engineering pub-crawl through the twentieth century
Johan Larson
working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
he working during each of the hundred years?
LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
Early flight? Movies?
Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
until the start of the war.
Project Ultra or Project Manhattan, 1939-1945: Our hero has two choices
during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK, or
on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
LACUNA, 1946-1960. Lots of cool stuff going on during this time,
particularly in jet propulsion and early computers, but I can't decide what
projects to pick.
Project Apollo, 1961-1972. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come.
LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware, probably.
Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
decent choice.
eBay, 1995-1998: The big noise of the day is the early commercial internet.
Of the three big successes of the era (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay), I think eBay
deserves the nod for having such a great business model.
Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
Johan Larson
Charlton Wilbur
JL> LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software,
JL> I would guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus
JL> (Pagemaker) would be a decent choice.
MIT, Xwindows, and the Athena project; DNS and TCP/IP. Ethernet.
GNU, BSD, and open source. The MIPS, PowerPC, ARM, and Alpha
microprocessors.
JL> eBay, 1995-1998: The big noise of the day is the early
JL> commercial internet. Of the three big successes of the era
JL> (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay), I think eBay deserves the nod for
JL> having such a great business model.
But eBay has nothing of any significant technical interest. It's just
a big database with a web interface. Why would a brilliant engineer
have any interest in it?
In the early part of your century, you concentrate on *technically*
interesting projects, and then you switch to big moneymakers with
interesting business models. Did your engineer decide to get an MBA
between working at Apple and working at eBay?
Charlton
--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com
Johan Larson
"Charlton Wilbur" <cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote in message
news:m2zmv5e...@ubiquity.chromatico.net...
The ideal project for these purposes would be on the one hand technically
interesting in that it solves a hard problem, and on the other hand broadly
influential by affecting many people. I'll admit that I am including eBay
more because of how big a phenomenon it became than for its strictly
technical merits. However, as far as I can tell, the real engineering (or
engineering/marketing, if you insist) challenge at the time was figuring out
how to make money through the internet. eBay figured out how to do so, and
in an interesting way.
What would you propose as an alternative? Or would you point somewhere else
entirely?
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote in message
news:leidnR7E95P...@comcast.com...
> Project Apollo, 1961-1972. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth
> century. Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing,
> too, but big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten.
> Sorry, programmers, but your day will come.
>
> LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware, probably.
On second thought, I think I want the Nameless Engineer at Intel for the
early microprocessors, even if I have to have him leave Apollo early.
Project Apollo, 1961-1970. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come. Departure shortly after the
moon-landing.
Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor, introduced
in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
Johan Larson
Charlton Wilbur
>> In the early part of your century, you concentrate on
>> *technically* interesting projects, and then you switch to big
>> moneymakers with interesting business models. Did your
>> engineer decide to get an MBA between working at Apple and
>> working at eBay?
JL> The ideal project for these purposes would be on the one hand
JL> technically interesting in that it solves a hard problem, and
JL> on the other hand broadly influential by affecting many
JL> people. I'll admit that I am including eBay more because of
JL> how big a phenomenon it became than for its strictly technical
JL> merits. However, as far as I can tell, the real engineering
JL> (or engineering/marketing, if you insist) challenge at the
JL> time was figuring out how to make money through the
JL> internet. eBay figured out how to do so, and in an interesting
JL> way.
But that's like "how to make money via the phone" or "how to make
money via the mail." Neither is a significant technical challenge at
all, and neither has very much to do with engineering. eBay is just a
mail-order flea market, just as Amazon is just a mail-order bookstore.
Sure, there are technical issues involved in making sure the web
servers and databases stay up, but nothing remotely close to the
design of the Macintosh or the Apollo project.
If you're interested in technical but influential, look at
cryptography and security, or, more broadly, the transition from
analog to digital formats in so many media, and the associated
corporate emphasis on encryption, security, and control.
Or look at the engineering effort behind the Internet itself. Making
customers feel safe enough to give their credit card numbers out is a
marketing problem, but routing huge volumes of data among millions of
computers is an engineering one. So is the distributed database that
maps computer names (www.ebay.com) to the network address numbers
(66.135.208.89, among others) that makes the routing possible.
JL> What would you propose as an alternative? Or would you point
JL> somewhere else entirely?
Well, you have an engineer, and you want items of technical interest.
I'd vote for "somewhere else entirely," and look at actual products
rather than marketing.
Johan Larson
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote in message
> Project Apollo, 1961-1970. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth
> century. Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing,
> too, but big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten.
> Sorry, programmers, but your day will come. Departure shortly after the
> moon-landing.
>
> Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor,
> introduced in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
That should be:
Project Apollo, 1961-1969.
Intel, 1970-1978.
Whole years only. No overlapping.
Johan Larson
Erik Max Francis
> Or look at the engineering effort behind the Internet itself. Making
> customers feel safe enough to give their credit card numbers out is a
> marketing problem, but routing huge volumes of data among millions of
> computers is an engineering one. So is the distributed database that
> maps computer names (www.ebay.com) to the network address numbers
> (66.135.208.89, among others) that makes the routing possible.
Indeed. eBay and Google are obviously big things today, but will they
be in 5, 10, 15 years? Who knows. But it's clear that the Internet has
been massively influential, and will continue to be so in the coming
decades. (And eBay and Google wouldn't exist without it.)
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
-- Aldous Huxley
A.G.McDowell
<johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?> writes
>Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
>working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
>Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
>time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
>he working during each of the hundred years?
>
>LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
>of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
>Early flight? Movies?
>
Opera called "The Electrification of the Soviet Union". The real thing
must have been a pretty big project. See e.g. http://www.marxists.org/hi
story/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch10.htm to see them admit some outside
involvement).
>
>LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware, probably.
>
>Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
>the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
>Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
>development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
>
--
A.G.McDowell
Daniel Silevitch
> Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
> working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
> Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
> time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
> he working during each of the hundred years?
>
> LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
> of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
> Early flight? Movies?
Panama canal.
-dms
Johan Larson
"Daniel Silevitch" <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:slrnd7sve2....@bardeen.local...
Good choice. I could have sworn the Panama Canal project was completed
before the turn of the century. Learn something every day, I guess.
The new text:
LACUNA, 1901-1903: Duh. Something.
Panama Canal, 1904-1913: Dig we must. Finish just in time for the Great War.
What luck!
LACUNA, 1914-1931: Duh. Something else. Probably several something elses.
Johan Larson, who is beginning to wish he had chosen a less pretentious word
than "lacuna"
Mean Green Dancing Machine
Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
>
>LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early
>part of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this
>time. Radio? Early flight? Movies?
Someone else mentioned Panama Canal. I'd also pick the early years of
aviation and anything Edison was doing.
>LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware,
>probably.
>
>Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses
>was the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the
>visit by Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future,
>through the development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced
>out of Apple.
>
>LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
>guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
>decent choice.
>
>eBay, 1995-1998: The big noise of the day is the early commercial
>internet. Of the three big successes of the era (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay),
>I think eBay deserves the nod for having such a great business model.
>
>Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
The Human Genome Project ran from 1990 through 2003. I'll agree that
Google was cooler when it started hiring in 1999, but AltaVista was a
better place than eBay (originally part of DEC WRL). I think you should
perhaps have had your person work at Xerox PARC in the 70s instead of
Intel. Then he would also have interacted with Engelbart at SRI. The
GNU project started in 1983; desktop publishing software was never
particularly interesting for Real Engineers. Then he would have switched
to Linux in the early 90s (or possibly BSD if he was a masochist ;-).
Real Engineers also worked on the LISP machines. NextSTEP would be
another option if he was an Apple-lover.
I'm sure I'm missing some things, but no friggin' way would he pick
eBay. Amazon was the only technically interesting company of the three
because of their aggregation system for reviews and recommendations, and
I'll bet he'd pick something else.
--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2005 by aa...@pobox.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
"In the end, outside of spy agencies, people are far too trusting and
willing to help." --Ira Winkler
Keith Morrison
> Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
> working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
> Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
> time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
> he working during each of the hundred years?
>
> LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
> of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
> Early flight? Movies?
1901-1905. Completion of the Trans Siberian Railroad. Aside from being
a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
1905-1906. HMS Dreadnought. Generally recognized as being the first
modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
1906-1913. Panama Canal. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower because
it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
them effectively useless.
1914-1918. Associated with World War I, the rapid development of
aircraft. By the end of the war, aircraft had evolved from fragile
things really good only for spotting to most of the general types
we'd know today: fighters, bombers, transports, recon; first aircraft
carriers. Multi-engine aircraft.
--
Keith
Cally Soukup
> Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
> working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
> Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
> time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
> he working during each of the hundred years?
> LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
> of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
> Early flight? Movies?
1904 to 1914. The Panama Canal.
--
"I disapprove of what you have to say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall
Cally Soukup sou...@pobox.com
Joe Ellis
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
> Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
> working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
> Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
> time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
> he working during each of the hundred years?
