Reviewing fluidic computers
Thinking about the natural basis of calculus reminded me of the Lukyanov fluidic computer, which reminded me that I've featured several fluidic computers this year.

First and most elegant, the Willson automatic buoy. Willson used nothing but natural forces, placed in constant and elegant equipoise. Water pressure counterbalanced acetylene pressure, with the rate of change supplied by combustion.

Next was the Dalen sun valve, using the heat of sunlight to control the flow of acetylene.

Willson and Dalen were practically useful and lifesaving beacons, tied to the Trinity House theme. They represented the original meaning of artificial intelligence, a self-sustaining machine with lifelike properties helping to solve human problems.

The most beautiful and mysterious is the Ridhwan water clock, which used a true fluidic computer to control a series of doors and bells and birds and pointers and lamps.

A medieval night clock used the combustion of oil by a flame versus gravity to count hours and signal end of work, without any mechanism at all.

The Gabry flame clock used combustion versus oil pressure to drive a mechanical pointer.

The Tiffereau water clock used water flow in equipoise to 'tick' a full-fledged clock escapement.

And finally the Lukyanov, a genuine analog computer using nothing but water flow for logic and calculation.

All of these devices are infinitely closer to the natural use of calculus than the lookup tables in books or silicon.

Labels: Equipoise, Patient things, Real World Math, Trinity House

  ¶ 4:22 AM

  Yes, it worked.
In previous item I noted a brief report of an MIT fog control project in 1930, and wondered if it had succeeded.

Unlike Lodge, MIT wouldn't have been limited by inadequate supplies of HV charge. Van de Graaff's own lab was also at Round Hill. Can't get chargier than that!

But they apparently didn't take the static path. This article by MIT gives the details.

Houghton hypothesized that if a more moisture-absorbing chemical were introduced to the fog, water molecules would attach to the new compound, vapor pressure would drop, and the fog would dissipate. He scattered calcium chloride, an inexpensive compound with such properties, onto a dense layer of artificial fog and watched as the fog vanished. Field trials in which a calcium chloride solution was sprayed onto natural fog yielded similar results, but the technique wasn’t practical for clearing fog from sizable patches of land.

To do that, and to counteract the way the wind pushed new fog in, Houghton suspended a 100- foot-long pipeline with downward-facing spray nozzles from 30 feet in the air. When set up perpendicular to wind direction, the apparatus shot a misty curtain of calcium chloride toward the ground, dispersing any fog rolling through.

Spraying 2.5 gallons of the compound per second, Houghton’s machine took only three minutes to turn an area with visibility of less than 500 feet into one where “buildings more than a quarter-mile away were visible,” according to one report.

In short, the MIT fog control project WORKED, and it worked by the same methods used in cloud-seeding.

The article doesn't say why the effort was abandoned. The experimental system required too much salt, but a serious engineering effort could undoubtedly have improved the performance or found other alternatives. It appears that MIT just wasn't interested. They were mainly concerned with detection, not control.

Later Houghton got tangled up in Cold War fakery, pushing for a weather control treaty because the Russkis might get there first.

“I shudder to think of the consequences of a prior Russian discovery of a feasible method of weather control,” Houghton said, although he’d previously been a voice of moderation on the plausibility of weather control. “International control of weather modification will be essential in the safety of the world as control of nuclear energy now is.”

Same old story. We frame Russia for all of our evil, in order to avoid doing anything good or useful.

Result: We do nothing but evil.

Labels: Patient things

  ¶ 9:06 PM

  Sportwave reprint
I linked this 2014 piece in previous item. After reading it, I think it deserves a reprint. Partly for the obvious relevance to communication methods, more importantly for the entertainment aspect. The content of shortwave was passively entertaining, and the work needed to send and receive SW was actively entertaining.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Shortwave is unique among all means of communication. It has a certain sporting aspect. When you send out a signal in the range of 3 to 30 mc, the atmosphere may decide to bounce it around the world, allowing you to reach great distances with fairly low power. With higher power, a serious antenna, and lots of experiment and calculation, you can be reasonably sure of reaching a desired destination most of the time. But you're never entirely sure. Sunspots and thunderstorms and temperature inversions and all sorts of other crap may block you. Ham operators enjoy this sporting aspect. Like fishermen they collect wall trophies (QSLs) and run contests and expeditions for bragging rights. Professional broadcasters may not enjoy it but have learned how to exploit it.

Doing a review of a 1983 Soviet shortwave radio got me thinking (again) about the meaning of SW. This radio, clearly for domestic use, proves that the Soviet system was confident about its success in those years. Not so in Stalin's time, when owning a SW was a criminal act, and radio was basically a closed-circuit intercom system.

Within the US, popularity and availability of SW radios inscribed a different curve. SW broadcasting came of age around 1935, basically enabled by the superhet receiver. Earlier receivers weren't able to maintain a consistent sharpness of tuning across a wide range of freqs.



