Technology Almanac

Seeing the Big Picture

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:17:00 +0000

I know exactly where I was on the night of July 20, 1969. At 9:56 PM, Central Daylight Time, I was in front of our black-and-white television set along with the rest of my family. We were part of the 600+ million people around the world doing exactly the same thing at that same moment.

Apollo 11 Moon Landing Live Broadcast

Neil Armstrong went down the ladder of the Lunar Lander and stepped off the last step onto the lunar surface. Humanity had put a footprint on the moon. The sense of history-in-the-making was palpable to everyone watching. It was astonishing -- mind-boggling, really -- that we could be watching something happening in almost real-time from a distance of 238,000 miles on another celestial body!

I'm not certain, but our television was probably no more than 27 inches. I remember it was contained in a plastic box which probably weighed fifty pounds because of the heavy cathode-ray picture tube. Long before the internet or even cable television, television signals arrived via an antenna. The picture was often grainy. Color television had been introduced in the late 50s but it was still expensive and my parents didn't own a set. Color broadcasts were limited to selected programming, I remember that NBC introduced theirs with the colorful peacock logo.

But color television made no difference that night because NASA had only installed a black-and-white video camera on the Lunar Lander. Color video would have taken too much weight and too much power. We were still thrilled to be watching.

What made me think of all this was that I recently came across a photograph of NASA Mission Control at the Houston Space Center. On the large screen on the wall, you can make out the same black-and-white image of the first moon walk. Today, we think nothing of large video displays and it barely catches our attention.

Large Panel Display in Mission Control

But like everything else associated with the Space Program of that era, even the video displays were state-of-the-art. There were no color LED panels that now fill every niche of our lives. The conventional broadcast video technology of the day was created using the cathode-ray tube. But a display of the size in Mission Control would have required a cathode-ray tube with an enormous glass enclosure weighing tons and needing immense power. So how did NASA create such a display?

The answer was revealed to me when I posted the Mission Control photograph to a Facebook group dealing with old technology. People commented almost immediately about the video display. It was created with a technology called Eidophor. I had never heard of it.

A little more researching on Wikipedia and YouTube enlightened me further on what this was all about. What you see in the photo of Mission Control is only the front portion of a much larger room. Behind the wall was another room at least as large and painted matte black. Technicians called it the Bat Cave. The equipment needed to project these displays filled the room as you can see in the schematic below.

Layout of Bat Cave

The Eidophor projectors themselves were marvels of technology as can be seen in the drawing. Read Wikipedia if you want to know more.

Schematic of Eidophor Projector

These projectors were around for a while beyond the Apollo missions and were used for sports events, rock concerts, and other large-screen applications. By then they had shrunk considerably from the NASA days but were still formidable hardware systems.

Refined Eidophor System

Today, flat-screen LED and OLED technology is so good that an 8K image can be displayed for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the power. Cameras on spacecraft have also improved so much that we can now watch full-color, hi-def video in virtually real-time.

On Feb. 18, 2021, the Mars Rover, Perseverance, made an extremely complex and completely autonomous landing as we all watched both the descent vehicle and the Rover as the maneuver was accomplished. We might even have been watching on our Smartphone while sitting at a local coffee shop enjoying a latte.

We have come a long, long way in fifty years. Sadly, almost no one could tell you where they were on Feb. 18, 2021 when Perseverance landed. We take so much for granted. Time for a refill of my coffee.

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

- Charles Mingus

The Fillmore Funeral Train That Wasn't

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 00:44:00 +0000

Fillmore Funeral Locomotive
Created in Affinity Designer by the Author

The locomotive in the 1874 image was resplendent with polished brass and ornate decorations. A portrait of Millard Fillmore, the late president who had just died in March of that year, graced the side of the engine. A star-studded crest of American flags overlaid by the American eagle graced the tender. The side of the headlight was painted with a scene of Niagara Falls, a tribute to Fillmore’s upstate New York roots . Perhaps the only presidential funeral train with more patriotic decorations was that of Abraham Lincoln, nine years earlier.

But unlike Lincoln’s train, Millard Fillmore’s funeral train never existed. Not only were the decorations on the side of the American Type 4-4-0 locomotive never installed, the locomotive itself was never built. So why does this image exist? An art project I began awhile back provided the path that led me to unearth at least some of this strange story.

Even as a kid, I had something of an artistic bent. I’d returned to dabbling in drawing and painting many times over the years - not that I ever stuck with it or got particularly good at it. Soon after personal computers were introduced, I was drawn to the graphics potential of these computers, but the programs that were available in those early days had very limited capability. That has all changed. The power of reasonably priced graphics software has reached a level that people could only dream of a few years ago. Recently, I bought a vector graphics software package called Affinity Designer for fifty dollars. Vector graphics software is based on nodes, lines and bezier curves and is infinitely scalable which means that the smallest detail and largest object can be rendered with equal clarity.

Like all art techniques, graphics software requires practice and persistence to master the nuances of the tools. Much of this can be learned by trying to emulate or copy other work. Originality is not the objective, rather, command of the tools is the goal. Looking around the web, I saw that others had chosen images of cars, airplanes, or even cartoon characters as their models for replication. But I was looking for something different. I wasn’t sure what but it needed to have well-defined lines and not be too complicated.

I thought of one of my favorite repositories for old images - the Library of Congress. Browsing through their Popular Graphics Arts collection, I found a lithograph dated from 1874 titled simply, Railroad Engine. It looked like it might just do the trick. It appeared to consist of just a few circles, rectangles and other basic shapes. How long could it take to replicate it?

Railroad Locomotive Lithograph, 1874, Library of Congress

I plunged into digitally tracing the drawing without giving the origin of the image much thought. I had seen other such prints of locomotives over the years. Engines of this era were often embellished with fancy ornamentation and I assumed this was just another such locomotive from one of the many manufacturers of the day. The more I worked with the image, the more I began to appreciate the underlying design of this machine. Engineering has long practiced the maxim, “form follows function". But while this was evident in the locomotive design, the balanced proportions and the clean lines of many of the parts suggested a designer who cared for more than function alone. This was intended to be admired as a work of engineering art.

Being an amateur student of the history of technology, I knew a bit about old steam locomotives. But I certainly didn’t understand the details of how all the components contributed to the smooth operation of this machine. To do justice to this image, I wanted more information so I could represent the parts correctly. When I am looking for information like this, one of my go-to places is Google Books. Google has scanned thousands of out-of-copyright books from academic libraries and placed them online with open access. Browsing under the topic of steam locomotive, I found the perfect guide, The Catechism of the Locomotive, by Matthias Nace Forney. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_N._Forney.

First published in 1875, Forney’s illustrated six-hundred page book provides a complete guide to the design and operation of steam locomotives. His book contains almost 1,300 practical questions and answers for the novice locomotive designer or operator. The book was so well received, it continued to be published in revised editions for the next fifty years.

Detail from Catechism of the Locomotive

With the help of Forney’s book I made sense of the image I was tracing. I could see the details of the various parts and how they interconnected, what made it a functional machine.

To trace all of the details in this image required a high resolution copy of the original lithograph. Fortunately, the Library of Congress has an online scan of the original print that is very high resolution. At 300 dots per inch, the image measures thirty-six inches long by twenty inches high. With such a high a resolution, I was able to trace every nut and bolt on the locomotive. No detail seemed to have been omitted. As my work continued, I became more curious about the origins of the image.

As noted on the print, it was the designer, A.J. Johnson, not the lithography company who submitted the print to the Library of Congress. A stamp in the lower left corner noted that the print had been received by the library in the same year it was created -1874.

W.J. Morgan Company was listed as the publisher of the lithograph. A little searching found that the lithography company was founded in Cleveland, Ohio shortly after the Civil War by two brothers: William J. and George W. Morgan. Their business focused mostly on broadsheets, pamphlets, and later, theatrical posters. They also produced fine lithographs for stock certificates and other needs.

Bridge Lithograph by W.J. Morgan Co.

Detail of Lithograph

But the lithograph of the locomotive had no visible commercial connection. It seemed not to be an advertisement for a manufacturer of locomotives. Why would the Morgan Company invest time and effort to produce this piece? Why would Johnson think it should be in the Library of Congress? The answer may be found by studying the details of the locomotive.

Detail of Lithograph

The library record and the lithograph itself lists A.J. Johnson as the locomotive designer. A Google search of that period for the name found no one by that name who designed steam engines. I also searched online in old railroad magazines and books from the era but found no reference to A.J. Johnson. Who was he?

I began to wonder if perhaps the portrait on the side of the engine was that of President Andrew Johnson and the locomotive designer was a coded hint as to the name of the person in the portrait. President Andrew Johnson had no middle name and the builder was specifically listed as A.J. Johnson. Nor did the portrait look much like Andrew Johnson except perhaps in style of dress. I concluded that A.J. Johnson and Andrew Johnson were not the same man.

Andrew Johnson

Image on Side of Locomotive

I checked the U.S. Census records for Cleveland for 1870 and 1880 using the online databases at Ancestry.com. When I put in a rough guess of his age as 25, the search engine soon found an A.J. Johnson listed as living in Cleveland in 1870. The census listed him as being born in Ohio in 1848 and gave his occupation as being a “Locomotive Builder”. I thought this might be my man.

