A little Philco Phun
American Radio Library has added a 1931 Philco publication aimed at salesmen. Philco hadn't yet asserted its unique style of circuitry and cabinets and corporate behavior. Still, these two pictures are sort of interesting.

A display in Wanamaker's department store demonstrated car radios, a new idea. Philco later specialized in car radios and became a division of Ford. In '31 Philco receivers were mainly installed in Chrysler products. Note the common classical theme in the '31 Philco and the '31 Chrysler. The lights are on, so presumably the car's electrical accessories, including the radio, were powered by a transformer to provide a bit of drama.



Here's the control box in a Lincoln. In the early '30s the steering column was vacant and available for accessories. Earlier the hand throttle and spark control were usually on the column. Later the shift lever and turn signals. Philco took advantage of the vacant territory for the radio controls.



In other words, column selectors for receptions came before column selectors for transmissions.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 3:13 PM

  Back to 1938
Well, now that I've had a brief few minutes of hope shattered by horrible reality, I'll return to focusing on the SANE parts of the world, and the SANE parts of America's timeline.

1938 to 1941 was the peak of sanity. FDR had brought Wall Street under HARSH control for the first and only time. Experts were realistic and humble. Deepstate was itching to resume power, but couldn't fight a President who knew the THINGS WORTH DOING AND HOW TO DO THEM. When the leader knows the THINGS WORTH DOING AND HOW TO DO THEM, the people of THIS country will defend the leader from opposition.

Corporations were proud of their products and employees, and considered separation from Wall Street to be a selling point.

Example from the magnificent American Radio History library as usual: A 1938 booklet published for internal use by Philco dealers. Philco was advising its salesmen on the best sales pitches.



Proud of being a NON-STOCK company!



Proud of using real wood built by craftsmen, proud of NO Innovative Disruption.

I can verify this claim precisely. Through the '60s and '70s I owned three 1938 Philcos like this one:



Used them daily. Excellent shortwave reception, beautiful room-filling sound, beautiful wood. All were over 30 years old, none of them failed. I just left them behind in my stupid hippie moves.

Philco wanted its salesmen to emphasize the angled dials, which were easy to use from a standing position:



Note the intentional appeal to OLDER customers. No focusing on the 18-34 demographic.

Here's some good general advice for salesmen. Note emphasis on FACT, NOT THEORY. Experience is more valuable than book-learning. You won't find that in any advice today. Note also that customers were assumed to be women. Philco understood that women make the choices in the average home. Fact, not theory.



Later emphasis on the same point:



The daughter will gravitate to you. But ... but ... but ... this wasn't 2018! This was before Betty Friedan allowed womxn to handle money! Can't be! CRIMETHINK! CRIMETHINK! No! No! I'm meltinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng

Labels: defensible times, things worth doing

  ¶ 11:18 PM

  "Rights" to duties, 1936 edition
A recent addition to the American Radio History library is a 1936 Radio Guide to Politics written by Philco.

Philco made excellent radios and also had an excellent corporate attitude, so I decided to read the piece. The booklet includes biographies of Roosevelt and Landon, plus the platforms of both parties. (Note that I'm not putting "both" "parties" in quotes as usual; we actually had TWO PARTIES in 1936.) I'd never looked at those platforms before, but the context of Radio + Philco somehow made them more palatable.

The Democrat platform is impressive in several ways.

= = = = =

1. It's written in terms of DUTIES, not "rights". It replaces the satanic "rights" constitution with a Godly DUTIES constitution.

First paragraph:

1.We hold this truth to be self-evident: that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are:

2. Protection of the family and the home.

2. Establishment of a democracy of opportunity for all the people.

3. Aid to those overtaken by disaster.

These obligations, neglected through 12 years of the old leadership, have once more been recognized by American government. Under the new leadership they will never be neglected.

Note that family and home came first. Both words are alien CRIMETHINK to modern politicians of "both" "parties".

= = = = =

2. Because FDR had actually DONE THINGS AND ACCOMPLISHED GOALS during his first four years, the platform was able to speak to people on the basis of trust. The people had seen REAL ACTION, and had good reason to expect more of the same.

We have begun and shall continue the successful drive to rid our land of kidnapers and bandits. We shall continue to use the powers of government to end the activities of the malefactors of great wealth who defraud and exploit the people.

Note that kidnappers, bandits, and malefactors of great wealth are correctly listed in the same paragraph.

= = = = =

3. Government has a DUTY to encourage thrift and savings, NOT to encourage debt.

We have safeguarded the thrift of our citizens by restraining those who would gamble with other people's savings, by requiring truth in the sale of securities; by putting the brakes upon the use of credit for speculation; by outlawing the manipulation of prices in stock and commodity markets; by curbing the overweening power and unholy practices of utility holding companies; by insuring 50 million bank accounts.

