The EMD F40PH is in use with several train operators. It’s a capable train for passenger service even though it is somewhat outdated now, despite production ending in the early 1990s, due to the more efficient designs coming from GE and others over the last decade. Amtrak had several F40PH locomotives when they [...]
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Wait, this has nothing to do with the solar system. Hit the jump for a nifty video from the US Army on how planetary gears work. Just because it’s Friday doesn’t mean you can’t learn somethin’!
When I started posting the Mesta Memories series, one of the first questions asked was how those striking pictures were made. Were they photographs or drawings? They resembled photographs at first glance, but the tonal scales were off in a way that was hard to put your finger on. They didn’t appear to be drawings either, especially when examined closely. My thought at the time was the effect was from the process used to transfer photographs to plates for printing and the printing process itself. I have seen many of these types of images from that period, the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and I wanted to know how they were made, so I started looking into it. I did a lot of looking, too. I searched everywhere I could think of and I couldn’t find anything that answered my questions about how images like that were produced. So I decided to email my cute niece Holly, who has studied publishing at college (has a degree in it, I believe) and works for the audiobook publisher Blackstone Audio, and see if she could give me any references. She put the question to her graphics guy, James, who is knowledgeable about these sorts of things, and he looked at the images and had this to say: Click on the image to see the entire picture. A new occasional feature. There will be cutaway images too. The CD is one of those technologies that seems to be…lingering. In fact, it’s on our A-T Technology Death Pool. But what of that shiny surface? As you may already know, it’s made up of “pits” which are usually 100 nm deep and 500 nm wide and vary from 850 nm to [...] 
The pneumatic tubes at the bank are intriguing things, especially to a child. Mommy puts the check in the bottle, sticks it in the machine, whirring sound, wait, wait, whirring sound, and there is a wad of cash and some Dum-Dums. Pure magic. But have you ever said to yourself, I have seen these things at the banks forever, when in the world did somebody come up with this? Continue reading Send it Through the Tube  Can we sneak by him, Ramius? We don't know how to play "Chicken"... “What are these doors? Those are too big to be torpedo tubes… “I’ll be… This…This could be a caterpillar.” Skip Tyler never got that confirmed by Capt. Vasili Borodin (who was too busy wishing he did get to see Montana) in McTiernan’s film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October… …and especially since Vasili and Skip never talk. But Tyler was right. Continue reading One Thing, Vasili… A long time ago in October 2010 we learned a little about one of the first computers to be invented. Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, had it been built, would have been the first programmable, Turing-complete computer. In 1837. Now, with steampunk at an all time high in popularity, and with this being the [...]
Yesterday, after the hoardes of pepper-spray wielding Black Friday zombies had dispersed, my wife and I went to the mall to get a few things for ourselves and to try to wrap up our Christmas shopping. Of course, that means a stop in the Williams-Sonoma store to drool over things like the Bodum Santos Stovetop Vacuum Coffee Maker. This is a pop-up turkey timer. Basically, there a soft metal or wax plug in the bottom. When it gets to a point where it melts, the red stick indicator is released and pushed out by the spring. Make sure the metal or wax melts at an appropriate temperature (165 F if I [...] |
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