American radios for home entertainment began to feature SW bands as soon as broadcasters began to provide content. SW reached a peak in WW2, when listening to the propaganda of both sides was considered part of an Informed Citizen's duties. Even some car radios had a SW band. Along the same lines, American newscasters frequently mentioned "our propaganda says .... and their propaganda says ....", trusting the American listener with the fact that both sides were stretching things.

After WW2, home radios dropped SW abruptly and picked up FM instead. This coincided with the government's sharp crackdown on 'disloyalty'. Suddenly the duty of an Informed Citizen was limited to line-of-sight propagation. Then TV finished the job, making the viewing experience line-of-sight as well. Propagandists finally fulfilled their perpetual dream: a closed pipe injecting one stream of messages from source directly to brain, with no leakage or tributary streams allowed. No skip, no bounce, no imagination. Best part: the injectees didn't even realize it was a pipe. They only knew that they couldn't stand to be disconnected from the pipe.

This state of affairs continued, with constantly tightening media monopolies and narrowing of permissible viewpoints, until the Internet came along in the mid-80s and broke the monopolies but didn't stop the censorship. The Web is, after all, a closed-circuit intercom system. Everything we see and hear passes through NSA's ears and eyes before it reaches ours.

SW isn't illegal; you can still buy SW radios designed for ham use, but they aren't meant for home entertainment. They don't look good in the living room. This limits their use to a small number of Oddballs who can be watched easily.

Why did US government and culture encourage SW in the '30s and discourage it from the '50s until the present? I think it was a question of confidence. FDR was confident that his efforts to improve America would stand comparison against the alternatives in Russia and Germany. Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, et al were not nearly so confident.

It's especially noteworthy that Russia was building and selling SW radios domestically in the '80s and we were not. Reagan crashed the Soviet Empire at a moment when our own empire truly would not stand comparison. As Gorby was loosening and reforming, we were eliminating industrial jobs, freezing out all possible reforms, and continually narrowing the range of permissible discourse.

Our trend has continued, with disastrous results. We don't know how the Soviet trend would have developed because it was interrupted.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Everything in the item is still valid except the date of 1935. In fact SW was intensely used by all sorts of operators in 1930, as clearly shown in this 1930 official list. Commercial broadcasters, dispatchers for police and airlines and shipping, simulcasts of US local stations, TV and fax experiments, and above all the commercial wire services.

Labels: Entertainment, meta-entertainment, Natural law = Soviet law, Patient things

  ¶ 12:10 PM

  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

  Lukyanov's water computer
The Russians made the most interesting analog computers. They stuck with analog cybernetics long after Westerners had switched to digital.

In 1936 Lukyanov developed a water-based computer to solve complicated functions for engineering and construction. He was working primarily with concrete and soil under freezing conditions, trying to help design dams and pavement in cold places. His machine, and later variants, served many purposes into the 1970s.

I've drawn the 'museum version' of Lukyanov's hydrointegrator. This may have been only the control panel; it diverges from his descriptions of the functional machine. The real machine was modular, with several large blocks of pipes and tubes behind the control panel.

This picture seems to show the real machine in use:


And this diagram is similar, with the plots showing up more clearly:


The cylinders holding graphic plots would normally be plotted outputs, but in this machine they're inputs. The real machine had four optional input variables, along with an implicit time variable.

A typical use was modeling heat transfer through a structure (dam or pavement) treated as a series of layers. Each water column represented a layer, and each column could be programmed to let in water at a specific rate. In other words, each column was like an RC filter in a sequential filter setup, with the visible height (or voltage in the electronic version) representing the temperature in that layer of the dam.



These diagrams clearly show the primary advantage of analog systems, whether mechanical or fluid or electronic, over digital software. In real life each layer or module or neuron or organism is always continuously influencing all other layers, with influence and feedback in all directions at once. Interconnected water columns do it naturally. You can't do it at all with interconnected functions in software. You can pass differences from subroutine A to subroutine B, and pass results back, but there's no way to make the influences simultaneous and continuous.

Electronic version:



The operator used the big lever to follow the curve already drawn on the wrapped graph. As the lever moved up and down, it moved a tank up and down, raising and lowering the 'potential voltage' input to the system. This diagram shows two input variables B1 and B2.



Programs were entered on the three rows of valves in the center of the control panel. The description doesn't clarify the specific purpose of each row, and the upper crank is also unclear. I suspect it was a manual turner or winder for the plot cylinder, which was apparently driven by clockwork.



Here Polistra is moving the big lever to follow the dam plot on the left cylinder, and the tubes are responding with a (purely imagined) output pattern. Another observer would record the heights at different times, or perhaps use a mounted movie camera to make a direct record.

The RC-like effect of the flow would also enable a single transient response to be modeled. After setting the valves for the appropriate pattern of Rs and Cs, just yank the lever upward and watch the columns move for a minute or two.

= = = = =

Footnote: The best descriptions in English are here at Archive.org.

