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Date:         Fri, 2 Jul 2010 21:17:07 -0700
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Pesky Oil Leak(was...now fully friday)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

OK, here's another in the same vein as the slide rule/abacus ideas...

How about the way navigating has changed in recent times? Back in the slide rule era they came up with a system to position one's self on the earth called LORAN...Kinda like a slide rule thingy...but we quickly advanced on to the GPS system.

Back about 25 years ago the engineers at Porsche AG and VW were building cars by hand and using slide rules....Mariners and even airplane pilots were using sextants to measure the angle of the sun off the horizon to find out where they were....Accurate as long as you knew the exact time and the quality of your instrument and your skill at using it was good...Ususally you could be accruate to a few miles, +/-.... We backed all that up with Radio direction beacons and other surface navigation devices...I still see every day all the "range markers" along the Columbia River where I live...If you keep the markers lined up, visually, one over the other, you know you are on the correct course.....somewhere...But even a cheap-o GPS will now tell you accruatly within a few feet of exactly where you are and which way to point to get to where you want to go.....

Now, I have this little $200 widget that is about half an oz and mounts on the handle bar of my bike, or even on my wrist....You move the bike back and forth under yourself at a stop signal and this little device detects and reports your change of position....In-effing- credible! Don Hanson On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Scott Daniel - Turbovans < scottdaniel@turbovans.com> wrote:

> Wiki has a lot on it.. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus > > from all over the place, not just Asian. > > I like that about the factor of ten error being extra penalized, re the > aircraft. > I think engineers only 'get close' too often. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dave Mcneely" <mcneely4@COX.NET> > To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM> > Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 7:02 PM > Subject: Re: Pesky Oil Leak > > > ---- Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM> wrote: >> >> the tricky part for me was keeping track of the decimal place. Getting >>> the >>> number was easy. >>> >> >> My freshman physics instructor, unlike a good many other instructors I >> knew over the years, deducted extra rather than less for a power of ten >> error. His rationale, explained to a young man who complained, was that >> with a power of ten error, you crashed the plane, rather than it just >> being hard to fly. >> >> now tell me ...is 'abacus' a Latin word ? >>> seems like it would be, yet the abacus is an oreintal invention I >>> believe. >>> >> >> 'Cordin to my dictionary, the word is Latin, adapted from a Greek word, >> which in turn had adapted that word from Hebrew. >> >> The device has been historically important in Oriental cultures, but I >> suspect it had parallel development in many places. >> >> David McNeely >> >


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