My question is, what is an “confined induction loop area”? Does that mean you have to surround your building with an antenna?
Pocket-Sized Radio Used in Private Paging System
Private and individual paging of personnel in plants and offices is possible with Motorola’s pocket-sized “Handie-Talkie.” Weighing only 10 ounces and slightly larger than a package of king-size cigarettes, the set is carried on the person. Its use eliminates the need for public-address type paging and loud call devices such as bells.
A typical paging system, using the “Handie-Talkie,” consists of a selector console with individual buttons for key personnel, and an FM transmitter that radiates alerting tones and voice messages within a confined induction loop area. The receiver is powered by a 4-volt mercury battery and is free from the noise interference common to many industrial establishments. Up to several hundred persons can be paged individually. (Motorola Communications and Electronics, Inc., 4501 Augusta Blvd., Chicago 51, 111.).
This is the third in a series of 5 articles I’ve scanned from an amazing 1952 issue of Scientific American about Automatic Control. Discussing automatic machine tools, feedback loops, and the role of computers in manufacturing and information theory, these are really astounding articles considering the time in which they were written.
THE ROLE OF THE COMPUTER
The multifarious control loops of a fully automatic factory must be gathered into one big loop. This can best be done by means of a digital computing machine
by Louis N. Ridenour
IF THE thermostat is a prime elementary example of the principle of automatic control, the computer is its most sophisticated expression. The thermostat and other simple control mechanisms, such as the automatic pilot and engine-governor, are specialized devices limited to a single function. An automatic pilot can control an airplane but would be helpless if faced with the problem of driving a car. Obviously for fully automatic control we must have mechanisms that simulate the generalized abilities of a human being, who can operate the damper on a furnace, drive a car or fly a plane, set a rheostat to control a voltage, work the throttle of an engine, and do many other things besides. The modern computer is the first machine to approach such general abilities.
Computer is really an inadequate name for these machines. They are called computers simply because computation is the only significant job that has so far been given to them. The name has somewhat obscured the fact that they are capable of much greater generality. When these machines are applied to automatic control, they will permit a vast extension of the control art— an extension from the use of rather simple specialized control mechanisms, which merely assist a human operator in doing a complicated task, to over-all controllers which will supervise a whole job. They will be able to do so more rapidly, more reliably, more cheaply and with just as much ingenuity as a human operator.
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This is the first in a series of 5 articles I’ve scanned from an amazing 1952 issue of Scientific American about Automatic Control. It discusses automatic machine tools, feedback loops, the role of computers in manufacturing and information theory. These are really astounding articles considering the time in which they were written, plus they have some great pictures (not this one so much, but the others).
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
AUTOMATIC CONTROL
An introduction to seven articles about self-regulating machines, which represent a scientific and technological revolution that will powerfully shape the future of man
by Ernest Nagel
AUTOMATIC CONTROL is not a new thing in the world. Self-regulative mechanisms are an inherent feature of innumerable processes in nature, living and non-living. Men have long recognized the existence of such mechanisms in living forms, although, to be sure, they have often mistaken automatic regulation for the operation of some conscious design or vital force. Even the deliberate construction of self-regulating machines is no innovation: the history of such devices goes back at least several hundred years.
Nevertheless, the preacher’s weary cry that there is nothing new under the sun is at best a fragment of the truth. The general notion of automatic control may be ancient, but the formulation of its principles is a very recent achievement. And the systematic exploitation of these principles—their subtle theoretical elaboration and far-reaching practical application—must be credited to the 20th century. When human intelligence is disciplined by the analytical methods of modern science, and fortified by modern material resources and techniques, it can transform almost beyond recognition the most familiar aspects of the physical and social scene. There is surely a profound difference between a primitive recognition that some mechanisms are self-regulative while others are not, and the invention of an analytic theory which not only accounts for the gross facts but guides the construction of new types of systems.
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Normally I don’t post articles without pictures, but this one just floored me. This little blurb from 53 years ago perfectly sums up the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature
Earth’s ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air’s carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man’s industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man’s smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.