>
Dayton, Ohio. 1900-1905. The Wright brothers designed the control system
and the aircraft, but sub-contracted the powerplant. They needed a
lightweight (aluminum) reliable engine, and someone who knows a bit
about photography and patent law wouldn't hurt.
--
"What it all comes to is that the whole structure of space flight as it
stands now is creaking, obsolecent, over-elaborate, decaying. The field is
static; no, worse than that, it's losing ground. By this time, our ships
ought to be sleeker and faster, and able to carry bigger payloads. We ought
to have done away with this dichotomy between ships that can land on a planet,
and ships that can fly from one planet to another." - Senator Bliss Wagoner
James Blish - _They Shall Have Stars_
Joe Ellis
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
>
> LACUNA, 1946-1960. Lots of cool stuff going on during this time,
> particularly in jet propulsion and early computers, but I can't decide what
> projects to pick.
Lockheed, the Skunk Works. Or if he wants full time work, Wright
Patterson AFB Aircraft Lab. He'd be back in Dayton, and working on
projects ranging from the Aerospace Plane, to the Century series of
fighters, to Atomic Aircraft Engines, to the XB-70... not to mention a
whole lot of wierd stuff that never got past drawingboards, much less
prototypes.
> Project Apollo, 1961-1972. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
> Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
> big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
> programmers, but your day will come.
>
> LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware, probably.
>
> Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
> the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
> Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
> development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
>
> LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
> guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
> decent choice.
Bah. The Space Shuttle, doing the post-Challenger investigation and the
return to space. We tend to learn more from our mistakes than from our
sucesses.
>
> eBay, 1995-1998: The big noise of the day is the early commercial internet.
> Of the three big successes of the era (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay), I think eBay
> deserves the nod for having such a great business model.
>
> Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
>
> Johan Larson
--
Johan Larson
"Mean Green Dancing Machine" <aa...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:d5m0ot$jej$1...@panix2.panix.com...
> The Human Genome Project ran from 1990 through 2003.
As I understand it, the HGP was done in highly distributed fashion by
academics. The conversations I have had with people from engineering and
computer science backgrounds have led me to believe that it was essentially
impossible for people from non-life-sciences backgrounds to get a hearing.
That probably excludes our engineer.
> I'll agree that
> Google was cooler when it started hiring in 1999, but AltaVista was a
> better place than eBay (originally part of DEC WRL). I think you should
> perhaps have had your person work at Xerox PARC in the 70s instead of
> Intel. Then he would also have interacted with Engelbart at SRI. The
> GNU project started in 1983; desktop publishing software was never
> particularly interesting for Real Engineers. Then he would have switched
> to Linux in the early 90s (or possibly BSD if he was a masochist ;-).
The problem with open source is that until very recently, you couldn't get
paid for working on it. And our engineer does need a paying job.
> Real Engineers also worked on the LISP machines. NextSTEP would be
> another option if he was an Apple-lover.
LISP is cool, but the LISP machines were dead ends. Our engineer is not
particularly interested in technically cool solutions that are operational
or commercial failures.
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
contributed so far.
Right now, the gaps are:
1. 1919-1931
2. 1946-1960
3. 1986-1998
(4). 1914-1918 is also very general.
Of these, the one that should be easiest to fix is 1986-1998. During that
time period, the places to work were almost certainly either networking
hardware, the internet, or PC software of some kind. Something in graphics
or computer games might also be a possibility. Who were the big (commercial)
dogs on the Internet Engineering Task Force?
Johan Larson
---------------------------
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1905. Aside from being
a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
HMS Dreadnought, 1905-1906. Generally recognized as being the first
modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
Panama Canal, 1906-1913. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower because
it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
them effectively useless.
Aircraft development, 1914-1918. Associated with World War I, the rapid
development of
aircraft. By the end of the war, aircraft had evolved from fragile
things really good only for spotting to most of the general types
we'd know today: fighters, bombers, transports, recon; first aircraft
carriers. Multi-engine aircraft.
LACUNA: 1919-1931
Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
until the start of the war.
Project Ultra or Project Manhattan, 1939-1945: Our hero has two choices
during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK, or
on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
LACUNA, 1946-1960.
Project Apollo, 1961-1972. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come.
Project Apollo, 1961-1969. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come. Departure shortly after the
moon-landing.
Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor, introduced
in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
LACUNA, 1986-1998.
David Dyer-Bennet
> Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
> working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
> Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
> time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
> he working during each of the hundred years?
>
> LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
> of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
> Early flight? Movies?
>
> Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
> the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
> proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
> until the start of the war.
>
> Project Ultra or Project Manhattan, 1939-1945: Our hero has two choices
> during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK, or
> on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
>
> LACUNA, 1946-1960. Lots of cool stuff going on during this time,
> particularly in jet propulsion and early computers, but I can't decide what
> projects to pick.
>
> Project Apollo, 1961-1972. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
> Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
> big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
> programmers, but your day will come.
>
> LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware, probably.
Where things fit is a bit of a problem, but Digital Equipment
Corporation is *huge* in the history here. Ideally he should be
involved with TOPS-10, and then perhaps the PDP-8.
> Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the
> masses was the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple
> from the visit by Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the
> future, through the development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs
> was forced out of Apple.
Far more interesting things to do then. Why not just put him at PARC
earlier, and skip Apple completely?
> LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
> guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
> decent choice.
Again this is the wrong date, but VisiCalc is a really key software
milestone, and I suspect you can argue its engineering was
interesting.
> eBay, 1995-1998: The big noise of the day is the early commercial internet.
> Of the three big successes of the era (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay), I think eBay
> deserves the nod for having such a great business model.
>
> Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
Google just did what earlier searches did, a little better. Go back
to Lycos, or at least Alta Vista.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
David Dyer-Bennet
Good choice, I think.
David Dyer-Bennet
> In article <leidnR7E95P...@comcast.com>, Johan Larson
> <johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?> writes
>>Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
>>working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
>>Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
>>time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
>>he working during each of the hundred years?
>>
> (much trimmed, here and elsewhere)
>>LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the early part
>>of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time. Radio?
>>Early flight? Movies?
>>
> Zeppelins (2nd Choice - not sure about the timing but isn't there an
> Opera called "The Electrification of the Soviet Union". The real thing
> must have been a pretty big project. See e.g. http://www.marxists.org/hi
> story/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch10.htm to see them admit some outside
> involvement).
Hoover dam, TVA, that kind of major civil engineering project, maybe?
Steve Glover
<johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> writes
>Project Ultra or Project Manhattan, 1939-1945: Our hero has two choices
>during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK, or
>on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
Three. You missed out Radar.
Steve (worked briefly with Sir John Randall)
--
Steve Glover, Fell Services Ltd. Available
Weblog at http://weblog.akicif.net/blogger.html
Home: steve at fell.demon.co.uk, 0131 551 3835
Away: steve.glover at ukonline.co.uk, 07961 446 902
Johan Larson
"David Dyer-Bennet" <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote in message
news:m21x8hp...@gw.dd-b.net...
>>
>> LACUNA, 1973-1978. What to do? Something in computer hardware, probably.
>
> Where things fit is a bit of a problem, but Digital Equipment
> Corporation is *huge* in the history here. Ideally he should be
> involved with TOPS-10, and then perhaps the PDP-8.
>
>> Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the
>> masses was the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple
>> from the visit by Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the
>> future, through the development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs
>> was forced out of Apple.
>
> Far more interesting things to do then. Why not just put him at PARC
> earlier, and skip Apple completely?
I have a bias in favor of projects that had wide public exposure, even if
their essential elements appeared earlier. The cool bits of the Mac had
indeed appeared earlier at PARC, but it was the Mac that took them
mainstream.
Also, I thought PARC mostly hired researchers from academic backgrounds,
rather than engineers per se.
>
>> LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
>> guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
>> decent choice.
>
> Again this is the wrong date, but VisiCalc is a really key software
> milestone, and I suspect you can argue its engineering was
> interesting.
>
>> eBay, 1995-1998: The big noise of the day is the early commercial
>> internet.
>> Of the three big successes of the era (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay), I think eBay
>> deserves the nod for having such a great business model.
>>
>> Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
>
> Google just did what earlier searches did, a little better. Go back
> to Lycos, or at least Alta Vista.
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
"Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
news:d5m0u...@news2.newsguy.com...
> 1901-1905. Completion of the Trans Siberian Railroad. Aside from being
> a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
> do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
> move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
> discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
> other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
>
> 1905-1906. HMS Dreadnought. Generally recognized as being the first
> modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
> and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
>
> 1906-1913. Panama Canal. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
> but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower because
> it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
> the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
> ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
> fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
> them effectively useless.
>
> 1914-1918. Associated with World War I, the rapid development of
> aircraft. By the end of the war, aircraft had evolved from fragile
> things really good only for spotting to most of the general types
> we'd know today: fighters, bombers, transports, recon; first aircraft
> carriers. Multi-engine aircraft.
Excellent. Incorporated. Thanks.
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
Here is the 0.2.1 version.
