Metasalute to 1906
Courseware debugging is hung up this weekend by another of those yak-shaving waits for permission, so I got bored.

Reading splendid old French tech magazines.

1906, plus or minus two years, is a pivot point in tech history, for reasons that still aren't clear. Every real invention was done by 1906, at least in conceptual form. Some of the concepts had to wait for refinements in materials and manufacturing. All "new" inventions since then are reinventing a pre-1906 invention and falsely calling it new. Why 1906? It wasn't the start of a war or a major revolution, it wasn't a plague or religious frenzy. No obvious stopping points or inflection points outside the tech world.

Those old French books had wonderful illustrations. This one caught my attention because the car is obviously a Renault. Can I reproduce this with available materials?



Yes. Fortunately I didn't have to make the Renault, or substitute my 1906 Great Smith car. Amazingly, Lucien Lilippe already made one. I already had the telescope and the terrain, and I'd just used the terrain in the hail cannon animation.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 11:36 PM

  1906 radar
From Telegraph Age, 1906:

An inventor in Dusseldorf, Germany, has designed an instrument which he terms a "telemobiloscope." By its means, it is claimed, a pilot is enabled to detect a ship near at hand in a fog, depending upon the fact that electric waves are reflected when they strike a metallic object.

The apparatus consists of a long box or tube, pivoted at one end and open at the other, containing a spark generator near the pivoted end and two lenses for collecting the electric waves. A suitable motor turns the box horizontally on the vertical pivot. As the box, slightly inclined toward the water, is swung around, the electric waves are projected outward, and if they strike an object containing metal they are reflected back, acting upon a receiver similar to that used in wireless telegraphy. This receiver is influenced only by return waves. When a vessel is discovered, the apparatus is turned until the reflection is strongest, when a good estimate of the distance can be made.

It's not clear what the "lenses" were, but this would have worked in a general way. It was already the same basic principle as radar, with the same physical setup of a rotating scope. Makes me wonder why development paused for 25 years before the Brits started over with tuned waves and timed pulses. Those features weren't quite ready in 1906, but they would have been ready in 1914.

Most likely the full development of CRTs in the late 20s made the idea attractive again, but XY plotters were available in 1906. The Telautograph was an XY plotter, and mirror galvanometers were fast and sensitive.

Labels: 1901

  ¶ 2:25 PM

  More from 1942
Another article in the 1942 Westinghouse Engineer also has an immediate resonance. The subject is electrical dust filters. History:

This simple principle of electrical precipitation of dust was noticed by Hohlfeld of Germany in 1824 as he watched the behavior of an electrical discharge in smoke. Nothing came of his observation until 1884 when Sir Oliver Lodge successfully applied the principle in a lead smelter. Electrical precipitation of dust did not become widely practical until 1906 when Cottrell, who had worked with Lodge, brought out the precipitator that bears his name.

Hmm. Lodge. Where have we heard that name? And where have we heard 1906?

Most of the article discusses various modern precipitators, based on the 1906 Cottrell invention.

This chart of the Dust Spectrum is especially useful. (I tacked on Orange Man Bad "virus" for future reference, but it's not the focus here.)



Note the area of 'smokes' and the typical smoke particle.

In the recent Gaian Punishment Smoke Lockdown, the EPA warned us NOT to use electrical precipitators. Only use filters!

Which of them would take care of the smoke? Precipitators, not filters. I found that the filter was ineffective by experiment, but I don't have a precipitator so I don't know if it would have done a better job.

Why did EPA tell us NOT to use the precipitators? Because they generate ozone, which is a "pollutant".

Can't make it up.

The rule is always the same. Government FORBIDS self-defense and REQUIRES methods and devices that make the pollution or disease WORSE.

= = = = =

Later, I animated the Lodge precipitator.

Labels: Carbon Cult, defensible spaces, defensible thymes, defensible times

  ¶ 5:36 AM

  I learned something!
Looking for old info on coherers, ran into a US Census publication from the magic year of 1906. The Census bureau wrote a splendidly informative article on the present condition of electricity and electronics, getting everything right and describing everything with crystal clarity. As expected, the publication also included lots of tables and maps of employment, sales, etc.

Another section described an industry I'd never heard of!

The Shoddy Industry.

There is, perhaps, no article produced in manufacture, no article used in manufacture, and no article in common use, that bears a reputation more undeserved than does shoddy. Its very name is a synonym for pretense and fraud. To the popular mind goods containing shoddy are not merely destitute of wearing quality, but are suggestive of the unwholesome secondhand clothing shop, and inspire one with apprehension lest the fabric should communicate loathsome disease to the wearer of apparel in which there is this substance of ill repute. All this is unwarranted by the facts, as all are aware who understand the shoddy process, the method of making use of shoddy, and the benefits which the use of it confers upon the user. It is not the case, as is too commonly supposed, that a garment — or the cloth which is made into a garment — is or can be composed wholly of shoddy. New wool or animal hair is always the basis of the yarn and a certain amount of shoddy is mixed with it on the card.