= = = = =

If modern "Democrats" really wanted to win without cheating, they should simply adopt this platform. Of course the trust part wouldn't work, because modern "Democrats" specifically deleted FDR's legacy in 1999 and thereafter participated equally in slaughtering the poor to boost the Dow. Moderns would have to promise a restoration of thrift and obligations, and frankly nobody would believe them.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 1:56 AM

  Highly refined reagent quality evil.
This Twitter thread is a HUGELY important explanation of how Elon works. Not just Elon but most of Silicon Valley. A concise history of the 'Paypal Mafia'.

Failed quality control and nonexistent customer service are NOT results of sloppy management, which will be resolved after growth slows down. Growth cannot slow down, so quality and service will never be ALLOWED to happen.

These techmonsters are perfectly explicit and open about their goals. They have NO intention of creating jobs or products, NO intention of making things that people can use.

SHARE VALUE is the entire universe.

Products and services are just one incidental and DISPOSABLE way of increasing share value. Anything that gets in the way of increasing share value DOES NOT EXIST.

Contrast this with the attitude expressed by Philco in 1938. Philco was a privately owned high-tech company, at the cutting edge of radio and TV development. Philco's slogan FOR INTERNAL USE, not just for public consumption, was "Sell merchandise that doesn't come back to customers who do come back."

= = = = =

Later constants and variables thought: Capitalists haven't changed. There were plenty of techmonster types around in the '20s. Same criminal characters running scams on the same subjects. Automobile scams, medical scams, subway scams, electronics scams, solar power scams. Same as now. What made the difference in the '30s was FDR. He clamped down HARD on the entire stock racket. In 1938 the cheaters and criminals still WANTED to commit crimes, but couldn't.

HONEST BUSINESS WAS THE ONLY CHOICE, so business was honest.

FDR's clamps remained in place until the '70s when first Nixon, then Reagan, then Bill Clinton, gradually disassembled all of the controls. Since 1998 there are no laws to hold back a feral criminal.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 2:09 AM

  Tech cantilever
I've always been fascinated with the overlaps between eras in technology or style. The old era typically zooms out onto a long cantilever of extreme embellishment before the new undermines it.

Back in the late '60s I had a pretty good collection of old radios, bought at auction for $10-$15. The one I used most was the 1938 Philco that I've remade for Polistra's use....



The Philco had good shortwave reception and wonderful tone quality.

The most 'cantilevered' radio in my collection was a 1929 RCA model RE-45, which attempted to create the PERFECT solution to the TRF problem. Tuned Radio Frequency sets had many stages of amplification, and all stages had to be tuned together. Most TRF receivers mounted five or six tuning capacitors on the same shaft, but this was unsatisfactory because each stage had its own slightly different bandpass curve. When you replaced a tube, you changed the characteristics of the stage, and you had to adjust various trimmer caps to get an approximate response. At best you could get precise tuning for one station. The RE-45 made it possible to compensate each stage's tuner for its own COMPLETE curve.

I finally found some tech info on this receiver, thanks to the infinitely valuable American Radio History website.

Front view from an ad:



The tuner was simple to use. Pull up the knob slightly and slide it across the dial, or turn it to 'roll' the pointer more finely. Inside was a FANTASTIC piece of mechanism.



Here's the 'micro-synchronous' part. When you slid the knob, it turned the big disk in the center of the chassis. The disk had about 30 little setscrews around the inner circumference (marked 18 on the diagram). Each setscrew pushed on a half-inch of the outer circumference, which was a flat leather belt. You thus shaped a tuning curve on one arc of the belt by adjusting the screws. As the main disk turned, the cam rollers (16) rode slightly out and in on the tuning curve. Each cam carried the base for one tuning capacitor.



Underneath, the same main disk pulled on a linkage that caused each of the five capacitors to move in a way that can't be described in words. I had to make a model...



This shows the two sets of intermeshing plates (red and blue) being pushed in and out by the pusher linkage (green) which is 70 on the bottom diagram.



Now we add the action of the adjusting cams on top. The cams are moving the base of the capacitor (gray part) slightly up and down, which in turn changes the NET motion of the plates in an OPPOSITE way.



This gave the repairman total control over the calibration of each stage to match its own peculiar tuning curve.

Did any repairman ever NEED or USE this level of control? I seriously doubt it. I tried adjusting those setscrews and didn't hear any meaningful difference. The radio received all nearby stations beautifully no matter how I adjusted the screws.

AND... the whole design was completely unnecessary in 1929, because superhet circuits were already practical and mature. RCA had produced the first commercial superhet in 1924. Superhets avoid the problem of matching tuning curves by reducing all incoming signals to the same intermediate frequency, which can then be detected and filtered uniformly with one curve.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 5:08 AM

  Why was recharging so late?
Another 'path not taken' question. Why did it take so long for rechargeable batteries to become common in ordinary devices?