In 1870, A.J. Johnson was a twenty-two year old living in a commercial hotel with a dozen other men with various occupations. No spouse was mentioned as living with him. The designation on the census of “locomotive builder” was most likely a bit of a personal exaggeration on A.J.’s part although I’m sure that is what he wanted to become. By the time of the 1880 census, AJ. Johnson was still living in a Cleveland boarding house but now he listed his occupation as “Riveter”.

1870 Census Cleveland, OH

1880 Census Cleveland, OH

While A.J. (the name recorded on the census) seems not to have had much of a career as a locomotive designer, he seems to have drawn at least one locomotive - the one in the lithograph. But this still didn’t answer how Johnson got connected to the W.J. Morgan Lithography Company. Did Johnson approach the Morgan Company to see if they would publish his design as a way to advertise his skills? Perhaps. Given his age and boarding house residence, it seems unlikely he would have had the cash to pay for such a printing project.

No, I think this lithograph emerged by serendipity. in 1874, W.J. Morgan Company was expanding into markets outside of Cleveland. They were developing a reputation for high quality lithographs. Eventually, they would claim to be one of the largest lithography companies in the United States. Morgan Company was looking for a way to place themselves before a broader audience - a national audience - and grow the business.

With not much else to go on, I continued to search the web for any other information I could find about this particular locomotive image. I got a hit at the Getty Images archive. The identical image was listed in their database but there it was identified as the Fillmore Funeral Train. Unlike the Library of Congress who had gotten the image directly from A.J. Johnson, Getty Images listed their source as a private collector of lithographic prints. The collector had entitled the print the "Fillmore Funeral Train".

Millard Fillmore as Congressman

That sent me in search of information about our 13th president, Millard Fillmore. Fillmore died on March 8, 1874 in Buffalo, New York. Fillmore had lost a bid for re-election in 1856 and returned to his native Buffalo where he was a leading citizen of the city throughout the Civil War and post-war years. Could the portrait be that of Fillmore? Comparing an image of him taken by Matthew Brady in 1850 with the image on the side of the locomotive made me think that it was indeed Fillmore. But why would W.J. Morgan print an image of a locomotive with Fillmore on the side?

Image of Fillmore on Side of Locomotive

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April of 1865, his funeral train made a long and circuitous journey from Washington, D.C., back to Springfield, Illinois where he was buried. One of the many stops along the route was Buffalo. Ironically, Fillmore was out of town at the time. Lincoln’s funeral train was met by tens of thousands of mourners at every stop on its journey to Illinois. The flag-draped train bearing Lincoln’s sarcophagus was emblematic of the fallen leader. His funeral train became synonymous with a proper funeral for a dead president.

Of course, Fillmore had died in his home city of Buffalo and no funeral train was ever planned or used to carry his body to its final rest. But I would be willing to bet that either William or George at W.J. Morgan Company reasoned that if they created a lithograph of a steam engine with Millard Fillmore’s image and resplendent presidential trimmings, they could sell this image to the people of the country to mark the passing of another president. They just needed an image of a steam locomotive. While many manufacturers of steam locomotives might have been only too happy to provide an image for the project, Morgan Company must have reasoned that an unaffiliated design would be seen as less an endorsement of any one manufacturer. The company would surely not have wanted to create bad blood with potential future advertisers.

Enter A.J. Johnson with his highly detailed drawing of a locomotive. The timing was right for a “collectible" tribute to Fillmore. Morgan Company only had to do have one of their artists embellish Johnson’s design with Fillmore and other Americana and they would have their image.

And so was created a locomotive that never existed, decorated for a presidential funeral that never happened. But the image lives on and its elegant design is a clear testament to the design aesthetic of that era.

Uncolored Tracing of Lithograph

Vector Graphics Colorization Detail in Affinity Designer

I began the project as a way to learn a new software tool. I hadn’t anticipated a detective story. Of course, I may be wrong about all this - but I think this contains much of what transpired in 1874. A.J. Johnson might never have built a locomotive but he has been immortalized as a locomotive designer by his image housed at the Library of Congress.

Oh, and as for my software learning project, well, I would say it was a success. After tracing and shading hundreds of objects, I think I have it figured out. There’s just no substitute for practice.

Technology and Democracy - 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 20:17:00 +0000

A new president has been inaugurated. The 2016 presidential campaign showed us just how vulnerable our country is to the misuse of our now-ubiquitous internet and communications technologies. Consider some of the abuses we have seen:

The Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee servers.
They fed those documents to Wikileaks with the deliberate intent to undermine confidence in our electoral integrity and perhaps to help Donald Trump win.
Fake news stories circulated on Facebook and Twitter to misinform and incite higher levels of partisan anger.
Google search results were compromised by partisan groups to bring up negative stories first when searching for information.
The media provided virtually nonstop coverage of Donald Trump and his campaign across both television and mobile platforms.
Twitter became Mr. Trump’s platform of choice to lead a cyber-bullying campaign against anyone who criticized him. And every Tweet became a news story.
Smartphone videos and photos provided instant “evidence” at campaign events and rallies supporting partisan views that were shared on social media platforms.

We live in a world where the technology that was promoted to bring us together has instead driven us apart. Instead of connection we ended up with polarization. We live in our own social media worlds listening to those we agree with. We are beginning to doubt almost everything else we hear, see or read. We are living in a “post-fact” world.

The campaign we have just witnessed could not have happened even as recently as fifteen years ago. We simply did not have the connectivity and bandwidth that allowed this digital assault to be shared instantly. The iPhone is only ten years old. Same for Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The connecting of the cellular network, the internet, and smartphones was the link that permitted this political monster to be born.

On May 24, 1844, the first message that was transmitted on the newly-invented telegraph was, “What hath God wrought?” We should be asking the same question now. We have created a superb, virtually real-time, global information network. It can be used for great good or it can do great harm. We have not lived with this technology long enough yet to know how to manage it or to manage ourselves when using it. The average time between checking our smartphones is now about six minutes. Ten times an hour we can get a jolt, a fix. When it comes to politics, it almost always zaps our nervous system. Like lab animals in some Skinner Box, we learn which buttons to push to get our hit. It makes us a feel crazy and we pay the price through our inability to focus, sleep, or think clearly.

In my view, smartphones are much more like television than they are like telephones. They are a screen that we seem powerless to ignore. We watch that small screen constantly, even while driving! And all of these hundreds of millions of screens demand new content which Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other social media sites are happy to provide. This can be problematic at any time but it becomes a real worry when it disrupts our political systems. Behind all this low-cost access and seemingly free content is money - eyeballs on advertising. While there is legitimate discussion regarding the corrupting influence of money in politics, no one talks much about the corrupting influence of the money being made off of political postings on social media platforms.

We have come to a juncture in our connected world. The questions we should be asking ourselves now are: how do we protect ourselves from the inherent vulnerabilities of this information network? How can we differentiate real news from fake news? How do we make our systems less vulnerable to being hacked? How do we reign in the urge to be isolate ourselves in our like-minded camps? The challenges presented by our desire to be constantly connected will only grow. We can only hope to manage it better than we did in 2016.

The Persistence of Form

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 23:25:00 +0000

Like most everyone else, I was blown away by the European Space Agency's recent successful mission to land a vehicle on a comet. After a ten year, four billion mile journey, the tiny Philae spacecraft landed on a three-mile long piece of rock moving through space at forty-thousand miles per hour. Incredible is an understatement! There was well-deserved jubilation in ESA's control center.

ESA circa 2014

When I looked at the pictures of the ESA's mission control room, I was struck by how little had changed in fifty years since the images of NASA's Mission Control in the Apollo moon project became so familiar to us.

NASA circa 1970

The computational power behind the NASA control room was less than what you can find today in an ordinary laptop computer. Yet, the design of Mission Control has not changed much despite the incredible leap forward in technology. You see the same consoles with screens and buttons. The same rows of positions facing the large screens on the wall displaying statistics and parameters. You see the same low level of light giving the room a hushed, monastic presence. I remember the sci-fi movie, Minority Report, from 2002 that had Tom Cruise standing at a large glass panel where he moved and manipulated data with his special gloves. Certainly, that theatrical image was intended to convey advanced technological control capability. And yet, here we are fifty years after Apollo and both the ESA and NASA rooms look virtually the same. Why?

Tom Cruise, Minority Report, 2002

The control rooms are a great example of the old adage, "form follows function." The rooms look the same because they provide the best way to fulfill the function. Nothing too deep about that. But what might change it? What would make this form no longer the best way to answer the functional need? Would everyone be wearing Google Glasses and hence no longer need to see a screen on the wall? Would the mission controllers be able to work from home in their bathrobes during the critical phases of the mission? I doubt it.

Think of business conference rooms. They have changed hardly a hair in over a century. Of course there has been the introduction of new technology. First it was the old overhead transparency projector which was replaced by a cable connection to allow a laptop to project an image on the screen. But the room, the long table with chairs on either side and the chairperson seated at the end, remains the same. It is the best way to allow everyone to have a "seat at the table", to fully participate in the meeting. Today we can have remote meeting via Skype but it never works quite as well as the conference room with everyone present. I wonder if those rooms will ever be replaced entirely?