Substance of ill repute is a brilliant phrase for an important insight. Our entire nation is now devoted to wiping out substances of ill repute. Witch powders and the witches who spread witch powders.

Now we only know the ill repute of Shoddy, and never realize we're insulting a whole branch of industry that employed ordinary people making useful products in an EFFICIENT way, RECYCLING resources that otherwise would have been trashed.

In 1906 government experts were engaged in telling the truth CLEARLY, and more importantly they saw their job as DEFENDING honest productive work. They provided VALUABLE INFORMATION in the sense that you could LEARN SOMETHING NEW AND USEFUL by reading their articles.

Now government experts tell nothing but vicious lies, and they see their job as DESTROYING honest work and STEALING honest labor and KILLING honest workers. Experts provide negative information. When you read the spewings of experts, real data is RIPPED out of your brain and replaced by demonic monsters.

= = = = =

Credit footnote: The section on electricity was written by Expert Special Agent Commerford Martin, and Shoddy was written by Expert Special Agent Edward Stanwood.

Non-barking footnote: Martin's article dives into full and clear detail about every imaginable type of electrical equipment, from telephones to coherers to industrial motors to cookstoves. How they're made, how they could be made better, how they affect the people who make and use them. But Martin DOESN'T mention the one device that was developed IN THE CENSUS BUREAU in 1890, a device that had already been used BY THE CENSUS BUREAU for 16 years to tabulate data, including the data in Martin's article. This device had already spread beyond the Census, spawning a moderate-sized industry by 1906. Apparently this one device didn't seem especially important at the time!

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 9:48 AM

  Odd little jackpot
Short on sleep, I decided to delve into old books for a bit of sanity as usual. Combining the two hashtags in previous item,

defensible thymes + defensible times = SPICE CLOCK.

Try SPICE CLOCK in Google Books.

= = = = =

First, a little 1893 schoolbook called 'Geographical Spice', aimed at teachers who wanted to spice up their lessons with fascinating bits. Many of these bits are similar to the historical oddities dramatized by Hix or MacHarrie.

One item matched and improved a Hix piece that had caught my full attention earlier.

MYSTERIOUS MUSIC FROM THE SEA.

Pascagoula, in Mississippi, on the Louisville Rail road, is one of the few places in the world where one can hear in the lonely night-time a weird, sad music from the sea; not the music of washing waves and singing sands, but a monotonous hum, which naturalists say comes from a vast multitude of fish of the drum species; although visitors of a poetical turn of mind prefer to attribute this mysterious music to the sighs of mermaids and the wild wails of spirits of the deep.

Hix didn't know or didn't mention that naturalists had explained the music. He called it mysterious, most likely because his source did. Hix didn't let drama interfere with facts when known.

I thought I was COOL! I thought I was getting ahead of the old inadequate knowledge when I cited modern observations of fish songs. Nope, the 1893 naturalists already knew what was happening.

Another item is interesting in a similar way:

Almost everyone has heard of the blind fish of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, but not so much has been said about the blind rats of that cavern. The rats are quite numerous but very timid. They are of a bluish color, with white abdomen, neck, and feet. Their hair is very soft, and they have large, brilliant, sightless eyes, destitute of an iris. These rats have never been known to visit the upper world. Agassiz held the opinion that they were created with a structure adapted to their home, although some physiologists are of the opinion that the rats found here were not originally blind, but having found their way into the cave at last lost their vision.

Note again the DUAL SYSTEMS, the proper respect for both real and Darwin views. Couldn't happen now.

= = = = =

The second book that popped up on SPICE CLOCK was just plain fucking weird. The Book of Spice, 1906, Wallace Irwin, has nothing at all to do with spice.

Here's the sample text that showed in Google:



WTF? Why would a 1906 author write a combination of glossolalia, Roman numerals, Thai characters, Dutch words, binary digits, and Hebrew, and then a sentence in plain English?

Here's the underlying page:



Google's AI decided the squared-off crude sketch was text, turned its "eyes" 45 degrees leftward to match the rows of "letters", and tried to interpret it as text. Pretty smart in a mechanical way.

The title page of the book:



Note that the 1906 librarian filled in the author's real name. Human librarians knew what they were doing.

Most of the book is equally awful art combined with some wise sayings that couldn't be said now:

Labels: Bemusement, Entertainment

  ¶ 9:00 PM

  Non-explaining arrogance isn't new
The non-explaining Expert is more common now but NOT new. Here's a beautiful example from the pivotal year of 1906.