Johan Larson
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1905. Aside from being
a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
HMS Dreadnought, 1905-1906. Generally recognized as being the first
modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
Panama Canal, 1906-1913. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower because
it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
them effectively useless.
Aircraft development, 1914-1918. Associated with World War I, the rapid
development of
aircraft. By the end of the war, aircraft had evolved from fragile
things really good only for spotting to most of the general types
we'd know today: fighters, bombers, transports, recon; first aircraft
carriers. Multi-engine aircraft.
LACUNA, 1919-1931.
Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
until the start of the war.
Project Ultra or Project Manhattan, 1939-1945: Our hero has two choices
during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK, or
on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
LACUNA, 1946-1960.
Project Apollo, 1961-1969. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come. Departure shortly after the
moon-landing.
Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor, introduced
in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
LACUNA, 1986-1994.
Robert Sneddon
<st...@fell.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <g6KdndrCbdq...@comcast.com>, Johan Larson
><johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> writes
>>on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
>
>Three. You missed out Radar.
There's also the development of the proximity fuze, a better-kept
secret than the atomic bomb (the Russians didn't find out about them
until after they went into common use as antipersonnel artillery fuzes
in late 1944 -- the release came during the battle of the Bulge). It
involved some elegant engineering and serious work productionising the
device. Millions of them were made and used before the end of the war
and the reliability figures got to be very good, especially when you
consider the fuze consisted of a bunch of miniature valves (obUS: tubes)
and other circuitry fired out of an artillery barrel at thousands of
gees.
--
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.
Robert Sneddon
Daniel Silevitch
>
> Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
> the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
> proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
> until the start of the war.
From 1935 to the start of the war, he could be involved with the TVA, the
mother of all civil engineering projects.
> LACUNA, 1946-1960.
Development of transistors at Bell.
For the mid 50s, construction of USS Nautilus, first nuclear submarine,
might be a candidate.
-dms
Charlton Wilbur
>> Real Engineers also worked on the LISP machines. NextSTEP
>> would be another option if he was an Apple-lover.
JL> LISP is cool, but the LISP machines were dead ends. Our
JL> engineer is not particularly interested in technically cool
JL> solutions that are operational or commercial failures.
Then consider plunking him down at Xerox in time to work on Smalltalk.
While the actual Smalltalk machines themselves were commercial
failures, their children include the Macintosh, Windows, XWindows, and
Java; your engineer might find following the concepts from Alan Kay
through Xerox and Apple, then jump over to see what Bertrand Meyer
does with Eiffel, and then back to NeXT and Apple.
Charlton Wilbur
DDB> Far more interesting things to do then. Why not just put him
DDB> at PARC earlier, and skip Apple completely?
Because the actual hardware development of the Macintosh is
fascinating. PARC was dealing with interesting concepts; the
Macintosh was trying to bring them to the public for under $1000, and
made a lot of interesting compromises because of it. There was a lot
of deep technical wizardry in that little box (and in the Apple II
before it).
Del Cotter
Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> said:
>LACUNA, 1914-1931: Duh. Something else. Probably several something elses.
>
>Johan Larson, who is beginning to wish he had chosen a less pretentious word
>than "lacuna"
1924-1930: work with the young Nevil Shute on the Vickers R100
transatlantic airship.
http://www.nevilshute.org/TimeLine/timeline1921-1930.php
--
Del Cotter
Thanks to the recent increase in UBE, I will soon be ignoring email
sent to d...@branta.demon.co.uk. Please send your email to del2 instead.
Johan Larson
OK, good ideas. This would close the 1946-1960 gap:
Bell Labs, 1946-1950. Development and refinement of transistor (invented
1947.)
USS Nautilus, 1951-1954. First nuclear submarine. Built at the Electric Boat
Division, Groton.
USSR Space Program, 1955-1960. Includes launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957.
No, I don't know how he managed to go from the Nautilus project, to Sputnik,
to Apollo.
Some things must remain mysteries.
Johan Larson
Joe Ellis
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
> Here is the current state of the timeline. Thanks to everyone who has
> contributed so far.
>
> Right now, the gaps are:
>
> 1. 1919-1931
> 2. 1946-1960
> 3. 1986-1998
> (4). 1914-1918 is also very general.
>
> Of these, the one that should be easiest to fix is 1986-1998. During that
> time period, the places to work were almost certainly either networking
> hardware, the internet, or PC software of some kind. Something in graphics
> or computer games might also be a possibility. Who were the big (commercial)
> dogs on the Internet Engineering Task Force?
>
> Johan Larson
>
>
> ---------------------------
>
>
>
> Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1905. Aside from being
> a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
> do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
> move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
> discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
> other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
As an _original_ engineering feat, it just isn't that impressive. It
doesn't accomplish anything that wasn't done earlier, in similar (and
occassionally far worse) conditions, through more difficult terrain,
with fewer and more fragile and dangerous technological tools.
If you really want something railroady, let him go back a few more years
and work on the Firth of Forth Bridge (completed in 1890)... or put him
to work at the Union Pacific's "Department of Research and Mechanical
Standards" in the late 1930s (1938 should do) and let him work on the
"Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive, delivered September 5, 1941. It
weight a bit over half a _million_ pounds, could pull a 7,200,000 pound
train up a 1.14% grade without helpers, and the top design speed was 81
mph. (see: http://www.steamlocomotive.com/bigboy/)
Now _that's_ impressive.
Or put him to work on the Chunnel. It was proposed (this time) in 1963,
green-lighted in 1964. Looks like he could drop in any time between 1964
and 1988 for design, 1988-1994 would get him in on the construction
work. 31 miles long, three parallel bores, opened to passengers in July
of 1994.
Johan Larson
"Charlton Wilbur" <cwi...@chromatico.net> wrote in message
news:m2k6m9c...@ubiquity.chromatico.net...
Here is the engineer's current schedule:
Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor, introduced
in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
At Intel, the 8080 is released in 1974. That means our engineer could, in a
pinch, work at PARC 1975-1978. Would that be useful?
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
"Joe Ellis" <synth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:synthfilker-6CAF...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com...
>> Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1905. Aside from being
>> a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
>> do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
>> move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
>> discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
>> other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
>
> As an _original_ engineering feat, it just isn't that impressive. It
> doesn't accomplish anything that wasn't done earlier, in similar (and
> occassionally far worse) conditions, through more difficult terrain,
> with fewer and more fragile and dangerous technological tools.
Someone suggested having the engineer help out the Wright brothers.
Unfortunately I am already quite aircraft-heavy in this schedule. Do you
have a suggested alternate?
>
> If you really want something railroady, let him go back a few more years
> and work on the Firth of Forth Bridge (completed in 1890)... or put him
> to work at the Union Pacific's "Department of Research and Mechanical
> Standards" in the late 1930s (1938 should do) and let him work on the
> "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive, delivered September 5, 1941.
I have a big gap from 1919 to 1931. Is there something cool and railroady in
that interval?
> Or put him to work on the Chunnel. It was proposed (this time) in 1963,
> green-lighted in 1964. Looks like he could drop in any time between 1964
> and 1988 for design, 1988-1994 would get him in on the construction
> work. 31 miles long, three parallel bores, opened to passengers in July
> of 1994.
Our engineer currently has 1986-1998 uncommitted. Some time there,
preferably by 1990, he needs to do something seriously internety. But I'll
consider having him working 1986-1990 on Chunnel planning and early
construction.
Johan Larson
Robert Sneddon
<dms...@uchicago.edu> writes
>From 1935 to the start of the war, he could be involved with the TVA, the
>mother of all civil engineering projects.
For this timeperiod here's always Von Braun and what later became
Peenemunde.
sharkey
>
> Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
I think the timing is off: Google are doing more interesting
things now than they were back then.
1999-2000 is also the time of the Y2K boom -- but there's not
a lot of interesting engineering in that.
Also, from about 1998 you _could_ get paid to hack on Open Source ...
by 2001 it was quite common. Also: WiFi, Bluetooth, mesh networks
were all just getting started.
And the browser wars was about then, now I think about it.
-----sharks
Cally Soukup
> Here is the current state of the timeline. Thanks to everyone who has
> contributed so far.
> Right now, the gaps are:
> 1. 1919-1931
The Empire State Building was built in 1930-1931. Yes, it only took one
year. "Once I built a tower to the sun...."
The Hoover Dam started in 1931 and finished in 1936, though you've
already got him doing something else those years.
Andrew Stephenson
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" writes:
> [engineering projects of the 20th century]
Your man is already spoken for in some of these periods; but he's
a time traveller, so can double up. More jobs for him...
1931..1936: Hoover (aka Boulder) Dam.
1958..1985: Netherlands Delta Plan, a huge flood control project.
(Also, X..1983, the smaller Thames Barrier.)
1962..1975: Serious development work on Concorde. Your man could
time-share between that and Apollo.
Re the Internet: TCP/IP. 1980s? Or was it 90s? (Am off-line.)
And the World Wide Web (cf the Internet).
