Talk about something which makes you feel old...
Talk about something which makes you feel old...
(OP)
I was just reading the June 9, 2011 issue of the Machine Design magazine (yes, they still publish a hardcopy version which is mailed gratis to members of the engineering community) and there was an article about how NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (once known as the National Bureau of Standards), was doing some 'spring cleaning' and have come across many obscure and unknown insturments which they have posted pictures of, along with many easily identified artifacts, in what they are calling the 'NIST Digital Archives', subtitled: 'MUSEUM ARTIFACTS of the National Institute of Standards and Technology'.
What intrigued me was that they are asking for the public's help in identifying some of these mystery devices so I immediately checked out the website (link provided below) and was happily reading the descriptions of each item, most of which are of known origin and usage (and acknowledged as such), but a few are stubbornly odd and truly obscure as to what they were intended for. But as I said, I was enjoying myself, being a museum addict (I have my own online museum, link provided in my signature below), until I encountered item NO. 23 in the list of 'NIST MUSEUM ARTIFACTS'. Now hold on here, if this constitutes being an 'artifact' what does that say about all of us who KNOW exactly WHAT this item is and HOW to use them since these were part of OUR own tools of the trade not all the long ago (or at least I would like to think that it wasn't that long ago)?
Anyway, here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/6xb7trq
And for those who would like a little hint as to what item 23 was; "To an engineer, a compass wasn't always something which kept you from getting lost."
What intrigued me was that they are asking for the public's help in identifying some of these mystery devices so I immediately checked out the website (link provided below) and was happily reading the descriptions of each item, most of which are of known origin and usage (and acknowledged as such), but a few are stubbornly odd and truly obscure as to what they were intended for. But as I said, I was enjoying myself, being a museum addict (I have my own online museum, link provided in my signature below), until I encountered item NO. 23 in the list of 'NIST MUSEUM ARTIFACTS'. Now hold on here, if this constitutes being an 'artifact' what does that say about all of us who KNOW exactly WHAT this item is and HOW to use them since these were part of OUR own tools of the trade not all the long ago (or at least I would like to think that it wasn't that long ago)?
Anyway, here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/6xb7trq
And for those who would like a little hint as to what item 23 was; "To an engineer, a compass wasn't always something which kept you from getting lost."
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.





RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
It's obviously a variable something or other - Capacitance? Egg timer?
But why didn't they just open it up and see? I know I would.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
I did a construction project in my back yard a few years ago. I discovered that the lumber size tables in my college mechanics of materials textbook are out of date.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
That thing was a pariah when it was brand new!
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
- Steve
LinkedIn
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
Note that when I bought mine back in the early 60's (while in high school) I got a metal one (exactly as shown in the image above) since I wanted it to last a lifetime (I keep it my desk drawer in case of power failure). Note that that in nearly 50 years, it has not lost any any of it accuracy
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
My first computer was a Turbo XT with not one but two 5.25 " floppies, 10 MHz clock speed, 640 KB RAM and an 8087 coprocessor. I installed my own 20 MB hard disk.
Since that time I have developed spreadsheets that couldn't even fit on a 20 MB hard disk.
But regarding Item 23...
That was back in the days when the engineer seldom saw more than 3 drawing revisions between conceptual design and IFC. To ask the designer for more revisions than that was tantamount to risking one's life. Guess what? The designs at the end of the day were just fine. So much for the value added of CADD.
Regards,
SNORGY.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
As a college freshman - we HAD to take a slide rule course. By the time I was a junior - I had a TI SR-50 that cost $250!! About the same cost of a semester of college!!
Atari with tape recorder for program and data storage
TRS-80 with 8'' floppy disks
IBM 1170
IBM 360 and 370 that fit in a HUGH building
Tape storage
Punch cards
Phones that had a dial
Party lines as in phones - not as in fraternities.
Phones that were really attached to the wall. At least you couldn't lose them
Electric erasers
Vellum and ink
Drafting boards
Architectural and engineering scales
Survey chains - had to be able to "throw" in order to pass the course.
Drawing triangles
10 cps (character per second) modems. We were in heaven when we got 30 cps!!
Linotype machines - yes - I worked in a printing plant one summer and the operator made the most money because he controlled the flow of much of the plant.
VW's without a gas gauge - my first car. Had a one gallon backup tank. A/C was all the windows OPEN
Cars that had points and condenser. The last three guys under 40 didn't even have a clue about what I was talking about.
Appliances you could find parts for and actually fix.
Cars you could fix yourself!!
A real newspaper - even two a day - delivered
Ice cube trays
Coffee percolators
Clothes lines
A real "tire" swing
A dictionary
I guess I could go on and on...... I wax nostalgic.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
A real newspaper - even two a day - delivered Ice cube trays Coffee percolators Clothes lines A dictionary
Well Ok, I use a french press as percolators are an invention of the devil.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
I notice memory devices keep getting smaller. First the 8" floppy disk, then the 5.25", then the 3.5" floppy, and now the thumb drive.
