Parallel is always faster
Ran across a fact I hadn't heard before, in an area that I thought I understood. The fact fits nicely into my latest just-for-fun graphics project on 1957 IBM.

Punched cards are totally old-fashioned. Carrying data around in a box is just hopelessly passe.



Wrong!

Surprising fact: When you need to transfer a REALLY BIG batch of data, it's still easier to do it physically. Big databases or raw unedited video can run into the petabyte range. No matter how good your web connection, it's faster to let FedEx fly the entire set of disks. Amazon has a special product for this purpose, a memory box designed for freight handling.

I hadn't really thought about the question of scale, just ass-u-me-d that big corporations had special web connections. They do, but no web connection can beat a box of memory cards when the box is big enough.

It comes down to the oldest dividing line in communication. Parallel vs serial. A box of cards is parallel. A data wire is serial. Parallel is always faster.

Data communication STARTED as parallel. The Chappe semaphore system was beautifully designed to carry blocks of semantic data as a visual image. It had 256 available positions, most of which were assigned to words and phrases. Later versions even had a code-switch character, denoting that this message will use the Government phrase set or the Stock Exchange phrase set, etc.



Wheatstone's early telegraphs were parallel in the modern sense, with five wires carrying a range of 32 characters.



Morse introduced serial communication, which became the norm for obvious practical reasons. One wire is cheaper to mount and maintain than five wires.

IBM offered web connectors in 1957, using either telegraph** or telephone wires. They transferred about 500 characters per minute.

What was the dividing line in 1957? Let's say you needed to transfer the text of a novel from your office in Chicago to your office in NYC. 100k words = 500k characters, so it would take 1000 minutes or 16 hours. Sending a typed manuscript, or a stack of cards, by truck would take about 20 hours, and a flight would take about 4 hours. So the flight would have been much faster than the web. If you needed to transfer two of those novels or data sets, even the truck would be faster.

Obviously distance is the crucial variable. Between offices in the same city, driving will almost always be faster than any kind of electronic transfer. For a longer distance, the threshold in 1957 was around one megabyte. Now it's around one petabyte, but it's still a threshold.
** "Telegraph" in 1957 was really teletype, using FSK Baudot audio. The direct ancestor of later web modems.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 12:35 AM

  Computers are always sorters
Computers spend most of their time organizing and sorting data, NOT calculating numbers.

I discussed this at length a few years ago with the original 1890 Hollerith:



= = = = = START REPRINT:

Here's a simple animation of Hollerith's 1890 Census machine. [Polistra and Happystar wanted to get in the picture, but they blocked the view of the important parts. So you'll have to imagine a person operating the press and moving the cards.]



This 1890 Tabulator only automated the most tiresome and error-prone stage of the process, counting the holes and sorting cards into 'pre-programmed' categories. When you pull the handle of the press, a grid of spring-mounted needles tries to poke through all the hole locations. Where a hole is actually punched, the needle drops through to make contact below, closing a circuit that leads to the corresponding dial above. An electromagnet ratchets the Ones dial forward one step, and the Tens dial follows by reduction gearing. Much like the escapement in a clock.



If this particular combination of holes corresponds to one of the programmed combinations, the Sorter pops an appropriate door open. You'd then take the card, drop it into the one open door, and close the door.

The programming of combinations was done mainly by soldering and unsoldering dozens of wires for each setup! There were a few switchboard-style plugin choices, which would have been like user-selected variables, not like actual software. So my animation is arbitrary, not trying to make any real combinations, showing only that the dials increment and a different door opens for each card.

This process was clearly too 'manual' even by the standards of the time, with humans performing several steps that were easily mechanized.

After 1890 Hollerith went commercial and quickly developed various ways to feed and read cards automatically, then carry them into appropriate slots. He also began to add more calculation and programming abilities.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Now let's look at those later versions. Here Polistra is loading a stack of cards into the most basic 1957 sorter, the model 82.



Now she is selecting one column for sorting. Three turns of the crank to reach the third column. (Fancier machines had more automatic multiple choices.)



In typical use, each column carried one variable in the data, and each row in the column denoted one category of this variable. For a database of criminal suspects, the third column might be weight, with the 10 rows of the column corresponding to 90, 100, 110, and so on. The secretary in charge of this database knew these assigned meanings by heart, so she could quickly sort one column at a time. She's looking for a 5'8 white dude weighing 160, with tattoos on left arm and scar on right cheek. She would first sort by gender, picking out the pile for male; then sort those by race, picking out the stack for white; then sort those by weight, picking out the stack corresponding to 160; then sort those by height, pulling the 5'8 stack, then by tattoo, and so on. Each successive sort was smaller and faster, and the final result would hopefully pin down only a few known suspects.

When each card crosses over the selector, the first ROW with a punch triggers the chute blades to move down in unison. Here a punch in the 4th row triggers the first 4 chute blades to move down:



And then the same card enters the open gap in the chute blades, and the rollers on top propel it along the chutes. The middle of the card rides between the top unmoved chutes and the bottom moved chutes. The first chute above the open path knocks the card down into the appropriate slot.



Note that this card with a 4th row punch ends up in the 5th slot. The rightmost slot was for a card with no punches at all**. With no hole to trigger the solenoids, all the chutes would stay up. The rightmost and lowest chute would be above the card, and would kick the card into the 'reject' slot. (In modern software the 'reject' slot is a NULL or None value of the column variable.)

Computers are still mainly sorters with secondary calculating functions. In the last Windows EXE version of my courseware, the C++ source code contains about 13000 non-comment lines, of which only 120 are explicit arithmetic. In other words, only 1% of the action is adding, multiplying, sines, arctans, etc. The other 99% is pattern-matching and counting and recording. Hollerith jobs. The program presents an image or a text question; waits for a click on some part of the image or a button; increments the number answered and number correct; and holds the results in a file.

