The ride in the
forefront of the photograph below is "The Bug" but if
you look in the top left corner you will see three of
the arms of the Octopus rising up above the booth of
The Bug.
The National
Fairground Archive web site at the University of
Sheffield, says this about the Octopus Ride:
"The Octopus ride was built under licence from Eyerly
by Lusse at Blackpool, where it is said that 12
machines were created for amusement parks around the
end of the 1930s. ... The Lusse machines were built
with long arms, and were quite a big operation and
thrill ride at the time. More were made as the ride
proved a popular hit, and the name Octopus stuck well,
since the machine had 8 arms, and a sweeping plunging
movement caused by an ingenious offset spindle and
wire system."....."The Octopus was a popular ride in
the UK up until the start of the 1980s, when thrill
rides such as the Orbiter began pushing up the
public's expectations."
Below is an image of a
modern Octopus ride in the town of Haarlem. The
image was placed in the public domain and is available
through Wikipedia Commons.
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