--
Andrew Stephenson
Johan Larson
"Cally Soukup" <sou...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:d5mc7j$5i7$2...@wheel2.two14.net...
> The Empire State Building was built in 1930-1931. Yes, it only took one
> year. "Once I built a tower to the sun...."
Incorporated. Thanks.
Johan Larson
Joe Ellis
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
> "Joe Ellis" <synth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:synthfilker-6CAF...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com...
> >> Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1905. Aside from being
> >> a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
> >> do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
> >> move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
> >> discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
> >> other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
> >
> > As an _original_ engineering feat, it just isn't that impressive. It
> > doesn't accomplish anything that wasn't done earlier, in similar (and
> > occassionally far worse) conditions, through more difficult terrain,
> > with fewer and more fragile and dangerous technological tools.
>
> Someone suggested having the engineer help out the Wright brothers.
> Unfortunately I am already quite aircraft-heavy in this schedule. Do you
> have a suggested alternate?
Yeah... drop one of the other aircraft devlelopment bits and put him
with the Wrights. <<grin>> When it comes down to a choice between the
actual inventors and mere developers...
> >
> > If you really want something railroady, let him go back a few more years
> > and work on the Firth of Forth Bridge (completed in 1890)... or put him
> > to work at the Union Pacific's "Department of Research and Mechanical
> > Standards" in the late 1930s (1938 should do) and let him work on the
> > "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive, delivered September 5, 1941.
>
> I have a big gap from 1919 to 1931. Is there something cool and railroady in
> that interval?
Well, you just missed Grand Coulee Dam (construction started in 1933).
Design work on the Golden Gate Bridge started in 1928, construction
started in 1930.
You could go into broadcasting - that's a particularly hot period of
invention and innovation:
1920 The first modern commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh,
begins broadcasting.
1925 John Baird succeeds in transmitting a recognizable image.
1926 Charles Jenkins set up the first intercity television transmission
in the United States by wire.
1927 Philo T. Farnsworth transmits first television image.
1928 Color television.
1930 Vladimir Zworykin of RCA devises superior television camera.
1933 Edwin Howard Armstrong invents frequency modulation (FM).
(from http://www.greatachievements.org/greatachievements/ga_6_3.html)
Lots more ideas here:
http://www.greatachievements.org/greatachievements/
>
> > Or put him to work on the Chunnel. It was proposed (this time) in 1963,
> > green-lighted in 1964. Looks like he could drop in any time between 1964
> > and 1988 for design, 1988-1994 would get him in on the construction
> > work. 31 miles long, three parallel bores, opened to passengers in July
> > of 1994.
>
> Our engineer currently has 1986-1998 uncommitted. Some time there,
> preferably by 1990, he needs to do something seriously internety.
You're about 20-30 years late for serious _engineering_ work on the
internet. The foundation was laid with ARPAnet, proposed and developed
in the 1960s.
> But I'll
> consider having him working 1986-1990 on Chunnel planning and early
> construction.
>
> Johan Larson
--
Kate Nepveu
>Here is the current state of the timeline. Thanks to everyone who has
>contributed so far.
I just wanted to say this has been fascinating reading, though I've
nothing to contribute.
--
Kate Nepveu
E-mail: kne...@steelypips.org
Home: http://www.steelypips.org/
Book log: http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/
Johan Larson
"Kate Nepveu" <kne...@steelypips.org> wrote in message
news:sogt71d6639ph7jr3...@news.verizon.net...
> "Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
>
>>Here is the current state of the timeline. Thanks to everyone who has
>>contributed so far.
>
> I just wanted to say this has been fascinating reading, though I've
> nothing to contribute.
Praise? Purrrr!
Johan Larson
Mark Atwood
>
> Of these, the one that should be easiest to fix is 1986-1998. During that
> time period, the places to work were almost certainly either networking
> hardware, the internet, or PC software of some kind. Something in graphics
> or computer games might also be a possibility. Who were the big (commercial)
> dogs on the Internet Engineering Task Force?
Cisco
--
Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all.
http://mark.atwood.name/ http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Johan Larson
down to a single gap: 1986-1998, which needs to be filled with something
internetty. The rest of the schedule is full, although some of the
transitions (e.g. 1930, 1955) are really weird.
What to do about the weirdness? Well, we could restrict the range of
engineering projects. It might make sense to have our hero be strictly an
electrical engineer, say. That would probably prevent the stranger jumps.
Over the course of the century, our hero would probably move from
large-scale power systems, to electronics, to chips, to software to move to
the with the most fashionable projects.
Johan Larson
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1904. Aside from being
a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
HMS Dreadnought, 1905-1906. Generally recognized as being the first
modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
Panama Canal, 1907-1913. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower becaus
it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
them effectively useless.
Aircraft development, 1914-1918. Associated with World War I, the rapid
development of
aircraft. By the end of the war, aircraft had evolved from fragile
things really good only for spotting to most of the general types
we'd know today: fighters, bombers, transports, recon; first aircraft
carriers. Multi-engine aircraft.
Western Electric Company, 1919-1929: Development of movies with sound,
leading
to the Vitaphone system. "The Jazz Singer" was released in 1927, and
"The Lights of New York" in 1929.
Empire State Building, 1930-1931: A landmark to this day.
Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
until the start of the war.
Project Ultra, Project Manhattan, or Radar, 1939-1945: Our hero has three
choices
during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK,
the atomic bomb in the US, or radar development in either place. Take your
pick, really.
Bell Labs, 1946-1950. Development and refinement of transistor (invented
1947.)
Electric Boat Division, 1951-1954. USS Nautilus, the first nuclear
submarine.
USSR Space Program, 1955-1960. Includes launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957.
Project Apollo, 1961-1969. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come. Departure shortly after the
moon-landing.
Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor, introduced
in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
LACUNA, 1986-1998. Chunnel, maybe? 1986-1990.
Nancy Lebovitz
Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
>
>> I'll agree that
>> Google was cooler when it started hiring in 1999, but AltaVista was a
>> better place than eBay (originally part of DEC WRL). I think you should
>> perhaps have had your person work at Xerox PARC in the 70s instead of
>> Intel. Then he would also have interacted with Engelbart at SRI. The
>> GNU project started in 1983; desktop publishing software was never
>> particularly interesting for Real Engineers. Then he would have switched
>> to Linux in the early 90s (or possibly BSD if he was a masochist ;-).
>
>The problem with open source is that until very recently, you couldn't get
>paid for working on it. And our engineer does need a paying job.
>
Then shouldn't he be working on open source projects in his spare time,
the same as everyone else who was working on open source?
--
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
"We've tamed the lightning and taught sand to give error messages."
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
Nancy Lebovitz
Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
>Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
>working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
>Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
>time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history, where is
>he working during each of the hundred years?
I realize this is all just an excuse to put together a coolest engineering
project timeline, but I'm distracted by the question of what this engineer
is doing, and what the satisfaction is.
He can't change outcomes, so he can't use his future knowledge. Instead,
he has to pretend to be productive while doing very much less than he
can. As I understand geeks/engineers, this would be maddening rather than
fun.
Ben Bradley
23:27:55 GMT, Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>On Sun, 8 May 2005 16:19:34 -0700, Johan Larson <> wrote:
>> LACUNA, 1946-1960.
>
>Development of transistors at Bell.
You took the words right out of my fingers. I was recently reading
online history in relation to the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law and
was fascinated by the chain of people and companies from Shockley
Semiconductor to Fairchild to Intel.
Speaking of electronics, does he have a year back in the first
decade when he could have contributed to looking at the Fleming Valve
and giving an idea to Lee de Forest? That would put him on a huge
advancement as well as its even-more-popular replacement.
Just in case there weren't enough things already going on during
WWII, magnetic tape recording was invented by 'them.'
>For the mid 50s, construction of USS Nautilus, first nuclear submarine,
>might be a candidate.
What about the fusion bomb?
>-dms
Johan Larson
"Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote in message
news:0omdnSgInJX...@comcast.com...
> HMS Dreadnought, 1905-1906. Generally recognized as being the first
> modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
> and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
>
> Panama Canal, 1907-1913. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
> but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower becaus
> it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
> the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
> ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
> fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
> them effectively useless.
I'm thinking of replacing these two entries with this one:
Ford Motor Company, 1905-1913. In 1908 Ford introduces the wildly
popular Model T, which made cars for the first time a product for
the ordinary household. In 1913, Ford introduces the first moving
assembly line for cars.
The Dreadnought and the Panama canal were great works of engineering, but
I think the pervasive use of cars has more fundamentally changed our daily
lives.
Johan Larson
Andrew Plotkin
> In rec.arts.sf.fandom,rec.arts.sf.science, On Sun, 08 May 2005
> 23:27:55 GMT, Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Sun, 8 May 2005 16:19:34 -0700, Johan Larson <> wrote:
>
> >> LACUNA, 1946-1960.
> >
> >Development of transistors at Bell.
>
> You took the words right out of my fingers. I was recently reading
> online history in relation to the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law and
> was fascinated by the chain of people and companies from Shockley
> Semiconductor to Fairchild to Intel.