= = = = =

The business model of IBM's machines was strictly rental. The time pattern of computing business models corresponds to the timeline I observed in media. Start out as individual units, mainly in large markets and academia; spread out to broadly available individual units; re-centralize back to CENTRALLY CONTROLLED systems, turning the world into one unit.

Here's the price list for the 082 and 083 sorters from a 1957 IBM catalog, with inflated modern equivalents in red:



Note first that these machines were FAST. 650 cards per minute, about 10 per second. A typical stack would take about a minute, with a stream of cards zooming across the top and sliding into their appropriate slots. Those chute blades clicked up and down with remarkable speed and accuracy. The 82 had less electronic components than the old Hollerith; it was mainly a superfast mechanism.

In modern terms a business paid $500 a month for the basic model 82, $1000 a month for the fancier and more automatic model 83. As with cars, options added to the total. The accounting machines, with calculating abilities on top of the sorting, were $1000 a month in 1957 or $9000 today.

Comparing to human workers, a skilled secretary earned about 5 times the rental of the sorter, but a skilled accountant cost the same as the accounting machine.

These machines were usually not connected to any sort of web, but webs did exist in 1957. The telegraph system was still an active data network in 1957, and businesses could also rent private lines from Bell Tel to carry data.

Here's the Data Transceiver, able to read a stack of cards and send their data over any of the 'private webs' to a corresponding transceiver at the other end. The sending speed was about 500 characters per minute, and the price was $200 per month, or $1800 in today's money.



As always, renting is more profitable than selling. IBM and Bell Tel were both rental-based utilities, offering intensive and fast service for a fairly high rental.

= = = = =

** Graphic serendipity sidenote: I wasn't thinking about the reject slot when I animated this action. I just moved the bottom four guides down, then slid the card leftward and followed the first kicker above it. The logic of the mechanism WORKED even though I didn't understand it. Later when rechecking, I noticed the 5 vs 4 inconsistency, thought it was a mistake, then RTFM more closely and understood the 'reject'. As usual, EXPERIMENT LEADS TO THE CORRECT ANSWER regardless of facts and theory.

Labels: Alternate universe, Experiential education, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 11:35 PM

  Strange dream
Odd dream this morning about a power slide rule. It looked something like this:



Basically a regular Pickett in a motorized platform. The buttons around the top were little slide levers controlling various actions. One of them was labeled 'Noise', which introduced jitter into the actions.

I suspect this was a solidified version of the Lukyanov water computer. I wrote a PY to run the Lukyanov, including the ability to add noise. Jitterizing would be a worthy feature in a real** analog computer.

A power drive would actually work better with a BIG circular rule like the Norma Grafia. You wouldn't have to reverse at the ends. For instance, you could set C and D to a proportion, then run the cursor slowly around the circle to see all the similar proportions.

The shape of the platform is tanh. Was that an intentional choice by the dream scripter? A way of saying that we need an analog computer focused on Nature's way of doing things? The curve was important in the dream, and the control levers pivoted around the curve. Probably not intentional, but it's still a good piece of advice. More likely the dream scripter was just copying the VW tool pictured in previous item.... or the iconic shape of the '61 Lincoln that was the main subject of previous item. All tanh.

= = = = =

** Was this feature tried? A quick google finds the vast majority of computers, both analog and digital, were concerned with avoiding or smoothing out the phase and amplitude jitter in real signals. Only one analog computer was trying to do the opposite. ASTRAC was a true analog computer with digital counting and control systems attached. Some of its analog modules intentionally introduced randomness and Zener noise. The developers were apparently using the random for 'Monte Carlo' simulations with repeated analog functions feeding a digital program. I'm thinking more of dynamic stability, wiggling into a negative feedback loop to reach the optimum quickly. Simulating the action of a gamma muscle loop, for instance.

Labels: Alternate universe, Morsenet of Things, Real World Math

  ¶ 5:39 AM

  Breaking out of the usual "debate"
As the usual fake "dispute" rages about new "alternative" ways to stay trapped inside the NSA cellphone system that is TOTALLY OWNED BY APPLE AND GOOGLE, it's worth remembering that there are plenty of other ways to communicate, aside from plain speech.

Some are obvious and some have been forgotten. I've been trying to illustrate some of the forgotten systems in the last few years.

Variations on electric telegraphs, visible through the #Morsenet of things tag and often connected to Breguet.

Railroad signaling systems, via the Box Depots set.

Mechanical semaphores, probably the most interesting and evocative.

Pigeons.

Acoustical channels.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, Patient things

  ¶ 11:53 AM

  One clue
Reminding yet again that after EIGHT MONTHS of holocaust we still have ZERO INFORMATION about the motives, the Cui Bono, the networking, or the threats that created and maintained the holocaust.

Thinking about the networking led to one clue, but it's not much more than a clue.

All officials use the same Phases and Subphases, all use the same announcements and posters. The data for these precisely synchronized monstrosities had to be transmitted.

The physical method doesn't tell us anything. The web, 5G or 4G or whatever, isn't important. Telegraph systems in the 1870s, or mechanical semaphores in 1800, could distribute this amount of data equally fast.

The important thing about sync is that all of these mayors and Public Death Officers had to be PHASE-LOCKED in a GUARANTEED way, LONG before March 1. There's no point in sending out the kill command in Feb if you aren't already 100% confident that 100% of the receivers will follow instructions 100% and keep the secret 100%.

Questions: Who was synced first, and who was synced strongest?

First: Stock demons. All stock demons from left to right, bull to bear, long to short, were pushing HARD for lockdowns in mid February.

Strongest: Mayors and Public Death Officers.

Governors and county commissions weren't solidly synced. A few of them simply didn't participate at all, and several more stopped participating later. Broadly speaking, Dixie and the High Plains are done with the holocaust.