Maybe it is because as people working towards a common objective, we need to be together. Our physical presence allows the non-verbal cues to be easily perceived. Silence can say as much as words. Actions can be decided upon quickly when necessary. More than that, we have a feeling of shared responsibility and shared reward that comes from being physically together to do the job. We are, after all, tribal in our primal essence and we want to belong to the tribe. The conference room replaced the campfire circle.

So will mission control centers or conference rooms (or a thousand other forms in our lives) change? I suppose they will but our need for community will never go away. As we move into an increasingly virtual world, we will have to find a way for our online avatars to be able to not only speak but feel for us. I don't think it will happen soon.

[For a great tour of NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center Mission Control, read the blog by Lee Hutchinson on Ars Technica.]

Legends and Reality: The Wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 00:41:00 +0000

"The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitchee Gummee.
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy."
- Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

November 10th marks the 39th anniversary of the sinking of the Great Lakes ore carrier, SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Ships have been sinking on the Great Lakes for as long as mariners have plied the waters of the big lakes. Some ships sink with only a passing mention in the news. Others become legends.

My great-grandfather, John McPherson, sailed on many small vessels on Lake Superior while working for the Booth Fishing Company which sold the abundant Lake Superior whitefish to restaurants all over the country. In 1922, he was returning to his home port in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (also my home town) on a wooden tugboat named - ironically - Reliance. The tug had taken shelter in a protected bay on the north (Canadian) shore of Lake Superior to wait out a December storm. They had no radio or radar. They did have a wireless telegraph to keep in touch with the home office. But in stormy weather, they were on their own. They waited days while food supplies dwindled and finally decided to make a run for it when the storm abated somewhat. The Reliance had not gone more than twenty miles when the gale-force west winds pushed them onto the rocky shoals of Lizard Islands, a mile from the Canadian shore.

The propellor sheared off on the rocks. The captain, crew and passengers of about twenty men and one woman decided to abandon what seemed to be their foundering ship and try to use the two lifeboats to get to Lizard Island. My great-grandfather went up to the top deck to help release the life boat davits (booms that hold the lifeboat). Just as they unlashed the davits, the Reliance was hit by a particularly strong wave and lurched violently sideways. The davit that John McPherson was working pivoted around and crashed into his back throwing him off the tilted deck and into the icy water. He was most likely unconscious immediately after he was hit in the back because he never reached for the life ring that was thrown to him. He disappeared under the waves. Two other men were also lost while trying to get to the island. But to the surprise of those still on board, the Reliance did not sink. The sturdy little tug was slowly pushed by the waves towards the Lizard Islands. Finally, the remaining crew and passengers were able to escape to the island and then get to the mainland another mile beyond. All survived despite a harrowing overland journey through waist-deep snows.

The wreck of the Reliance made headlines in newspapers both locally and nationally - perhaps as much for the dramatic survival story that followed the wreck. And then it was another footnote in the history of Lake Superior shipwrecks.

Unlike the Reliance, The Edmund Fitzgerald would not become another sad, but brief, part of Great Lakes lore. The reason, of course, was Gordon Lightfoot's hit song celebrating the "crew and good captain well-seasoned." It is a powerful ballad that pits the great ship manned with experienced seamen against the pitiless brunt of a November gale. It makes for good music. But it isn't quite true.

There were other ships of comparable size and age on Lake Superior that day. None of those sank. Bad luck for "The Fitz"? Multiple inquests were held by authorities including the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board. Their findings pointed to many mistakes and deficiencies that contributed to the disaster.

The Fitzgerald and her sister ship, the SS Arthur B. Homer, had welded (rather than riveted) steel joints and both ships had reported structural failures in some of those joints. The Fitzgerald's scheduled repairs to the weld problems were canceled earlier in the year because, like the Homer, she was going to have her hull lengthened to carry more cargo. The repairs could be made at that time.

The captain of the Fitzgerald, Ernest M. McSorley, was known in Great Lakes maritime circles as a "heavy weather" captain, meaning that he would bull his way through storms rather than take shelter when he encountered severe weather. The captain of another large ship (the Wilfred Sykes) on Lake Superior that night sought shelter in Thunder Bay. Upon learning that the Fitzgerald had just been lost, The Sykes captain commented to lawyers who went on his ship that night to inform him of the sinking, that it was due to McSorley's negligence. McSorley was not held in high regard by some of his peers.

There was plenty of blame to go around. The Coast Guard had inadequate standards for the amount of freeboard (the distance from the deck to the water) that a ship could safely maintain. There were no instrumentation or sensors for the crew to know if the cargo holds were flooding with water except that the ship would sit lower. The lower it sat, the more vulnerable it became to the thirty-five foot waves. The Coast Guard had no lifesaving personnel within any reasonable distance of the wreck site to help, even if there had been survivors. Watertight compartments were not required on Great Lakes ships prior to the sinking. Nor was relatively straightforward instrumentation such as a fathometer (to determine the depth of the water) installed on the Fitzgerald. The only way the crew could know the depth was to throw a lead line overboard (a rope with a weight on one end and knots at regular intervals to measure depth). Such readings were not going to happen in a raging storm. The nautical charts in the area of the wreck were found to be in error. One of the shoals extended a mile further than was recorded on the charts.

Overall, the Marine Board found that there was an attitude of complacency in the operators of Great Lakes vessels. The smaller size of the Great Lakes, as compared to the ocean, gave a false sense of security that in times of trouble, safety was never far away. Their concluding remarks begged to differ:

The nature of Great Lakes shipping, with short voyages, much of the time in very protected waters, frequently with the same routine from trip to trip, leads to complacency and an overly optimistic attitude concerning the extreme weather conditions that can and do exist. The Marine Board feels that this attitude reflects itself at times in deferral of maintenance and repairs, in failure to prepare properly for heavy weather, and in the conviction that since refuges are near, safety is possible by "running for it." While it is true that sailing conditions are good during the summer season, changes can occur abruptly, with severe storms and extreme weather and sea conditions arising rapidly. This tragic accident points out the need for all persons involved in Great Lakes shipping to foster increased awareness of the hazards which exist.

But "the legend lives on..." thanks to the power of Lightfoot's song. (It's funny that no one writes songs about airplane accidents. Maybe they are still too new in our pantheon of technology to take on the mantle of myth.) The gales of November will once again be blowing this week across Lake Superior as the first superstorm of the winter makes it way east. Let's hope that this time the "good ship[s] and crew" know enough to take shelter.

Reference from Wikipedia here.

The Ultimate Container Ship

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 21:28:00 +0000

How big can they build a container ship? Big enough so it can't dock in any U.S. port. Check out the video from the New York Times below. The Mary Maersk requires only 27 crewmen to operate the 1300-foot behemoth. The automation on the bridge and in the engine room is a key part of why so there are so few crew. I can imagine a lot more unemployed seamen as ships of this size become more common. But as consumers, we love the low prices we get from cheap transportation of goods from the manufacturer to the market.

http://nyti.ms/1mZkgjM

Video: Behemoth at Sea

Futures Past

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 20:22:00 +0000

Isaac Asimov

Recently, I came across a post at Open Culture that referred to an article Isaac Asimov had written for the New York Times in 1964. Asimov, a prolific writer (he published over 500 books and 90,000 letters) is best remembered for his science-fiction. His Times article was motivated by his visit to General Electric's pavilion at the New York's World Fair. If we had made so much progress in the last fifty years, what would the world be like in fifty more - in 2014? So how well did Dr. Asimov predict our lives today?

Some highlights from his article:

We should be living mostly underground to both stabilize our living environment and leave the surface mostly available to feed the exploding population which has grown to 6.5 billion people (our current population is actually 7.1 billion people). (Score: Close on the population, off on the root cellars.)
Further population growth is being controlled mostly by limiting births (Score: Check, see link above.)
We are living with more gadgetry to do our mundane tasks (Score: Check).
We are still waiting for the robots that will simplify our lives (Score: Check).
Some needs, like language translation by machine, are now commonplace (Check).
Our appliances are cordless and run on atomic power (Score: Only partly right. Some cordless gear but nada to atomic power).
Conventional highway transportation is past its peak and new levitation roads are making an appearance (Score: no points for this one).
Some vehicles can now get to their destinations without a driver at the controls (Score: Check. Think Google's autonomous driving vehicles).
We can now talk on our phones and see the person at the same time (Score: Check. Think Skype, FaceTime.)
Unmanned exploration vehicles have landed on Mars (Score: Check. Curiosity anyone?).
Our televisions are now flat screens hung on our walls (Score: Check).
Our routine jobs are now done better by a machine in almost every case. We are now mostly a race of machine tenders. (Score: Check. Think ATMs, scanners at checkouts).
All high school students are being taught computer languages and binary arithmetic. (Score: Only partly right. Certainly, students know their smart phones and Google).
We are suffering from a gigantic case of boredom and psychiatry is the largest medical specialty. (Score: Partial credit for this one. Most people are probably more anxious than bored. Psychiatrists are busy but no more than usual).

Asimov concludes his article by stating:

"The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they will do more than serve a machine. Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!"