The first practical batteries were refillable wet cells. They could be recharged, but typically weren't, because the batteries were invented before practical generators were available and LONG before mains power was available. They would provide a reliable voltage until the electrolyte was reacted out. The electrolyte could then be drained and refreshed without replacing the entire battery.



Dry cells weren't commercially available until 1890 or so. Early tube radios could use both kinds. Philco made these attractive wet batteries, remarkably similar in form to those 1840 Leclanche cells:



Wet cells disappeared fast, and portable or farm radios used only dry cells from 1930 on. Most radios switched to mains power. Cars, of course, have always used wet batteries.

Many portable radios had dual-mode AC or battery, and one portable radio was advertised as recharging its own dry cells.



Recharging carbon-zinc dry cells was sort of halfway possible. Rechargers were available. I owned one in the '60s. Recharging only worked a few times and degraded the battery fast, so it really wasn't worth the trouble. You gained a few days of extra use.

Why didn't Philco improve the nickel-iron wet cell to make it more practical for portable devices like power tools? Recharging didn't really take off until the lithium dry cell came along.

= = = = =

Correction: I've been calling those early wet batteries Leclanche. There were several named types of wet cell, notably Daniell. Leclanche was the first of the dry carbon-zinc cells.
  ¶ 1:11 AM

  Trivalent? No.
From previous: Binary logic forces us to play team games, in sports and in politics. Teaming makes it EASY for Deepstate to keep us in an artificial stageplay, where we believe we're "discussing" or "voting" or "deciding" between two views that are both written by the same author to serve the evil purposes of the same author.

First thought: Would a three-value logic system help to deal with the teamplay situation?

= = = = = START REPRINT:

When dealing with media figures, the only constant fact is that everything you hear is intended to make one side or the other look bad. Some of one side may be true or not. There's no point in evaluating the truth.

Deepstate is jumbling up everything. Time, space, logic, memory.

We're supposed to ignore experience and accumulated knowledge.

We're supposed to pay sole attention to the displays presented by Deepstate.

And we're supposed to "vote" and "decide" according to these displays. The "control" is in our hands! Better make the right "decision" or the "Constitution" and the "Republic" will be trashed!!!!!!!



Polistra and Happystar have a better display.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Second thought: Three-value logic doesn't really describe the solution. Trivalent systems start with the assumpion that T and F are the desired goals. The in-between range is considered as undefined. Not enough info available to pick T or F. The third value is still outside of teamplay, off the field. You're supposed to resolve the lack of info and join one of the teams.

Life doesn't have teams. Life has tanh. Analog systems and our sensory systems are based on tanh. Every smoothly variable control has endpoints. A volume control or a tuner has endpoints. The stereo balance control has endpoints.

In an analog system the area between the teams is the ONLY area. The two endpoints are available, but you rarely need to use them. If you have to turn the volume to max all the time, you need a more powerful amplifier. If you turn the volume to zero all the time, you don't need the radio at all. You can throw it away.

This is a sloppy metaphor because it still implies that the endpoints are part of the "usable" spectrum. They aren't. The picture above is a better metaphor. Endpoints are fake scenes generated by Deepstate to prevent us from opening the window and looking at plain old reality.

Nevertheless, pure binary thinking was much less prevalent when we were more accustomed to analog systems like slide rules and mercury thermometers and radio tuning dials. Our math is now digital, with every number appearing as a falsely precise set of digits. Our tuning is channeled, with each channel coming from a specific company. Watch this on Youtube or Hulu or Disney. Get your "news" from CNN or FOX. There's no uncharted space on the dial. These choices aren't necessarily binary, but they are digital. You have to click the rotary switch to one of the approved teams.

Polistra's 1938 Philco was all analog.



Here's the dial:



The top line suggested bands typically used by various parts of the world, but most of the dial was 'uncharted', with unexpected goodies available to the patient listener. The physical characteristics of shortwave reception also contributed to the unexpected SPORT of listening. Sometimes the ionosphere would bring in Norway or Burma with local volume while blocking nearby stations. It was a game of skill AND chance.

1938 was the peak of analog news and entertainment. Government and corporations INVITED us to listen outside the team boundaries. Most radios had shortwave bands. Newscasters in WW2 explicitly stated that BOTH of the endpoints were censored propaganda. We were expected to favor our censored propaganda because we were fighting a real and JUSTIFIABLE war, but we needed to know WHY our side was better.

After FDR died, Deepstate rose from its grave. Lady Edgar resumed playing her old "two" "sides" fake-terrorist games, and we immediately returned Russia to its old familiar role as boogeyman. We stopped making SW radios for consumer use. TV was divided into 12 channels with no uncharted tuning allowed. We started down the ever-narrowing canyon toward today's rigid channelization.

Labels: Carver, Entertainment, Equipoise

  ¶ 1:38 AM

  More on moths
Continuing from previous item.