All mayors are synced, and many of the mayors under non-participating governors simply went ahead and killed everyone, disregarding the governor.

The mayors were 100% confident in their 100% connection to Deepstate. They knew that even rebellious governors couldn't do anything against them.

I still don't know how the PDOs and MDs (Murder Doctors) were linked, but the stock demons and mayors lead firmly to one source.

Bloomberg.

Bloomberg has owned all the mayors for about 10 years now; and Bloomberg has been running 'closed-circuit' networks for the stock demons since 1981**. His company knows how to send data securely to a tightly restricted set of recipients.

Later thought: Another closed-circuit system was set up in 2014 under Romneycare. All medical facilities were required to link up to a government net, and HIPAA had already conformed them to strict OpSec. Under HIPAA the patient is the enemy, and must never be allowed to know anything about his own health. HIPAA made it much easier to turn a relabeled or mythical "virus" into a black plague. HIPAA also made it impossible to use REAL public health techniques, which depend on identifying early spreaders PUBLICLY so their contacts will know that they need to get medical attention. HIPAA forces secret "contact tracing", which can't work at all unless all movements and activities of all people on earth are known at every second. Sweden didn't have HIPAA, so Sweden was able to use REAL contact tracing at the start.

= = = = =

** Of course the Bloomberg Terminal was just a new expression of the encrypted ticker-tape network, which had dominated both semaphore and electrical telegraph nets. Before Bloomberg, much of the traffic on the pre-HTML internet was closed-circuit stock transactions. Compuserve was owned by HR Block and made most of its money with ticker activity. 1981 marks the date when Bloomberg himself became the central controller of this centuries-old network.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 6:48 AM

  Mayflower radio
Many of the early radio stations were founded by rich aristocrats as toys, with varying degrees of seriousness. Here's one that went all the way with aristocracy, yielding no quarter to the hoi polloi.

WMAF in Dartmouth.

Their brochure, written in 1923, starts with the Mayflower and traces the family of Colonel Green down to the current day.

Within recent years Colonel Green has established there his summer home "Round Hills House."

Here's the station on the grounds of his summer home:



Some genuine technical experimentation:

Colonel Green's interest in radio began in 1896. Learning of Marconi's transatlantic experiments, he attempted to adapt the new art to railroad use. Two baggage cars of the Texas Midland Railroad, of which he was President, were equipped with receiving sets and a sending set was installed at Terrell, Texas. The old metal-filings coherer was not satisfactory on a moving train but messages were handled for some months between two fixed stations eleven miles apart.

Sounds like the railroad employees didn't really need the new toy, since railroads already had sufficient communication systems.

The interior of the studio was fairly standard for the time, with appropriately elegant furniture:



The best part:

To make these excellent programs available to his guests, Colonel Green has installed on the top of a water tower a group of loud speaking sound projectors connected to another amplifier, the whole being known as a Western Electric public address system. Near the water tower is ample parking space for automobiles and Colonel Green has invited his neighbors to drive in and listen to the programs, which will be clearly audible for a half mile or more. Plans are under way for the installation of additional projectors at Round Hills Light, a rocky islet, so that when the New York boat passes in the early evening the passengers may be entertained and farewell messages may be given to departing guests.

Drive-in radio theater!

Radio as semi-exclusive entertainment for the guests of the manor, secondarily broadcast to the seething masses.

= = = = =

The mansion is still there, now a historical landmark. Colonel Green didn't stick with the radio station, but he invited MIT to use the site and 'seeded' their research. MIT built a radio-telescope on the tower and hosted Van de Graaff's experimentation with high voltage. Later the military used the site as part of its DEW line, "guarding" against mythical "Russian" "invaders". Colonel Green's attention span may have been short, but his influence on radio was long and benign.

A wonderful example of science as entertainment!

Here's Col Green in his custom-made electric runabout, with direction-finding antenna to check out the propagation patterns from his station. He certainly looks entertained!



(Financial footnote: Col Green could easily afford to buy toys like railroads and radio stations. He inherited $200 million, equal to $4 billion in today's Monopoly money. Unlike other heirs, he used his toys for good purposes.)

Labels: Entertainment, Morsenet of Things, Trinity House

  ¶ 1:12 AM

  Plus c'est, but not quite
Is media bias new?

Fuck no.

But there is one difference. From Broadcasting Magazine, Aug 1964.

A request for public opinion on "prejudicial expressions" in CBS newscasts was voiced July 20 by Rex G. Howell, owner of KREX, Grand Junction, Colo., in a TV editorial. Mr. Howell, whose stations are CBS affiliates, said he had been registering protests with the network "for many months" over newscasts which "constituted opinion-making rather than reporting of factual news." He said: "We protested the snide manner in which Eric Sevareid interviewed Senator Goldwater, and the side comments frequently voiced by Walter Cronkite which seemed to convey the impression of extreme hostility toward the Arizona senator."

"We fervently wish," Mr. Howell said, "that Mr. Schorr and some of his other liberal colleagues would practice greater regard for the basic principles of fairness in journalism." The editorial quoted Mr. Howell's telegram to CBS President Frank Stanton. In it Mr. Howell said: "It is a source of great personal sorrow that the ideological differences between certain network personnel and the Republican nominee for the presidency has led to such unfortunate exchanges as to reflect upon our dedication to the principles of the fairness doctrine and our own sense of journalistic responsibility."

The one real difference: Howell headed a local station. Now no local station would complain. Everyone is on the same side. There are only ponents and pluponents, no opponents.

Another difference, at least in formalistic terms, is that Howell had the LAW on his side. CBS was violating the fairness doctrine and forcing local stations to participate in the violation.

Howell pointedly FOLLOWED the law by finding a local Democrat to give a counter-editorial after his own editorial.

