Re: Circuit Symbol

On 21/12/2024 5:48 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Fri, 20 Dec 2024 09:04:52 +0000, liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:
 

Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> wrote:
>

On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 14:29:50 -0800, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
>

On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 20:38:33 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>

john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Thu, 19 Dec 2024 09:09:54 -0600, Dennis <dennis@none.none> wrote:
>

On 12/18/24 21:20, john larkin wrote:
>

>
I vaguely recall that they oscillated at somethig over 100 Hz. I
powered an old car radio with 60 Hz instead of the vibrator, and the
radio's step-up transformer ran hot.
>

They ran at a frequency as high as reasonable for a mechanical device.
This allowed for a smaller transformer.

>
Vibrating contacts were the first switching regulators. Auto
generators - before alternators - used a hysteretic oscillating
contact closure to drive the field coil. That was very efficient and
not especially reliable.
>
>

>
Especially when made by Lucas.
>
Cheers
>
Phil Hobbs

>
The brits traditionallty split their motorcycle crankcases vertically,
to maximize oil leakage through the gaskets.
>
Those dumb Japanese, Honda and Kawasaki, split their crankcases
horizontally, which required us to change the oil, not just add it.

>
The Japanese initially started off by copying the British bikes. Then
they immediately set about looking for ways they could be improved.
Once they'd got ahead, they set about continually improving the
improved designs, even if they were only competing against themselves.
The British just sat back and complacently did nothing; just kept on
turning out the same old designs year in year out.

>
The two major factors were the management and the unions, who both
deserved each other:
>
The management saw research as an unnecessary expense that could be
dispensed with once there was a product which worked, however badly, and
which could be made and sold.  Real engineers hardly ever got into
management and didn't last long if they actually treid to practice
engineering.
>
The unions had the management over a barrel and extorted every last
penny out of the firms, with restrictive practices hampering any
attempts at improvement.  Many of the production line workers would have
been unemployable in any other job and even the better ones were totally
unmotivated to produce a good product.
>
I was lucky enough to work in a firm (in the same industrial area as a
major and much maligned car plant) that had neither of these
disadvantages and I still marvel at how good their products were and how
they managed to survive and make a profit whilst maintaining those
standards.

 Sounds about right. The sixties and the seventies in particular were a
period in Britain where Marxists were hell-bent on destroying the
country and wanted to bring production to a halt on any old pretext.

I was actually a trade union "office representative" at Kent Instruments in Luton in 1975 and 1976. There weren't a lot of Marxists around, and the main job of the trade union was to defend the people they represented from the bizarre delusions of the people who supervised them. The personnel department lied to us a lot, and didn't like it when I called them out on it. I was happy to move on to a much better job at EMI Central research during 1976, and stopped being an active union member. I'd got stuck with the trade union work at Luton largely because I could move on in that way - everybody else owned their homes and had kids in the local schools.

The 'management' spent most of their time in the nearest pub having 3
hour long 'liquid lunches' which didn't help the fortunes of the
companies they were supposed to be running much, either. When Thatcher
got into power in '79, there were a huge number of arses in dire need
of kicking. And she duly delivered and an extremely painful period of
restructuring commenced.

Not so much re-construction as de-construction. Thatcher and her crew didn't like manufacturing industry and preferred to make money by shuffling money around. They pretty much wrecked what was left of British industry - though the upper class twits who that thought that they were running it had already done a pretty good job.
A lot of my work involved getting around them - there were people in British industry who knew what they were doing, but there were a lot of upper class twits who had to be fobbed off. The fact that I had a Ph.D. from a respectable colonial university meant that the upper class twits thought that I was on their side, which helped.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney