I love how much English writing has changed since then. You'd never say "in such a way that" or "so fitted" or "every seventh conductor being connected". The entire prose style can change but the joke can still be perfectly on point
> The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the panametric fan.
In modernese:
> The original machine's base plate is made of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing designed to line up the two main spurving bearings directly with the panametric fan.
Still not great writing but doesn't trip my age sensors. It's not just the "in such a way" but also the use of "of" for material composition. "A coat of wool" etc
Edit: reorganized for clarity
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... shows mostly intention:
> "for the most part dApps are purposely written in such a way that they can be easily integrated with other dApps" - (2 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29730055
> "just like an auction (generally) wants to design their auction in such a way that people are honest about their willingness to pay" - (3 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29725278
> "you'll end up listing it in such a way that people will figure out what this position is worth to you" - (3 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722240
Scanning to find one which was a closer fit to the quoted example:
> "The light from that line is then passed through a dispersive element (optical grating, prism) in such a way that a spectrum is generated perpendicular to the scanned line." - (17 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29557861
That's the only such I found after scanning through 19 pages / 4 months of comments.
That is, most of the HN comments use the phrase to describe a class of possibilities, or state the intention but not the actual solution, rather describe the intention behind a specific design.
Since the casing is supposed to be malleable, it might not have necessarily been designed to line up the bearings, and it was only through a particular way of surmounting the casing that got them lined up.