Has anyone mentioned lasers?
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.
Michael Ash
>> LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
>> guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
>> decent choice.
>
> Again this is the wrong date, but VisiCalc is a really key software
> milestone, and I suspect you can argue its engineering was
> interesting.
It may be hard to get involved with its engineering, since it was created
by only two people. I think this will be a problem for a lot of early
PC-type work; things like the Macintosh were created by largish teams and
Our Hero could probably blend in, but anything much earlier and you'll
have a hard time avoiding an inflated headcount and changed history.
frisbie...@yahoo.com
Johan Larson wrote:
> Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the
goal of
> working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
> Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during
that
> time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history,
where is
> he working during each of the hundred years?
>
> LACUNA, 1901-1931. I'm not sure what our hero is doing during the
early part
> of the century. The cool railway work is probably over by this time.
Radio?
> Early flight? Movies?
>
The Golden Age. Take your pick. Motor vehicles and all sorts of
manufacturing machinery. Steel plants, real man's stuff. How about
working on the Titanic?
Then there was developing all that stuff that Thomas Edison invented.
Movies, record players, bringing electric lights to the world, etc.
Charlton Wilbur
(quoting John Larson)
>> The problem with open source is that until very recently, you
>> couldn't get paid for working on it. And our engineer does need
>> a paying job.
NL> Then shouldn't he be working on open source projects in his
NL> spare time, the same as everyone else who was working on open
NL> source?
Except that many people worked on open source software for pay. Most
of them came from an academic or research background, not a corporate
one, and shared the software as if it were research results.
Patrick Spinler
>
> I have a big gap from 1919 to 1931. Is there something cool and railroady in
> that interval?
>
Development of the Burlington/Pioneer Zephyr ? First streamlined diesel
electic locomotive ?
http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/zephyr/
-- Pat
Keith Morrison
>>Someone suggested having the engineer help out the Wright brothers.
>>Unfortunately I am already quite aircraft-heavy in this schedule. Do you
>>have a suggested alternate?
>
> Yeah... drop one of the other aircraft devlelopment bits and put him
> with the Wrights. <<grin>> When it comes down to a choice between the
> actual inventors and mere developers...
Except that there were a lot of other people working on the issue
that would have come up with the same solution. It was Steam Engine
Time for powered heavier-than-air flight in the 1900-1908 period.
And while the Wrights were inventors, they became stuck in a rut.
Henri Farman introduced the modern aileron in 1908, but it wasn't
until 1915 that Orville Wright grudgingly admitted that it was
superior and simpler to the wing-warping that the Wrights had patented,
even though the basic idea had been around for 80 years by that point.
--
Keith
Keith Morrison
That's one of the reason, for aircraft, World War I and later work for
companies would be easier than getting involved with the Wrights. Lots
of cool advances going on but more teams and thus anonymity.
--
Keith
Bill Higgins
> Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote in article <g6KdndrCbdq...@comcast.com>:
>> Here is the current state of the timeline. Thanks to everyone who has
>> contributed so far.
>
>> Right now, the gaps are:
>
>> 1. 1919-1931
>
> The Empire State Building was built in 1930-1931. Yes, it only took one
> year. "Once I built a tower to the sun...."
The U.S. Post Office issued its Yip Harburg 37-cent stamp on 28 April.
Perhaps a 10-cent stamp would have been more appropriate.
--
Bill Higgins | "They can have my World Almanac
Fermilab | when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
| Or when next year's edition comes out,
Internet: | whichever is first."
hig...@fnal.gov | --Lois A. Fundis
Joe Ellis
Keith Morrison <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
OK... prove it.
Without researching, who built the Wright's engine?
<<weg>>
Joe Ellis
Keith Morrison <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
> Joe Ellis wrote:
>
> >>Someone suggested having the engineer help out the Wright brothers.
> >>Unfortunately I am already quite aircraft-heavy in this schedule. Do you
> >>have a suggested alternate?
> >
> > Yeah... drop one of the other aircraft devlelopment bits and put him
> > with the Wrights. <<grin>> When it comes down to a choice between the
> > actual inventors and mere developers...
>
> Except that there were a lot of other people working on the issue
> that would have come up with the same solution. It was Steam Engine
> Time for powered heavier-than-air flight in the 1900-1908 period.
...and we all know how well steam engine work for aircraft.
The Wrights worked out rather precisely how much horsepower they need
from the engine, how much thrust to expect from the props, and how much
lift they could _really_ expect from the wings (using their _own_
research data, not the faulty tables available at the time.)
Consider that everyone else was still using bad data that over-estimated
how much lift an airfoil would generate, it's unlikely anyone else would
have succeeded in real controlled flight in the next few years.
When they went to France to fly after 1905, the French newspapers were
going on and on about how so-and-so flew 100 or 200 meters in a straight
line for 15 seconds or so... until the Wrights took their airplane up
and flew a figure 8 over the same field for several minutes.
Yes, there were other people working on the problem... but the Wrights
_solved_ the problem, and every else based subsequent solutions on
_their_ work.
>
> And while the Wrights were inventors, they became stuck in a rut.
> Henri Farman introduced the modern aileron in 1908, but it wasn't
> until 1915 that Orville Wright grudgingly admitted that it was
> superior and simpler to the wing-warping that the Wrights had patented,
> even though the basic idea had been around for 80 years by that point.
... and was effectively the same thing as wing-warping...
But 80 years? Nope.
Del Cotter
Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> said:
>Empire State Building, 1930-1931: A landmark to this day.
When I visited the Empire State Building after Torcon in 2003, I was
amazed to see *sash windows* so high up. But of course I shouldn't have
been; after all, the first tall buildings weren't designed with the
thought that people would jump out of them.
And I suppose, even by 1930, the famous tendency (still a recognisable
trope of cartoons after all these years) of ruined businessmen to jump
out of their umpty-umpth floor windows was not yet sufficiently
internalised by architects that they would have thought "Hey, I can stop
that by *not installing windows you can open and climb out of!*"
--
Del Cotter
Thanks to the recent increase in UBE, I will soon be ignoring email
sent to d...@branta.demon.co.uk. Please send your email to del2 instead.
Keith Morrison
>>>It may be hard to get involved with its engineering, since it was created
>>>by only two people. I think this will be a problem for a lot of early
>>>PC-type work; things like the Macintosh were created by largish teams and
>>>Our Hero could probably blend in, but anything much earlier and you'll
>>>have a hard time avoiding an inflated headcount and changed history.
>>
>>That's one of the reason, for aircraft, World War I and later work for
>>companies would be easier than getting involved with the Wrights. Lots
>>of cool advances going on but more teams and thus anonymity.
>
> OK... prove it.
>
> Without researching, who built the Wright's engine?
They did.
--
Keith
Joe Ellis
Marcus L. Rowland
<synthfilker-64DB...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com>, Joe
Ellis <synth...@sbcglobal.net> writes
>In article <d5o69...@news2.newsguy.com>,
> Keith Morrison <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
>
>> Michael Ash wrote:
>>
>> >>>LACUNA, 1986-1994. What to do? Something in computer software, I would
>> >>>guess. Desktop publishing was very big, so Aldus (Pagemaker) would be a
>> >>>decent choice.
>> >>
>> >>Again this is the wrong date, but VisiCalc is a really key software
>> >>milestone, and I suspect you can argue its engineering was
>> >>interesting.
>> >
>> > It may be hard to get involved with its engineering, since it was created
>> > by only two people. I think this will be a problem for a lot of early
>> > PC-type work; things like the Macintosh were created by largish teams and
>> > Our Hero could probably blend in, but anything much earlier and you'll
>> > have a hard time avoiding an inflated headcount and changed history.
>>
>> That's one of the reason, for aircraft, World War I and later work for
>> companies would be easier than getting involved with the Wrights. Lots
>> of cool advances going on but more teams and thus anonymity.
>
>OK... prove it.
>
>Without researching, who built the Wright's engine?
>
><<weg>>
>
be the Indian factory.
--
Marcus L. Rowland http://www.forgottenfutures.com/
LJ:ffutures http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/
Forgotten Futures - The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game
"Life is chaos; Chaos is life; Control is an illusion." - Andromeda
Joe Ellis
"Marcus L. Rowland" <forgotte...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
<<snip>>
> >> That's one of the reason, for aircraft, World War I and later work for
> >> companies would be easier than getting involved with the Wrights. Lots
> >> of cool advances going on but more teams and thus anonymity.
> >
> >OK... prove it.
> >
> >Without researching, who built the Wright's engine?
> >
> ><<weg>>
> >
> I've a vague idea it was a souped-up motorcycle engine, my guess would
> be the Indian factory.
Nope. <<grin>>
Keith Morrison
>>>>>It may be hard to get involved with its engineering, since it was created
>>>>>by only two people. I think this will be a problem for a lot of early
>>>>>PC-type work; things like the Macintosh were created by largish teams and
>>>>>Our Hero could probably blend in, but anything much earlier and you'll
>>>>>have a hard time avoiding an inflated headcount and changed history.