= = = = =

Sidenote after thinking about "devices" and Pied Pipers: another advantage of mechanical and fluidic computers is independence. They can't be hacked or detected from a distance. Only a live spy in the same room can control or read them. Even electronic analogs are harder to penetrate than digital, because they don't emit a readable stream of patterned codes. An RC computer responds when you turn the knobs, then settles gradually into a new condition. No predictable and redundant patterns. Russia understood this point deeply after repeated invasions and penetrations by Krauts and Yanks.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Patient things

  ¶ 10:01 AM

  Good entertainment = good maintenance
In previous item,

The real engineers and architects of the first 1000 were not in Github mode. They built houses and cathedrals to last, because they understood technology was not going to improve soon. The scribes put artistry into their handwritten books, knowing that the books would be used and maintained for centuries. They tried to provide beauty and pleasure for the maintainers, to insure better and longer maintenance. Bookkeepers used indelible ink on heavy paper, and 'illuminated' their ledgers with similar artistry.

Providing beauty and treats for the maintainers is a lost art, but not lost for 1000 years. The practice was fairly common up to 1970 when the whole world of manufacturing and maintenance was hunted to extinction by Wall Street.

Some car makers tried to create a pleasant environment for mechanics. I experienced this sort of pleasure when working on Mercedes and Toyota in the '70s. When you got into the engine compartment, everything you needed for routine maintenance was easy to find, pleasant for the eyes and hands, and satisfying to complete. I never had this experience in a VW or American car.

RCA and Zenith unquestionably followed this rule with their radios in the '20s and '30s. Both brands were beautiful and entertaining outside and inside. The inside included all the info you needed, and often included specialized tools or spare parts.

I try to provide moments of pleasure and beauty in my courseware and graphics. A textbook, whether on paper or software, should include some art and entertainment. I don't know if anyone appreciates them, but I feel obligated to pay back the beauty of life and nature.

Later and better thought: Providing beauty and treats for the maintainers is NOT a lost art outside of human "civilization". Plants have been doing it for a billion years. Flowers and fruits are EXACTLY beauty and treats to insure maintenance.

Labels: Entertainment, Equipoise, Patient things, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 1:58 PM

  More Github grumping
Random Github thoughts after struggling with the latest major update of Poser.

Their developers switched to using the latest version of Python for scripting. There's nothing new in Python that could possibly be needed. The change was purely motivated by Github fashion.

This change basically destroys all existing tools for Poser, because they will require heavy rewriting. I've got a thousand of these tools, some used constantly, all used occasionally, for play and courseware development.

Seems like there should be a business opportunity for anti-Github programs. The 'open source' world almost entirely goes the other way, toward maximum rapid change.

Basic fact: People who actually use tools, whether the tools are hammers or programs, need to have STABLE tools. A hammer that changes its shape every month, requiring a new type of nails every month, will ruin the carpenter's coordination and speed. A text editor** or operating system or graphic app that changes every month requires you to spend all your time relearning instead of working.

This is just another form of psychopathic aggression. Psychopaths destroy PURPOSE and STABILITY above all.

Carpenters have an advantage because their hammers and saws (so far) aren't web-connected. The hammer doesn't "phone home" every millisecond to check the server for updates, and doesn't turn itself off when your subscription to the hammering service expires, or when the house you're building disagrees with the architectural or political tastes of the hammering service.

There should be money in a STABLE source of software.

This would be another function of the new Trinity House in my dreams, the anti-Parkinson pro-PURPOSE pro-SKILL pro-SCIENCE crowdfunded foundation.

= = = = =

** Text editor: I'm eternally grateful to the developers of Kedit, the text editor I've been using since 1987. They updated it from DOS to Windows, and then basically stopped. They never switched to subscription or cloud mode. It's still possible to order Kedit, and it still works. I've tried all the alleged alternatives, and nothing else does the same job. I would be HAPPY to pay an annual subscription fee for Kedit, to GUARANTEE that it NEVER changes. But the developers don't want money. They're missing an opportunity.

Labels: Parkinson, Patient things, skill-estate, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:45 PM

  Tool rule
Previous item about a Soviet navy manual with USEFUL math reminded me of the basic point.

Russian math and science teaching was EXPERIENTIAL and SKILL-BASED. Our STEM was based on theory and memorization. Sputnik should have told us to start imitating Russia, but instead we made our own education even worse with Set Theory.

Here's a pretty good rule:

When a part of math is used in real life, the users develop real tools to make it easy.

Abacuses and ledgers have been used in commerce for thousands of years. Tables of log and trig values have been printed for hundreds of years. Babbage designed and used his computer to print tables, not to solve individual problems.

Specific trades developed highly specialized slide rules or 'wheel charts', usually circular, to figure often-used formulas in one turn. HVAC contractors had slide rules for fan capacity and Freon quantity. Radio repairmen had slide rules for Ohm's law and resonant frequency. Carpenters had slide rules for lumber size and bevel angles. Insurance salesmen had slide rules for annuity values and life premiums.