= = = = =

Later: I looked to see if Sevareid vs Goldwater was available on Youtube. The specific interview wasn't there, but the search led to an even more perfect example of pluponents.

CBS recently ran an 'archive' feature from the '64 election, with a clip of Sevareid discussing media bias.

Headline:

Think media bias is a new issue? Think again: Here's a 1964 special hosted by CBS News correspondent Eric Sevareid, who speaks of "an ugly boil of hostility towards the press."

Media bias as defined by the media has NOT changed. As seen by CBS then and now, media bias means "an ugly boil of hostility toward the press" and nothing else. Deplorables are zits.

= = = = =

On a vastly more positive note, here's a 1975 interview of Howell by a Grand Junction oral history project. A fascinating big picture of radio from a thoughtful and objective man who was there at the start. He mentions one 'backwater' that I haven't read about: In the '20s the wire services like UP and AP refused to deal with the upstart radio industry. So a group of broadcasters formed their own coop news service, strictly by CW. When one station had a scoop, or read something important in their local newspaper, they sent the item to the other stations. Most early stations were founded by hams, so Morse was universal and natural. It would also have been semi-secret, not easy for casual listeners to intercept.

= = = = =

Personal: I mentioned Barry a few days ago, now he turns up again. It's odd that I still think of Barry on first-name terms. I supported him in '64, even though I was an ignorant young leftist then. Now that I'm a slightly less ignorant old populist, I still have positive feelings about him, though he would count as a tech-monster Libertarian in modern terms. In '64 he was probably serving as a pluponent provocateur, helping LBJ to steer the reluctant Dems into total war without feeling like warmongers. "We're not pro-war like those horrible Goldwater zits! We were reluctantly forced into total war by Tonkin Gulf."

Why do I still look at Barry in a positive light? Probably the ham radio thing, a SKILL-based guild that runs deeper than ideology.

NOW I SEE: And why have the modern monsters been wiping out SKILLS since 1975? Specifically because SKILL runs deeper than ethnicity or ideology. When people work together, using shared SKILLS on an absorbing project, ideology and race don't matter nearly as much. Now that all SKILLS have been offshored or obliterated, we have nothing but ethnicity and ideology, which are incurably and intentionally divisive. This also applies to schools, which led the way in eliminating all SKILL-based projects and job training. It's not surprising that schools have also led the way in ethnic and ideological division.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, NOT alternate universe, NOW I SEE, Pluponents, skill-estate

  ¶ 9:44 AM

  Speaking of walls....
I noticed in the statcounter listings that a reader in Riobamba, Ecuador was reading some of the meaningful parts of this blog, the tech history. Thanks, reader! You're the reason I do this.

I hadn't heard of Riobamba, so I looked it up. It's about the same size as Spokane. Wandering through the images on Google Streets, Riobamba is typical of South America with WALLS around every house. Aside from that difference, it's clear that Riobamba is in better shape than Spokane. Businesses are everywhere, and all of the businesses appear open and thriving. The streets are maintained, sidewalks are clean, cars are new, walls are solid, most of the buildings look clean. Well-dressed people are walking calmly in all of the neighborhoods. No beggars or gangsters visible. Nothing looks ragged or beat-down.

Ecuador was one of the anti-Soros bright spots for a while, until the Assange mess caused Deepstate to step in and change it. Those changes clearly didn't affect everyday life, which looks prosperous and normal.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Morsenet of Things, Sorosia

  ¶ 5:25 AM

  Tubes were an unnecessary and destructive sidetrack
Random afterthought to real coherers.

Thinking again about those submini tubes while using the breadboard for experimentation led to a historical oddity.

Tubes were probably an unnecessary sidetrack in the overall development of electronics, making experimentation unnecessarily hard for a few decades.

If the path of coherers and catwhiskers had been extended, it would have led quickly to transistors. The Lodge liquid coherer was a solid-state diode. Some early experimenters with catwhisker-style detectors developed the triode transistor but didn't pursue it.

Tubes made experimentation hard because they needed high plate voltage, which in turn required special precautions. When you're fiddling with 1.5 to 18 Volts, you can plug and unplug stuff and screw around to your heart's content, without stopping your heart or starting a fire. When you're working with 250 Volts, extreme caution is needed.

The HV could have been avoided if the original Audion had led directly to those submini tubes. Subminis easily live in the same breadboard world as transistors and ICs, with 1.5 V filament and 18 V plate. DeForest's original Audion operated in this range.

The Brits had subminis in the '30s, but America stuck with the big HV tubes until '48. By that time the transistor was already underway and the tube era was fading.

Plain old size is another factor in experimentation, but it's more of a balanced factor. The components in 1920 were much larger than now, requiring bigger workbenches and more woodworking and metalworking tools. If I had been working with those components, I couldn't keep my electronics stuff inside one desk. I'd need a separate workroom or an outside ham shack. But larger components are easier to handle and repair, and easier to see, so there are advantages both ways. Safety is a purely one-way variable.

Continued here.

Labels: Alternate universe, Lodge, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 12:08 AM

  Grandinifughi
Last week I ran across these strange devices while looking for something else, as usual.



On further reading, it turns out that hail cannons were a big business for about 20 years. French and Italian farmers were convinced that the cannons made a difference. Like cloud seeding, they didn't halt the weather every time, but they dissipated hail often enough to save massive amounts of money and trouble. Unlike cloud seeding, there was no downside. Seeding is a zero-sum procedure, depriving one location of rain to favor another location. Deicing the hail doesn't move the precip, it just avoids the damage.

Major agricultural implement companies made hail cannons along with plows and seeders and cream separators. Genuine scientific conferences were held annually, showing off the latest experiments and inventions.

The French called them canons contre grèle or grelifuges, and the Italians called them Grandinifughi. A word you can chew on!