>>>>
>>>>That's one of the reason, for aircraft, World War I and later work for
>>>>companies would be easier than getting involved with the Wrights. Lots
>>>>of cool advances going on but more teams and thus anonymity.
>>>
>>>OK... prove it.
>>>
>>>Without researching, who built the Wright's engine?
>>
>>They did.
>
> Wrong.
Oh?
Oh, wait, I get it. You're going to be all smug and claim that
Charlie Taylor is the correct answer. Well, to be fair he was
the machinist, but it pretty much was a joint operation.
Which, I would point out, doesn't negate my original point.
Getting involved with the Wrights would mean playing a large
role because it was such a small operation. The fact that
Taylor is remembered (and his name trivial to find) proves
the point.
Now, quick, who was the person responsible for getting the
placement of the machine guns on the Sopwith Camel? Who
was responsible for the changes to the Camel that resulted
in the Snipe? Who designed the engine for the SPAD XIII?
So on and so forth.
--
Keith
how...@brazee.net
already know the science and the result of the research.
What you want to pick is the personalities. Do you want to work with
Jonas Salk, Howard Hughes, Albert Einstein...?
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>On Mon, 9 May 2005, Cally Soukup wrote:
>
>> Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote in article <g6KdndrCbdq...@comcast.com>:
>>> Here is the current state of the timeline. Thanks to everyone who has
>>> contributed so far.
>>
>>> Right now, the gaps are:
>>
>>> 1. 1919-1931
>>
>> The Empire State Building was built in 1930-1931. Yes, it only took one
>> year. "Once I built a tower to the sun...."
>
>The U.S. Post Office issued its Yip Harburg 37-cent stamp on 28 April.
>Perhaps a 10-cent stamp would have been more appropriate.
Good point.
-- Alan
George W Harris
:It's not the science or technology that you want to pub-crawl through. You
:already know the science and the result of the research.
:
:What you want to pick is the personalities. Do you want to work with
:Jonas Salk, Howard Hughes, Albert Einstein...?
Richard Feynman. He sounds like a real party
animal. Nikola Tesla would also be a hoot.
--
They say there's air in your lungs that's been there for years.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
Joe Ellis
Keith Morrison <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
> Joe Ellis wrote:
>
> >>>>>It may be hard to get involved with its engineering, since it was
> >>>>>created
> >>>>>by only two people. I think this will be a problem for a lot of early
> >>>>>PC-type work; things like the Macintosh were created by largish teams
> >>>>>and
> >>>>>Our Hero could probably blend in, but anything much earlier and you'll
> >>>>>have a hard time avoiding an inflated headcount and changed history.
> >>>>
> >>>>That's one of the reason, for aircraft, World War I and later work for
> >>>>companies would be easier than getting involved with the Wrights. Lots
> >>>>of cool advances going on but more teams and thus anonymity.
> >>>
> >>>OK... prove it.
> >>>
> >>>Without researching, who built the Wright's engine?
> >>
> >>They did.
> >
> > Wrong.
>
> Oh?
>
> Oh, wait, I get it. You're going to be all smug and claim that
> Charlie Taylor is the correct answer. Well, to be fair he was
> the machinist, but it pretty much was a joint operation.
And this means Taylor didn't build the engine exactly how? The Wrights
presented the design specs: Power output, torque, maximum weight,
materials. Charlie did the work, the mechanical engineering - machining,
assembly, gross mechanical repairs. He was well paid for it, too. The
Wrights KNEW his value to them, and rewarded him accordingly because he
could do things they couldn't.
> Which, I would point out, doesn't negate my original point.
> Getting involved with the Wrights would mean playing a large
> role because it was such a small operation. The fact that
> Taylor is remembered (and his name trivial to find) proves
> the point.
On the contrary, it proves that the time-traveling engineer could have
BEEN Charlie Taylor, and no one the wiser.
And I see you cheated... you DID research it. <<WEG>>
>
> Now, quick, who was the person responsible for getting the
> placement of the machine guns on the Sopwith Camel?
Placement was the same as on any of a number of other WWI aircraft. YAWN.
> Who
> was responsible for the changes to the Camel that resulted
> in the Snipe?
Who cares? It's a mere refinement of an existing design. There's nothing
exciting in that.
>Who designed the engine for the SPAD XIII?
Hmmm... Hispano-Suza <<sp?>>, I believe...
(No, I _didn't_ look it up...)
>
> So on and so forth.
All equally mundane, and nothing really _interesting_ about the
engineering problems.
Now, compare this to hand-building a UNIQUE engine for the FIRST
sucessful aircraft to specific requirements with very limited tools and
materiels... THAT'S a challenge, even to engineers today. It was the
biggest challenge of the various Wright Flyer groups trying to re-create
the first flight.
Why would ANY engineer time travel to sit over a drafting board with 40
other engineers sitting over drafting boards, each drawing one part of
an aircraft engine he may never actually SEE? BOOOORRRRRIIINNNG! It's a
waste of time travel. He wants excitement, involvement, to be there when
HISTORIC things are done. OK, he can't _change_ history... but no one
said he can't BE history. We know Charlie Taylor built the Wright's
engine... our engineer could BE Charlie Taylor... or anyone else. If he
can time travel, then getting the appropriate documents and proving he
"is" Charlie Taylor is trivial.
For those interested in more on Mr. Taylor, see:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22charlie+taylor%22+w
right+mechanic+engine
sharkey
> "Johan Larson" <johan0larson8comcast0net> writes:
> >
> > Of these, the one that should be easiest to fix is 1986-1998. During that
> > time period, the places to work were almost certainly either networking
> > hardware, the internet, or PC software of some kind. Something in graphics
> > or computer games might also be a possibility. Who were the big (commercial)
> > dogs on the Internet Engineering Task Force?
>
> Cisco
Also Sun Microsystems and a heap of university spin-offs.
-----sharks
sharkey
>
> >Empire State Building, 1930-1931: A landmark to this day.
>
> When I visited the Empire State Building after Torcon in 2003, I was
> amazed to see *sash windows* so high up. But of course I shouldn't have
> been; after all, the first tall buildings weren't designed with the
> thought that people would jump out of them.
I imagine it's got more to do with modern air conditioning systems ...
which don't play nicely with open windows.
-----sharks
George W Harris
<synth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
:> Oh, wait, I get it. You're going to be all smug and claim that
:> Charlie Taylor is the correct answer. Well, to be fair he was
:> the machinist, but it pretty much was a joint operation.
:
:And this means Taylor didn't build the engine exactly how? The Wrights
:presented the design specs: Power output, torque, maximum weight,
:materials. Charlie did the work, the mechanical engineering - machining,
:assembly, gross mechanical repairs. He was well paid for it, too. The
:Wrights KNEW his value to them, and rewarded him accordingly because he
:could do things they couldn't.
Machinists are *very* important. Read an account
of Babbage's efforts to build the Differential Engine sometime.
If you were going to do a 19th century
engineering pub crawl, that'd have to be on the list.
Also, the Brooklyn Bridge.
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste more like
prunes than rhubarb does" -Groucho Marx
Johan Larson
<how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:u8Tfe.88$Dh...@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
What you want is the synapse-crackling excitement of working with a great
team that by God is making the future happen RIGHT NOW.
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
"George W Harris" <gha...@mundsprung.com> wrote in message
news:958081tg64ci4mete...@4ax.com...
> If you were going to do a 19th century
> engineering pub crawl, that'd have to be on the list.
You first. I'm not organizing it; I'm burnt out. I am going to grow organic
vegetables in Vermont.
Johan Larson
Johan Larson
version 1.0 of the pub-crawl timeline. Thank a lot to everyone who
contributed.
Somebody want to organize a release-party?
Johan Larson
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1901-1904. Aside from being
a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
HMS Dreadnought, 1905-1906. Generally recognized as being the first
modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
Panama Canal, 1907-1913. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower becaus
it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
them effectively useless.
Sopwith Aircraft, 1914-1918. Developed the Sopwith Camel (hi, snoopy!),
the leading aircraft on the allied side of the war. Also the Sopwith Snipe,
which was the primary British fighter until the mid-twenties.
Western Electric Company, 1919-1929: Development of movies with sound,
leading
to the Vitaphone system. "The Jazz Singer" was released in 1927, and
"The Lights of New York" in 1929.
Empire State Building, 1930-1931: A landmark to this day.
Douglas Aircraft, 1932-1938. The biggest success in aviation before WWII was
the Douglas DC-3. This interval places our hero at Douglas from the earliest
proposals for that aircraft through its delivery in 1935, and continuing on
until the start of the war.
Project Ultra, Project Manhattan, or Radar, 1939-1945: Our hero has
three choices during the war. He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts
in the UK, the atomic bomb in the US, or radar development in either place.
Take your pick, really.
Bell Labs, 1946-1950. Development and refinement of transistor
(invented 1947.)
Electric Boat Division, 1951-1954. USS Nautilus, the first nuclear
submarine.
