Richard Casady wrote in
:

Computers are fast? You could learn calculus in
less time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxeLyMvu8fg

Sometimes old doesn't mean slow.....

W4CSC QRU QRV QSX 7 14 21 MHZ

jeff wrote in :

They
describe in detail a new device called the transistor: "It seems likely
that this device will simply computer circuits considerably."


When I was a boy, in the 50s, my uncle worked for GE heavy military in
Syracuse, NY. They threw out tons of stuff, a lot of which the pack rats,
like my uncle, were allowed to cart off instead of the trash collectors.

He brought this boy some new fangled tiny blue plastic "fuses", as he liked
to jokingly call them, with 3 wires and a red dot near one of the wires
hanging out of them. On the side, it said RAYTHEON CK-722, one of the
first production germanium transistors.

Fascinated by the new device, my school grades suffered awful as I spent my
time pouring over every book he had on transistors and transistor circuits,
determined to make something useful out of them.

What I made was a 3-transistor TRF AM radio with a regenerative detector in
a tiny plastic box my mother threw away. High impedance crystal earphones
in ham magazines were a dollar and I had those for crystal radio projects.
The new receiver had a loopstick antenna and with 2 RF stages it was very
sensitive, though not very selective.

I wore it to school just as the World Series started so I could hear the
ball game during the boring classes in our elementary school. I got
caught, of course, but when the principal found out I had built the radio
out of these new transistors, he was so fascinated listening to the ball
game on it I wasn't punished. As it was the only transistor radio in our
town, I ended up in the newspaper showing it off.

You know you're "old" when your new stuff is now a museum!....dammit.

http://www.ck722museum.com/

Edgar wrote:
....
Was that all really almost 30 years ago??

The "March of History" has always fascinated me. In 1967 I got a tour
of the Apollo control center in Houston, with the 5 IBM 360/75's. This
was probably the most powerful setup in the world at the time; now its
less power than my kid's cell phone. About 10 years later I was in a
huge disk farm in Greenbelt MD where hundreds of "washing machines" held
all of the telemetry from all of the US satellites for 6 months. It
added up the the almost unthinkable amount of half a terrabyte! Now
that costs $69!

For years I've be saying that in spite of all this, the most significant
advances were from about 1840 to 1870, when the telegraph and the steam
engine transformed the world from the way it had been for hundreds, if
not thousands, of years to a world not much different from the way it
was yesterday. However, now I'm not so su are we on the verge of
another major shift for humanity?

In article , Marc Heusser wrote:
In article ,
Justin C wrote:

Out of interest, how far is too far?

Ok, here comes the comparison.
(LW low water, HW high water, 24h time, height above map reference zero
for Hamburg, St. Pauli, Germany, 53°32'44"N 9°58'12"E, GMT+1
for Monday, 23 March 2009
(This is the large port of Hamburg)

The reference: prediction by th BSH
(www.bsh.de, free)
HW 0151 3.9m
LW 0927 0.4m
HW 1439 3.7m
LW 2147 0.5m

WXTide32 (latest version 4.7, 25 Feb 2007, wxtide32.com,
for 53°33.00'N 9°58.02'E, free)
HW 0133 3.1m
LW 0905 0.5m
HW 1428 3.0m
LW 2113 0.6m

That's out by a fair bit, on the high at least. To be working out calculations on almost 4 and find out it's really around a meter less, that could be a problem. But I'd always *try* to arrive before the bottom of a low... try being the operative word. Mind you, 3 meters wouldn't be much of a problem for most cruisers, as long as there isn't much of a swell.


Tides (iPhone, version 2.0, free, but ad ridden)
I was not able to enter Hamburg, Germany, a major port, with the new
version, even when I entered the exact coordinates and searched for
nearby prediction spots.