The 1951 Philco publication mentioned an article by Ted Powell in Proceedings of IRE. Amazingly, the IEEE has preserved those archives, and the Powell article is here.

Powell was answering an earlier discussion by Bibbero, who was debunking telepathy by using Shannon information theory. Powell was more or less rebunking the potential of telepathy.

Bibbero's main point:

Consider, then, how much more rapidly information could be transmitted by telepathic than by aural or visual means. It is within all our experience that an almost infinitely large number of impressions can occur during a dream, which may require only a fraction of a second for completion. A bandwidth 1000 times that required for video transmission would not be an unreasonable assumption for telepathy. If, say, a 10^10 cycle bandwidth is required for a single telepathic transmission it would cover the entire range from subsonics to the experimental radar hyperfrequencies. If now we further allow each person on earth a separate band of 10^10 cycles for his thought transmission, we must push the upper end of the telepathy frequency spectrum to 10^19 cycles, even if we used all the lower explored frequencies. More logically, we should start with 10^19 cycles and continue up to 10^29.

= = = = =

Powell's rebunk made the same point I tiresomely repeat. Nature isn't bound by our theories. Nature has ALWAYS found a way to do EVERYTHING in the technical realm, including an infinite number of tasks that we haven't yet begun to understand or even observe. He cited the moth infrared perception as just one example of Nature's superiority.

R. J. Bibbero's entertainingly speculative comments on the telepathy sense lead to the same bewilderment most investigators feel when they attempt to account for observed extrasensory-perception phenomena. Perhaps some clues may be found in the incredible sensitivity of the obscure senses possessed by some animals (and humans) and in the discovery in insects of infrared senses which strangely correspond with Bibbero's belief in the existence of hyperfrequency effects.

Doctor Tromp found that dowsers actually locate underground water and bodies of metal by virtue of their feeble diamagnetic and ferromagnetic fields. Some "healers" can also detect sick areas in a body by sensing the tiny differences in body electrical potentials over such areas. This was verified by the electrocardiogram and by body potential checks.

Professor Miles of Yale University had discovered that insects smell by means of infrared senses and that 7 male moths released from a moving train over a 1-mile stretch found, within hours, a female moth sealed in an hermetic container. This was confirmed by J. P. Duane and J. E. Tyler of Interchemical when they found that a female moth's temperature was some 11° higher than that of her surroundings and that she emitted infrared radiations about 8 microns in wavelength. The male moth's antenna hairs were 40 to 80 microns long, and they varied in 4 micron steps, or half the female moth's main infrared emission.

Powell also notes an idea that was instantly dismissed in 1951. Now that biologists are removing their theory goggles, they're finding the old "nonsense" is precisely correct.

Doctor Rajewsky, a German biologist, has the rather unusual theory that the human brain not only employs electrical impulses to control the body, but also radio waves, with individual cells acting as miniature oscillators.

Bibbero was missing the point by treating information as bits, and he was also missing the basic definition of information. Bibbero assumed that telepathy had to contain all the data needed for a transfer between machines. If you want to tell a simple robot how to walk, you need to send all the angles of all the joints at each microsecond.

Human communication doesn't work that way. Even by Shannon's definition, information is the unexpected or unpredictable part of the needed data. When we talk or write, we never pour out all necessary data because we know in advance what the receiver knows. We have empathy. Perception is always DELTAS FROM A MOVING BASELINE, and communication is the same. If I want you to fetch me a sandwich, I don't have to specify every angle of every finger and elbow and hip and knee to accomplish the task. I just say "How about a burger?". You know where the kitchen is, you know where each food item is stored, you know how to operate the pans and spatulas and knobs on the stove, and you know all the steps needed to cook a burger.

Telepathy, if it exists**, would be the same. A few dozen bits would suffice to call up most images in a culture with plenty of shared assumptions. In Sorosian lands where culture and skills and division of labor have disappeared, we're getting much closer to the unintelligent mechanical robot that needs to hear each angle and vector for each microsecond.

= = = = =

** For clarity, I'm open but unconvinced. I've experienced (seemingly) a few dramatic examples, but natural communication methods aren't limited to a few dramatic examples. When Nature goes to the trouble of setting up a system, the system is used constantly. There's always a range of abilities for any talent. A few people do it more accurately and delicately than others, and a few can't do it at all. But most people do it well enough most of the time. If most people were using telepathy most of the time, we'd have a vastly different world.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Sorosia

  ¶ 2:00 AM

  Reprint and revise
Time to go back to the 'fable' I wrote during the 2008 TARP coup. Some of the narrative (eg Sheikh Osama) has been superseded or modified by later learning and experience. I'll reprint the first segment up to the crucial point, where one line needs to be FEROCIOUSLY superseded. In 2008 I couldn't possibly imagine that this point would need revision!!!!!!!

= = = = = START REPRINT:

June 2008, at the Mill.

