desert dweller
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Power to the Peaceful...Hate does not create.
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Post by desert dweller on Feb 20, 2020 13:04:55 GMT -8
Because I believe that the Trailhead Register is more of a free-for-all compendium of topics which could be discussed around a campfire or stove rather than just a conveyance of hiking related verbiage, I am posting this here as a catharsis for conversation.
I'm starting this 17 minute video at the 12.5 minute mark because of the way the narrator summarizes the importance of the transistor and how it fundamentally and completely changed the world. The entire video is good and presented by a guy whose knows how to enrapt.
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Post by autumnmist on Feb 21, 2020 10:17:39 GMT -8
Spending some time watching the video will be a learning experience for me. I remember transistors in terms of radios and tvs, with lots of tubes but that's probably the limit of childhood recollection, so I'll spend some time on the next day when it's too frigid to go outside and see if I can educate myself.
It's sometimes unsettling to think of how rapidly technology has changed. Telephones are an example.
I learn from reading posts of others who are more familiar with tech issues; the drone and AI posts were good educational posts. Others such as your post on migrant issues was educational, but more cultural and humanitarian, and just as important.
Sometimes I wonder if there's just so much information, so much news, that it's expanded beyond the human capability to be aware of everything that's happening these days.
And I do appreciate your efforts to raise a range of issues that affect us all, one way or another.
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driftwoody
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Take the path closer to the edge, especially if less traveled
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Post by driftwoody on Feb 21, 2020 10:46:15 GMT -8
I'm not so sure transistors outrank the wheel in the greatest invention category.
Sliced bread, maybe.
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desert dweller
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Post by desert dweller on Feb 21, 2020 11:37:25 GMT -8
I'm not so sure transistors outrank the wheel in the greatest invention category. Sliced bread, maybe. Well, I would say that date-known inventions would be the critical marker for the transistor being the greatest. However, in the category of unknown important inventions, then the fermentation process would be uber alles. The pursuit of a good beer buzz would motive the invention of the wheel to get the beer from one place to another. And, the invention of sliced bread would be a natural mate to consume with the freshly delivered beer.
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desert dweller
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Power to the Peaceful...Hate does not create.
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Post by desert dweller on Feb 21, 2020 11:55:02 GMT -8
Sometimes I wonder if there's just so much information, so much news, that it's expanded beyond the human capability to be aware of everything that's happening these days. If I were to rely on my 35 year old college education to have decent conversations with learned strangers, then I'd be way behind the curve. A lot of my "viewing" time is focused on documentaries of various subjects. The central theme I use for science, physics, math and similar documentaries is that they have to be presented to the educated layman. I no desire or capability to decode most of the famous equations such as the Quantum Wave Function but I usually have no problem with understanding what the equation describes. (The Quantum Wave Function describes the behavior of a quantum particle.) Over time watching such documentaries, when they are properly presented, I can build up a bank of knowledge and can hold my own in a discussion of just about any field of study.
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Post by bobcat on Feb 21, 2020 12:20:34 GMT -8
When I was a college freshman, we had an unplanned guest appearance in my Intro to Engineering course by Dr John Bardeen, Nobel Laureate for his work on transistor. He was on campus for something else and his hosts brought him in and introduced him to us, about 200 would-be engineers. First Nobel Laureate I ever crossed paths with. I’ve been lucky enough in my scientific career to meet several since then.
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whistlepunk
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I was an award winning honor student once. I have no idea what happened...
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Post by whistlepunk on Feb 21, 2020 13:20:26 GMT -8
I suggest Velcro.
Maybe the beer can coozie, although I never really saw the logic in beer coozies. If the beer is in your hand long enough to warm up you are drinking too slow.
edit: I am going to add carbon fiber fly rods.
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toejam
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Hiking to raise awareness
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Post by toejam on Feb 21, 2020 13:31:43 GMT -8
Without thinking very hard about it, the automobile has had the biggest effect on my life. Everything I've done to chase my own dreams required the kind of mobility not afforded by public transportation (or waiting hours at a charging station).