The SF earthquake was followed quickly by a highly unusual spell of rain, which made even more trouble for the miserable people who were temporarily sheltering in parks and plazas.

From American Inventor p199 of PDF.

As a consequence of these unusual conditions, Prof. O. A. Leuschner, the astronomer in charge of the observatory at the University of California, received many requests for information upon the subject of the connection between earthquakes and the weather. To all these requests he made the short and simple answer: "Earthquakes are never influenced by the weather, nor do they affect weather conditions in any way."

A curious fact about the rainstorm was that the wind accompanying it came from the north, whereas storms in California almost invariably are brought on by a strong southeasterly or southwesterly wind. One of the amateur weather observers at Berkeley, the seat of the University of California, says that during a period of many years he has never known heavy rain associated with a northerly wind. Prof Leuschner, however, while not undertaking to explain the phenomenon and admitting that our knowledge of earthquakes is slight, declares that "wind and rain and other weather phenomena cannot possibly be considered as under the influence of seismic phenomena."

Note the arrogant dismissive tone of Leuschner, who was flatass wrong. The fast pressure change in a storm CAN trigger a quake that's ready to rumble, and the huge electrical discharges produced by quakes CAN trigger or move storms. Both facts were already known in 1906. Geologists are still declaring that earthquakes can't possibly be related to anything.

The job of an expert is to connect things that are disconnected, and disconnect things that are connected. Break all facts, obliterate all logic.

Note also the healthy skeptical attitude of the American Inventor writers.
  ¶ 1:16 AM

  1906 Lyft
Well, not exactly. But it was a use of the latest technology to manage a car service. The Decauville Garage in NYC served individual owners and their individual chauffeurs. Garage space was already at a premium in NYC, so a central garage and repair shop was needed. Decauville provided storage and repair and gasoline for 350 cars, each in its own rented stall. It also had 'recreation' and showers for the drivers when on duty. Each driver had his own message slot in the 'recreation' room.



Here's where the technology came in.



A switchboard operator took calls from owners who wanted to use their cars. She wrote a message on the Telautograph [which Polistra has modeled and animated]. The original messages, on a continuous roll of paper, were filed for reference. A receiving Telautograph in the chauffeurs room picked up the written message, and an attendant there tore it off and made sure the correct driver got it quickly.

Decauville also had a clever facility for quick battery switching in electric cars, which were dominant in City use at that time.



The cars didn't need mustaches, of course..... drivers handled that end of the business.



= = = = =

Sidenote: The Telautograph made it easy to draw and instantly send a map or sketch. This could have led directly to something like today's GPS systems, as Polistra and friends illustrate. Probably not 1906 tech here, more like 1918 with the direction-finding receiver.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Alternate universe, Danbo

  ¶ 4:06 AM

  Lodge on science
Last year I was focusing on the work of Oliver Lodge, including his 1906 essay on creation vs Darwin. The latter concluded with a clear picture of demons, and a plea to keep demons out of power:

"The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? If we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire, we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings.

Today a 1925 essay on science has appeared at American Radio History.

It is devoutly to be hoped that in the long run, when present international troubles have subsided, the power of rapid communication will surely conduce to better understanding among the nations, and will lead in due time to the much-desired but long-delayed era of universal peace. To this end much more than physical and material progress must contribute, for nothing can replace the whole-hearted desire for cooperative advancement of all nations on terms of mutual amity and good will.

The interchange of discoveries between the nations has long been in operation. All scientific discoverers throughout the world virtually pool their resources and communicate to each other their results, except indeed those of a destructive and inhuman character. Secrecy is alien to the spirit of science; and all true wealth increases in value when freely shared. Indeed, that is the test of true wealth, as Ruskin long ago pointed out — namely, that the more it is shared the more it is possessed and the greater value it has for everybody. Witness the broadcast distribution of music and drama and works of art generally. These are not things for private possession only, but can be shared and enjoyed by all. Things of this sort constitute the true wealth of humanity, and to that category scientific discoveries belong.

The spirit of nationalism is wholesome enough if it be held reasonably and without flaunting claims to superiority. The spirit of emulation is also wholesome, for it is by no means the same as competition.

Emulation is the desire to do something better than has been done before, and better than others have as yet learnt to do it; while competition is mainly the effort to monopolize some activity, and to do things instead of others.

In extreme cases unfair competition may prevent others from taking their due share in the beneficent work of the world. Hence progress surely lies in the direction of co-operation all round, each nation and each individual doing his best, and not seeking to prevent others from doing theirs. Nations which interchange scientific discoveries might also wisely interchange commodities, since not every locality is equally suitable for producing everything. Division of labour, of this sane and salutary kind, might be recognized as good.