USSR Space Program, 1955-1960. Includes launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957.
Project Apollo, 1961-1969. The biggest stunt of the late twentieth century.
Gotta be there. There was some neat stuff going on in computing, too, but
big flaming rockets are cooler than boxes mit dem blinkenlighten. Sorry,
programmers, but your day will come. Departure shortly after the
moon-landing.
Intel, 1970-1978. Working on the 4004, the first microprocessor, introduced
in 1971. Also worked on the 8080 and 8088 processors.
Apple Computer, 1979-1985. The computer that took the GUI to the masses was
the Macintosh. This interval places our hero at Apple from the visit by
Apple engineers to Xerox PARC, where they saw the future, through the
development of the Mac, to the year Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.
Cisco, 1986-1998. Development of switches and software for the
Internet as the public becomes aware of it, and the system is forced
to adapt to orders of magnitude more traffic than it was originally
imagined to accommodate. Much participation with the Internet
Engineering Task Force.
Google, 1999-2000: Search is king. The coolest company in the world.
Johan Larson
"Joe Ellis" <synth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:synthfilker-
> Why would ANY engineer time travel to sit over a drafting board with 40
> other engineers sitting over drafting boards, each drawing one part of
> an aircraft engine he may never actually SEE? BOOOORRRRRIIINNNG! It's a
> waste of time travel. He wants excitement, involvement, to be there when
> HISTORIC things are done. OK, he can't _change_ history... but no one
> said he can't BE history. We know Charlie Taylor built the Wright's
> engine... our engineer could BE Charlie Taylor... or anyone else. If he
> can time travel, then getting the appropriate documents and proving he
> "is" Charlie Taylor is trivial.
Hmmm. Now there's an idea. Presumably someone has already organized this pub
crawls. An maybe some of the participants were'nt quite as careful in
setting up their background documentation as they might have been. Have
there been any particularly notable scientists or engineers who seemed to
come out of nowhere, make a significant contribution, and then pretty much
vanish?
Johan Larson
Keith Morrison
In thinking about working with the Wrights versus working with
some anonymous design team later, well, if you're a time-traveling
engineer who wants to help out but not cause too much of a wave
the second option is exactly what you'd want. Working as part
of a group allows you to slip ideas to other people on the sly,
in all sorts of settings, with minimal chance of being caught.
You just don't be too helpful to the same crew and pass off your
information as random ideas or suggestions that won't work exactly
right but that someone can quickly work out the correct solution
to.
"I was thinking about the machine gun and the propeller thing.
Could you hook up some kind of chain or something to the engine
to make the machine gun stop firing when the blade is in front
of it?"
"Yeah, I was planning on trying out different things and I
received this weird result from gallium in the silicon on
the first try."
So on and so forth.
--
Keith
frisbie...@yahoo.com
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> In article <leidnR7E95P...@comcast.com>,
> Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net> wrote:
> >Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the
goal of
> >working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth
century.
> >Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during
that
> >time, but is not actually allowed to substantially alter history,
where is
> >he working during each of the hundred years?
>
> I realize this is all just an excuse to put together a coolest
engineering
> project timeline, but I'm distracted by the question of what this
engineer
> is doing, and what the satisfaction is.
>
> He can't change outcomes, so he can't use his future knowledge.
Instead,
> he has to pretend to be productive while doing very much less than he
> can. As I understand geeks/engineers, this would be maddening rather
than
> fun.
Nah. He knows the broadest outlines but not the details. Suppose he
has to design a starter motor for an automobile. He knows EM theory,
but that was known well enough then. He has to learn the manufacturing
and materials of the day. In short, being from the future is a usually
a disadvantage when you get to anything down-to-earth.
The Connecticut Yankee type would be the exception. More usual would
be Arthur Dent, marooned in the past with naught but some primitive
sandwich-making skills.
David G. Bell
no...@nospam.demon.co.uk "Robert Sneddon" wrote:
> In article <QkqvZXoO...@akicif.fsnet.co.uk>, Steve Glover
> <st...@fell.demon.co.uk> writes
> >In article <g6KdndrCbdq...@comcast.com>, Johan Larson
> ><johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> writes
> >> He can work on the Enigma decryption efforts in the UK, or
> >>on the atomic bomb in the US. Take your pick, really.
> >
> >Three. You missed out Radar.
>
> There's also the development of the proximity fuze, a better-kept
> secret than the atomic bomb (the Russians didn't find out about them
> until after they went into common use as antipersonnel artillery fuzes
> in late 1944 -- the release came during the battle of the Bulge). It
> involved some elegant engineering and serious work productionising the
> device. Millions of them were made and used before the end of the war
> and the reliability figures got to be very good, especially when you
> consider the fuze consisted of a bunch of miniature valves (obUS: tubes)
> and other circuitry fired out of an artillery barrel at thousands of
> gees.
A particular application of radar...
I think if you're looking for engineering cool, you might consider being
the guy sweeping the floor whose broomstick helps achieve the first
supersonic flight.
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."
David G. Bell
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" wrote:
> I have a big gap from 1919 to 1931. Is there something cool and railroady in
> that interval?
I'd have to check the dates, but the railways in Britain were really
pushing the envelope. Not just high-speed locomotive designs from the
GWR, LNER, and LMS, but the signalling development needed to support
the speeds. Early in the period you have 4472 from the NE/LNER, and
then the GWR designs which led to the Kings. But you miss the
streamliner trains of the thirties. Still, the non-stop express from
London to Edinburgh would be cool.
David G. Bell
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" wrote:
> "Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
> news:d5m0u...@news2.newsguy.com...
> > 1901-1905. Completion of the Trans Siberian Railroad. Aside from being
> > a serious engineering feat, the railroad would eventually have a lot to
> > do with history as it was this route that allowed the Soviet Union to
> > move troops into Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 to defeat the Japanese and
> > discourage them from attacking the USSR later, and then move troops the
> > other way to stall and push back the German attacks in 1942.
> >
> > 1905-1906. HMS Dreadnought. Generally recognized as being the first
> > modern battleship of the 20th century. The subsequent naval revolution
> > and arms race was a trigger to the First World War.
> >
> > 1906-1913. Panama Canal. Not only changed shipping routes worldwide,
> > but was one of the keys to making the US an eventual superpower because
> > it could rapidly transfer naval forces from one ocean (and one side of
> > the planet) to the other. The only other countries that had that
> > ability in theory were Canada and Russia, but both had to deal with the
> > fact their passages were clogged with ice most of the time which made
> > them effectively useless.
> >
> > 1914-1918. Associated with World War I, the rapid development of
> > aircraft. By the end of the war, aircraft had evolved from fragile
> > things really good only for spotting to most of the general types
> > we'd know today: fighters, bombers, transports, recon; first aircraft
> > carriers. Multi-engine aircraft.
>
> Excellent. Incorporated. Thanks.
There's so much in World War I, so don't get hung up on aircraft. You
could put him at Fosters of Lincoln, for instance, where they happened
to invent the tank.
Have you considered motor and power-boat racing in the time between the
wars?
Paul Dormer
(Del Cotter) wrote:
> *From:* Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk>
> *Date:* Mon, 9 May 2005 19:48:07 +0100
>
> On Sun, 8 May 2005, in rec.arts.sf.fandom,
> Johan Larson <johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> said:
>
> >Empire State Building, 1930-1931: A landmark to this day.
>
> When I visited the Empire State Building after Torcon in 2003, I was
> amazed to see *sash windows* so high up. But of course I shouldn't
> have been; after all, the first tall buildings weren't designed with
> the thought that people would jump out of them.
>
> And I suppose, even by 1930, the famous tendency (still a recognisable
> trope of cartoons after all these years) of ruined businessmen to jump
> out of their umpty-umpth floor windows was not yet sufficiently
> internalised by architects that they would have thought "Hey, I can
> stop that by *not installing windows you can open and climb out of!*"
>
You might like to know that there's a new documentary series starting on
BBC-1 tomorrow (Wednesday) night called "A Short History of Tall
Buildings". The advance publicity in the papers suggests it might be
interesting.
Joe Ellis
frisbie...@yahoo.com wrote:
<<snip>>
> Nah. He knows the broadest outlines but not the details. Suppose he
> has to design a starter motor for an automobile. He knows EM theory,
> but that was known well enough then. He has to learn the manufacturing
> and materials of the day. In short, being from the future is a usually
> a disadvantage when you get to anything down-to-earth.
>
> The Connecticut Yankee type would be the exception. More usual would
> be Arthur Dent, marooned in the past with naught but some primitive
> sandwich-making skills.
In which case he could make a killing by inventing McDonalds...
Daniel Silevitch
A first cut (not in any particular order):
Suez canal
US Transcontinental railroad (preferably with the Central Pacific rather
than UP)
Construction of the Great Eastern
Eiffel Tower
First transatlantic telegraph cable
Clipper ships, either US or UK.
-dms
Andrew Stephenson
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" writes:
> You first. I'm not organizing it; I'm burnt out. I am going to
> grow organic vegetables in Vermont.