My spin might be that he was partially right about the Creative Class. Some of the most creative activity has been financial - mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations to name just two. Unfortunately, this type of creativity managed to create a Great Recession which almost brought the world's economy to the brink of collapse.

As for the world of leisure, as he was thinking of the people of 2014 who no longer worked, perhaps he mistook enforced leisure for long-term unemployment? Work is a glorious word for those who have been able to find it after being laid off for six months or more.

I suspect that if Asimov were alive today, he would be reticent to prognosticate about 2064. The rate of technical change continues to accelerate. Predictions of our future just ten years down the road are getting more difficult. But for all the technical change, the real drivers of our future will be the social and political issues which will reshape our landscape. And not all change is for the better.

Art and Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 20:08:00 +0000

Art and technology share common roots - creativity and imagination. While technology expresses itself more in objects of utility, art captures and creates objects of beauty. Often, technology is not only useful but beautiful. Both technologists and artists have known this for millennia. Think of Leonardo's beautiful drawings of his many inventions.

Google continues to try to document the world and bring it to our desktop, tablet, and smartphone. One of their more recent explorations is the Google Cultural Institute which aims to bring some of the finest works of art from the world's museums to the internet. I thought it would be fitting from time-to-time to highlight a few of the art works found on the Cultural Institute website that depict the world of technology as seen by the artist. Let's start with two works from the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK. Newcastle has long been one of the great industrial and shipping areas of the UK and it is not surprising that artists have captured this activity in their art.

Here are two examples that depict the history of Newcastle. The Tyne Bridge was modeled after the Hell Gate Bridge of 1916 in New York.

(Click on images to obtain larger view.)

On The Tyne - Shipbuilding
Thomas William Pattison
1954

The Building of the Tyne Bridge
Edmund Montgomery O'Rourke Dickey
1928

2013 - It Was A Very Good Year

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 15:35:00 +0000

It has been almost exactly a year since my last post at the close of 2012. As my title suggests, this last year has been busy and productive but without any posts to Tech Almanac. What gives?

In 2013, I stepped away from posting in the blog to develop and complete a feature-length documentary. The subject of this documentary was not even related to technology - unless you call the Nazi's search for efficiency in the extermination of Jews and other so-called Undesirables a topic in technology.

My journey began with a conversation over dinner with new friends, Bill and Paulette Terwilliger. Paulette was born in 1942 in Paris to Jewish parents. That simple fact provides the impetus for a story of survival and heroism. Paulette's mother, Rose, was 21-years old when she gave birth to Paulette. Rose was alone in Paris. Her husband was already in a French prison for trying to find a place of safety in the south of France for his family. Rose's parents and brothers had been arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Rose somehow escaped the ever-increasing roundups and had to make her way to safety on her own. A Catholic grandmother in a tiny village in southwest France had agreed to hide Rose and Paulette for the duration of war. You can see a trailer for the documentary here:

The full documentary runs 82 minutes. I have submitted it to four film festivals around the country for consideration. I am hoping that at least one of them chooses to show it. I won't know until late January or early February.

Having now finished that project, I hope to find more time to return to posting here at the Tech Almanac. I love sharing my thoughts on technology and its impacts on the world. This is not to say I won't be spending a great deal of time on new documentary projects. I already have three ideas in the hopper - one of which is even technology related! The common link between the blog and the docs is the stories and ideas that capture my attention.

Best wishes for a wonderful 2014.

2012 - A Year of Wild Weather

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 14:38:00 +0000

While weather is not exactly a technology, tracking the weather most definitely is. I am a big fan of the Weather Underground website. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out at this link. There is also a mobile app for your smart phone that gives an abbreviated version of the data. I use it mostly for live radar in my local area.

Weather Underground produced a summation video for weather in the U.S. during 2012. The video is worth a look.

Massive droughts, wildfires, distorted temperature patterns, tornado outbreaks, hurricanes - 2012 brought them all. Severe weather is becoming the norm rather than the exception. I think we better get used to it. There can be little doubt that our climate is changing.

Meteorological technology improvement becomes all the more critical as the weather becomes more extreme. If it were not for the early warnings provided before a tornado outbreak or Hurricane Sandy's deadly landfall, the death toll would have been much higher. NOAA's weather satellites are getting old and need to be replaced. The Hurricane Hunter aircraft are decades old. I don't ever plan to fly into a hurricane but I surely wouldn't want to do it on one of those old birds.

Let's all hope that 2013 is a year with fewer meteorological catastrophes. We need a bit of a breather.

40th Anniversary of the Launch of Apollo 17

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:50:00 +0000

Launch, 12:33 AM, December 7, 1972

Today (December 7, 2012), marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 17 Lunar Mission. It was the last mission in which a crew of astronauts left low-earth orbit and spent time on another celestial body. The crew of Apollo 17 - Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmidt - took perhaps the most famous image of the earth, nicknamed later The Blue Marble.

Earth from Apollo 17

It seems odd that you would have to be almost 50 years old to remember the last trip to the moon. We have in no way given up on space missions - witness the latest unmanned robotic explorers of Mars and Mercury (where ice has been discovered at the poles of the latter). The International Space Station is still in orbit and actively manned by astronauts from a host of countries. But space exploration seems to have aged rather poorly compared to those dynamic days of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. The Space Shuttles are now in museums where they join the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo 17 on its last mission to the moon. The U.S. is pinning its hopes for future space access on commercial vehicles to replace the retired Shuttle fleet.

While many Americans will remember December 7th for a far sadder event in 1941, I would rather remember it as the day we again reached towards the stars.

Post Script: Apollo 17 was the last mission for my fledgling aerospace engineering career. I had worked on the lunar experiments for the Apollo 12 to 17 missions. I returned to grad school and changed fields to bioengineering where opportunities seemed a little better. Sadly, I think I was right.

The Future of Telephones: The 1962 World's Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 03:02:00 +0000

We are always predicting the future, whether that future comes in the next week, the next decade, or the next century. Not surprisingly, we miss the mark when it comes to the fine points. The details are always harder to see through the heatwave of time. What is perhaps most surprising is that at times we get the broad outline more or less right.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw a video produced by AT&T for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. So how well did this short film of fifty years ago do in terms of its vision for the future? Check it out, the future of phones starts around the 4:50 mark:

The film was set in the world of the rotary-dial telephone. Every phone was owned by the Bell System. The up and coming technology of the future was (drumroll, please) the push-button phone! No more rotary dialing, just the speed and simplicity of tapping the buttons. Other new technologies on the telephoning horizon included features such as call-waiting, call-forwarding, and conference calling. It was even predicted that you could dial a number while you were away from home to turn on your air conditioner or your underground irrigation system. And where would you make such a call when away? In a telephone booth, of course!

The Ubiquitous Telephone Booth

There is always the temptation to chuckle at these past predictions of the future. They can seem naive and simplistic. What AT&T didn't see clearly in 1962 was the huge changes not only in technology but also in the business models that were going to turn their industry on its head. They couldn't foresee the government breakup of the company over concerns about its monopoly power. They couldn't foresee that phones would no longer be the property of the phone company but would become commodities purchased in electronics and discount stores. The future from the vantage point of 1962 certainly didn't include cordless phones and, most importantly, the future arrival of cellphones was completely invisible.

Not only did the rotary-dial phone disappear but shortly thereafter went the pay phone and even the phone booth. People used to want privacy for their phone calls. Now people chatter endlessly on their cellphones while walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant. But some things remain the same. They still use call-waiting, call-forwarding, and conference calling. People value new and better services.

The other major gap in Ma Bell's vision in 1962 was that the phone would morph from being a device strictly for talking and turn into a computer that you can carry in your pocket. I would guess that today's smart phones have more computational power than the entire 1962 switching system for a medium-sized city. And with Moore's Law still operating, smart phones have an ever more powerful future.

Lest we take too much pleasure at the expense of the folks of 1962, we are no better at looking into the future. There are, of course, plenty of futurists who predict that we will be wearing our computers embedded in our clothing and that everything will be digital and online everywhere 24/7. But in these projections we miss the unpredictability of our non-linear world. Things will certainly be very different in some very unpredictable ways. But what remains constant is that we will still want to connect. We will still need talk to those we love and those we whom we work. As AT&T's marketing slogan said in those days of fifty years ago, we will still want to "reach out and touch someone." How we will do that remains to be revealed to us. Whatever the answer, I guarantee it will be interesting.

1962

2012

The Curta Peppergrinder

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:51:00 +0000

I hate to admit it, but I came of age in the era of the slide rule. To be more precise, I had a Post Versalog that I proudly used throughout my undergraduate engineering days at the University of Michigan. No, I did not hang it on my belt nor did I have a pocket protector for my pens. Slide rules were just the tools of the trade if you were in a computationally-intensive academic discipline. I still have my slide rule in a box somewhere in the basement.

Just after I entered grad school in 1974, electronic calculators made their debut. HP lead the way but they were expensive and a lot of engineers didn't like the RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) method of computing. I had a Texas Instruments SR-51 programmable calculator. I still have that, too. Why? I knew that they would eventually become iconic symbols of a computing past that was rapidly evolving.

