories of those 4 years.

Thanks so much for doing the research and finding it at it's new home. Perhaps someday I will travel to Zurich to see it. I looked thru my old RPI pictures and hoped that there might be a pic of me standing next to in. But in fact, I have very few pics of my 4 years at RPI. Something now regret.

I now living in the Los Angeles area and work for a company that is in the video editing business.

Take care

Martin R
Burbank, CA

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Hi, Tom -- thanks for finding our campus landmark! I spent untold hours sitting on the green watching it while I did homework or chatted with friends. In my day, there was also a kinetic sculpture in the student union -- wall mounted, slowly shifting tapered metal pieces about a yard or so long. I think this was also by Rickey, but am not certain. Any news on it? Thanks again for your devotion to this elegant, simple sculpture! Pat Henking RPI '76

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