[ATM] ATM: Re: URL Instruments, etc.

[Khail Rosenberg]

Overpowering knowledge can make current dreams come true:)

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 8:47 PM, Mel Bartels <mbartels at bbastrodesigns.com>
wrote:

> >>>
> "This post was from March I think, but this evening I spent
> a while going throught these old catalogs. Brashear 1911
> catalog has a pic of their "standard" 30 inch refractor.
> I did not know that in 1911 this was so common as to be
> anyone's standard. Makes me wonder how many they produced.
> These catalogs are a real joy!"
> <<<
>
>
> When we were kids, catalogs sometimes used 'standard' to mean what we call
> today the basic model.
>
> I still enjoy the ads from the previous 'silicon valley' mechanical era
> centered in the USA NE.  (My wife's grandparents came from Slovenia as
> kids,
> did not speak English, settled in Cleveland, ended up owning a large
> machine
> shop and patenting milling machine attachments).   My father was quite a
> good builder, grew up on a depression era farm with no electricity, using
> horses to plow, planting and harvesting by the stars and the Farmer's
> Almanac.  If he could feel it and cut it he could build it.
>
> I have always respected the difficulties of experimental physics and
> building models that were mechanically based.  Today it is almost too easy:
> software modeling in virtual environments can turn wishful thinking into
> the
> illusion of overpowering knowledge.
>
> Mel Bartels
>
>
>
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