Here's part of a wonderfully lyrical account from a 1901 cultural magazine (p 662 of the PDF):

The terror of hail is as old as Adam's first planting season, and the hysterical efforts of man to do away with it date from that same springtime. It is just another phase of man's striving to climb back into Eden, where it does not hail. So he rang bells and made other noises, at first in religious appeal, and then with a vague notion of turning the storm by deafening detonations. Neither is the more scientific idea of shooting against clouds a new one. In 1760 the Chevalier de Jancourt, a physicist, noted that it never hailed on besieged towns, and urged wise men to get to work against what he called the most costly form of divine wrath. But the wise men were not wise enough, and the peasants rang their bells as before, and then declared that it would have hailed harder if they had not rung them.

The author visited actual farms and watched the Grelifuges in action. He talked to the farmers and grape-growers and scientists. Conclusion:

Cannons have been fired against hailstorms, and hail did not fall. You might say that hail would not have fallen anyhow. But it did fall anyhow - that is, all around except on the spot covered by cannon.

Again there remains the other possible coincidence: namely, that the hail had no designs against that particular exempted spot in the first place. But there is still an answering fact; for when the shooting ceased, the rain changed to hail, and when the shooting recommenced the hail as quickly changed back to rain. This is not an isolated instance, but the general case. .......

A veteran artilleur who had lost a leg in the service demonstrated how simply and safely this particular gun can be handled. He first produced one of the empty cartridges. This was of specially forged steel, about eight inches long. He adjusted a percussion cap, rammed in eighty grammes of mining powder, and ended with a wad of soft wood...

The artilleryman advised us to watch for the whirlwind-ring, and then he pulled the string. The explosion sounded like the heavy boom of rock-blasting. You knew vaguely that the tripod was hidden in smoke, and that a white cloud had puffed from the mouth of the funnel. Then, as though growing out of the shock of the explosion, there came the sound of a long, shrill whistling. It was like the fierce metallic singing of some monster tuning-fork, mounting to a more angry pitch as it hurled higher in air. There, away up in the sky, was a gauzy ring as of smoke, still ascending and still buzzing on that shrill crescendo note. The ring was outlined against the deep blue like a soft, silky wreath, in the rays of the sun it was brilliant and changing, and then again shaded. One second later, and it had vanished in space. That, briefly, is the tore, or whirlwind-ring, which bursts from the cannon.

And what happened after the vortex penetrated the cloud?

But even as the spectator on the hill was losing hope for the much-vaunted cannon, he looked up again. There was a disturbance going on in the darkest cloud, just over the vineyards. It looked like billows of rolling, tossing smoke up there. Then all at once the cloud opened, and through the rift was the glorious gold of the afternoon sun. At last, here was a breach in the enemy's flank. A gunner below shouted involuntarily, and all of them worked faster and faster yet. Each cannon was counting two, three, shots to the minute. Other breaks showed in the clouds. There was a moment of wavering, and then panic. The dark-browed invader broke and fled. He scattered towards the hills, and in his retreat he sent down a discouraged volley of raindrops.

Or in more prosaic form, the cannons broke the updrafts that encouraged hail, and left a heavy rain.

Here's my attempt to capture the scene.



Polistra is at the controls of CANNONE FORMIDABILE, a full-fledged artillery piece with azimuth and altitude adjustments:



Happystar is supervising a cannon built into its own cozy shed, with a separate inner room where the tireur could sit and wait for the storm while sipping the products of the vineyard he was protecting.



An automatic acetylene cannon is in the background, developed by Maghiora and Blanchi.



Did the cannons make sense? We know from wind-tunnel studies of streamlining that a vortex breaks up smooth airflow. The purpose of streamlining is twofold: First avoid flat surfaces directly pushing the air; second, avoid vortices. You want the air to split smoothly around the car or plane, and rejoin smoothly afterward.

The end of the Grandinifughi era isn't clear. Did the farmers decide that the Grandinifughi weren't worth the effort? Or did insurance companies make damage more profitable than prevention? Flood insurance works that way.

= = = = =

Happy ending! Grelifuges are STILL USED in France and Italy, and STILL MADE in Spain, and they look about the same as the 1902 versions! The new cannons use acetylene, continuing the tech invented by Maghiora and Blanchi. Video of a modern grelifuge. Live action with a visible and audible whirlwind-ring at 4:14. The old description wasn't lyrical, it was accurate!


= = = = =

Etymological footnote: The French and Italian words for hail are opposite. Grèle comes from Latin gracilis, and means slim or small when used as an adjective. Grandini comes from a root meaning 'coarse-grained', thus by extension grinding and grain and grand and things that grind, including hail. My initial impression of 'chewiness' was spot on.

Labels: 1901, Asked and partly answered, Happy Ending, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 5:11 PM

  The oldest difference and the oldest confusion
Looking back to see if I could link the Coherer subject to an earlier discussion of modulation and rectification, I found this 2016 item with a broader view of communication, and a unique point that deserves reprinting.

Marconi initially treated wireless the same way as wired because he was trying to replace the transatlantic cable with wireless. Tuning and resonance weren't needed if your signal was the only one on the path. Experience soon showed him that tuning was needed. Coherers matched up with spark gaps in a "wired" analogy that didn't really work. Tuning gradually led to a new matchup between rectification and modulation, opening up the field for separate stations broadcasting separate programs.

The conflict between wired systems and wireless systems is exactly as old as life, starting with bacteria.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

These modern debates about encryption (ie the Bitcoin scam or the fake dispute between Apple and FBI) ring hollow to my ear, but I hadn't figured out why until just now.

Both sides are missing the oldest and deepest fact.

Encryption is the PRIMARY form of communication. Encryption came first. Publicly readable speech and writing came later.

Most living things communicate through chemical, visual and audio signals. Some fish communicate through AM and FM radio waves. Bacteria and mitochondria communicate electrically via wires. Most of these 'channels' are intrinsically and physically private.