What could be happening in a Vermont organic vegetable patch that
may be looked back on as landmark engineering of the Twenty-First
Century?
--
Andrew Stephenson
Jens E. Nyborg
Using naturally occurring vira for "organic" genetic engineering,
producing the first chicken-pie trees. (3.14159etc. of them in fact)
Johan Larson
"Andrew Stephenson" <am...@deltrak.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:111573...@deltrak.demon.co.uk...
Not a darn thing. And that's the point.
Growing organic vegetables is, to the point of stereotype, the kind of thing
burnt-out engineers go do when they never, ever, want to see another
millisecond or foot-pound.
Johan Larson
Steve Glover
<johan0larson8comcast0net@?.?.invalid> writes
>Somebody want to organize a release-party?
It would be interesting to come up with a list of the actual pubs people
who worked on those projects may have drunk in.
Of course, our hypothetical hero would have spent at least one first
Thursday, maybe more, in the White Hart^WHorse.
Steve
--
Steve Glover, Fell Services Ltd. Available
Weblog at http://weblog.akicif.net/blogger.html
Home: steve at fell.demon.co.uk, 0131 551 3835
Away: steve.glover at ukonline.co.uk, 07961 446 902
Andrew Stephenson
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" writes:
But Vermont? Are you sure that's the right state for "burnt-out
engineers"? It may better suit slightly jaded engineers, or b-o
industrial chemists, or metallurgists. Maybe b-oes belong in OR?
If you can get funding, do study this: double blind tests and so
forth. I look forwards to your report. To be candid, engineers
surely know that, if we must cultivate our garden, eventually we
must also do a write-up -- with footnotes, graphs and appendices.
--
Andrew Stephenson
Andrew Stephenson
st...@fell.demon.co.uk "Steve Glover" writes:
> Of course, our hypothetical hero would have spent at least one
> first Thursday, maybe more, in the White Hart^WHorse.
And he would surely have met Harry Purvis, a fellow Mystery Man
of Science.
--
Andrew Stephenson
John Desmond
<<
sharkey <sha...@zoic.org> stated:
-----sharks
>>
Well, the Empire State was designed when, if you wanted to cool off in
a NYC summer, you _opened the window_. First tall buinding designed
with central air conditioning was the Philadelphia Savings Fund
Society tower, a couple of years after the Empire State.
Yours, John Desmond
Kip Williams
> Well, the Empire State was designed when, if you wanted to cool off in
> a NYC summer, you _opened the window_. First tall buinding designed
> with central air conditioning was the Philadelphia Savings Fund
> Society tower, a couple of years after the Empire State.
I'm failing to visualize the size of the Empire State Building's
footprint. Are all the offices outside? There's no airshaft, is there?
Is it sort of a modified H shape?
Kip
modified asterisk shape
Johan Larson
>> Growing organic vegetables is, to the point of stereotype, the
>> kind of thing burnt-out engineers go do when they never, ever,
>> want to see another millisecond or foot-pound.
>
> But Vermont? Are you sure that's the right state for "burnt-out
> engineers"? It may better suit slightly jaded engineers, or b-o
> industrial chemists, or metallurgists. Maybe b-oes belong in OR?
> If you can get funding, do study this: double blind tests and so
> forth. I look forwards to your report. To be candid, engineers
> surely know that, if we must cultivate our garden, eventually we
> must also do a write-up -- with footnotes, graphs and appendices.
Duuude. So much ambition.
Here, take a toke o'this; it's organic too.
Johan Larson.
Andrew Stephenson
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" writes:
> "Andrew Stephenson" <am...@deltrak.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:111575...@deltrak.demon.co.uk...
>
> > But Vermont? [suggestion for scientific project]
>
> Duuude. So much ambition.
>
> Here, take a toke o'this; it's organic too.
Mmmf? *koff* Mmm... Oh, man, the spectral subdivisions! Like,
quantify them! Where's that real cool bolometer...?
--
Andrew Stephenson
Bill Snyder
Hey, man, I'm a little hungry all of a sudden, wanna hand me a couple
dozen heads of lettuce? And stop Bogarting the genetically-modified
hemp there. Is that rabbit looking at me funny?
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Kip Williams
Oh, don't let that bother you. He stares at everybody that way.
Kip
no, that's my old number
Johan Larson
> Mmmf? *koff* Mmm... Oh, man, the spectral subdivisions! Like,
> quantify them! Where's that real cool bolometer...?
Bolometer? Is that for finding hyperintelligent super-tanks or really fat
sausages*?
Johan Larson
[1] Tb ba. Fjvat. Vg'f n whvpl fybj-cvgpu evtug qbja gur zvqqyr.
Karen Lofstrom
>> Growing organic vegetables is, to the point of stereotype, the
>> kind of thing burnt-out engineers go do when they never, ever,
>> want to see another millisecond or foot-pound.
>
> But Vermont? Are you sure that's the right state for "burnt-out
> engineers"?
It is, if you're riffing on a passage from Tracy Kidder's _Soul of a New
Age Machine_, which is about engineers in Massachussets. (DEC, I think.)
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------
Maybe in your linear fascist patriarchal "correct" spelling
scheme, it is, but some of us like to thonk outside the bqx
a little. -- Ray Radlein
David G. Bell
johan0larson8comcast0net "Johan Larson" wrote:
Not in my visualization of the Cosmic All.
David G. Bell
<synthfilker-5E64...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com>
synth...@sbcglobal.net "Joe Ellis" wrote:
> In article <d5o55...@news3.newsguy.com>,
> Keith Morrison <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
>
> > Joe Ellis wrote:
> >
> > >>Someone suggested having the engineer help out the Wright brothers.
> > >>Unfortunately I am already quite aircraft-heavy in this schedule. Do you
> > >>have a suggested alternate?
> > >
> > > Yeah... drop one of the other aircraft devlelopment bits and put him
> > > with the Wrights. <<grin>> When it comes down to a choice between the
> > > actual inventors and mere developers...
> >
> > Except that there were a lot of other people working on the issue
> > that would have come up with the same solution. It was Steam Engine
> > Time for powered heavier-than-air flight in the 1900-1908 period.
>
> ...and we all know how well steam engine work for aircraft.
I'd have said that there's no close analogy -- there were attempts at
steam locomotives, some quite usable, for decades before the Rainhill
Trials. And the "Rocket" won as much on reliability as anything else.
Similarly, 1915-1916 was Tank time, and Tritton, Wilson, and the rest of
that old gang came up with something which worked. The Foster company
was big on agricultural machinery and heavy haulage with petrol engines.
Hornsby, who had built track-laying vehicles a few years before, was
based a few miles away at Grantham.
It was Tank time, and, like the Wright Brothers, somebody else might
have "won". But Lincoln was where the winners were. The French and
German designs worked, more or less. The Renault FT-17 did some things
much better, but wasn't big enough to cope with some trenches.
Similarly, in the 1930s everyone was working on jet engines, not just
Sir Frank Whittle (and the history of his designs does show the weakness
of a controlled, "planned" economy). The Germans built jet engines.
The Italians came close. And the people in America who were working on
turbochargers for high-altitude flight were saying "Why didn't I think
of that!".
On the other hand, if you want cool science and engineering in wartime,
maybe building stuff is the wrong place. Look at the work R.V. Jones
did in scientific intelligence. You get to use Ultra. You have
arguments with eminent scientists and engineers who say X is impossible,
and you get to remind them that the Germans are doing it. You see so
much happening.
If R.V. Jones had died in a tragic accident in 1946, instead of having a
long and well-documented life, he'd be a time-traveller candidate, and
some of his hunches could have been from knowing his history.
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>In article <111575...@deltrak.demon.co.uk>, Andrew Stephenson wrote:
>
>>> Growing organic vegetables is, to the point of stereotype, the
>>> kind of thing burnt-out engineers go do when they never, ever,
>>> want to see another millisecond or foot-pound.
>>
>> But Vermont? Are you sure that's the right state for "burnt-out
>> engineers"?
>
>It is, if you're riffing on a passage from Tracy Kidder's _Soul of a New
>Age Machine_, which is about engineers in Massachussets. (DEC, I think.)
Data General.
Good book, too.
-- Alan
>
steve...@cox.net
Lofstrom) wrote:
>In article <111575...@deltrak.demon.co.uk>, Andrew Stephenson wrote:
>
>>> Growing organic vegetables is, to the point of stereotype, the
>>> kind of thing burnt-out engineers go do when they never, ever,
>>> want to see another millisecond or foot-pound.
>>
>> But Vermont? Are you sure that's the right state for "burnt-out
>> engineers"?
>
>It is, if you're riffing on a passage from Tracy Kidder's _Soul of a New
>Age Machine_, which is about engineers in Massachussets. (DEC, I think.)
Please! It was "The Soul of A New Machine", and it was Data
General, which built the Nova and Eclipse minicomputers that
competed with DEC's PDP-11 series. The project that the book
followed was the development of DG's answer to the DEC VAX, the
first 32-bit supermini. Whatever happened to Data General?