Later those slide rules turned into specialized calculators, then specialized computer apps.


Conversely, how can you tell if a part of math is useless? No tables or slide rules.

There was NEVER a pocket manual or a slide rule or a calculator or an app for set theory.

You can't even write a computer program to do set theory! It's completely ephemeral and useless.



Happy Ending: Searching Ebay for wheel charts showed surprisingly that wheel charts are still alive. They seem to be most active in graphic situations like color matching or image matching, where computers can't beat human perception. Turn the outer wheel to match the color on the object, and the inner windows show which color name or product is closest to the color.

Labels: Experiential education, Happy Ending, Patient things

  ¶ 1:55 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

  Greats and Ungreats
For a long time I've been tired of conservative focus on a few Great Thinkers.

This essay by Bradley Bitzer hits the same old points.

In times of chaos, it’s profoundly necessary to remember those who have come before us and the innumerable sacrifices they made. Each of these great men, whatever his individual faults, sought to live according to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. They preserved, and they conserved.

The best preservers of SKILLS, and the culture that surrounded the SKILLS, were guilds, Mutual Benefit Associations, and unions. Sometimes even governments, like the unique French preservation of semaphore skills in 1845.

Too many of those Great Ones were part of the Deepstate of their time, whether the Roman Deepstate of 1000 AD, or the FBI/CIA Deepstate of 1950, or the Epstein Deepstate of 2020.

In any era you have to be part of the inner elite to be widely published and remembered. The inner elite always has an evil motive. A few famous figures have pushed back the elite. Harding and FDR did it. Most of the conservative favorites were on the other side.

I'm constantly trying to focus and magnify the thoughts and desires of the ungreat. Many of them didn't write books or make speeches; instead they taught or invented. Their desires and purposes come through in their patents and activities. There's a lot of purpose in a patent after you dig past the boilerplate.

Three examples come to mind: Claude Chappe, Mary Jameson, Lucius Curtiss.

There are billions of decent sane people in any era, most of whom deserve more credit than any of the greats or ungreats. But it's simply impossible to focus on them because they didn't leave any record at all. A few historians are trying to give them credit by writing semi-fictional stories about the ordinary peasants and parents of various eras. I don't have the skill for that work, so I'm focusing in the middle ground.

Labels: Patient people, Patient things, skill-estate

  ¶ 4:11 PM

  Trying to de-LSD-ize an invention
Another semi-real descendant of the Breguet family, and another link between several of my patient machine sets. In this case I've reimagined the original to work better, using techniques fully available and understood at the time.

This was invented by a Monsieur Regnard in 1855. It was clearly intended as an alternate receiver for the Foy-Breguet system, which was the French official telegraph in those years. I've rigged it to use the same code patterns.

Regnard was trying to show letters on a screen. He used two wheels triggered by the incoming pulses. Each wheel always turned clockwise, and the pointer on the screen was pushed and pulled by a complex lever arrangement between the two wheels. His screen, shaped to fit the vector sum of the levers, was just plain weird and hallucinatory. (I'm convinced that inventors and artists in the 1800s were influenced by ergot in the bread.)



See what I mean?

The same function could have been accomplished in a much neater way by thinking in three dimensions, using Azimuth and Altitude as in telescopes or cannons. The pointer would then look like a telescope or cannon. Or a toucan.



One of the two input signals would tick the pointer from side to side by rotating a horizontal wheel. The other input signal would tick the pointer up and down by rotating a vertical wheel.

With those two motions coordinated, the pointer could find grid locations on a square screen, or could find letters arranged in grid form.



A larger version with a pencil or chalk mounted on the pointer could transmit pictures.

Later, of course, the Gray Telautograph accomplished the purpose in a strictly 2D way, again using two pulse-controlled wheels. The Telautograph became the standard way of transmitting signatures and sketches from 1890 to 1970.

[I've shown magnets that would 'flip' the ratchets forward. This probably wouldn't work well in reality; a system more like the rack and snail that drives a clock chime would have worked much better. I didn't feel like forming the more complex details needed for that setup, since this is just an imaginary reimagining of an imaginary invention.]

Labels: defensible times, Entertainment, Morsenet of Things, Patient things

  ¶ 3:51 PM

  Yet another weird French clock
This is remarkably similar to the Gabry lamp-clock in its appearance and history. Invented and described in French scientific texts, but probably not built.

It's not especially pretty, but it is 'patient' in a unique way, using equipoise and differential action.

Behold Tiffereau's ticking water-clock, the last of the clepsydras!



Why is it remarkable? It uses differential action in two separate ways.

First, it guarantees that a steady flow reaches the 'drip point', using a siphon tied to a float.



As the water in the source tank rises and falls, a float carries a siphon. The inlet of the siphon is always below current water level, and the outlet is always inside the nearly-empty inner drip chamber. Thus the hydraulic pressure in the drip chamber remains relatively constant as you fill and empty the main source tank. (This action resembles the Willson automatic buoy.)