It surprised me to learn recently of an even earlier iconic mechanical calculator called a Curta. I had never heard of it or even seen a picture of one but a little digging on the internet last night brought a wealth of information about this little marvel.

The Curta was developed in Europe around the time of World War II by an engineer named Curt Herzstark. Herzstark was born in 1902 and had a natural aptitude for engineering. Herzstark's father owned a mechanical calculator company in Vienna before the war and Curt worked for the company. When the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938 under the so-called Anschluss, the factory was converted to making military supplies. Still, things remained relatively stable until 1943 when the war started going very badly for the Nazis on many fronts. Curt Herztark was arrested for being sympathetic to Jews (he was half-Jewish himself even though he was raised as a Christian). He eventually was sent to the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. He was assigned to work as a slave laborer in an adjacent factory. His engineering talents were recognized and he was put to work in the office doing design work. While there, he told the factory supervisors of patents he had been awarded in 1938 for a miniature hand-cranked mechanical calculator that could perform the four basic math functions very efficiently. Intrigued, his supervisors set him to work to perfect his design. The camp commandant planned to give one to Hitler as a gift of appreciation after Germany won the war.

Herzstark set to work immediately and produced a complete set of working drawings by the time Buchenwald was liberated by the Allies on April 11, 1945. With the Soviets on the verge of occupying that part of Germany, Herzstark fled to Austria. He immediately began to seek funding to build his design. Eventually, he found support from the Prince of Liechtenstein who was trying to establish a post-war manufacturing base in his tiny country.

Curt Herzstark produced his namesake calculator (Curta means offspring of Curt) from 1947 to 1970 when, like the slide rule, mechanical devices gave way to electronic calculators. The Curta was nicknamed the Pepper-mill for its obvious resemblance to that culinary device.

Curta's were expensive ($125 to $175) but very compact and highly accurate. Their size made them popular with airplane pilots and rally race car navigators. Over 140,000 of the devices were made during their heyday. You can still find them on eBay for prices in the one to five thousand dollar range.

Curt Herzstark died on October 27, 1988 in Vienna. He had lived through some of the worst of times to see his ideas validated and embraced by a world rapidly moving forward towards high-speed computation. If I were ever so lucky as to find one of these little beauties for a reasonable price, it would join my Post Versalog and SR-51 as a reminder of what came before.

How To Build a Steam Locomotive

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:08:00 +0000

It seems that manufacturing and craftsmanship are reported in some quarters to be disappearing from the the scene. It is true that many manufacturing jobs have been automated. But beyond automation, some crafts and some products seem to be just plain extinct. The steam locomotive falls into this category. There are certainly a few old locomotives puffing around railroad museums and there are even a few Class A steam locomotives, like the Union Pacific's No. 844 , still operational enough to remind us of why past generations had a love affair with the steam locomotive.

But how do you build such a machine? Virtually every locomotive was a custom made machine. It took many skilled engineers and craftsman to create the design and fabricate the components. Parts were made in foundries or forges from molten iron and steel. Holes and surfaces were shaped to exacting tolerances on vertical mills, shapers, and lathes. Assembly was done in giant erection shops with huge overhead cranes. It was an impressive operation.

I recently came across a film clip on YouTube that shows what went into building a steam locomotive in 1937. The setting is England but the operations were the same everywhere. In the video, you can see a very interesting combination of controlled force and high craftsmanship. In every step you see skilled people working together to build a complex machine. I don't want to read too much into this but I would hazard a guess that they also felt considerable pride in their work.

But this is not the end of the story. In the early 2000s, a group of railroad buffs decided to build the first steam locomotive to be crafted in England in fifty years. The locomotive, a Peppercorn Class A1 (named for the designer), was rolled out of the Darlington Locomotive Works on August 1, 2008.

I find it encouraging that the skills needed to build this magnificent machine have not disappeared completely. I think the men who worked on Number 6207 seventy years earlier would have been pleased to see their work carried forward.

This is, after all, the very definition of craft - a skill learned through apprenticing to a master. When the chain is broken, that craft is in danger of disappearing. Sometimes, it can be resurrected by relearning the old ways. As an example, I think of another video I saw recently of a man in Wilmington, North Carolina who painstakingly relearned how to make tintype photographs.

Why resurrect old skills and crafts in the digital age? I think we need them to connect us to our heritage. We need to feel a part of a continuity of technology that spans more than our hyper-connected, online world. While all things digital now dominate our consciousness, the undeniable presence of our physical technology provides an anchor to the real world. And, ironically, the descriptions for how to build a locomotive or create a tintype are most likely to be archived in digital formats somewhere on the World Wide Web. And so it goes.

Credits:

I found the video for A Study in Steel on The Old Motor.

Technology: The Central Issue in the Election

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:55:00 +0000

It's the morning after. The people have spoken and the people say they can't agree on either who should lead them or on what the real issues are. By a narrow slice of the popular vote (but a strong majority in the electoral vote), President Obama returns to the White House for a second term. But looking at the Red State - Blue State map of the country shows just how differently people feel in broad swaths of the country.

The drumbeat of this last election was jobs and the middle class - the economy. But that is only the symptom. One cause of our distress is the unstoppable forward flow of technology. Technology gives us our prosperity but (reflecting the economist Joseph Schumpeter's famous phrase) it also brings creative destruction. The unemployed (and worse, the unemployable) might argue that destruction is never creative.

Technology raises our standard of living. We enjoy the benefits of the technology every day of our lives. Most of us love new technology. We are willing to stand in line for hours to get the newest iPhone or iPad. We love our DVRs, our internet, our reliable cars, and our ATMs. We notice the loss immediately when there is a temporary power blackout. When a big natural disaster occurs, as just happened with Hurricane Sandy, we are literally off the grid. We can no longer function without the technologies that support us.

Technology, like time, moves in only one direction: forward. Older technologies are replaced with better versions or are made entirely obsolete by new technologies. It is that change that brings so much disruption. People whose skills are based on an old technology lose their jobs. They don't have the skills for the economy enabled by the new technology. It is not that they need to somehow just get retrained to do the same job using a little newer technology. The old job is gone forever, replaced by technology. It's the same story whether you think of a manufacturing job now automated by robotics or a bank teller replaced by a computer-enabled ATM. The bank teller can't take a computer class and compete with the ATM. Technology has simply wiped out the need for the human teller.

And so this election which seemed on the surface to be about jobs and the economy is really about how to cope with changing technology. How do people find work in the new economy when they lack the skills needed? The answer is always the same: re-education. People need to get themselves retooled just as their former workplaces have been retooled. This is by no means easy. Most people have mortgages, children to support, bills to pay. How do you they gain new skills when they can barely put food on the table? I believe this is one of the most important issues we face in the coming decades. Because technology isn't going to take a breather. It isn't going to stop at this point and say in effect, "Time-out to catch up." The engine of creative destruction will continue to inexorably plow forward. The single skill that everyone should learn is the ability to continually re-educate ourselves. Obsolescence is not a theoretical discussion. It is critical to putting food on the table.

Technology contributed to this election in more subtle ways than simply displacing workers with automation. The very nature of new, computerized technology allowed financial institutions to play fast and loose with our money in unprecedented new ways. The result was the financial meltdown. But that same technology provides the ability to attract foreign investments and allows more effective competition in global markets. But if you just lost your home to a mortgage foreclosure, foreign investments seem irrelevant. It feels like an economic problem, not a technology issue.

So where do we look for relief from problems that are enabled by new technology? Still newer technology will bring some relief but also new problems. We will need everyone to understand these issues more clearly. We will need the means to continually redevelop job skills. We will need better schools for our children that prepare them for this exponentially-changing world. We will need more ways to retool in mid-life. We will need the leadership at every level - business, government, community - that helps us to manage the inevitable changes ahead.

While I might sound naively utopian, I believe that it can be done. Why? Because we have done this over and over again in our history. Think of the changes that occurred when manufacturing was first industrialized in the 19th century. Think of the impact of electrification, the automobile, and the internet. All these have made our lives immeasurably better. But they made many skills obsolete. We don't need telegraph operators or buggy whip makers. We have managed our way somehow through the changes. We will continue to do so. It has never been easy. But I believe in technology and I believe even more, I believe in people's ability to adapt.

Machines and Nightmares

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:56:00 +0000

I recently finished reading a riveting memoir by Agnès Humbert entitled, Résistance, A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France. This book is a diary of Humbert's experiences from the time the Nazis invaded France in 1940 to the end of World War II. Humbert was an intelligent woman who was employed at one of the museums in Paris at the time of the invasion. At the age of 43, she decided to work with some trusted friends to produce an underground newspaper of the same name as the book, Résistance. The little group of a dozen friends lasted about a year until it was betrayed by an unknown informer. The Nazis executed the men involved by firing squad and Humbert and several other women were convicted to five years of slave labor working in Nazi factories in Germany.