And international jealousies, based on mere rivalry and competition, ought to cease, especially rivalry and competition in armaments and instruments of destruction. Civilization ought to have progressed too far by now for the perversion of ingenuity responsible for the construction of diabolical and otherwise useless mechanism, and for the artificial increase of those natural evils among which it is our lot to live and against which it is our business to contend.

Sorrow and sighing there must be in plenty during this planetary existence, without our trying to increase their sum, without adding to each other's difficulties, and without bringing about those horrors of death and torture and destruction which, when they occur by inadvertence or by accident or by the unconscious and uncontrolled forces of Nature, arouse worldwide feelings of sympathy and desire to help.

Until the will of man is brought into harmony with what we can gather of Divine intention, humanity cannot be called really and effectively civilized, although it may achieve marvellous feats of locomotion, and although it has extended the range of human speech to distances undreamt of by our ancestors. Now that we are able to travel farther and faster, we should travel to some good purpose. And now that we can speak across a continent, let us see to it that we have something worthy to say.

The overall spirit is the same from 1906 to 1925. It also sounds a lot like Harding and Hartness in the same period. Important people had ACTUALLY LEARNED from both WW1 and the excesses of the Gilded Age. The latter learning quickly disappeared in US, as Coolidge reactivated the Gilded Age based on Share Value. FDR finally brought both sides of the lesson into harmony.

The WW1 learning persisted even through WW2, as we clearly recognized the difference between imperialism and defense. Deepstate had to work hard in 1946 to break down the WW1 lesson and resume imperialism.

Labels: Equipoise, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 12:19 AM

  Why didn't I finish this connection?
Ack! Why didn't I complete this chain of reasoning before?

From two recent pieces.

Vreeland:

Lately I've been studying and animating some old devices that followed the liquid soft analog path instead of the dry hard digital path. The dry path didn't win a decisive victory until around 1960.

Wet electronics came before dry. The first telegraphs used potential difference from wet batteries to form visible streams of electrolysis bubbles, one wire for each letter.

Electrolysis is messy, so it receded quickly from everyday use into lab use.

Ayrton:

I'd never thought about why it was better to build a voltmeter by placing a known resistance in series with an ammeter. Ayrton shows why. Pure voltameters were clumsy and dangerous. Galvanometers were much easier to handle and less messy.

Sidenote: Nature disagrees. As I've often noted, Nature strongly prefers using static fields for both meters and motors. Human technology strongly prefers using magnetic fields for meters and motors.

What's the missed connection? Nature is wet and chemical, so Nature prefers electrostatic fields and ionic currents (moving charged molecules around). Human tech moved away from wet stuff, so human tech prefers magnetic fields and electron currents. Wet = static, Dry = magnetic.

If we had continued favoring wet tech, we would have been more resonant with Nature, and we wouldn't have LOST some of the understanding and therapy methods that we were developing before 1906.

A couple of recent "rediscoveries" are good examples.

Electricity could speed wound healing. The electrotherapists in the 1880s knew this and used it.

Researchers are looking into the role of ionic currents in consciousness. Ionic currents are wet.

Labels: Asked and finally answered

  ¶ 2:40 AM

  Year-end roundup
Instead of trying to find a few good items here for a year-end roundup, I'll just reprint one. This wasn't a major item with lots of illustrations; I asked a question, didn't follow up, and forgot about it. Happened to bump into it yesterday when I was writing about the 1906 Great Smith and its unique synchromesh, an invention that didn't get noticed or imitated. 20 years later GM "invented" synchromesh, but it still wasn't tremendously important in terms of sales.

This item from September manages to gather up my focal points this year.

= = = = = START REPRINT:


Random thought, probably wrong but I want to pull it out for further examination.

In my long and emotional piece on the Chappe telegraph I wrote:

This system required considerable skill and brute strength. The stationnaires were expected to work 12/7/365 for 38 francs a month, roughly $150 now. They had to watch up and down the line for messages from other telegraphs, and then twist their wrists and bodies to resend the message. No wonder they were easy to bribe.

By contrast, the early dial telegraphs required no skill and no strength, and Morse requires considerable skill and no strength.

Raises an interesting question: Successful systems required either physical strength or mental skill. Telegraphs that anyone could operate didn't succeed.

Is this a general rule? We presume that every improvement in convenience, every decrease in strength or skill, should be immediately popular. In fact it doesn't work that way.

I can think of several examples in the history of automobiles. Synchromesh made shifting much easier, but it wasn't a major selling point. The first full automatic by Sturtevant in 1905 didn't even get noticed; Reo's Self-Shifter in 1933 didn't sell; Hydramatic took 10 years to become popular. Power brakes, relieving effort and improving safety, appeared on most big cars in the '30s then disappeared, and didn't return until the mid '50s.

