In defence of old technology.

[Old Koreelah]

4 hours ago, Thruster88 said:

You could just have plenty of fuel and call ATC for radar vectors to the nearest suitable runway.

A lot of assumptions there, T88. This is an enormous continent, with many flyers far from ATC.

How many of us would appear on Air Services radar? 

[jackc]

9 hours ago, onetrack said:

One would hope the COVID-19 crisis has caused a rethink in corporate policies. The greatest single problem with our economic system today is the emphasis on a high level of short-term profits to reward shareholders and senior management people, instead of looking at how the corporations short-sighted policies impact upon themselves and their clients in the long term.

 

In essence, corporate education and modus operandi fails to place any real value on the customer, or their outlook or opinions, to the corporations long term detriment. Typically, the corporations outlook is simply constant greed for market share and profits, without any long-term insight. There is a stark division between American corporations and Japanese corporations, where the Japanese corporations are more cohesive and forward-looking than any American corporation.

 

The video below is quite interesting as to how corporate short-term greed and the JIT manufacturing process has badly affected supply chains and caused disruption world-wide. There's a whole lot more to any business decision than just a quick dollar, and many things are not measured accurately, when the bean counters try to bring everything back down to hard dollar values.

 

 

If you don’t have shares to try and make a bit of money?  Crime seems to pay for many?  the days of earning 8% bank interest are long gone, and we don’t have ‘people’s’ bank anymore……..

[kgwilson]

8 hours ago, danny_galaga said:

Interesting, since the first CRT was invented in 1897 😉

The first TVs were mechanical. CRT's are electronic.

[danny_galaga]

8 hours ago, kgwilson said:

The first TVs were mechanical. CRT's are electronic.

Who made a colour tv (moving pictures) in 1884? If it's some mythical Tesla story, that can be discounted since people incorrectly assume everything he wrote about in later life he invented. 

Tv seems to be like flying-lots of people claim to have done it first. But only those who documented it fully can really make that claim.

[octave]

History of the Television

[pmccarthy]

In defense of Ballarat boy Henry Sutton...

In 1885, Sutton designed, but did not construct, a mechanical television apparatus to see the Melbourne Cup in Ballarat.^[34][3]:319 Sutton had published his Telephane designs in 1890.^[34][27][35] According to historian Ann Moyal, the concept was never successfully demonstrated: "Sutton's 'TV system', which he called 'telephany', used all the latest technology, such as the recently-invented Kerr effect, the Nipkow disc (which Baird was to use in the 'twenties) and the selenium photocell. But its weak link in the 1870s was that the signal had to be transferred by telegraph lines, as radio had yet to arrive, and these were too slow to transmit the dashing horses of the Melbourne Cup successfully."^[36]

[Bruce Tuncks]

Markdun, you are being a bit unkind to Cook. He was able to navigate using the lunar angular distance method for longitude. There were only a few people in the world at the time who could do the maths. I sure can't.

[Markdun]

Bruce, navigation is not only knowing where you are, it has to have meaning or context. An aviator got lost in a hot air balloon, so he descended over a golf course and asked a couple of guys playing golf where he was.  Their answer was, ‘you’re in a hot air balloon 200’ above a golf course’.  He then asked if they were accountants, to which they responded, ‘how did you know?’. ‘Because the answer you gave was precisely correct, but absolutely useless’.

Jimmy Cook was a superb navigator, but when he cruised the Australian east coast he may have known his lat & long, but his charts didn’t show where the land and water was etc.  so despite knowing his lat and long, he had to navigate with the original instrument....the Mark 1 Eyeball and a string with a lead weight on the end. Knowing his lat and long enabled him to make an accurate chart for others....indeed some of the charts I’ve used in 1985 were marked as  Lt Cook of the RN being the chart maker.

[spacesailor]

HOW many remembers the 60 second stopwatch ?.

I still have mine, and the littlies are surprised, it WINDS UP.

spacesailor

[pmccarthy]

On my first job as a surveyor I was issued a chrome plated pocket watch, wind up type. You could buy them at the time for $2.50. My daughter had it now as a family heirloom.

[onetrack]

My Dad bought my brother a beaut wind-up fob watch for (I think it was) his 19th birthday.

Brother took the watch gratefully, his butterfingers let it slip - it hit the concrete floor vertically, and exploded like a hand grenade, with watch parts spreading far and wide!

The brother was obviously quite upset at losing his present, within milliseconds of receiving it - and Dad was quite disgusted at his clumsiness!

I think the watch cost about £2.00 ($5.00) at that time (late 1950's) - but the basic wage was only around £13.00 ($26.00), back then.