This puzzle makes use of the "The Physical World" relief on the north-northwest wall of the Eastman Lobby (Lobby 6) at MIT.
Various pictures appear online and a couple are Googleable, including the following.
- Source: MIT Admissions website
- Source: Wikimedia Commons (harder to find at first, but giving better detail)
Specifically:
- Each "Attempt Number" clues one of the words in the text at the bottom; this enables us to order the rows by the order of these words in the text.
- Each "Attempted Repair" involves connecting what sound like two auto parts. These are actually references to two parts of the picture in the relief.
Drawing a line from the first part to the second and continuing gets you to one of the eleven pictures of scientists around the edge; the scientist's name has one phoneme in common with the onomatopoetic word used to describe the engine sound.
The resulting chart summarizes what 1 and 2 give us:
| Attempt number | Word | Auto Part 1 | Pic Part 1 | Auto Part 2 | Pic Part 2 | Scientist | Sound word | Shared Phoneme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 144 | gross | round weight on the timing apparatus | pendulum bob | shiniest round reflector | Venus | Fresnel | PLOP | /l/ |
| 1 of 4 (and by far the weakest!) | gravitating | right end of the generator shaft | right end of the generator shaft | center of the 27-ball-bearing assemblage | center of the crystal structure | Galileo | SNAP | /æ/ |
| Just ask someone — they'll tell you immediately. | responsive | gap the spark crosses | spark gap of the spark gap transmitter | center of the radio receiver | center of the loop-shaped radio antenna | Helmholtz | SQUEAK | /s/ |
| I already told you that. | revealed | middle of the bottom of the glass | center of the bottom half of the hourglass | thin glass tube | tube between the halves of the hourglass | Newton | SPLAT | /t/ |
| 5 out of 123456789 | innermost | central generator coil | central generator coil | middle of the top small crossbar | middle of the top small crossbar on the pendulum clock | Huygens | HOWL | /h/ |
| 0.00729735 | structure [it's the fine structure constant] | lowest point of the lower radiator | lowest point of the spark gap transmitter | reflector with the automobile name on it | Mercury | Rumford | CLUNK | /ʌ/ |
| 1 of 9 (for Mr. Boddy, anyway) | study | bottom of the 27-ball-bearing assemblage | bottom of the crystal structure | reflector that was new less than thirty days ago | Moon | Ampere | BLOOP | /p/ |
| 2 out of 2 | both | rusty reflector | Mars | blue water holder | Earth | Maxwell | KNOCK | /k/ |
| 85 out of 118 | At | core of the central gas reservoir | center of the sun | leftmost wheel on the generator | wheel on the extreme left of the generator shaft | Archimedes | YAHOO | /ɑ/ |
| 10 10ths | wholly | gap in the radio receiver | gap in the loop-shaped radio antenna | tail end of the thing with the tail lights | tail end of the comet | Faraday | VROOM | /r/ |
| Sorry, I can't really tell one from another. | indistinguishable | top of the 27-ball-bearing assemblage | top of the crystal structure | top of the glass | top of the hourglass | Alhazen | ZOOM | /z/ |
Taking these phonemes in order gives LAST HUPP CARS (hinted in the intro; they are vintage automobiles).
The answer is thus the last cars made by the Hupp Motor Car Company: SKYLARKS (hinted in the flavortext; "capers" and "skylarks" are synonymous verbs).