What does any of this have to do with technology? Humbert was assigned to work under the most horrifying conditions at a rayon factory in Krefeld, Germany. I will skip over the descriptions of the malnourishment, abuse, filth, and inhumane treatment at the hands of the Nazis to relate something she wrote while working at the factory. While pondering the inhumanity and total unpredictability of her situation at the hands of her captures, she remarked in August, 1942:

"I wonder - a worthy subject for meditation - what Descartes would have made of industrial machinery. What a subject for a philosopher! Not just the relationship between man and machine, and all the upheavals, material, moral and social that come in its wake, but simply the thoughts that sometimes come into your head when you are working at a machine. There's no tricking a machine; it's just not possible. A part out of alignment? Production immediately slows down. A loose screw? The whole machine seizes up. I like and admire the incorruptible integrity of the machine. With work done by hand there is always a little leeway, a margin of error, and any time lost can be made up with a little effort or improvisation; machinery, on the other hand, admits absolutely no possibility of inaccuracy or prevarication, is immune to all excuses, lies or flattery, Enduring, unswerving and fiercely tenacious, machines can teach men a marvelous lesson in integrity. The builders of the future, of our future, should take inspiration from man's handiwork, the Blessed Machine!"

I had to think about this for a bit because the machine she was describing was the spinning machine which extruded the viscous rayon pre-polymer through a very fine platinum minaret into an acid bath to form the thread. She had to work on this machine without any protection for her skin or eyes. The pre-polymer is extremely caustic to the skin. The acid is not only caustic but leads to blindness. The slave laborers were offered no protective clothing or gloves and had to work ten to twelve hour shifts even while Allied bombing raids were going on. She was a mass of sores and unable to even see for days at a time. How could she sing the praises of machinery? Because she desperately needed to experience something that had integrity.

Humboldt's countrymen in her opinion had totally lost their integrity in rolling over without fighting back against the Nazis. What kept her alive through her incarceration was a feeling of integrity - she would never bend or yield to her captors. She never cracked under interrogation by the Gestapo when they wanted information on her colleagues. She never once begged for mercy. She was one tough lady.

Humboldt survived the war. She was liberated by the U.S. Army while being held captive in April 1945. She stayed for a few months after her liberation and worked tirelessly, but fairly, to identify the true Nazis in the area that were trying to fade into the woodwork. She returned to France and lived for almost another twenty years, dying in 1963.

It still amazes me as I reread her words on machines that she could have been so lucid about such a subject in the middle of such horror. Having never worked with machines, I would have thought she would have hated them. Yet, she found something positive in them even under the worst of circumstances. I stand in awe. I would love to have met her.

You can get the book on Amazon. There is also a Kindle edition.

Fordlandia: Ford's Utopian Amazon Community

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 15:45:00 +0000

I just finished reading Greg Grandin's book, Fordlandia, The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City. Grandin is a good writer and he brings to life the story of Ford's attempt to build a model Midwestern town in the Amazon jungle. The rationale that Henry Ford gave to the world for investing in this ill-fated adventure was that he needed a steady supply of latex rubber. The real reasons, as Grandin makes clear, were far more complex.

In the 1920's, Henry Ford was hailed as one of the most influential businessmen in the country. He not only had created the Model T and the assembly line that built it, but he believed that a robust consumer economy depended upon a middle class that earned enough to have buying power. His Five Dollar workday was one of the major factors in building such a market of consumers.

Ford's massive operations, first at Highland Park and then at the River Rouge plant in Detroit, were models of efficiency. They were also models of how workers could be turned into cogs in a vast and dehumanizing industrial machine. Fordism, as it was called, was represented by the stopwatch and the check list. No detail was too mundane to not be improved and made more efficient. His vast industrial operations and those of other large corporations drew people to the cities seeking jobs with steady wages. Industrializing America was the nemesis of Rural America.

Ford was born and raised on a farm and he hated it. As soon as he could, he escaped to Detroit to find work in machine shops and later the Detroit Edison before turning his creative hand to automobiles. But as Ford's empire grew, his nostalgia for a simpler past also grew more important to him. To capture this disappearing America, Ford began collecting old machinery, tools, steam engines, pots and pans, sewing machines - anything that represented the past. He kept all his treasure in one of his warehouses at the Highland Park plant. Later, he started collecting whole buildings: Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, the Wright Brothers bicycle shop, homes of poets, country churches and schools - even his own family's farmhouse. He needed a place to put all this stuff. In 1929, he built Greenfield Village and the adjoining museum to house his collections.

Similarly, Ford began to build communities from scratch that were models of his vision of the right balance between industry and agriculture. Several of these were in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where lumbering and the sawmill provided the balancing arms of his vision. He thought he could use the same model to improve the Tennessee Valley, and he envisioned dams and hydroelectric stations that would supply him with power -- built next to new, idyllic communities that had the most modern schools, hospitals, and sewage plants. His dream for transforming the Tennessee Valley was thwarted by local and national politicians. Ironically, it would be those same politicians who later created Ford's vision themselves during the Great Depression with the formation of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

When latex shortages threatened the automobile industry, Ford decided he could kill two birds with one stone by building a model community in Brazil to tap and export latex rubber. The work began in 1928. By 1945, after building Fordlandia and later Belterra, the failed venture was handed over to the Brazilian government and Ford Motor Company left the Amazon forever. Grandin's book does a great job of explaining the missteps, naiveté, and bad luck that plagued the operation from beginning to end.

Ford was not the first, nor probably the last, to dream of creating his own vision of what a community should look like. Almost all of these visionary industrial communities have ended in failure. One of the most extensive was Pullman, Illinois. George Pullman built this model community to house his workers for his new railroad car workers. The town lasted barely ten years before it was brought down by labor strife. Like Fordlandia, one man's vision of what should happen was a far cry from what did happen.

Grandin, in his epilogue, sums up the issues well:

"Ford, the man who in the early 1910s helped unleash the power of industrialism to revolutionize human relations, spent most of the rest of his life trying to put the genie back in the bottle, to contain the disruption he himself let loose, only to be continually, inevitably thwarted. Born more from political frustration at home than from the need to acquire control over yet another raw material abroad, Fordlandia represents in crystalline form the utopianism that powered Fordism -- and by extension Americanism. It reveals the faith that a drive towards greater efficiency could be controlled and managed in such a way as to bring balance to the world and that technology itself, without the need for government planning, could solve whatever social problems arose from progress's advance. Fordlandia is a parable of arrogance. The arrogance, though, is not that Henry Ford thought he could tame the Amazon but that he believed that the forces of capitalism, once released, could still be controlled."

Arrogance, naiveté, hubris, utopianism -- you might think we would know better by now. But in some way, I admire Ford's efforts even as I cringe at the outcomes. Ford was a complex man who could easily be both admired and despised. He legitimately earned both. But to give up on building dreams such as those that Ford dreamed is perhaps to give up on dreaming at all. If I had the choice, I would take the dreamer.

Curiosity: The Rover

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:58:00 +0000

"The top of the atmosphere down to the surface... it takes us seven minutes. It takes fourteen minutes or so for the signal from the spacecraft to make it to earth - that's how far Mars is away from us. So when we first get word that we've touched the top of the atmosphere, the vehicle has been alive or dead on the surface for at least seven minutes."

- Adam Steltzner, EDL Engineer

By now, we all know that the new Mars Rover, Curiosity, is safely on the surface of the Red Planet. But I think it is worth taking a minute to marvel at the complexity of simply getting something the size of a small car successfully onto the surface of Mars.

It begins with a launch vehicle to get the massive payload off the earth's surface and into a trajectory to intersect with a planet over 350 million miles away. It continues with getting the probe into orbit and then, most amazing of all, landing something this big as gently as you might have your car lowered to the service shop floor after an oil change. And the kicker in all this: it has to be done automatically with no intervention from earth. The distances involved are just too large to have any real-time control.

NASA and Cal-Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the nerve center for this adventure. They produced a wonderful simulation video of what was involved in getting Curiosity onto the surface. You can watch it here:

Why spend a billion dollars to put a one-ton rover on the surface of Mars? The name says it all - Curiosity. When we stop being curious, we stop living. We stop being the best we can be as humans. Curiosity is going to bring us many more surprises in the coming weeks and months. The payback will be worth the money.

So here's to the engineers! Let's take a moment to stop and think about what they just did. Simply amazing!

View From the ISS by Knate Myers

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:07:00 +0000

Maybe you've seen already this recently released video by Knate Myers on Vimeo. He took photo footage shot by the astronauts on the International Space Station and set it to the music of John Murphy's Adagio in D Minor, the soundtrack of the movie, Sunshine.

The imagery is mind-blowing. Anything I might say about it would be a cliche. For best enjoyment, watch it in full-screen mode using the HTML5 video rather than the Flash video. At least on my machine, it played smoother. Enjoy!

View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

Are We Losing Our Ability to Fix Things?

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 02:10:00 +0000

I read Louis Uchitelle's essay in Sunday's New York Times entitled, A Nation That's Losing Its Toolbox. Mr. Uchitelle's piece laments what he perceives to be the loss of the ability of the average American to work with his or her hands to fix things - whether things around the house, or the family car, or even on the job. He describes legions of Home Depot shoppers who need in-store training on how to fix a faucet or install a replacement window. He equates this loss to the diminishing ability of Americans to innovate through a hands-on, we-can-fix-anything attitude. Mr. Uchitelle believes that this loss shows up "in the wistful popularity of books like 'Shop Class as Soulcraft' by Matthew M. Crawford." [I read Mr. Crawford's book a couple of years ago and I thought it mostly a scree against white-collar workers.]