Polistra was heartbroken to see her home town of Manhattan smashed by a tornado. She is certain that nothing will improve. All factions of the American power structure are frozen in absolute gibbering insanity, utterly incapable of taking the most obvious steps in any positive direction. We have surrendered to Sheikh Osama, surrendered to Reckless Desire and Ruthless Greed, surrendered to every imaginable variety of falsehood and fraud, to every false god known to history, and to some never before imagined.


She prays for relief.


Huh?

= = = = =


June 1939, Ponca City, the Arcade Hotel.



Fran is a free-lance magazine writer. Tonight she's working on a draft while half-listening to Information Please.



What's this? Radio overheating? Can't be. It's a nearly new Philco.



Huh?



Howdy. You're surprised, aren't you? This is going to take some explaining...

And Polistra proceeds to explain the situation ... that she's a cartoon character from 2008 who dreamed her way back to 1939. Since Fran is a writer, she has sufficient imagination to encompass the idea.




Fran asks Polistra the inevitable questions.

Fran: Well, what great advances has America made since '39? Cured cancer?

Pol: No. We have lots of fancy machines and drugs, but except for childhood leukemia, which we can definitely cure, we haven't improved the survival rate in general. You could even say that the fancy machines make things worse, because people know about the cancer earlier.

Fran: That's dismal. Well, cured infantile paralysis?

Pol: Yes, in 1954.

Fran: Cured the common cold?

Pol: No.


= = = = = END REPRINT. START REVISION.

Pol: You won't believe this. We haven't cured the common cold, but we've renamed the common cold as an Official Witch Curse that requires EXTREME MEASURES....

Fran: Try me.

Pol: Because of the renamed common cold, everyone in the world must be imprisoned and starved. The whole world is under a state of siege by nearly all governments.

Fran: You're right. I don't believe you.

= = = = = END REVISION, END CIVILIZATION.

Fran would have immediately called the cops to pick up this hopelessly crazy girl who thought she was a time traveler. The cops would have hauled her out to Fort Supply Insane Asylum, where she would have made medical history as the craziest and most deluded person ever observed.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 5:44 AM

  Sales and service
Returning to the vague subject of radio and culture from a different angle, which may be more relevant.

Profit vs share value. With corporations that sell a physical product, the change is easy to define. Companies that seek a profit want to sell a product that SATISFIES the customer, and they also want to have a customer class that can afford to BUY the product. So they want employees, and they PAY employees. PAY FOR VALUE in both directions.

Companies that seek Share Value don't need employees or products or customers. Share Value rises to infinity when all employees are gone and all customers are dead.

This change happened in most industries in the '80s, and it ALSO happened in radio at the same time.

Rush brought in the Share Value mode aka Silicon Valley mode. He claimed falsely that he had no employees, and he made it clear that the listener was the PRODUCT, not the buyer. Listeners existed to provide calls that he could ROAST or SMASH or DESTROY.

Profit-based companies focus on SERVICE. They want live and solvent customers who return to buy more of the product, so they want to be sure the product satisfies the customers.

The Philco slogan said it all. Sell merchandise that doesn't come back to customers who do come back. This was an internal slogan, not a fake advertising phrase.



Service in broadcasting was harder to pin down because the product was abstract entertainment, not cars or appliances or soap. Nevertheless, many stations and programs provided specific services and opportunities to participate. The FCC demanded real evidence of real service before renewing licenses, so this was good business AND legally required.

The most common service was local daytime women's programs, which acted as an exchange for recipes and household 'hacks'.

Several syndicated or national programs provided specific services, either steadily or occasionally.

Examples I've noticed:

Dick Tracy was all about participation and learning. Young listeners were organized into clubs and invited to help solve this week's case, using the 'secret' codes and methods provided in the 'secret' manual.

An odd west coast program called In the Crimelight was similar in some ways to Strange As It Seems, focused strictly on crimes. Each episode discussed a specific historical case or a type of crime. At the end of each episode the host, a retired cop, offered to help or advise listeners with crime-related problems. He gave his address and promised to answer every letter in a helpful way, whether he could solve the problem or not.

At the end of one 1945 episode of It Pays to be Ignorant, Lulu McConnell, who posed as a drunken Irish barfly, dropped out of character and sweetly invited lonely soldiers to write to her.

We don't know what happened to those invited letters, but we know for sure that they weren't simply Product. The Crimelight host never used the info in the letters, and Lulu didn't mock the writers in other episodes.

We could use a little more sweetness and a WHOLE FUCKING LOT LESS mockery and arrogance and condescension.

Labels: Alternate universe, defensible thymes, defensible times, the broken circle

  ¶ 12:45 AM

  Happy 110th, Bakelite!
Happened to notice a 'this date in history' feature.

Today is Bakelite's birthday!