In household appliances: Automatic ironers were introduced after WW2. A few people bought them, but most preferred the manual way. Kitchens of the '20s were designed so the housewife could sit down while washing dishes or cooking. Later kitchens returned to full standup, and nobody complained.

The same presumption is behind the current push toward "autonomous" cars. Again it's pretty clear from sales and polling that most people would rather do their own driving, and most people are exactly right. In this case the "innovation" is NOT innocent and misguided. The "innovation" is genocide.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Within limits, most creatures would rather accomplish their purpose by using and improving their own skills. An invention that eliminates dangerous or extreme exertion will succeed, but an invention that goes beyond the optimum will fail.

= = = = =

This is intimately related to the idiotic Repooflican Tocqueville cultists, who constantly tell us that politicians win because they give free LARGESSE to the "47% Takers". I decisively and definitively debunked Tocqueville. In fact people vote AGAINST largesse, and vote FOR real jobs.


= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Morsenet of Things, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:38 PM

  The switchover from order to chaos
Via Evolution News, a POWERFUL idea from Neil Thomas.

Here I will make the attempt to drill down even further to the root causes of what appeared to be the Western world’s unprecedented rejection of tried-and-tested philosophers and scientists such as Aristotle, Cicero, Plato, and the physician Galen in a strange capitulation to “out there” philosophic fantasists like Epicurus and his Roman disciple, Lucretius.

It was the would-be rehabilitation of those ancient materialist thinkers by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, in the late 18th century, coupled with the later Victorian crisis of faith and the sudden irruption into this already volatile mix of Charles Darwin which was to result in the particularly strange irrationalism which has stubbornly persisted right up to the present day.

This abdication of normal canons of reason consisted in people forsaking traditional norms of philosophical common sense and (effectively) throwing in their lot with the ancient goddess of chance, Lady Fortuna (or Lady Luck as she was later to be called), that accursed personification of unreliability whom the ancient philosopher Boethius, Geoffrey Chaucer, and many others have arraigned since time out of mind for being incapable of any productive and dependable action on behalf of struggling humanity.

Thomas is onto something big. This change from order to chaos happened in politics when the orderly and genetically determined sequence of hereditary kings was replaced by the random dice-toss of revolutions and "elections". Not coincidentally, the replacers (Robespierre, Tom Paine, etc) were psychopaths devoted to SMASHING order and life, and ENFORCING perfect chaos and death.

Around the same time, science abandoned the quest for order. The Arab and Persian astrologers, trailed by Kepler and Brahe and Chaucer, were observing the heavens to discern God's will. After Kepler, astronomers stopped looking for order and contented themselves with sampling the dots.

Also around the same time, economics was taken over by BETTING MEN who developed statistics to profit from rolling dice and shuffling cards. Previous investment had been based on common sense and personal involvement. Two-way obligations between the investor and the farm or business, and two-way obligations between employer and worker. Sharia codified this arrangement best, but it was also strongly encouraged by Catholic and Jewish economic systems.

The stock market broke up the obligations, turning investment into a fungible and STATISTICAL process with no common sense or human connection. Share Value functions on multi-layer SIDE BETS, not personal judgment of competence.

When the psychopaths took over biology, they abandoned the two-way obligation loop of feedback. Natural selection is explicitly random, bringing in the astronomer's pet randomizer of cosmic rays. Unpredictable particles change the genome, and unpredictable climate events decide which changed version will survive.

Finally in 1906 the psychopaths took over physics and math. Godel and Bohr declared that everything is perfectly unpredictable. We're not allowed to trust our own senses and instruments; we must wait for a Credentialed And Approved Scientist to tell us whether the cat is there or not.

Darwinians assume God is a psychopath just like them. Change the rules, kill the defiant, change the rules again, kill the defiant again, loop forever. Never allow the victim to regain BALANCE or swing with a RHYTHM or form his own FEEDBACK LOOPS with your chaotic torture.

Actual nature has constant rules. The inherited mechanisms of negative feedback (life) interact with the predetermined patterns of inanimate nature (weather, geomagnetic fields, earthquakes) in an infinite pattern of two-way loops.

Two-way? Yes. Every life form alters the inanimate parts of nature. Bacteria dissolve rocks and build new rocks, and create and move clouds. Trees break up rocks and build soil, and change temperature and humidity patterns. Complex animals dig up minerals and food, plant more food, and build hives and houses and dams. Intelligent brains reshape the magnetic field.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, switchover

  ¶ 11:14 PM

  EPA kills again
New skyscrapers are turning into Towering Infernos regularly. Overall a net gain, since the occupants of skyscrapers are rich fuckheads who deserve to die. But there's a real danger of killing innocent non-fuckheads who happen to walk past the skyscraper, or innocent maintenance and cleaning workers inside the skyscraper.

