Tag: Metrology
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Insiderish?
At the moment this insiderish event in the “news” business strikes me as fairly significant. Detroit still has morning and evening papers. They started out independent, then semi-merged in 1989 with a Joint Operating Agreement. The upper levels of management and financing were together while the newsrooms were independent. In the 80s many papers formed…
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Almost up to TRS-80!
Windows 11 has achieved what previous tech predictors thought impossible: It matches the performance of a TRS-80 with cassette drive memory, or the first PC with 144k floppies. Fine work, Microsoft! Sardonic off. I’ve been using Win 11 for several weeks now, so I have a good idea of how various programs run. Absolutely everything…
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XII gaming
Seen at Substack, verified by an archeology book. These mysterious dodecahedrons were fairly common in the northern part of the Roman empire, from Britain to Germany. Theories abound but nobody is certain of their purpose. They were about 4 inches in diameter, with 12 sides. Each side had a hole, each a different size. My…
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50 year unsync
In 1958, TV Radio Life magazine interviewed Martin Klein, who hosted a weekly science program on LA television station KCOP, listed as ‘independent’. It’s still there, still on channel 13 with the same call letters. They asked Klein to predict 50 years into the future. How would we live in 2008? Klein worked for Cohu…
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One-stop shop
History Today tells how medieval scribes adapted to the onset of printing by reusing and expanding their existing materials, tools and skills. = = = = = START QUOTE: At its height Oxford’s book trade enjoyed the establishment of Dominican and Franciscan friaries in need of books for university activities and preaching, and an early…
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Aphid Day 2025
Aphid Day is Oct 9, 2025. I’ve been seeing a few aphids in previous days. Today they gave a nice clear signal that summer is over, swarming as soon as the sun came over the horizon. I’m especially glad to see them. This summer wasn’t hotter than average but it was harder than average on…
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Hard currency?
The ex-Soviet auto history podcaster often mentions that trade between the US side of the world and the Soviet side was difficult because the ruble wasn’t a ‘hard currency’. I used to hear that phrase in the news and didn’t question it at the time. The news told us Soviet money wasn’t hard, so it…
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Things endure
Looking through old Billboard mags while chasing elusive info about Western Union’s public fax machines, ran across a permanent memorial to the last moment of sanity before political lunacy resumed. In Dec 1945 the treasury issued the FDR dime. Billboard, serving coin-op vendors, was concerned that the dime wouldn’t fit current machines, but the treasury…
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New measuring standard
Since 2008 I’ve been vainly preaching the FDR gospel. If a ruler wants to improve his country, he doesn’t need to invent any new methods. Just copy FDR. Roosevelt faced ALL the same problems we have today, with different names and numbers. He didn’t get it right the first time, but he kept tirelessly experimenting,…
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Kraut joke
Seen under ‘engineer jokes’ at Quora, but not really about engineers. = = = = = A Mercedes engineer and a Jaguar engineer are arguing about who has the best quality control. Mercedes engineer says let me tell you how good our quality control is, there’s a test we do. We’ll pull a random car…
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Why not barley?
Random stupid bitching! When I switched back to more or less vegy diet in 2010 after a carny diet led to trouble, I made barley the base. In my previous long vegy period from 1970 to 1990, I had followed hippie tradition with rice. Barley has more complex nutrition than rice. It grows in many…
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Vector fields
Vector fields are a math tool used in graphing and understanding sets of forces or complex patterns. Vector fields have proved useful with brain networks. Older forms of measurement were also vectorial, with complex measures like metes and bounds forming vector fields to measure farm fields. A vector is an arrow representing a movement and…
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X et XII, pars I de II
Discussions and school lessons on Roman arithmetic are solely about integers. In reality the Romans, and the medieval merchants who continued the tradition, handled fractions all the time using a sophisticated notation. Integers operated on a pair of 5s, not a simple base 10. Fractions operated on a pair of 6s, not a simple base…
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X et XII, pars II de II
After covering the Addiator I was curious to see if there were similar devices in earlier times. Rome used primitive abacuses, just stones sliding in grooves on wood. Not really a device. Googling medieval abacus led solely to this gadget: There’s only one source for the picture and description, a 1682 encyclopedia of ancient things…
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Waggles and rods
= = = = = = VECTOR MEASUREMENT PART 1 OF 2 = = = = = Following from the Medieval Metrology series last month. Medieval land measures were vector, not rectangular. The base unit was time and work, not distance and weight. With land as with money, the base was one day of work…
Polistra's Mill 