In the same issue of the Times was a second article entitled, How a Cellphone's Case Can Imitate Its Maker, by Randall Stross. The article delves into the differences in the difficulties of repairing smart phones and ePad devices depending on the manufacturer. In his column, Mr. Stross focused on a web-based company called iFixit which sells online manuals and tools to change cellphone batteries, replace cracked touch screens, and make other repairs to our electronic paraphernalia. As a bad example Mr. Stross cites the iPhone 4 which is put together with special screws specially designed by Apple to be unremovable without a special screwdriver. Enter iFixit which sells not only said screwdriver but replacement screws that work with the ordinary variety of torquing tools. iFixit calls their product the "Liberation Kit". Their claim is that anyone can replace an iPhone battery in less than five minutes.

I was struck by the completely different attitudes in these two articles. One laments the loss of handyman capabilities while the other celebrates that we can indeed do-it-ourselves. Which is the truer picture? I would suggest that the lack of fix-it knowledge is a least as much a function of manufacturers designing products that can't be easily repaired as it is that we are losing our desire to fix things. Take the automobile as a prime example. Most men (I'm not being sexist, it just seemed to work this way) used to know how to change the oil in their cars and if pressed could replace the spark plugs, points, air filters, and maybe even the brakes. Today, the entire motor is hidden under a one-piece shroud that envelops virtually the whole engine compartment making access nigh-on impossible. The engine is carefully monitored and controlled by several computers which are no longer accessible or adjustable with the wrenches and screwdrivers found in most toolboxes. We now are informed of the status of the inner workings of the engine only when we get the dreaded Check Engine Light illuminated on the instrument panel. Even then, you need an engine analyzer to read the computer error codes to see what might be bothering your ailing vehicle.

But despite my experience, given the tools and the knowledge, a lot of people are willing to give some reasonable repairs a try. Not everyone, of course. Not everyone fixed their cars even in the days of the Model T. But I would argue that most people with a little encouragement will try to repair things that seem within the knowledge of someone with a normal amount of mechanical aptitude. We like to fix things. The reason fix-it shops have disappeared is not because we don't like fixing things, it is because most things are not designed to be fixed. Open the average DVD player these days and you find a box with one electronics board that does everything, some injection molded plastic parts that are ultrasonically welded together and a cheap optical laser to read the DVD. None of this can be repaired if it has a problem. The only solution is to junk it.

It used to be different. When radios and tvs had vacuum tubes, even drug stores had so-called tube testers that allowed a homeowner to check a tube to see if it needed replacing and sold the tubes on the spot! There was a company called Sam's that used to sell extensive repair manuals and schematics for every radio and television set made (all in the USA, by the way). Shop manuals for cars were commonly sold to car owners. Most home owners had at least a few books around on DIY subjects.

So I'm not buying Mr. Uchitelle's argument that people just don't seem to know how to do anything these days. Give them the tools and a little instruction and people can do some amazing things for themselves. To prove my point, I would refer Mr. Uchitelle to the growing popularity of "maker fairs" and magazines such as Make which celebrate a whole new generation of DIYers. The internet is bursting with websites that teach people how to do everything from changing an iPhone battery to repairing a furnace. I'm not worried about our hands-on, can-do attitudes going away any time soon. We are still a nation of doers.

The Automatic (Rail) Road Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 19:13:00 +0000

As I wrote in my last blog, machines that can lay an entire road in one operation are now a reality. I just came across a video of such a machine.

The video below shows a multi-part machine which lays high-speed railroad tracks. The video was shot in Europe but a similar machine is being used to lay tracks on the high-speed rail line between St. Louis and Chicago. According to the source that I saw, these are the only two such machines that exist in the world. It's quite an operation. Give it a look:

[A "Hat's Off" to my sister-in-law, Peggy, for bringing this to my attention.]

In 1958, Disney Imagines the Future of the Highway

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 19:26:00 +0000

As long as I seem to be on an automotive futures theme, I want to draw your attention to part of a Disney television production from 1958, entitled Magic Highway USA. The show was part of the Wonderful World of Disney series, Most of this program explored the history of the highway in the United States. But the last ten minutes looked to the future. You can watch the whole thing at the link about or just the last nine minutes here:

I love these old predictions of the future. Almost all of them have people flying around in their personal helicopters or living in some undersea colony. The buildings all look like they came out of the Jetsons. But just like in the Futurama exhibit that I wrote about a couple of entries ago, some of the predictions turn out to be remarkably accurate. Others turn out to be true but are embodied in some way other than that described. And of course, there are the "dead wrong" predictions. So how did the Magic Highway USA predictions turn out? Here's a list of what was in our futures, circa 1958:

Dead Wrong Predictions:

- Multi-colored highway lanes to give motorists a color-coded path to their destination
- Radar screens to allow drivers to see in poor visibility
- Fog-eliminating devices to clear the roadway
- Atomic reactors to melt tunnels through mountains in a single pass
- Cantilevered highways hung from the side of mountains
- Automatic servicing of the car in the homeowner's garage
- Tandem vehicles that separate into parts for different destinations
- Special highways for new forms of vehicles (e.g., tubular highways)
- Individual parking spot for your car in your office at work
- Massive parking "cylinders" at shopping malls instead of parking lots
- Highway "elevators" to lift cars up sheer cliffs
- Gas turbine-powered automobiles
- Atomic-powered automobiles
- Jet engine-powered automobiles
- Cars that convert from highway vehicles to cabin cruisers

Nothing much surprising in this first list. This is the usual science fiction view of the future. What was more interesting to me was the number of predictions that turned out to be true, even if they were accomplished in a slightly different way. Have a look:

More-or-Less Correct Predictions:

- Larger, simpler highway signs that can be easily read at high speeds
- Roads specifically designed for better visibility
- Electronic navigation controls (at least there are now onboard navigation and traffic monitoring GPS systems)
- Rear view mirrors are television cameras (back-up cameras are becoming common)
- Helicopter rescue of traffic accident victims
- Integrated road building machinery that can lay down whole roadways at one pass
- Prefabricated bridges and overpasses
- Form-in-place concrete structures, such as bridges
- Wider, faster expressways that extend the areas from which people can commute to work
- A nation crisscrossed by a network of super highways
- Communities that are built around the design of the freeways for better access and commuting
- Preprogrammed route selectors (think GPS systems)
- Electronics that drive the car to its destination (not here yet but Google is working on a driverless car)
- Business conferences on video screens (... at least for a passenger)
- Family entertainment systems in the car (think DVD and game counsels)
- Ability to know your location on a synchronized electronic map (GPS again)
- Office buildings that combine multi-level parking and office facilities
- Moving sidewalks (at least in airports and convention centers)
- Solar powered automobiles (experimental cars are here. Production cars? Hmmm).
- Air-conditioned routes across hot deserts (in-car AC is now virtually standard).
- Roads over subfreezing mountains (high-speed roads over subfreezing terrain are common in the northern parts of the country)
- Vehicle travel under the ocean (the Chunnel between the UK and France pops to mind)

Like most technology visions, this program also had its moments where it lapsed into the rhapsodic:

"These giant arteries will link together all the nations and help to create a better understanding among the peoples of the world. As in the past the highway will continue to play a vital role in the progress of civilization. It will be our magic carpet to new hopes, new dreams, and a better way of life for the future!"

Have you ever noticed how technology (whether embodied in better highways or in the internet) is always predicted to improve the relationships between peoples? There is some truth in these euphoric predictions but there is an equally true and opposite reality: technology creates frictions between the peoples of the world. Technology has never been a panacea. And predicting the future of technology remains one of our most difficult challenges.

The Horseless Age

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Mon, 28 May 2012 15:55:00 +0000

In my last post, I wrote about Futurama, an exhibit sponsored by General Motors at the 1939 World's Fair. Futurama was Norman Bel Geddes vision of an America of 1960, fully connected by interstate highways. That vision became reality.

But visionaries have always been with us. I recently came across an editorial written in 1896 in the first publication that exclusively focused on the automobile. The magazine was called The Horseless Age and the publisher was a man named E.P. Ingersoll. He was a tireless reporter and promoter of all things automotive. In the fifth issue of Volume 1 of his journal, he penned an editorial with the very sedate title of "Effects on Land Values and the Distribution of Population." But what he wrote was an insightful analysis of things to come.

The first thing that caught my eye when I read his piece was that it was the trolley and bicycle that began the movement of people to the suburbs - even before the advent of the automobile. When this editorial was written, there were essentially zero automobile companies in the U.S. Any cars that were being purchased were imported from France and then only by the wealthy. It was this same trend to the suburbs that was illuminated in the Futurama exhibit forty-five years later.

Ingersoll clearly understood the impact of transportation systems on land values. What Ingersoll didn't state was that it was the cost of transportation and not just its availability that drove land values. I think of the falling home prices today in the outer exurbs as people respond to high fuel costs by trying to move closer to the urban centers. The problem, of course, is that their homes are worth less than they owe on them, essentially trapping them in the exurbs.