Apparent reason: New skyscrapers are using polyurethane for insulation and exterior cladding. Might as well use gasoline.

Hmm. Skyscrapers, depending on how you define the term, have been around since 1906, and the big ones since 1925 or so. How come we didn't have Towering Infernos in the Empire State or Chrysler Buildings? Presumably there have been frequent office fires, especially before 1990 when everyone smoked all the time. But those office fires stayed in one office. They didn't roar up and down the whole building as fires are doing now.

Hmm. What's the difference? Can't figure it out.
  ¶ 2:34 AM

  Acetylene world
After showing the Great Smith truck in food vending mode, I decided to make a proper accessory with shelves and hotplate.

The heat source would logically be acetylene, because the Great Smith already had an acetylene generator on board for its headlights.

Looking through Googlebooks, I found the Acetylene Journal from 1912. An alternate universe opened up.

We tend to think of acetylene as a welding gas, supplied in high-pressure cylinders, dangerous and hard to handle. This is a more recent way of using the gas. In 1906, acetylene was supplied on demand by generators using calcium carbide granules or rocks. Carbide is neutral and safe until you put water on it, and acetylene gas is non-toxic. (Plants love it.)

CaC2 + 2H2O → Ca(OH)2 + C2H2

On contact with water the carbide turns to limestone, and the acetylene gas is burned IMMEDIATELY, turning into CO2 and water, releasing heat and light. In these generators there's no storage of gas, no pressurized tanks.

I remember using a miniature acetylene generator in the 'hatlight' I bought for spelunking. The process was easy to control. A few drops of water gave enough acetylene for an hour of light. When not in contact with liquid water the carbide was just inert like rock salt. (This video shows the same lamp in use. These lamps are EXPENSIVE now! Wish I'd kept it.)

Big generators for town usage were available:



and smaller generators for cars:



and free-standing lamps:



and this thing:



Why did low-pressure acetylene disappear? Most of the answer is wildly obvious. Nothing can compete with electricity for flexibility and ease of use. Cars and houses switched to electricity and never looked back. That's not the puzzle. The puzzling comparison is acetylene versus propane for emergency and off-grid heat and light. Propane won despite being far more dangerous and toxic.

Labels: 1901, Patient things, storage

  ¶ 7:42 AM

  Monetize = civilize 2
Another unexpected insight from Street's 1906 book.

Street discusses the origin of laws and courts in the major civilizations. Here he answers another question that overlaps law and math and science:



Whether you take the story literally or metaphorically, it shows that the tribe of Moses has always preferred theory over practice, personal authority over experience.

Still true today. In the areas of study where the Tribe dominates (economics, finance, math, law schools), theory is EVERYTHING. In academic areas where the Tribe isn't top dog (engineering, materials, agriculture) experiment and experience have a fighting chance.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Experiential education, From rights to duties

  ¶ 2:59 PM

  S100E001?
Stupid random thought.

I was downloading some '50s TV shows to watch later. Most of the systematic Youtubers list old TV shows with numbers like S03E18 for Season 3, Episode 18. A few shows lasted long enough to need two digits on seasons, so this makes sense.

Would any radio or TV show need three digits? We're getting mighty close. Fessenden made the first known music and speech broadcast in 1906, but his station didn't last. The first 'solid' commercial stations started in 1919. It's possible that one of those stations had a feature like Farm News that continued under the same title through the decades, which means a three-digit season number could be needed soon.

If you include Morse we'll get there sooner and more definitely. W1AW, the headquarters of ARRL, has a unique status as both broadcaster and amateur. It was founded in 1914, shut down during WW1 as part of the total tech mobilization, then restarted in 1918. Since then it has been 'broadcasting' bulletins and code practice sessions regularly.

Some of the Navy's beacons may have been continously sending signals longer, but you can't call their output broadcasting or programs.
  ¶ 3:46 PM

  Lodge month
October was Lodge month 'in these columns'. I've added a tag to the related items.

I hadn't paid much attention to Lodge before, even though his name is well known in radio circles for his studies of propagation. That wasn't his central contribution.

His constant focus was on the boundaries and borders between electricity and matter. His coherer made use of a constantly moving and re-forming layer of liquid. The device wasn't practical, but it helped to form a better understanding of modulation and rectification, which then led to the changeover from Morse to music.

His precipitator also applied a static charge to flowing gas and smoke, ionizing and cleaning the flow. This device proved to be powerfully practical, and his sons commercialized it for profit. The precipitator, as improved by Cottrell, is still in use.

Lodge's philosophy was unfashionable in 1906, and even more unfashionable now. Around 1900 the cult of "science" was in its first flush of victory. Deconstructors were everywhere, from religion to biology to math to physics. Purpose was dethroned and replaced by Lord Random.