Smarter vertebrates turn public audio channels into private channels through individual variations. Why do birds develop special grace notes? So a male can stand out as a mateworthy individual, and so members of a family can recognize each other.

Why did humans take it to the next level with more complex and more articulate syllables? Not so everyone could understand. That's SUICIDAL. We developed language so OUR FAMILY and OUR TRIBE could communicate without OTHER FAMILIES picking up the information.

Why did humans later develop ways of recording information on clay or wood? Three semi-separate motivations. (1) The priesthood of bookkeepers (my kind of priesthood!) developed numbers so they could keep track of business transactions. After the idea of visual mapping became familiar, the specific number symbols for One Ox or One House came to represent the ox or house itself, and then the sounds for Ox or House. After that, metaphor expanded or specialized the symbols.

(2) Census-takers picked up the trick, using it to register information about residents for governmental purposes like debts and taxes. (3) Religious priesthoods used writing to keep the scriptures within bounds, so they could gain power and money by renting out little bits of the ceremony. Guilds developed their own special sublanguages to protect their ownership of skill-estate, so they could rent out skilled labor without passing the skills to outsiders.

All of these priesthoods were trying to keep information within their own circles. Otherwise, why bother?

Audio encryption pretty much disappeared after writing became commonplace. It didn't re-emerge until electronics made tricks like multiplexing and modulation possible. Later on, DSP made complex audio encryption easier.

And that's where we are now. The same place we've always been.... except that AS FUCKING USUAL we intentionally reverse our understanding.

The initial and permanent purpose of communication is EXCLUSION. DIVISIVENESS. XENOPHOBIA. When communication REALLY MATTERS, it's coded.

Families no longer matter, so families no longer encrypt. Businesses still need encryption to stay ahead of the competition. Government data-gatherers still need encryption to stay ahead of the citizens. Armies still need codes to protect strategies.

= = = = =

Going back to the start again, it's clear that the Tower of Babel story is intentionally false. Languages and dialects reinforce walls and


Languages didn't start from a single universal tongue. Exactly the opposite. Satan doesn't separate languages; Satan wants everyone to speak the same way so the government can spy more efficiently. The tower story must have been written by the Babylonian NSA.

CORRECTION: I hadn't bothered to read the ACTUAL story of Babel. In fact the story is an accurate representation of Natural Law. A tyrant forced a universal language, and God broke up the universal language into proper modular languages. Our standard FALSE globalist interpretation, which I mindlessly followed, says that Satan broke up the tower, even though the STORY ITSELF credits God.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

In the first steps toward radio, the same confusion arose. Wired telegraphs, like wires between bacteria or fungal wires between plants, are intrinsically encrypted. Marconi had to learn, just as the first users of language learned, that tuning is needed on both ends in a public channel. A universal language can only work if there is EXACTLY ONE SENDER in the entire world. Deepstate is always trying to achieve EXACTLY ONE SENDER, so we need to cultivate and strengthen our tuning ability.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Morsenet of Things, Natural law = Sharia law, Real World Math

  ¶ 12:30 AM

  National Coherer Day
August 20 was National Radio Day, arbitrarily created in the '70s to celebrate WWJ in Detroit. This year is the centennial of WWJ's first broadcast, which wasn't exactly the first commercial broadcast but close.

I'll arbitrarily call today National Coherer Day because I feel like it.

Coherers were an odd sidetrack in the history of radio. They were developed by experiment and accident, not by theory. Coherers flourished in a very specific environment, and helped to maintain the environment. Spark gap transmitters favored coherer receivers, and coherer receivers favored spark gap transmitters.

Most of all, coherers were strictly for Morse, and strictly for driving a tape-writer or plotter. They didn't belong in a system that relied on human hearing, whether via Morse sounder or earphones. Printers were part of the early transatlantic cable systems, and printers were mature and reliable at the time when wireless experimentation started. Marconi saw wireless as a replacement for the transatlantic cable, with essentially one sender and one receiver; so his system was surrounded and constrained by the analogy and the existing equipment.

= = = = =

Let's start with a complete Lodge-Muirhead station, operated by Polistra with the help of Happystar.

Lodge designed a resonant antenna, with two conical capacitive elements tied by an inductive element.



The station included, from right to left, the Morse key (hidden by Polistra); the Lodge Buzzer; an induction coil; a spark gap tuned by Leyden jar capacitors and an inductor; the transmit-receive switch leading out to the antenna; a Lodge Coherer; and finally a printer or tape-writer.



The Lodge Buzzer was an overly complex way of providing AC to the primary of the induction coil. Most systems used a simple hammerbreak. The Buzzer was a three-stage relay, allowing the Morse key to handle low voltage and current. The fast switching of high current for the primary was done by a mercury dip.



Now we see the whole thing ticking and tapping away, while Polistra sends a meaningful message through the antenna.



Early telegraph rigs were extremely clocky, with all sorts of mechanical pendulums and escapements, and electrically switched pendulums.

Before looking at the Lodge Disc Coherer, we'll show the most common coherer.



A glass tube with loose metal powder or filings inside. The tube was placed in series with a battery and the printer or tape-writer. Normally the filings had a high resistance, essentially non-conducting. When an RF signal came through the ether near the coherer, or a high-frequency signal was imposed on the DC, the filings lined up and cohered, closing the circuit and effectively acting like a relay. The filings wanted to remain lined up, so a mechanical tapper was needed to break them apart between dots and dashes. This tapper is run by a buzzer, but it could also be pure mechanical clockwork.

The Lodge Disc was entirely different.

Here's a description of its action:

This is done by causing a small steel disc to revolve continuously in contact with a column of mercury, between which is interposed a thin film of oil. In action the coherer operates as follows: When the impinging waves set up oscillations in the resonator circuit the potential difference due to their cumulative effect disrupts the film of oil and at that instant cohesion takes place between the molecules of the solid and the fluid metals, only to be instantly restored by a partial revolution of the disc.