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Post by graywolf on Feb 21, 2020 13:41:54 GMT -8
He didn’t say greatest invention of all time. He said greatest invention of the 20th century.
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Post by autumnmist on Feb 22, 2020 14:36:40 GMT -8
I honestly don't know if transistors affected my life when I was growing up and during adulthood, but I do remember the effects of upgraded office machinery.
1. Typewriters. I learned to type on and for the first years of work used a manual typewriter. Invention of the electric typewriter brought the incomparable IBM Selectric, then stand alone word processors, networked word processors, then computers. Typing on an old manual was slow, and sometimes tedious.
The quality of product, accuracy and presentation of the work improved drastically. And now we have phones that handle texting.
I think I may still have an old manual typewriter somewhere; perhaps it'll bring an antique price when I find it.
2. Another important aspect was copying. Mimeographs and carbon paper were so tedious, time consuming and messy, but were all that we had during those more primitive times. It was hard to get through a mimeograph copying project w/o ink on hands and often on clothes. And it was hard to remove. Copies made from carbon copying paper were unprofessional looking, especially with multiple hand erased errors.
The end product wasn't particularly impressive.
Correction tape moved us forward a bit; taping over errors was quicker and less messy. But large, negotiated documents still often required complete retyping. I recall one particular major document in a large real estate transaction that had so much tape on it it was difficult to type; the iterations reached over a dozen changes.
Computers and laser printers were a real boon to document production; they took so much of the tedious labor out of projects.
3. There were also the dictating machines, a great move forward from shorthand, which could be tiring and physically challenging. As a court reporter with the Juvenile Court, we each had to be qualified in Gregg shorthand at 200 WPM. It took some time and practice, but I qualified. When I transferred to the Prosecutor's Office, two of the reporters used the machines, much easier and not as hard on the hand and arm muscles.
I remember one really difficult time when I covered a B & E. Prosecutors normally had only one or two witnesses, just enough to bind a case over to Circuit Court. When the case wasn't as strong, more witnesses were needed. I remember some of the hearings well, including the one with 6 witnesses, which lasted almost up to 4 hours. My arm was throbbing, my hands were cramped and I didn't even care if proof was established; I just wanted the hearing to be over.
I think for me these office improvements were just as effective and influential if not more than anything else in my working life.
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ErnieW
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Post by ErnieW on Feb 22, 2020 20:20:57 GMT -8
Going backward from the previous post maybe moveable type should be in the running. It really revolutionized human's flow of information. The transistor has helped greatly amplify that (<-bad transistor joke)
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BigLoad
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Post by BigLoad on Feb 22, 2020 22:13:30 GMT -8
I don't know if I could support anything as being the single greatest invention, but in terms of how it revolutionized so many aspects of life, the transistor has to be right up there.
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rebeccad
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Writing like a maniac
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Post by rebeccad on Feb 23, 2020 3:00:20 GMT -8
Reading autumnmist ’s post about typewriters and the evolution, I was thinking how I couldn’t have written my dissertation without a computer (because I’d never have done the necessary revisions if it meant retyping the whole thing every time—and the same holds for my novels). But of course, the transistor made the computer possible. And if the transistor made computers possible, then it made the Internet possible, and that pretty much launched the 21st Century.
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Post by tallgrass on Feb 23, 2020 6:17:13 GMT -8
I'm not so sure transistors outrank the wheel in the greatest invention category. Sliced bread, maybe. Not just the wheel, but the ball bearing. Wheel is great & all...but none of our high speed parts for anything could exist without the ball bearing
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ErnieW
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Post by ErnieW on Feb 23, 2020 7:08:25 GMT -8
Not just the wheel, but the ball bearing. Wheel is great & all...but none of our high speed parts for anything could exist without the ball bearing Ball bearing plants were high priority targets in WWII Europe. The allies were literally trying to get the German war effort to grind to a halt.
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