81–90 of 121 posts
Thought it was very interesting to see the precursors of modern computers and how they achieved the various mathematical functions mechanically
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WW II American torpedoes didn't have inertial guidance. They used gyros for directional control and just ran in a straight line after making a single turn onto the set course. Occasionally the torpedo would get stuck in that turn and run in a circle. Towards the end of the war the Navy also started introducing homing torpedoes, but those didn't use inertial guidance either.
A gyro by definition IS inertial guidance.
Modern educational videos/films feel lower quality (in terms of content) even with all the modern tech at their disposal. Better technology doesn't seem to improve education. The quality of the content is 99% the skill of the teacher.
Domain experts and instructional designers working together, in close proximity, in both time and space, produce the best educational content in my opinion. Without iteration and feedback loops between these groups we end up with the shallow content that is so prevalent in the e-learning industry.
I dream of an online community encompassing science researchers, instructional designers and education researchers, software developers, and teachers. So "my students are struggling with" -> "the underlying idea is" -> "maybe represent that as" -> "here's a strawman web interactive" -> "tried it this afternoon, mostly worked, except for" in tight iterative churns.
Bagpipes are the same thing. Nowadays, nothing seems official unless it starts or ends with bagpipes.
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By the end of WW II American torpedoes were automatically programmed (direction, speed, fusing) before firing. The heavy calculations would be done by the shipboard firing computer while the parameters set would be used by the simple computer on the torpedo (which had inertial guidance). I struggle to imagine how people managed to design such things with just pencils and slide rules.
WW II American torpedoes didn't have inertial guidance. They used gyros for directional control and just ran in a straight line after making a single turn onto the set course. Occasionally the torpedo would get stuck in that turn and run in a circle. Towards the end of the war the Navy also started introducing homing torpedoes, but those didn't use inertial guidance either.
Well that's not a great failure mode, if it can come right back at vessel which launched it ... imagine trying to implement a self-destruct failsafe with that tech back then ...
The US Navy's old training materials are fantastic for learning about various technologies. I think their masterpiece is "Basic Hand Tools" a handbook written in plain English that describes the use of practically every hand tool ever invented. "Basic Hand Tools" on the hammer: >Whoever conceived the idea of cracking a nut with a rock unknowingly invented a tool. When a later genius tied a stick to the rock, he inven…
- Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
This is completely true. 18-20-year-old kids launch and arrest aircraft on a carrier while simultaneously performing an underway replenishment, and it's just another day.
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50 years ago that was true. Sometime ago though (I don't know when, but I'd guess starting in the 1990s) they changed to electronic computers. Using electronics makes some things simpler and puts the complex parts in standard hardware (a CPU is much more complex but it isn't custom designed for you), or software (easy to change if you get it wrong.
For the fuel injection and ignition (spark) timing yes, but the camshafts to open and close the valves are still driven by a gear, belt or chain. Even variable valve timing is mostly controled by mechanical or hydraulic means, though I'm guessing some electronics may be involved.
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> Or fire a 5 inch gun, you know, if that's more your speed. Depends on what the target is.
For $1k it's just a blank round. But if you donate $1M, you're allowed to shoot the USS New Jersey's curator Jordan with an HE shell from the 16" guns.
Modern educational videos/films feel lower quality (in terms of content) even with all the modern tech at their disposal. Better technology doesn't seem to improve education. The quality of the content is 99% the skill of the teacher.
I've seen a few of these old instructional videos. In addition to the content itself, I'm always very amazed by the fact they can produce these videos without computers!
So, like you, I watched the film (as it was certainly produced on 16mm film) and was surprised by the quality of the graphics, titles and animation. Even the shooting and editing was remarkably good for what's obviously an industrial-grade training film produced on an assembly line. I was especially taken by the fidelity of the full screen title slides featuring soft-edged drop shadows. When I started out in video, the first place that hired me was a tiny hole-in-the-wall studio that produced corporate and industrial sales, marketing and training videos for mid-sized clients on 3/4 inch U-Matic tape. And they still laid out titles by hand a line at a time with a manual Letraset-type machine. The titles we did in the mid-80s didn't look as nice as what these guys were doing in 1953!