Polistra's world is full of partly or mostly Bakelite objects:



My real world has only a few mostly Bakelite objects, all decorative or toys.

This Delco radio



and the Triplett voltmeter and Philmore crystal radio.



Only one object is in constant daily use, the handle on this RevereWare pan:



Bakelite is a near-perfect insulator for electricity and an excellent insulator for heat, which makes it ideal for handles on thermally or electrically hot objects. It stands up to a wide variety of chemicals, and can be polished to a deep luster.

In the '30s colored or translucent Bakelite was used for appliance and radio cases and jewelry. Again the surface had a depth that you can't get with newer plastics. Only one of Polistra's objects has translucent Bakelite: the pushbuttons on the 1938 Philco floor radio.

Labels: Patient things

  ¶ 11:57 PM

  More from 1945
Another article from the big 1945 Electronics journal that somehow snuck past Steamboat Willie to get into Googlebooks as a full copy.

This is a set of postwar recommendations for television, which was already running full speed in Britain (always ahead of us on electronics) but still experimental in USA STRONG. Written by Virginia Bradley, who had been working for Philco's experimental TV station before the war interrupted everything. I assume Virginia is a man's name like Evelyn Waugh, because EVERYONE KNOWS that wymmynses were not allowed to work until Betty Friedan [pbuh] broke the glass ceiling. Several of the engineers writing on highly technical topics in this 1945 journal are also men with female names.

I pasted the text into a big image that won't fit properly here, and pasted the accompanying chart similarly. Bringing out small pieces of each to show how deeply Mr Bradley understood the nature of a visual medium, even before it had been properly implemented.

This analysis of human perception is especially smart:



DuMont picked up this idea quickly. The Big Three were slower, but after 1970 they really got into it. They figured out that tachistoscopic switching keeps your brain LOCKED IN. This is the biggest reason to stay clear of TV.



The part under 'remote origination' turned out pretty well, except that we no longer have fairs and parades. Instead of fairs we have Hollywood Transexual Award Ceremonies, and instead of parades we have High-Speed Chases.

Under 'commentators', note Mr Bradley's strong emphasis on graphs and visual aids. This SHOULD have been TV's main advantage over radio, but it never happened. In fact commentators and discussers are NOT ALLOWED to use graphs and visual aids because graphs may convey a truth that can't be interrupted and demonized. Silencing and obliterating truth has turned out to be the single sole solitary mission of TV.

And especially note this: "Televising pretty girls is a programming must. They will be employed as announcers and for purely decorative effect." We know for sure now that Mr Bradley was a man, because no wymmymmynses could POSSIBLY express such a vile vicious bigoted KKK Hitler Halliburton piece of xenophobic KKK Hitler buffoonery. Everyone knows that Betty Friedan [pbuh] does not allow pretty girls to exist, let alone be seen on TV. And TV obeyed Betty Friedan [pbuh] perfectly until KKK Hitler Murdoch came along and recognized Mr Bradley's basic wisdom. Until 1990 all announcers were ugly ignorant male Communists. Now, post-Murdoch, we have a mix of pretty girls and screechy fags, but they're still ignorant Communists. Some things never change.
  ¶ 1:06 AM

  Happy Metrology Day!
World Metrology Day was yesterday.

Metrology teaches how to use, calibrate and interpret tools and methods of measurement. There has never been a University Department Of Metrology, which explains why it's still a clean and valid discipline. Nobody has the job title of Metrologist, but most technician-level workers, especially in medical areas, do a whole lot of metrology. For instance, an audiologist has to devise methods to detect fake hearing loss.

There's only one World-Famous Metrologist: Fanny Farmer, who taught cooks the value of the Level Cup and the Level Tablespoon.

I didn't realize there was a special day for the subject, but it's always been important in my life. For most of my career I did technician-type work in acoustics and related subjects. Metrology was a central part of my work: knowing the limits of your measuring tools, finding the baseline, knowing the appropriate standards, calibrating to the standards, making the necessary adjustments to the tool or the measurements.

My long experience with calibration is why I'm so ferociously enraged at the murderous "scientists" who run the Global Warming hoax. It's a crime against Nature and a crime against Humanity, but at base it's a crime against proper measurement. These evil monsters intentionally ignore all the standards of metrology. They use 'tools' like tree rings that have no definite relationship to temperature, they ignore obvious defects in their real thermometers, they toss numbers together without regard for precision, and when that fails they simply make up numbers to "prove" their "case". They do it for money and power, and they reap the respect of the ignorant elites who call this crime "science" because it helps the elites gain money money money money MONEY and power power power power POWER.




I've always 'celebrated' metrology, or more precisely the National Bureau of Standards, on New Year's Eve. Since 1971 I've had a tradition of listening to WWV on whatever short-wave receiver was available. At first it was the majestic 8-tube Philco that Polistra is using here. That radio could pick up anything and make it sound like a concert hall. More recently it's been little battery-powered Chinese crap. Either way, as long as I can hear that special high beep at Zero Hours Zero Minutes Coordinated Universal Time, it's Happy New Year!