From the department of unintentional irony:
A GIFT OF PERFECTION
DROP DEAD
CIGARETTE BOX
For the man who is dying for a cigarette, this 3-3/4″ x 1″ x 1-1/2″ completely metal, copper color coffin is a true replica of the real thing… Beware—your friends will fall in love with it. So-O-O buy several for gifts.
No others like it! Send $2.00 for each prepaid DROP DEAD COFFIN to
Andrea Specialties, Dept. S.M., 2700 Point Breeze Drive, Wilmington, Delaware 18903.
The “Thinker” device sounds like B.S.. They admit that it has to be “pumped” with answers. My guess is that it either it just spits out the next answer in it’s queue when a button is pressed (I doubt the mike is hooked up to anything). Or, more likely, it’s just a complete fake and there is someone controlling it. It sure as hell doesn’t have voice recognition in 1955.
Also, it seems to me that $150 or $200 in 1955 is a hell of a lot of money for a high-school science project.
High-School Robots Learn the “Three Rs”
By Jim Collison
AN ELECTRONIC THINKER—a completely mechanical robot — built by Robert Kotsmith, 16, and Michael Chmielewski, 17, high-school juniors at Foley, Minn., is passing exams of a factual nature that would stump any uneducated robot.
The machine, built during a period of 10 months at an estimated cost of only $120, understands and answers the human voice. The Thinker answers mathematical questions, gives data on current events and history, writes and even learns new facts it does not already know.
Even to persons well versed on scientific progress, this project seems astounding. Foley science instructor Alfred A. Lease says this of his students: “Their accomplishments would make some college graduates look on with envy.”
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“Impossible, you say? The miracle of electronics has all but removed the word “impossible” from the dictionary.”
Make the POP’tronics Secretary
Tell your friends that their telephone messages to you will he recorded by electronics
By TRACY DIERS
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE to have a secretary who will answer your phone and take messages at any hour of the day or night but who will demand no pay and no coffee breaks? Impossible, you say? The miracle of electronics has all but removed the word “impossible” from the dictionary.
There are two types of systems you can build which will do this job for you. The deluxe system requires two tape machines or one tape machine and one disc machine— when a call comes in, it plays a recording of instructions and then switches over to record the message. The simpler type, to be described here, requires only one recorder and anyone who can put together a small amplifier can build it.
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This would be a lot of fun without a text editor. One mistake and you have to start over.
More about ASCII Art on Wikipedia.
KEYBOARD ART
By Paul Hadley
WHILE purely entertaining, doodling with a typewriter gives vent to the imagination and originality of both the experienced and the hunt-and-peck typist. Fill-in pictures are the easiest to “draw” with a typewriter. An example is shown in the flower which is made with the letter X alone. Such pictures, whether a flower or a portrait, are made by using an outline of the subject as a typing guide. This is done by tracing the outline lightly on paper and backing it with carbon paper to type the picture. Caricature or cartoon “drawing” combines letters with symbols as shown in the examples below. Here, half-spacing of the typewriter is required, as in the case of the owl’s beak and feet. The log cabin shows what can be done in drawing a picture in perspective.
I have an issue of this and will be scanning in some of the projects. However I must say, the current Make is much more interesting.
This show looks like it was really cool. It’s basically American Inventor without the overt competition.
BBC Puts Inventors On TV
INVENTIONS ARE the stars of one of the most popular television shows in Britain.
The Television Inventors’ Club of the British Broadcasting Corporation has been on the air for seven years. During this time more than 7000 inventions have been submitted to the club, of which 580 have been shown on the air. A quarter of these have caught the eyes of manufacturers and many are already in production.
The inventions range from a simple shirt stud which allows for the shrinkage of the collar, to a compressible ship’s fender which eases a 24,000-ton vessel against a dock.
A number of British inventors have hit the jackpot through the program. One of them actually did it with a better mousetrap, and the world has already beaten a path to his door to the tune of over a million sales. Years of patient observation taught the inventor that a mouse twists its head when approaching the bait and nibbles from below. His trap therefore springs when the bait is lifted—not pushed down. A tidy profit was also made by the inventor of a stair elevator for invalids. A moving step, carried on rails, is drawn up the staircase by a cable and winch. More than 500 inquiries poured into the BBC when this device was shown on TV.
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