= = = = =

The second use of balance and equipoise is more interesting. Each drip from the inner drip chamber hits a delicately balanced spoon. When the drip hits the spoon, its weight pushes the spoon down for a moment ... until the drip exits the spoon into the lower tank. At that moment the spoon rises again. Each fall of the spoon ticks the clock forward.



I'm showing the ticks as minutes here for convenience, but they would probably be closer to seconds in the real thing, if it was ever built.

Labels: Equipoise, Morsenet of Things, Patient things

  ¶ 3:11 PM

  The opposite of 'patient machines'
Headline at Eurekalert:

Engineering: Reducing noise transmitted through an open window

Hmm. Could be interesting. Let's read it.

The goal is admirable:

The authors hope that it could be used to reduce noise levels entering through an open window, while keeping homes ventilated, and could improve the health of people living in cities.

Especially important now that we've temporarily and fakely REdiscovered the previously well-known value of fresh air. We won't remember the REdiscovery because we don't learn anything, but the fact remains whether we remember it or not.

How do they propose to achieve the goal?

The device, assembled by Bhan Lam and colleagues, consists of 24 loudspeakers (each 4.5 cm in diameter), fixed in a grid pattern to bars attached to the inside of a window and one sensor located outside the window. If the sensor detects noise outside the building, the loudspeakers emit "anti-noise" at the same frequency as the detected noise but with inverted sound waves. This "anti-noise" cancels out the detected noise and reduces the volume of noise pollution entering the room, even when the window is open.

And how much benefit do you get from this massive and wildly expensive and energy-consuming megasystem?

The authors observed up to a 10 decibel noise reduction for sounds with a frequency above 300Hz, such as traffic and train noises.

10 dB isn't much. It's a barely noticeable difference in most situations.

More importantly, perceptual noise reduction is only partly correlated with measured dB. Annoyance comes from several interweaving factors: The meaning of the noise (talk vs buzz, doorknock vs heating duct thump); sudden explosive sounds vs constant rumbles; and the predictability or periodicity of the pattern when not constant.

A simple reduction in level for a specified frequency range can be achieved MUCH more cheaply and 'patiently' by redesigning the screen or adding louvered shutters. Some inconclusive musings on the subject.

= = = = =

Next day: I ran a real test of my musings and got a surprise!

Labels: Patient things

  ¶ 12:31 AM

  I'm always doing Wheatstone ... but Wheatstone doesn't always work!
Second piece in Ancestral Ciphers, following (out of historical sequence) from the M-209 disk cipher machine.


In these Ancestral sets I try to find the first machine or first prototype. For ciphering, Everybody's Magazine in 1917 had a good article on early pictorial and sequential codes, p1003 of the PDF. The article was centered on Kraut ciphers, but it was really a long historical overview of the subject.

The family tree of Enigma-type machines starts with the thread cipher, often used in underground or prison communications. Sender and receiver have matching templates, sometimes homemade and linear:



or sometimes a page from a book or newspaper. The locations of the 26 letters are marked, ideally not in alphabetical order, and even more ideally with several duplicates of frequent letters to foil freq-count deciphering. The above picture is definitely not ideal.

Sender takes a long thread and places one end on the place in the template where the first letter of the message occurs. He then stretches the thread to the place where the second letter of the message occurs, and marks this place on the thread with ink. (Ideally disappearing ink.) He then holds that point of the thread on the location of the second letter and spans the thread to the location of the third letter of the message, and so on.

The result is a long thread with random-looking marks, or ideally no visible marks. The thread can be included easily in all sorts of items, from the classic cake to a shirt or sweater.

Sequential letter-finding guarantees difficult decryption, because each interval is the distance between previous and current letter, not a constant correlate of current letter.

Aha! Sounds like the Breguet dial telegraph. Each letter counts pulses from previous letter, and the pulse count is never directly correlated to the letter itself. Relative, not absolute.

Was there a Breguet cryptograph? Turns out that there was a device that looked and worked like Breguet, but it was invented [or claimed]** by Wheatstone.

= = = = =

Everything I find interesting turns out to be Wheatstone, whether I know it or not.

The device is so much like the Breguet dial that I was able to reuse most of my Breguet model. I built it in a couple hours, versus a couple days for most gadgets.

Here's Polistra showing how it would have been used. Crank the main handle to input letters, and write down what the second hand shows as the ciphertext.



The inner circle was meant to be cardboard and temporary. The sender and receiver would be using the same randomized order for the inner circle.

Unfortunately it wouldn't have worked well. I'm pretty sure I've followed Wheatstone's description. The inner circle had one less space than the outer, and the inner hand was supposed to run slightly faster than the outer, so the phase angle between them gradually increased. After one outer circle, the inner hand should then be running 'one hour ahead' of the outer hand, then 'two hours ahead' after two outer circles, and so on.

In the first place, there's no need to have a smaller inner circle if you're going to step the inner hand forward. But more importantly, the inner hand OFTEN looks like this:



Ambiguous. Which letter do you pick? This ambiguity would be common no matter how the ratios of inner writing and inner hand are chosen.

