I created this fixture about half a century ago. It was a (free) assignment, part of the subject ‘materials science’: at the university! We learned to do a bit of welding. To use a microscope etc. And about densest sphere stacking. The math behind the latter I learned decades later as part of my education at a college to become a math-teacher!
The employee involved did not praise my design but later I found a photograph of the lamp in the magazine of the University in an article about that subject ‘materials science’!
(or of the faculty, I am not sure about that part of the story)