Can we still buy the latest 45? Or is it now the latest thumb?
Or if we lose our hard drive, will we lose 10 years of photos?
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
An excellent question. My digital photos are archived onto high quality CDROMs. At some point, I expect I will have to transfer these to some other quality archival media, and I will feel old when I get around to doing it.
I have a scanner that digitizes 35mm slides and negatives. I will have to take good care of this. Digitizing all of my film will be a project for after I retire, if ever.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
I also save photos onto CD's, but I also keep copies on my hard drive.
Funny thing is my new computers never seem compatible with some of my games. So I have several old computers just so I can play my older games. I would think backwards compatibility would be a nice feature on new operating systems, but apperently not.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
My first car was a 1971 BMW 2002 that I paid $300 for in 1983 or 1984.
The gear on the distributor was a tad worn, so the points tended to bounce, and it ate condensers at an alarming rate.
The nice Bosch mechanical advance distributor was almost as much as I paid for the car, but condensers were cheap, so I had a few in the glovebox at all times.
When the engine started running poorly it was time to change the condenser. Got so that I could do it in about 2 minutes.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
When my grandparents (and their generation) died, they left behind loads of photographs, many of them annotated, many of them mounted in albums.
When my father died, my Mum and I knew he'd been filming, photographing and digitising like crazy during the last months of his life, but he left no instructions - the end came sooner than he had planned. So we found a range of computer bits in amongst boxes of wires and strange plugs. I have no idea where some of his archives are and whether they'll ever be compatible with the day's equipment if/when I find them.
Give me a box of dusty fading prints any day.
- Steve
LinkedIn
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
Yep, you kind of wonder whether your great-grandchildren will be able to look at pictures of their grandfather holding their father 90 years after the digital image was captured.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
I am an old movie buff. I am recalling stuff I read about the old movies, but this should apply to commercial film.
Old film stock was nitrate based. It has a half life of forty years, and it is extremely inflammable. 90% of all the movies shot during the silent era are now gone forever, due to deterioration, people not caring, and some fires in studio vaults. Note how the later Kodak black and white film is called Safety Film.
Your film probably survived because it was stored in a cool, dark place by people who wanted it to survive.
My dad was a photographer for a Toronto newspaper. He has a lot of film in 120 (2-1/4") format, and he has stuff in the large, newspaper camera format. I think this is around 5"x3". I do not have the camera in front of me. My slide scanner cannot scan this stuff. I may have to go out and find an enlarger.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
"Chad" before everybody knew what "chad" was (and not the guy on the corner with the stylishly colorful clothing)and 120 mA loops.
The lovely rhythms of a well-functioning unit.
old field guy
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
After age 80 most of us just won't be able to do much. But many of us will be able to think. And that is where we are of most value.
To all things there is a season.
But just yesterday I was looking at some photos of old power plants, and one of them looks very simular to what it looks like today. However most of them looked like... Well it's better that they were torn down.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
As for the photo, you might find it interesting that the national archive folks (if I recall correctly) do not use digital preservation for the precise reason that they don't want to have to update the archives for new formats (or generally try to keep up with updating the technology). However, for personal photographs I think having them in a digital format does two things for preservation. First, it allows us to take MANY more photographs. I think is alone makes it better than chemical photographs. Secondly most photos are stored in common formats (jpeg has been around since the early 90s) and it's unlikely that future computers will be unable to open a .jpg .bmp .tif .gif or .png in the future as they don't require any special hardware or software, they are simply a decryption algorithm for the image format. Finally, with the advent of the internet and the influx of digital storage I predict that it wont be hard to store old pictures. One just merely has to make sure that they're hosted by a reliable service or are stored on a lasting form of digital storage (hard drives will always be able to be accessed, even if you have to take it to some place that would specialize in getting data off of out-dated computer hardware).
EIT with BS in Civil/Structural engineering.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
EIT with BS in Civil/Structural engineering.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
its not your bad... lot of far older posts get revived.
If the thread hasn't been closed, its still open no matter what the interval between posting.
On the other hand, on another website with poorly organised posts, I waded in replying to a new post in the thread only to realise the thread was 7 years old.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.com/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
I guess you are old when you know which side of the divide you are on in all those threads where some enthusiastic young engineer wants advice on how to deal with some "Senior Engineer" who is, in the opinion of the young guy, making senile mistakes.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
So why the rush to replace them with microprocessors, which will doubtfully will last 20 years.
So jwm I resemble that remark.
RE: Talk about something which makes you feel old...
In my industry I'm one of relatively few because there's an entire generation almost completely missing from the power generation industry: a lot of bright young folks coming through the universities, and a rapidly dwindling number of guys with grey hair, but few in between those age groups.
I have seen protection relays mounted on slate switchboards which were installed when my grandfather was my age, and they still work perfectly. I shall wait and see how many of the new electronic gizmos make it to 20 years, never mind 80 years.
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!