In fact the real (and commercially successful) Breguet setup would have done the job BETTER. Breguet was stepwise and 'digital' on both sender and receiver, with clockwork ticks and escapements, so there was never any ambiguity. Choosing and sending and printing letters is an inherently digital task. With numerical measurements you can round up or down. 3.87 becomes 4. But you can't round up or down with arbitrary symbols. A.87 doesn't become B, it's just meaningless.



Breguet could become a cryptograph by adding a 'kicker' to the receiver, so the receiver's pointer would jump ahead by 'one hour' after each revolution.

Even without any encryption, Breguet would have been frustrating for an interceptor who didn't 'tune in' at the start of the session. It could have been made much harder, even without the 'kicker', if the sender and receiver agreed to start each message from a different reset point.

= = = = =

The Hagelin multi-disk cryptograph, and its Enigma descendants, simply repeat the Wheatstone principle through several stages, with each wheel shorter ratio than the previous, so the mapping steps forward at each stage.

Here's my M-209 model made semi-transparent to show the wheel steps.



Wheel 1 has 26 letters, then 25, 23, 21, 19, 17. Each ratio is prime, no nice 2s or 4s.

The thread cipher, and Wheatstone's mechanized version, are relative measurements, not absolute. Wheatstone is always about relative measurement. Like the nervous system, everything is differences and deltas.

Morse and Braille and Chappe are absolute codes. Each letter, or each defined combo of letters, always has the same audio or tactile or visual pattern, starting from the same ground point. These systems can be read reliably no matter when you 'tune in'.

Morse is thus more like speech.... Or is it?

In fact speech is more like Breguet. All perception is relative and delta-based. Each vowel and consonant is judged as a transition from the previous set of frequencies.

= = = = =

** Footnote: Biographers depict Wheatstone as the typical born inventor, pouring out ideas all the time, quickly losing interest in each new idea and moving on. Some of the ideas were brilliant and original and timeless, some were unoriginal and impractical. Fortunately his business partner Charles Cooke was steady and practical, able to filter out the useful ideas and make them commercially profitable.

Labels: Equipoise, Metrology, Patient things, Real World Math

  ¶ 2:34 PM

  The Enigma was thoroughly familiar
Starting a new series, Ancestral Encryption. Gotta keep the artistic output flowing, though my heart's not in it today. Way too much holocaustal hell, with no sign of any relief.



This M-209 ciphering machine was produced in great quantities during WW2. It was a small machine. Though it looks like a typewriter and has the same complexity as an adding machine, it's about the size of a landline phone.

Like the Gibson Girl transmitter,



the M-209 was ergonomically designed to fit the soldier's body. It could be used on a desk or table, but it was mainly meant for field use. The case was indented to fit over a knee, and a strap was added to hold it to the leg.



The six Key wheels on top were usually preset at headquarters before sending it out in the field. The field operator would turn the C/D switch on left to Code or Decode, then turn the Selector on left to each character of the input text and turn the black Drive knob on right. On some versions the Drive knob had a crank. As with a manual adding machine, the Drive knob would run the input letter through the cams set by the six Key wheels, and the output character would be printed on the paper tape.



The M-209 was a lot like the German Enigma machine, which is famous through stories and movies. Both were based on an earlier commercial cipher machine. Stories and movies give the impression that Alan Turing was solely responsible for solving the Enigma from scratch. Turing's math probably helped, but this class of machine was common on both sides, and familiar long before the war. The British deciphering project didn't use computers or theoretical math; it just manufactured a huge number of simulator machines and ran them in mass production style, bruteforcely examining all possible combinations and permutations. When a correct key was found, the key was applied to new messages until it failed. The project was a triumph of industry and organization, not a triumph of theory.

Labels: Patient things

  ¶ 5:54 AM

  The first quadraphonic stereo (revised)
Just redoing and expanding this item, after adding the mechanical analog computer and releasing the set at ShareCG.

= = = = =

Returning to the Ancestral Audio theme after a productive sidetrack into the Pigeoneers.

This wasn't the first use of stereophonic sound, but it was the first use that turned into a lasting and practical device. Like most real inventions, it was designed for war.



These weird-looking gadgets were fairly common in WW1. At first they were purely acoustic with no electronic parts at all. Later they continued in WW2 with more electronics.

Each unit required two soldiers, one for each pair of horns. Each pair was rotatable, but the two horns in each pair always pointed the same way. The pairs were perpendicular; one pair focused the observer on east to west, and the other focused on north to south. I'm showing only the observer for the East-West pair here. Each horn had a rubber hose at the small end, leading to the leather helmet on the observer for this pair. Observers were trained to use their binaural hearing to detect the position of an aircraft from left to right on this axis. They also estimated height and type of aircraft.

As the observers announced their estimates of position, they fed the angles into a hugely complex mechanical analog computer that assembled the estimates into an azimuth-altitude reading, which could then be applied directly to a cannon.



