Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ; -))

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Sun Jun 20 23:03:03 2004

> There are many skills (engineering related or not) that are lost regularly.
> You mentioned tube technology.

Bad example. Very little about the technology of tubes is lost. What is
lost are small details that don't add up to much (certainly it would be
nice to fill these details in, and there are quite a few people doing
so). Just because average Joe Engineer doesn't know how a tube works
doesn't mean the information is lost.

> My father was one of the most respected
> engineering wiremen of the 1960's. He was highly sought after for making
> harnesses by many companies. The art of hand lacing a harness is basically
> lost.

No it is not, although not many people use it. It is still used in the
AT&T and some MCI telephone world. In fact, the very first AT&T Worldnet
dialup equipment was hand laced (by me). I ran into many not-so-old timers
that still would lace up cables by hand perfectly.

Certainly some history is lost, but generally it is not the theory. What
gets lost is knowledge about specific instances - specific equipments, how
they worked, why they were made, who used them, etc..

For example (with tubes), some of the knowledge about how early tube
computers is probably lost*. Maybe nobody saved the prints to an IBM 701
or Burroughs 205. However, we know the theory behind these machines. Go to
the library and pull out any of the trade magazines from the 1950s, and
you will know everything there is to know about how to make digital
circuits with tubes, and probably with some looking, specifically how IBM
and Burroughs made digital circuits with tubes. The theory is there,
preserved.

*although I am always hopeful that lost info will be found. Somehow it
manages to surface from the weirdest places.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Sun Jun 20 2004 - 23:03:03 BST