The thin layer of oil between dissimilar metals was probably acting like a semiconductor, similar to a catwhisker or even a bijunction transistor. "Cumulative" implies that some degree of rectifying was going on.

Marconi tried another variation on the constantly moving surface:



Looks like a tape recorder or wire recorder. The large-diameter coil around the moving wire carried the DC, and the antenna was connected to the small-diameter coil inside it. When RF was present, the magnetic particles in the wire cohered, strengthening the core effect, raising the inductance of the large coil momentarily, and thus providing a pulse of added current in the larger coil. The moving loop gave this section of wire a chance to relax its coherence before it was used again.

Another inventor went full biological, reverting to Galvani.



A frog leg carried a pen in its foot, and the RF was enough to trigger muscular contractions.

= = = = =

An early realization of the need for tuning came close to understanding the principle of rectifiers:

To excite the coherer under the conditions presumed to be necessary for long distances, the impulses due to these waves must syntonize with the natural period of oscillation of the receiving circuit, and therefore these successive waves must pass by that circuit (wherever it may be), with the second following in the same phase as the first, or nearly so, otherwise the tendency of the second one will be to weaken or annul the effect of the first one.

Again emphasizing the cumulative effect. Almost got the point of rectifying, but not quite. Fleming finally realized that it was necessary to eliminate or invert the negative side of the sine wave. A symmetrical wave adds and subtracts equally, so the sum is zero. Removing one side made it possible to accumulate the RF power, which could then be filtered to sort out the modulation. But the realization was hard to grasp while the sparks and coherers were working together nicely.

= = = = =

Earlier I mentioned an attempt to see coherer-like activity in the brain. The experiments were interesting, and I noted that the connection was actually better than the 1906 researcher could see.

There's a separate coherer-like response in nearly all neurons, which didn't occur to me at that point. A spark-gap signal received by a coherer, complete with the buzzing and tapping and ticking at both ends, was a pulse train of varying length. A longer series of pulses for a dash, shorter series for a dot. This is how MOST neurons communicate and accumulate their signals. Pulse trains of varying lengths.

= = = = =

Happy ending:

Surprisingly, coherers are enjoying a second life in the new digital world.



In the '50s, US and Soviet researchers were using coherers as computer memory elements, taking advantage of the natural hold time to create a 'short-term' memory.

Several recent Japanese patents use old-style powder coherers for the original purpose, giving a sensitive relay-like response to small added AC. The patents use coherers in touch-sensitive pens, or to detect nearby lightning.

Convective question: Wouldn't it be nice if our wetware memory had a tapper to break up unwanted coherences? Instant answer: We do have a tapper. Walking. Also, some biofeedbackish therapy techniques use finger tapping for this exact purpose.

= = = = =

Here's the set for Poser at ShareCG.

Followup, a real experiment with a real coherer!

Labels: Equipoise, Happy Ending, Lodge, Morsenet of Things, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:55 PM

  Ridhwan in the brain
A study of memory vs time finds a new type of clock.

Monkeys were shown images while their brains were monitored with electrodes.

Summary:

Many neurons in the entorhinal cortex were responsive to image onset, showing large deviations from baseline firing shortly after image onset but relaxing back to baseline at different rates. This range of relaxation rates allowed for the time since image onset to be decoded on the scale of seconds. Further, these neurons carried information about image content, suggesting that neurons in the entorhinal cortex carry information about not only when an event took place but also, the identity of that event. Taken together, these findings suggest that the primate entorhinal cortex uses a spectrum of time constants to construct a temporal record of the past in support of episodic memory.

The entorhinal area is just a zone in the hippocampus, not really a distinct part. Here's a sectional view of the hippocampus, the 'seahorse-like' hemstitch along the bottom of the cerebrum. The arrow points to the entorhinal area.



This graph shows what happens. Each horizontal row is the response of one neuron. Most neurons maintain their pulsing for about 1/3 second, but some hold the image for longer intervals, up to 5 seconds.



Most human inventions follow Nature whether we know it or not. In this case it's hard to think of an invented timing mechanism that works the same way. Water clocks 'slide' through the hours with one moving part. Dial clocks 'roll' through the hours, again with one moving part, not a separate hand for each hour.

In electronics, timing is often done with an RC time constant. The RC circuit behaves like a pendulum with an escapement, charging up to a fixed threshold then triggering a switch that discharges the Capacitor. I can't think of a circuit that stacks up a sequence of increasing RC time constants, all starting at the same time.

There was ONE clock that registered each hour with its own neuron, starting at different times and sliding up, charging the time constant for each hour.

The Ridhwan, shown here running from midnight to 8AM.



It's not quite the same, because the Ridhwan neurons start in sequence, not all at once. Still, it's closer to the brain than any other form of clock. Each hour has its own house, and in the original each house had a different picture on it. I got lazy and just showed alternate pictures on odd/even hours.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 1:35 PM

  Just a little French fun
Stationnaire Polistra is enjoying the nice hot weather.



French telegraph poles at the time of the Foy system had a unique style. Each had a little roof and lightning rod.



English posts at the same time also had a roof, but it was a simple wooden gable, not as stylish.

= = = = =

Also:

The Breguet clock telegraph was the universal ancestor and basis of all French systems. Was there ever an iBreguet? A pocket-watch Breguet?

Yes, at least in prototype form.

This was built and tested for military use by M. Trouvé, but apparently not adopted.

By one account the watch had two sides, like the Soviet sliderule watch. One side was turned by the knob to send, and the other side showed the incoming signal for receive.



Another account shows a miniMorse key on the sender.



At that time batteries were large wet cells, so the senders and receivers were 'local remotes' from a portable central station with batteries and wire reel.