Schematic of the computer:



This sound locator fits into my 'patient' category because it relies on sharpened and trained and calibrated HUMAN senses. Non-patient tech weakens and atrophies human skills and senses and immunity.

Despite the experience of the engineers and the experience of the soldiers, stereo didn't break into peacetime uses until 1950.

Constant theme: Hearing matters more than vision in real life, but sound always trails far behind light in artistic and commercial development.

= = = = =

Links for Ancestral Audio so far:

Poulsen's wire recorder

The last windup phono

The Dictaphone

Dictaphone annotator.

Webster Chicago wire recorder.

Anti-aircraft sound detector

= = = = =

The Ancestral Audio set, released at ShareCG.

Labels: Patient things, skill-estate

  ¶ 1:10 PM

  Inancienation
I've used the above word once before, and the bots that "read" this blog seem to like it, since it provides a unique search term. So I'll satisfy their tastes again.

For the last ten years I've been tracking the decay and renovation of a vacant apt bldg in this neighborhood.

Here's how it looked for many years:



Here's the fake start of renovation about two years ago:



And the first demo about six months ago:



Now they're FINALLY working steadily. They've closed off some windows and reshaped others, and reframed the inner walls.

This week they did something innovative, or rather inancienative.



They tore off the rotten old porch cover on the left and replaced it with an EXACT REPLICA of the nicer porch on the right. Respecting the original designer. My crappy picture doesn't do it justice. All the dimensions and bevels are exact.

Good work!

Random stupid thought: If copyright laws applied to architecture, this form of respect and symmetry would be illegal. According to county records this apt was built in 1923, just after the Steamboat Willie line specified by the Disney-owned copyright "law". All additions would have to be mismatched.

Labels: Heimatkunde, Patient things

  ¶ 7:32 AM

  Pigeoneers and Pigeons 2
Continuing from here, with a few more pictures and a surprise.

A stationary loft served as the home base for the pigeons. They were trained in the stationary loft and learned to regard it as home.



A typical military loft had three or four rooms.



The Detention Cell, with a separate entrance, held misbehaving or ill pigeons. The ill birds needed to be separated because the healthy pigeons would otherwise try to kill them. Birds are Darwinians. The bad birds were kept separate so they could be retrained without affecting the others. A central hall led to a main residence and a workroom. Each room had a set of nest boxes and a set of perches.



Nest boxes were just large enough for one pigeon to sleep and eat; but pigeons were generally free to fly around the rooms when not locked in for bedtime. Water and food were available in the main room.

Pigeons are a one-way communication device. When men were sent out to the field for reconnaissance or battle, they carried pigeons from the stationary loft. Sometimes they carried in trailers,



and sometimes in carrying cages in trucks.



Each pigeon was equipped with a Message Capsule.



When the field unit wanted to send reports or requests for support back to headquarters, they would write a message on a standard form, roll it tightly, insert it in the capsule, and launch the pigeon. Automatic communication, no radio waves, no visible transport on the ground.

= = = = =

The one-way-ness would limit modern uses, but a Guild of modern Pigeoneers could find ways to use pigeons for off-grid banking and communication. A load of pigeons could be taken to a Branch Bank or Branch Post Office at intervals, then launched back to the central office with checks or letters. A capsule could carry massive amounts of information in digital form (eg USB stick).

= = = = =

Surprise: During WW2 the Army's pigeoneers had bred and trained two-way pigeons, or more precisely two-home pigeons. The birds knew two locations. When released at point A they would fly to point B, and when released at B they would fly to A.

At Fort Monmouth a true blue-blooded pigeon named Mister Corrigan was taken, whose ancestry was known for 525 pigeon years of life. 167 famous champion racing pigeons appeared in his pedigree, including the names of some famed army message carriers.

On such aristocratic material Major John K. Shawvan, of the U. S. Signal Corps, set to work. A short while ago it was announced that under the Major's tutelage Mister Corrigan had made pigeon history. He flew twelve miles from his home loft to a small container around which crouched a small group of soldiers. Five minutes later this history making pigeon was winging his way back on the return trip to the loft he had left not many minutes before.

Today Fort Monmouth claims to have a flock of nearly a hundred of the only two-way homing pigeons in the world—birds able to carry messages on round trips across battlefields

The article also describes a similar French project in more detail. Was this line of work continued or expanded later? I can't tell from online material, but two-way pigeons are definitely possible. (Nice choice of name for the main pigeon!)

I'll bet you could train for more than two locations by using an aerial picture of the uniquely marked landing zones. Show a picture of Zone C, and the bird would know how to get there.


= = = = =

Poser models released at ShareCG.

Labels: Patient people, Patient things

  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Pigeons and Pigeoneers
I was deeply impressed by the Signal Corps approach to pigeons.