Lodge, with impeccable credentials as an experimenter AND theorist, discussed the boundary between static spiritual charge and the moving material world. He countered the purpose-killers and psychopaths who were starting to take over the world and now have completely conquered it.

The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? If we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire, we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings.

The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character insofar as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that is ipso facto already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality.

That is my creed, and, optimistic though it be, it seems to me the only rational creed for a man of science who, undeterred by any accusation of dualism, realizes strongly that our entire selves — our thoughts, conceptions, desires, as well as our perceptions and our acts — are all but parts of one stupendous whole.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Labels: Lodge

  ¶ 10:06 PM

  Closing the Memory Hole
Exploring old tech journals helps to close the Memory Hole, helps to destroy the lies of Innovative Disruption. We have standard Shared Lies about every invention. Elon is taking the art to new heights. Every invention by Elon is NEW NEW NEW and NOBODY EVER THOUGHT OF IT BEFORE.

Four examples from just two months in 1914, from The Automobile.

1. On p 360 of the PDF, the Ruetschi full synchromesh gearbox. As I've noted with Smith, GM claimed to have the first sync in 1929. Smith had it in 1906, Ruetschi in 1914. In fact the Big Three didn't get FULL sync until 1963. Smith and Ruetschi had sync on all gears.

2. On p 443, an adaptive air suspension that automatically responds to load conditions.

3. On p 791, the Zeitler full automatic, with a selector knob that looks a lot like the HydraMatic selector. I've noted the earlier 1905 Sturtevant full automatic. Both well before the Innovative Disruptive 1940 HydraMatic.

4. Less important but still well before the Shared Lie. On p 358, this Duryea convertible had a fully concealed top and spare tires in the trunk. We normally believe that the '34 Airflow started the hidden spare trend, and the first concealed soft top was the '55 Tbird. The Duryea has nice graceful lines. Too bad they didn't slant the windshield.



General observation: Most 1915 cars were trending toward smoothness and streamlining. The trend reversed after WW1, and most cars in the '20s were rigidly square and essentially identical. The trend toward smoothness and real variety restarted in '33 when the Depression forced automakers to think outside the rigidly square box.

Labels: 1901, Shared Lie

  ¶ 3:10 PM

  Part of the same gift
In my present focus on science as entertainment I've neglected another connection that was clear and constant before 1906.

Science was seen as one of the gifts we received from God, and practicing science was a way of thanking God for the gift.

Here's a passage from an 1853 Italian book on telegraphy:

Ogni mezzo che serve alla comunicazione di un essere coll' altro, si comprenderebbe solto il nome di telegrafia, interpretando questa parola nel senso il più esteso.

Tutti i membri della creazione animale hanno ricevuto dal loro Fattore qualche mezzo naturale di comunicazione che unisca e colleghi fra loro gli individui delle varie specie. Infiniti e mirabili sono i modi con cui si manifesta il divino linguaggio della natura, disposto con bella armonia. L'uccello gorgheggia, il quadrupede emelte gridi e voci inarticolate, e questi mezzi cosi poveri e ristretti bastano ai bruti limitati nella loro vita ai bisogni istintivi e materiali. L'uomo destinato ad una via L'uomo destinato ad una via di progresso morale e civile, ha mestieri di poter esprimere con segni sensibili le idee, i sentimenti che si agitano nell'anima sua, comunicarli ai propri simili, e stringersi con essi in amichevoli rapporti: E la divina Provvidenza lo dotò di favella che lo rende superiore agli altri esseri, e determina lo sviluppo di sue facoltà intellettuali e morali.

The book starts out with the Chappe semaphore, which uniquely marked the destruction of this connection in France. Claude Chappe was a priest who thought he was advancing the poter esprimere con segni sensibili le idee, i sentimenti che si agitano nell'anima. When he saw that the Revolution was using his invention for the exact opposite purpose, he jumped down a well.

Reviving the sense of entertainment and joy must also revive the connection to the gift by Divine Providence. Can't have one without the other.

Labels: defensible times, Entertainment

  ¶ 9:40 AM

  Plastics explosive
Reading Collectible Auto while eating as usual. An article on designers struggling to adapt to the 1973 oil shock mentioned the attempt to use plastics instead of metals, which mostly failed.

For some reason this reminded me of the famous line in the '68 movie. One word, young man. Plastics.

I watched that movie in a theater, and the line struck like a bomb. The audience (who presumably knew it was coming) gasped and groaned and screamed at the line. One of my hippie "friends" had a full-scale breakdown afterward.