Finally, I think Ingersoll deserves credit for not mincing words about congestion in the cities. He understood that the poorest people in the cities could never afford their own cars and hence would remain locked in the slums. Today, the poor are still locked in the slums of cities and run-down neighborhoods. They might have a car but if they do, it is usually very old and in very poor condition. Their upward mobility is close to zero.

Ingersoll's editorial isn't that long. I repeat it here verbatim:

"One of the most interesting phases of speculation called up by the motor movement relates to its probable effect on land values and distribution of population.

In the aggregate the constant tendency of land values is to increase as population increases, and there is no reason to believe that this tendency, now very strong in this country, will be checked for some time to come. Every mechanical improvement introduced adds to land values, which may be considered as the capitalized value of civilization.

But while the general tendency to increase will in all human probability remain unchanged, local changes are bound to result from the general introduction of motor vehicles as the have resulted from the introduction of other improvements in locomotion.

The trolley car has opened the suburban property, and by connecting rural towns has made populous streets where before were farmers' houses.

The bicycle has had a similar effect upon land values, pushing the line of possible residence near business centers further out, and hence making such outlying sites more desirable and more valuable.

The slight depreciation which these new agencies of locomotion have caused in the case of land devoted to industries injuriously affected by them is but a sign of the stimulating effect in other directions. The bicycle and the trolley depressed the prices of certain grades of horses and this has undoubtedly depressed the values of some lands devoted to raising such grade of horses, though this depression is apt to be quickly relieved by putting the land to more profitable uses.

Country hotel sites have in many sections been given additional value from the fact that they are frequented by bicycle riders seeking rest and refreshments on their outings.

The general adoption of the motor vehicle will intensify these tendencies. It will make suburbs easier of access, improve the trade of country hotels in many places, and still further depress the business of horse-raising. Much of the land now used for horse-raising and growing horse feed will in process of time find other uses more in harmony with the trend of progress.

The establishing of new factories will stimulate the growth of population locally, as has been observed in the case of the bicycle industry, but there is not the slightest hope that the motor vehicle will relieve the congestion of cities; for the congested districts are inhabited by the very poor, who cannot afford to buy a vehicle of any kind."

Note: The Horseless Age remains in publication today but its name was changed around World War I to Automotive Industries. You can read all the early volumes of the magazines on Google Books.

Our Futurama

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:08:00 +0000

The lines formed as soon as the gates opened. It was the premier attraction. People were willing to wait for hours in the hot summer sun to see it. Many saw it multiple times during their visits. When they finally got into the building and entered one of the moving cars, the magic began.

Exhibit Building. Note the lines.

I might be talking about the iconic ride, Spaceship Earth, the geodesic-like sphere at Epcot in Disney World. It is the the ride that most captivates people in our modern-day version of a permanent "world's fair". But I am writing about General Motor's Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Futurama was the single most popular attraction at the fair by a large margin. People would wait for hours in the long snaking lines that wound up a curved ramp to finally enter the building through a deep-red slit in a towering wall. Huge letters, "G" and "M", defined the edges of the opening. Once inside, visitors would seat themselves in one of moving modules called "carry-go-rounds" that formed an endless loop slowly moving past the perimeter of the exhibit. Music and narration would emanate from a speaker in the back of each module, exquisitely timed to what the passengers were viewing.

Futurama was industrial and stage designer Norman Bel Geddes vision of what the United States would look like in the future of 1960. His vision was conveyed in a massive, 36,000 square-foot model of a city and countryside of that distant time 21 years in the future. The model contained over half a million individually-fabricated structures, a million trees, and fifty thousand vehicles. Viewers were, in essence, flying over the landscape at a low altitude and witnessing what they might look forward to in the years ahead.

Model city. The tall buildings are actually about four feet in height.

The central theme of Futurama was that a network of better roads and superhighways would provide for a transformation of the nation. The current dirty and congested cities and clogged local highways would be replaced by cities that were clean and accessible by multilane, limited-access highways. People would be able to live in green communities outside of the city and drive to work on modern roadways with higher speeds, better safety, and a minimum of congestion.

The Last Intersection

The last scene in this futuristic vision of 1960 was of a city intersection with multilevel roads and modernistic buildings. When the visitor left the carry-go-round and walked through the exit doors, they found themselves in a full-sized version of the same intersection they had seen in the model. The illusion must have been startling. Perhaps most startling of all was that the vision, in fact, came true. The superhighways that Norman Bel Geddes portrayed became our interstate highways and toll roads. The green spaces where people lived away from the cities became our suburbs. We might not have quite gotten there by 1960 but most of us finally did. And has it been the utopian vision described in Futurama? We would, of course, say no. But we are not the same people who looked at it from afar and saw it in sharp contrast to their own world of 1939.

We don't have world's fairs in this country any more. The last one was held in 1984 in New Orleans and it declared bankruptcy halfway through its six-month run. Maybe because of television and computer imagery we can no longer related to the seemingly-quaint idea of a physical model of the future. Dioramas to portray the world to come are expensive to build and go out of date quickly. Even Spaceship Earth at Epcot requires constant updating on what its vision of the future of communications looks like. But let's just imagine for a moment that we could hire someone like a Norman Bel Geddes of 2012 to build a Futurama of 2035. What would it look like? Would we see a better world ahead, as Futurama did, or would we see something much more worrisome?

I think we have become more cynical about the promise of technology. At least we no longer believe in the illusion that it can solve all our problems. More often that not, we see technology as creating as many problems as it removes. The internet and its attendant privacy issues are just the latest example of the duality of every new technology. It might be easy to fall into envying the untroubled vision of technology portrayed in the 1939 World's Fair but these people were not naive, either. They saw their world being torn apart by the beginnings of World War II. They didn't know yet about atomic bombs but they saw - correctly - a horrific conflict ahead. Yet most people interviewed at the fair were optimistic about the longer-term future of the country. The American Way promised a brighter future for themselves and their children. We might be tempted to disagree with them in our own times.

They say that hope dies last. I don't think we are anywhere near the end of hope but I do think we are facing some tremendous challenges in the coming decades and we have only just begun to see them looming ahead of us. I would suggest that we build a new Futurama that would be a marker to help us get a better fix on the future. I, for one, would even volunteer to help pay for it. And I would certainly stand in line for a few hours to see it.

Note: General Motors produced a film about Futurama, entitled "New Horizons". You can watch it on YouTube below. It runs about 23 minutes but is worth the time.

Professionals

noreply@blogger.com (Gregg McPherson) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:50:00 +0000

I am on a diet trying to shed a few of those extra pounds that so insidiously creep up on us as we age. I haven't had so much as a cookie in three weeks. Why, then, am I watching a documentary entitled, The Kings of Pastry (a 2009 film by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker)? Am I eating vicariously? Beyond the scrumptious-looking treats, the film raised an interesting question in my mind.

The premise of the film is the desire of French pastry chefs to earn the coveted title of "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" - or MOF, for short - that is the premiere achievement for French pastry chefs. Every four years, a competition takes place in France where the best pastry chefs are invited to spend three days in a peer-judged event. The results will determine if they will be allowed to claim the appellation of MOF and wear the tricolors of France on their chef's jacket collar. It is considered to be the pinnacle of the profession and pastry chefs have been known to compete for decades to try to win entry into the select group.

The competition is grueling. Three days of entering the kitchen at the crack of dawn and being there for ten hours or more without a break, even for lunch. These chefs are not just producing little creme puffs or eclairs. Their efforts produce sculptural works of art in sugar. They might work for a day on one piece only to have it shatter into a million sweet fragments when they try to move the sculpture to the display area. The competition is intense.

The film got me to thinking about professionalism and pride in your work. I find it interesting that where these sorts of competitions exist to identify the "best-of-the-best", you can always find a sense of professional pride in whatever occupation is involved. Recognition comes from an elite cadre of your peers who judge whether you are good enough to join them in the Inner Circle. You receive the appellation and you wear it as visible evidence that you are in this select group. Others outside the profession may have no idea what any of this means but your peers know and you are held in high regard. Most of all, you know yourself to be at the top of your game.

Are there similar sorts of recognition in science and technology? Yes and no. The most prestigious national groups in the U.S. for science and technology are the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Technology. These are mostly recognition for academic achievement. There is the Presidential National Medal of Technology and Innovation which is granted to individuals and groups that have made significant contributions to U.S. inventions and innovations. But none of these gets at the sort of thing I was thinking about. Is there ever a peer-reviewed competition to determine the best, say, airline pilots, truck drivers, bridge builders, or software programmers? My guess is that there is something in each of these fields. Do they get to claim a visible recognition of their stature? Are there names known to their peers? In France with such a strong culture surrounding food and wine, it seems natural to honor chefs and vintners. In our country, so based on commercial success, it seems that the salary or the position in the organization suffice as recognition.

What might happen if such recognition was started for occupations that don't provide recognition at the moment? Would the whole occupational area rise in its performance if there was, say, a Master of Postal Clerks or Master of Welding? (There is such a thing, by the way, as a Master of Wine for wine tasters and it has exactly the effect I am writing about). I doubt that we will ever get a Master of Fast Food or a Master of Greeters at Walmart. But maybe this helps to separate what are jobs from those that can rightly be called professions.

Food for thought (sorry, I couldn't help the pun).