(Graphical note: Regular WWV listeners will understand Happystar's slo-mo 'dance moves'.)

= = = = =

Next morning: By a neat coincidence, the first OTR clip on my bedtime playlist last night was a Lum & Abner episode containing a tribute to metrology. Clip is here; the cautionary tale about calibration starts about 4 minutes into the clip.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 7:22 PM

  The tube museum
Noticed a website for a Vacuum Tube Museum, apparently tied to the Smithsonian system. Seems awfully ambitious in plans, with awfully limited results so far. Smells a bit like vaporware. Successful tech museums usually start as one man's collection, and expand organically and gradually from the inherited core.

The website shows sample exhibits, exclusively focused on the high-dollar side of tube equipment. Hallicrafters ham xmtrs, HP and Tek test equipment, McIntosh audio.

I don't see any of the everyday tube world. No Philco or Zenith console receivers, no Webcor phonographs, no battery-powered portables, no hearing aids, no movie projectors, no office intercoms or Dictaphones.

Also I don't see anything non-American. Seems that a museum would want to pay special attention to the Russian parallel universe where tubes and discrete circuitry lasted 30 years after Americans went bonkers. Especially since the title is International Tube Museum, and even more especially since the high-dollar audiophiles, who ARE represented, depend crucially on new Russian tubes.

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 5:54 PM

  Polistra's dream, 1
June 2008, at the Mill.

Polistra was heartbroken to see her home town of Manhattan smashed by a tornado. She is certain that nothing will improve. All factions of the American power structure are frozen in absolute gibbering insanity, utterly incapable of taking the most obvious steps in any positive direction. We have surrendered to Sheikh Osama, surrendered to Reckless Desire and Ruthless Greed, surrendered to every imaginable variety of falsehood and fraud, to every false god known to history, and to some never before imagined.


She prays for relief.


Huh?

= = = = =


June 1939, Ponca City, the Arcade Hotel.



Fran is a free-lance magazine writer. Tonight she's working on a draft while half-listening to Information Please.



What's this? Radio overheating? Can't be. It's a nearly new Philco.



Huh?



Howdy. You're surprised, aren't you? This is going to take some explaining...

And Polistra proceeds to explain the situation ... that she's a cartoon character from 2008 who dreamed her way back to 1939. Since Fran is a writer, she has sufficient imagination to encompass the idea.




Fran asks Polistra the inevitable questions.

Fran: Well, what great advances has America made since '39? Cured cancer?

Pol: No. We have lots of fancy machines and drugs, but except for childhood leukemia, which we can definitely cure, we haven't improved the survival rate in general. You could even say that the fancy machines make things worse, because people know about the cancer earlier.

Fran: That's dismal. Well, cured infantile paralysis?

Pol: Yes, in 1954.

Fran: Cured the common cold?

Pol: No.

Fran: Have you controlled weather? Built domed cities?

Pol: No. In fact we have decided to make no progress in that area. We haven't gone beyond cloud-seeding, and even though we know it works, we won't allow ourselves to do it.

Fran: Eradicated poverty?

Pol: No. The New Deal started a long-running escape from poverty, especially among Southern sharecroppers of both colors. Our entry into the war in '41, which you can probably foresee without my help, expanded that change dramatically. The poor folks moved into industrial jobs, and incomes rose steadily from '39 until 1970. Lots of other things were also improving during those years: science, education, invention. It all came to a screeching halt around 1970. What happened at that point was basically a bloodless takeover by a form of Communism, which we aren't allowed to discuss openly. It's complicated and crazy, and I doubt that I can explain it to you without driving you crazy too.

Fran: Murrr-derrrr! Well, how about fast trains? Super streetcars?

Pol: No. American trains are much slower, less efficient and less luxurious in 2008. They still carry freight well enough, but passenger trains are dilapidated junk, pretty much restricted to serving a few big cities badly. Most people travel long distances by airplane, and that system is starting to fall apart too. Streetcars are mostly gone, though again a few big cities still have good bus and subway systems. In most cities, you're out of luck if you can't drive or can't afford a car. Cars have improved a lot, for what it's worth: they're safer, more efficient, more comfortable. Most of them are made in Japan now, and General Motors is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Fran: Not to interrupt, but you look like you could use a smoke.

Pol: Yes, and thanks for your insight. Smoking is on the way out in '08, but it isn't quite illegal yet.




Fran: Well, how about colonies on Mars?

Pol: Ha. We flew to the Moon in 1969, but then the Communist ideology took over and we haven't advanced the cause since.

Fran: Are you running the country on hydropower?

Pol: No. We're still using the dams the WPA built, which I'm grateful for, even if nobody else is ... plus a handful built later in the 1950s. Worst of all, we are actually getting rid of some dams to satisfy the utterly insane theory that's at the heart of this crazy Communism.