What was Deepstate doing? In hindsight it's obvious. Agent Provocateur as always. Deepstate was constantly steering smart youngsters toward abstract careers, ideally working in "social" "science" where we could develop torture chambers and psy-ops and surveillance techniques for Deepstate. The plastics man was there to make plastics look awful.

Plastics, and more generally materials, are where the REAL development of REAL technology happens. Original inventions were finished in 1906. Everything since then has been materials and manufacturing methods.

Deepstate has been running a multi-front war against real culture and real skill since 1946. They know that materials are the key to real tech, so they make materials awful.

The '73 oil shock was the Pearl Harbor of the "global warming" front, designed to make all aspects of manufacturing harder and more risky and less profitable.

Labels: Carbon Cult, skill-estate

  ¶ 4:53 PM

  Monetize = civilize 1
I've been thinking about monetizing and demonetizing. Wondered if there was a connection to Natural Law. As we demonetize everything we lose the balancing forces inherent in Natural Law.

Started reading about the old English version of Natural Law. Ran across a REMARKABLY CLEAR AND OBJECTIVE history of laws and courts written in 1906. It fills in some blank spots that I'd wondered about, and answers some questions I hadn't even known how to ask. I hadn't known how deeply and completely the principle of compensation, PAY FOR VALUE, was embedded in proper Natural Legality.

The remarkable book is Common Law Actions by Thomas Street.

He starts from the START, with the development of forms and procedures by tribes. Focuses strongly on Roman times when modern forms developed.



Monetized and balanced. Just like a Wheatstone Bridge or a diff amp.

Both sides wager a fixed amount on the decision. Both have a stake in the results. [stake = sword = wand.] The priest or judge goes into operation when the setup has been nulled by the equal wagers.

The actio sacramenti is obsolete in official channels because property is thoroughly registered and receipted now. Not much opportunity for an open quarrel over possession.

It could still be useful in unofficial disputes such as pimps arguing over their chattel....



No, I guess not. The wands, and swearing by the "law of the Quirites", probably wouldn't work.**

= = = = =

Here's the BIG POINT that stunned me with its clarity:



Semiquoting and modernizing:

A recent book on jurisprudence states that a system of laws by a wise lawgiver would start with a definition of rights, then proceed to describe duties, thence to prohibitions, finally to legal remedies.

HOWEVER: the above method of unfolding legal truth is exactly the reverse of the process by which law has IN FACT developed.

In legal thought as in philosophy we must start with the concrete and build up to the higher abstractions.

In other words, instead of beginning with "right", a term so highly abstract that even now it defies definition, we must begin with the process of adjudication.

Street's analysis of legal "foundations" perfectly parallels what I've been saying forever about the "foundations" of math and science. I had no idea that legal thinkers were capable of clarity, because I've NEVER read anything on the subject that makes sense.

Now that I've finally found one sensible writer ... (long dead) ... I have to ask:

WHY DON'T WE FIND THIS TYPE OF SANITY ANYWHERE ELSE? WHY HAS IT DISAPPEARED?

Every discussion of laws and "rights" starts by assuming the weird nonsensical delusion of "rights" as an absolute axiom, a self-evident truth. All details derive from "rights", which means all details are multiply convoluted weird nonsensical delusions.

I guess we don't find sense in legal thinking for the same fucking reason that we don't find sense in math and science and economics. Because we're fucked.

= = = = =

Conclusion: The Natural Law approach to economics is solidly based on two-way compensation and balance. Each side must give in order to get.

And now I learn that the NL approach to legality is identical.

Natural Law is like natural power. Hydropower. Using the natural gradients of male vs female, owner vs slave, buyer vs seller, and various mixes of talent and drive and morality. Each gradient is harnessed to drive the machines of business and legality. The system requires minimal added power when you ride with Nature, when you start with our REAL GOD-ASSIGNED DUTIES TO CREATE MORE LIFE, MORE ORDER AND MORE VALUE.

Modern theory flattens all gradients. We start with the self-evident lie of equality, and continue by removing all negative feedback mechanisms. Male and female are supposedly equal, boss and worker are supposedly equal, interest is zero, markets are always in equilibrium with perfect information on all sides.

This doesn't work because Nature still exists. Reality still exists. IN FACT male and female are different. IN FACT every person has different tastes and talents and tendencies. IN FACT boss and slave are different. IN FACT we have, and we feel, our GOD-ASSIGNED DUTIES. Nature continues to run in its own ways, and the system must exert maximal artificial force to oppose the natural force.

= = = = =

Language footnote: 'Quirites' doesn't mean what it sounds like. The Romans called the original Romans the Quirites, for reasons that are lost to history. Hmm. Considering that the original Romans were children of Romulus and Remus, maybe it does mean what it sounds like.

Labels: Answered better than asked, From rights to duties, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 5:11 PM