TideApp (iPhone, version 2.5, ads to come - I'd rather pay something for
it)
HW 0143 3.9m
LW 0901 0.75m
HW 1425 3.7
LW 2128 0.75m
Times seem to be within half an hour, heights within half a metre
good enough for planning

Mr Tides X (Mac OS X. version 2.5.6.2,
http://homepage.mac.com/augusth/MrTides/, based on XTide 2.8, free)
HW 0143 3.9m
LW 0901 0.75m
HW 1425 3.7
LW 2128 0.75m

I have XTides on my palm. I find it compares quite well with the local published tides, but I've not done a direct comparison over time. I think I shall.

It is said, I believe, on the XTides page, that the figures are calculated, and that, if you want better accuracy you should use published tide tables. While the published tables are calculations too, they're calculated for each port individually, while XTides is calculating based on less actual data - due to storage restrictions (at least on a palm).

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.

On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:33:37 +0000, Larry wrote:

What I made was a 3-transistor TRF AM radio with a regenerative detector in
a tiny plastic box my mother threw away. High impedance crystal earphones
in ham magazines were a dollar and I had those for crystal radio projects.
The new receiver had a loopstick antenna and with 2 RF stages it was very
sensitive, though not very selective.

I wore it to school just as the World Series started so I could hear the
ball game during the boring classes in our elementary school. I got
caught, of course, but when the principal found out I had built the radio
out of these new transistors, he was so fascinated listening to the ball
game on it I wasn't punished. As it was the only transistor radio in our
town, I ended up in the newspaper showing it off.

You know you're "old" when your new stuff is now a museum!....dammit.

http://www.ck722museum.com/

Good stuff. Some time around 1956 I got my hands on a 2N107 which
cost 98 cents and had specs similar to the CK722. I took a crystal
set that I had built previously, bread boarded onto a short pice of 2
x 4 lumber, and added a 1 transistor audio amplifier. It made a huge
difference in the audio level of the ear phones. A friend of mine
asked to borrow it once and I found out later that he had entered it
in the local science fair and won first prize with it.

jeff wrote in :

However, now I'm not so su are we on the verge of
another major shift for humanity?


Yes, We're witness to an economic coup d'etat where the banking elite have
taken over the governments without firing a shot. Just this morning,
they're giving themselves another $1,000,000,000,000 (Trillion) from the
public treasury....without firing a shot.

The new president's new cabinet is all about wall street bankers....See for
yourself.

Wayne.B wrote in
:

On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:33:37 +0000, Larry wrote:

What I made was a 3-transistor TRF AM radio with a regenerative
detector in a tiny plastic box my mother threw away. High impedance
crystal earphones in ham magazines were a dollar and I had those for
crystal radio projects. The new receiver had a loopstick antenna and
with 2 RF stages it was very sensitive, though not very selective.

I wore it to school just as the World Series started so I could hear
the ball game during the boring classes in our elementary school. I
got caught, of course, but when the principal found out I had built
the radio out of these new transistors, he was so fascinated listening
to the ball game on it I wasn't punished. As it was the only
transistor radio in our town, I ended up in the newspaper showing it
off.

You know you're "old" when your new stuff is now a museum!....dammit.

http://www.ck722museum.com/

Good stuff. Some time around 1956 I got my hands on a 2N107 which
cost 98 cents and had specs similar to the CK722. I took a crystal
set that I had built previously, bread boarded onto a short pice of 2
x 4 lumber, and added a 1 transistor audio amplifier. It made a huge
difference in the audio level of the ear phones. A friend of mine
asked to borrow it once and I found out later that he had entered it
in the local science fair and won first prize with it.



"Science Fair" to me always meant hauling the home brew ham radio
station down to the school gym and hauling a sloper dipole from the
front door of the school to the top of the flagpole on the same clip as
Old Glory. One year, I surprised them all by NOT bringing my station.
That year I built a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell from plans that came from
Mr Wizard, Don Herbert, who worked for GE that made the TV show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_Mr._Wizard
My father had the second TV in town, a Raytheon 9" that looked like an
old oscilloscope. The whole neighborhood used to crowd around it before
they got their own sets. I installed LOTS of TV antennas besides his.

When Mr Wizard was on....the TV was MINE.