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October 29th 03, 06:29 AM

In article ,
(Hans K0HB) writes:

Then, as the giant asteroid was to dinosaurs, overnight the $9.95
pocket calculator killed the slide rule. Despite it's ubiquity and
utter simplicity the mighty slide rule went extinct in less than a
decade! Perhaps somewhere, in a backward company in a backward
country
without sand from which to make silicon chips, a group of stalwart
engineers still treasure their Pickett or K+E slipsticks, and still
require a practical examination, down to the third significant digit,
of an engineers proficiency, and whether they actually could explain
the difference between the CIF and DIF scales.

Perhaps some amateur mathematicians still are proficient on slide
rules
(after all, they haven't been outlawed!). I bet they even hold speed
and
accuracy contests at a nostalgic "Slippers" convention each spring in
Akron, Ohio. Led by the scratchy but firm voices of their oldest club
members, Jim 'Bentupcursor' Nichols and Larry Elscale, they close each
convention by quoting the 1940's fight song of that bastion of
wood-assisted math, Cal Tech:

"E-to-the-x du dx, E-to-the-x dx,
Cotan secant tangent sine,
three point one four one five nine.
Square root, cube root, QED
Slipstick, slide rule, Hooray! CT!"

The next SLIPS newsletter duly reports the resolution of the IEEE BoD
to
gain legislation to include slide-rule competency testing as a
requisite
to all engineering degrees, except those seeking 2-year Stickless
Technician degrees. Regular Technicians will require 5CPM (Calculation
Per Minute) exams, BSEE will require 13CPM, and MSEE will require a
20CPM exam.

On another front, when I first became involved in amateur radio, Morse
code was the one absolutely necessary communications mode used by
every
ham. It was simple, uncomplicated, easy to use (after some period of
rather tedious practice) and delightfully low tech. It was the
communications mode-of-choice for over three generations.

Then, as the giant asteroid was to dinosaurs, overnight..........

:-)

Pity that the northeastern USA membership organization still
thinks it is the tyrannosaurus rex of radio when all it is is a little
lizard in an ancient back yard of morsemanship.

LHA.

October 29th 03, 03:13 PM

(Len Over 21) wrote

Pity that the northeastern USA membership organization still
thinks it is the tyrannosaurus rex of radio when all it is is a little
lizard in an ancient back yard of morsemanship.

The snarly Una-basher speaks again. He must have been scared
(scarred?) by an ARRL diamond when he was a baby.

ARRL is in fact very California-centric.

There are more W6 ARRL members than any other call area.
Two of the fifteen ARRL Divisions are in California.
Ten of the seventy ARRL Sections are in California.

73, de Hans, K0HB
--
http://home.earthlink.net/~k0hb

October 29th 03, 09:24 PM

In article ,
(Hans K0HB) writes:

(Len Over 21) wrote

Pity that the northeastern USA membership organization still
thinks it is the tyrannosaurus rex of radio when all it is is a little
lizard in an ancient back yard of morsemanship.

The snarly Una-basher speaks again. He must have been scared
(scarred?) by an ARRL diamond when he was a baby.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, you have to quit renting tapes of "Exorcist,"
ancient mariner. :-)

"Independence Day" is more your style. :-)

ARRL is in fact very California-centric.

There are more W6 ARRL members than any other call area.
Two of the fifteen ARRL Divisions are in California.
Ten of the seventy ARRL Sections are in California.

Ancient mariner, the ARRL Internet pages originate in the
northeast corner of the USA, diagonally oppoite California.
They couldn't be any more anti-west if they tried.

There are more licensed radio amateurs in California than
any other state because there are more US citizens in
California than any other state (one out of eight
Americans live here). The Pacific states are the center for
U. S. aerospace and electronics. "Silicon Valley" didn't
arise out any need for improved morse proficiency in radio.
Tektronix didn't start up to show RF envelopes to amateurs
and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their place to
make good electronic instruments...for laboratories...only
much later did H-P evolve to more things.

Good luck on your study of voice-modulated spark
transmitters.

LHA

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