Fran: Getting rid of dams? Why in the everloving name of God would you want to waste all that work and deprive the country of free energy??? Well, I don't mean you, because you obviously know it's wrong, but the people in your time?

Pol: Oh lord, you're not going to believe this. You've somehow understood my time-traveling, but you won't be able to absorb this.

Fran: Try me.

Pol: They want to eliminate the dams because they think the fish are more important than the people.

Fran: That's crazy all right.

Pol: It's a primitive religion, something like the old Incas or Mayas, whatever those South American savages were called. This religion considers the earth to be a goddess, and ultimately wants to sacrifice all people to the goddess. Most of our politicians and most of our churches and educators have signed on to the belief, and they treat anyone who disbelieves as crazy.

Fran: Weirder and weirder. Does this savage cult have churches?

Pol: Doesn't need any. All the main churches preach it, though I'm pretty sure the regular believers don't know where it's taking them.

= = = =

Continued here..........
  ¶ 7:41 AM

  Watching the radio
In the same way that Nature provided everything in the original genome, it seems that most successful inventions were present in our imaginations before they were invented. Television was always present in radio, and radio listeners always 'watched' the dial of the radio. Manufacturers soon understood this, and gave 'watchers' lots of entertainment in the dial. Colorful band indications, multiple pointers, Magic Eye tubes. The zenith of dial-entertainment was, of course, Zenith.

This picture, from a 1922 Radio World magazine, may be the first recorded instance of 'watching'. Serious broadcasting was only two years old, but radio was instantly popular everywhere, including a haute couture shop in Paris. Interesting dials hadn't developed yet, so someone built a frame where you could create your own images. (The frame resembles the oval I've always used when Polistra is watching her Philco.)



Wonderfully clever. And sure enough, the clerks and models 'watched' the frame, though their ears undoubtedly knew that the sound was coming from the speaker off to the right!

= = = = =

Sidenote: The ingenious builder of this frame, and the makers of entertaining dials, understood human perception vastly better than Marshall McLuhan did. I've always been irritated that McLuhan's wildly ignorant reversal has received so much respect and repetition. MM decided, contrary to every scrap of evidence and observation, that books and radio were 'hot', forcing you to accept an externally generated picture, while TV was 'cool', encouraging your mental and physical muscles to create your own image. I have no fucking idea how he reached these bizarre conclusions, and I have even less fucking idea why so many idiots blindly accepted his dogma, ignoring their own experience.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 5:54 PM

  Nature always gets there first
American Radio History has acquired a few issues of the Philco Tech Bulletin from the early '50s. Much of the material is details about specific milspec equipment, not hugely interesting. All of the writing is clear, and the diagrams are especially good.

Two brief articles are interesting to my taste.

One describes the power of speech in a way that I hadn't read before. Nothing new, just a clear use of numbers.

The lungs and the muscles used in breathing provide the source of power for speech sounds, and thereby control to a considerable extent the loudness of the emitted sound.

The amount of power used in speech is surprisingly small, however. The vowels, which are the most powerful speech sounds. average about 100 microwatts, with peak values of about 2000 microwatts. The voices of persons capable of very loud speech may reach peak-power values of 5000 microwatts. On the other hand. the minimum in speech power is probably about 0.01 microwatt. and occurs when the sound /θ/ is pronounced.

Therefore, a telephone system must be capable of handling a range of speech intensity of 500.000 to 1, or 57 dB. For ordinary conversation. the range is considerably less, being approximately 10,000 to 1 or 40 dB.

The power used in the production of music is much greater than that used for speech, varying from about 4 microwatts for a softly played violin to nearly 70 watts for a full symphony orchestra. Thus the intensity range for music is about 20,000.000 to 1 or 73 dB.

Based on studies of a number of individuals, the average power used in American speech is 10 microwatts; therefore, if a million people were engaged in conversation simultaneously. their combined average speech power would be approximately equivalent to that consumed by a 10-watt electric light bulb.

The other is EXTREMELY interesting.

In the August, 1951, issue of IRE, Mr. Ted Powell explains communication between moths. The female moth radiates infrared energy at a wavelength of about 8 microns. Radiation is indicated by the fact that the temperature of a female moth is about 11 degrees above that of her surroundings. The male moth has an antenna system consisting of a series of hairs ranging from 40 to 80 microns in length, in 4-micron steps. These steps are the familiar half-wave intervals so common to HF arrays.

A semi-familiar mode of communication with a remarkable receiver. The male moth doesn't pick up the heat via retina-type cells like a pit viper. He receives the heat AS MICROWAVES, with a TUNED ANTENNA ARRAY. Tonotopic like a cochlea.



Nature always gets there first. We can't possibly hope to beat Nature.

Continued in next item.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:57 PM