From the 1923 Signal Corps Tech Manual:

The pigeon is highly sensitive and responsive to treatment. Of great importance in this respect are kindness, firmness, and calmness of the personnel handling it, and the reward given the pigeon for good performance. The pigeon prizes its home, and every effort should be made to increase the attractiveness thereof by proper loft construction, management, and the maintenance of buildings and grounds.

The Corps understood that pigeons are intelligent conscious animals with souls. Pigeons, like humans, want to be useful, want to work and accomplish a purpose.

The pigeoneers knew all of their pigeons by name. Pigeons lived and served for up to 10 years, so the acquaintance was deeply personal. When a pigeon carried out its duty in extreme danger, it was commemorated by name.



Transcribed: With his eye destroyed by a piece of shrapnel and his head a welter of clotted blood, homed in splendid time from the Beaumont front, early in the morning of September 12, 1918. This bird carried a message of great importance which gave the location of several of the advancing heavy batteries, which were doing terrible execution on the advancing American troops. This information enabled the American Artillery to silence the enemy's guns within 20 minutes.

Mocker wasn't callously killed after his heroic deed; he recovered, retired, and lived at Fort Monmouth until 1937.

= = = = =

The Signal Corps also understood several physical aspects of birds that scientists were just starting to "discover" 50 years later.

The ear appears to play an important part in the sense of direction. It includes three parts, the external ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. At the top of the inner ear there are three semicircular canals which appear to be the nerve conductors of orientation. It is possible that their great sensitiveness enables the pigeon to perceive magnetic and atmospheric impressions, and to determine the direction of the loft, either at departure or during the flight, when on account of atmospheric disturbances the bird has temporarily lost its way.

Birds are blimps! Another case where we copied Nature without knowing it.

Not only do these air sacs constitute a source of supply for the lungs, but the warm air which fills them increases the buoyancy of the pigeon in the air and reduces the effort required for propulsion.

And the Army also cared about the pigeoneers, and took care to select and retain them:

A careful selection must be made of pigeoneers to train and care for a loft of long-distance pigeons. The pigeoneer should have had several years of experience in other lofts, and have a marked aptitude for judging flying birds. He should be given training under another pigeoneer experienced in long-distance work until he has demonstrated his ability to train and select long-distance pigeons for himself. He must keep pigeon records meticulously, culling and eliminating unsatisfactory stock, and developing finer stock as he deems best.

A qualified pigeoneer should not be required to maintain a loft containing over 50 long-distance pigeons. With these he should become intimately familiar, learning their individual characteristics in detail. He should cater to their peculiarities to bring out their best abilities; as for example, upon the return of a bird from a long-distance flight the pigeoneer assists the exhausted bird to his own perch or nest, dislodging any intruder if necessary. He should be allowed considerable latitude in exercising his initiative and developing his own ideas in regard to his birds.

This is DRAMATICALLY different from the scientific approach to both pigeons and humans, developed by Skinner at the exact same time. Most scientists have continued in the Skinner mode, treating both pigeons and humans as passive identical inanimate mechanisms. The previous SOULFUL view is just starting to return in the last few years ... but only for other animals, not for humans.

= = = = =

Since pigeons were a form of communication device, and since pigeons are unquestionably patient by my peculiar standards, I decided to run up some of the Signal Corps pigeon equipment.

First a stationary loft. These weren't manufactured by the Corps; each group of pigeoneers was expected to build its own from plans.

On the left is a bob trap, a simple one-way entrance. Pigeons landed on the perch, then walked in through the swinging door. They couldn't get out again until the pigeoneer launched them.



On the right is a drop trap, nothing more than a hopper with holes. Pigeons came in for a landing and swooped in through the holes. The trap was then closed manually after all the expected flights had returned.

= = = = =

Here's a trailer loft, which was manufactured. Each trailer loft was driven to a location near the action but not at the front lines. After a week or so, the birds learned to treat the trailer as their homing point.



Polistra is placing a feed trough, while the pigeon upstairs in the settling cage is drinking.

There's a drop trap on top, with a small landing area under it. Returning pigeons then stepped into the settling cage for rest, before the pigeoneer moved them into nests.



= = = = =

As with the semaphores, I have an ulterior motive for featuring pigeons. Even after radio was mature and easy to use in WW2, there were times when radio silence was necessary. Pigeons carried the message without stirring up the ether.

Like dogs and horses, pigeons clearly have a sense of duty and mission. The pigeoneers appreciated this sense and used it respectfully.

Unlike dogs and horses, we've never used pigeons for good. We've always abused their sense of duty for war. Traditionally dogs and horses have helped us to find and cultivate our own food. Dogs helped us hunt, and got part of the meat as a reward. Horses helped us farm, and got part of the grain as a reward. Natural Law at its best. Use employees to create good value, pay the employees from the profits, respect the souls of the employees. Pigeons have served armies for thousands of years, but never carried messages for productive enterprises.

Maybe it's time to reverse the old trend.

Continued here with a few more pix and details.

Labels: Experiential education, meta-experiential education, Patient people, Patient things

  ¶ 10:41 AM