If I hadn't already used the title Charge of the Light Breguet, it would be more appropriate here.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, Patient things

  ¶ 2:29 PM

  It's a clock! It's a printer! It's SUPERBAIN!
In this case I'm venturing up from the Ungreats into the Semigreats. Alexander Bain isn't a household word like Morse, but Bain successfully competed with Morse for a while.

The earliest failed attempts at telegraphy used chemical processes. Most used electrolysis, with 26 separate wires running across the land. Each wire was switched by its own key. All 26 were immersed in water at the receiving end. When each wire was charged, the receiving end formed bubbles under the appropriate letter.

Bain continued using chemistry in a more sophisticated way. His best attempt, which was popular for a while, was a 'ticker tape' that received and recorded the impulses from Morse senders. The current passed from a pointer through a chemically treated paper tape to a grounded backplane, creating visible blue dots and dashes where the dye was activated. This wouldn't have been fun for me to animate, since it was just a box with a paper strip coming out.

Bain's first invention was more fun by my standards. It mixed chemistry with another early theme in telegraphy.

Morse's original project was more like a linotype than a telegraph. The message to be sent was set up in type on a stick, then the sender would read the dots and dashes from specially formed patterns on the side of the letters. At the receiving end the codes would trigger a dispenser for letters, dropping the letters into a stick for printing. This idea never worked properly, and Morse finally realized that it was easier to use lots of human skill operating a simple key and sounder. The actual Linotype developed much later, completely separate from telegraphy and electricity. Even though it used Morse's methods it wasn't a direct evolution.

Here Bain was trying to read a fully set page of type or any other raised pattern as pixels. An engraving or etching, such as a copper stereotype plate, would serve especially well.

Bain called it IMPROVEMENT IN COPYING SURFACES BY ELECTRICITY in his 1848 patent.

I'm calling it the TeleTact. Here I've placed it in my printery scene for obvious reasons. Polistra is loading the TeleTact with a stereotype plate.



Let 'er rip!



A clock movement (hands on other side) powers the heavy pendulum. The pointer is forced to stay parallel, and it scans across the mysterious box line by line. When the pendulum makes contact with the 'ticker' points (just above Happystar's eyes) it energizes an electromagnet that escapes the rope pulley, allowing the mysterious box to drop one line.

What's happening inside the mysterious box?



A closeup view for orientation, with the pointer at the left end of the top line. The mysterious box contains a dense grid of wires running through an insulating mass like ceramic or hard wax. The top of the wires is just above the insulating surface, and the pointer gently brushes each wire as it scans. I'm showing three columns of (overly fat) wires for simplicity.



Here's a partly transparent side view, with a slug of type touching the wires.



The wires that are touching the protruding parts of the type or engraving are grounded. (Shown in gold here.) When the pointer hits those wires, it conducts a current through a relay, sending a pulse through the telegraph wires to the receiver.

Bain's system had one truly unique and elegant feature which hasn't been repeated in any sort of TV or scanner or printer since then. The sender and receiver were exactly the same machine. How did this work?



On the receiving end, the pointer was sending current toward ground at the moments in the scan when the sending pointer had encountered a 'high point' in the engraving. In the receiver, a chemically treated paper was inserted between the wire grid and ground. The wires that received current from the pointer would cause a reaction in the dye, darkening the paper at those points.

So the sender became a receiver by inserting paper instead of an engraving. No other changes needed. ELEGANT.

The magnet on the bottom leg was used for a separate purpose, which Bain intended to be included in the scanning process. It wouldn't have worked that way. The bottom magnet was a solenoid with a little latch bolt inside.



When energized it would pop out the latch bolt and hold back the pendulum for one tick. Bain seemed to intend this as a synchronizer during the scan. This would have been messy, with some ticks used for inking and some for syncing. Heavy pendulums keep time pretty well, so it would have sufficed to run a sync session between scan sessions. Then the signals wouldn't have been confused.

Labels: defensible spaces, defensible times, Equipoise, Happy Ending, Morsenet of Things, Patient things

  ¶ 7:54 AM

  Another day, another Breguet
One more dubious unbuilt telegraph based on the dial design. This one was American, and the inventor wanted us to know it was American.

Lucius Curtiss of Cincinnati invented this in 1848, and proudly titled it The American Indicating Disc Telegraph.



It certainly would have worked, but it would have been unnecessarily hard to use because it didn't make proper use of the Breguet-style dial. Curtiss had one distinctly French idea. Following Chappe instead of Morse, he intended to make phrases and words the major unit of information. He also tried to incorporate the idea of letter frequency, which most early telegraphs ignored.



The dial had 25 segments, but they weren't letters. They were 5 repetitions of 01234. Sending required you to rapidly hit the key until you saw the dial reach the desired number, then vibrate the key again to the next number and so on. You would pause between sequences. A single number meant a vowel; two digits between pauses covered the consonants and punctuation; and three or four digits would encode common words.



Each key impulse would trigger the magnets to tick the escapement, and the weight would gradually pull the wheel around.

You'd watch your numberwheel to form the sequences, which would also appear on the numberwheel of the receiver.

Curtiss was clearly a deeply religious man who lived by the Bible. His suggested list of common words included eg chance, church, God, good, give, except, accept, shall, shalt, should.

Unfortunately real telegraphs, from Chappe to the Web, are primarily used by stock swindlers. So a more practical list of common words would include eg short, long, corner, monopoly, evade, tax, cheat, gyp, steal, kill, slaughter, exterminate, Negative, Externalities.

I've resisted the temptation to 'correct' the mechanism, because I feel a strong empathy for Curtiss and his futile attempt to use technology for good purposes. Nevertheless, the original Breguet dial could have been relabeled to send a similar numbergroup code with a lot less uncertainty and a lot less wasted motion.

Labels: Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 1:51 PM