ritilan

Getting Users to Upgrade Their Browsers

2010-04-09T14:22:00.000-04:00

Getting Users to Upgrade Their Browsers: "

How quickly do users actually upgrade their browsers? It’s a question that seems to come up frequently and is definitely on the minds of developers who want to know when they’ll be able to leverage the best features for their apps. Overall, I think the major browser makers try to share important usage information but the this specific data isn’t reported often enough. It was great to see that Pingdom did their own analysis of the issue and even offered a comparison of the upgrade mechanisms used by the browser makers.

From the report, it shows that Google’s Chrome has by far the fastest upgrade time of all the browsers, generally converting users within a month of a new release. This is very impressive and primarily due to the browser’s use of automatic updating.

Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple & Opera all take a milder approach with Mozilla being slightly more direct using user prompts that try to explain the benefits of upgrading instead of forcing them to.

It’s certainly a balancing act between keep users up-to-date and allowing users to have a choice. What do you feel is the best update solution?

Recipe: Easy Ethereal Popovers

2010-04-09T12:23:00.000-04:00

Recipe: Easy Ethereal Popovers: "At the risk of waxing overly rhapsodic, popovers might just be the ideal winter food. In spite of their reputation as fickle and disaster-prone, these quick breads couldn't be simpler to make - and the reward of a piping hot, crusty bun will be worth 10 times the effort.

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NAKED COMPAGNIE

2010-04-09T11:55:00.000-04:00

DAVID GUETTA - VISUALS from NAKED COMPAGNIE © on Vimeo.

Get rich quick with the Plunder Funnel!

2010-04-09T11:42:00.001-04:00

Get rich quick with the Plunder Funnel!: "

The Consumerist's Ben Popken writes, 'I hate those get-rich-quick scam ads so Consumerist made an awesome parody video to skewer them. PLUNDER FUNNEL is a sure-fire money-making factory that will teach how you to cannibalize any human relationship and turn it into cold hard cash! Taylor Sternberg from Broadway's 'Jersey Boys' stars. I wrote and directed, and have a little cameo appearance.'

Plunder Funnel

Southern Belle at the Nashville Film Festival

2010-04-08T12:32:00.006-04:00

MAKEWRIGHT FILMS PRESENTS

Southern Belle tells the story of a week long camp where girls relive the summer of 1861. While the young women enjoy the chance to dress up like characters in Gone with the Wind, instructors hope to redress the wrongs of a history written by the victors. To understand the icon of the Southern Belle is to better understand the issues that continue to define and divide America today.

PREMIERING AT THE NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL 2010

Saturday, April17, 4:45pm(75min.)
Sunday April 18, 2pm

They Just Don't Get It

2009-11-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

They Just Don't Get It: "I am truly amazed by democrats. They do things that fundamentally destroy the economy and make people's lives harder, but since they want to help people, bad legislation that does the opposite is okay. Because it is intentions that matter, not the results, even if the results are the exact opposite of your intentions. For example they don't seem to get that employment is over 10% because"

Periodic table

2009-10-31T14:06:00.000-04:00

Periodic table: "

Interactive fonts, for when 'bold' isn't enough

2009-10-31T13:51:00.000-04:00

Interactive fonts, for when 'bold' isn't enough: "

Can't decide on a typeface for your next project? Why not choose them all, with Michael Flückiger and Nicolas Kunz's Laika, the dynamic font generator. It's a relatively straightforward concept, but could make for some cool visualizers. What if the text on your website 'breathed' with you, or melted when left in the sun? It could either be really cool, or more annoying than regular old blinking text. Personally, I'm picturing a weather display, where the word weather itself morphs in relation to outside conditions. [via thestrangeattractor]

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How to make everything yourself - online low-tech resources

2009-10-19T16:59:00.000-04:00

How to make everything yourself - online low-tech resources: "

Energy Bulletin pointed us to the website of Practical Action
(previously known as the Schumacher Centre for Technology &
Development), an online resource devoted to low-technology solutions
for developing countries. The site hosts many manuals that can also be of interest for low-tech DIYers in the developed world. They cover energy, agriculture, food processing, construction and manufacturing, just to name some important categories.

We would like to add to this the impressive online library put together by software engineer Alex Weir. The 900 documents listed here
(13 gigabytes in total) are not as well organised and presented as
those of Practical Action, but there is a wealth of information that is
not found anywhere else. The library is also hosted here (without search engine).

Other interesting online resources that offer manuals and instructions are Appropedia, Howtopedia and Open Source Ecology. These are all wiki's, so you can cooperate. The Centre for Alternative technologies has many interesting manuals, too, but the majority of those are not for free.

Previously: The museum of old techniques / A do-it-ourselves guide. This article was first published at NTM.

A tale of 10,000,000 books

2009-10-12T16:35:00.000-04:00

A tale of 10,000,000 books: "

The fundamental reasons why the electric car has not attained the popularity it deserves are (1) The failure of the manufacturers to properly educate the general public regarding the wonderful utility of the electric; (2) The failure of [power companies] to make it easy to own and operate the electric by an adequate distribution of charging and boosting stations. The early electrics of limited speed, range and utility produced popular impressions which still exist.

This quotation would hardly surprise anyone who follows electric vehicles. But it may be surprising to hear that in the year when it was written thousands of electric cars were produced, and that year was nearly a century ago. This appeared in a 1916 issue of the journal Electrical World, which I found in Google Books, our searchable repository of millions of books. It may seem strange to look back a hundred years on a topic that is so contemporary, yet I often find that the past has valuable lessons for the future. In this case, I was lucky — electric vehicles were studied and written about extensively early in the 20th century, and there are many books on the subject from which to choose. Because books published before 1923 are in the public domain, I am able to view them easily.

But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole. With rare exceptions, one can buy them only for the small number of years they are in print. After that, they are found only in a vanishing number of libraries and used book stores. As the years pass, contracts get lost and forgotten, authors and publishers disappear, the rights holders become impossible to track down.

Inevitably, the few remaining copies of the books are left to deteriorate slowly or are lost to fires, floods and other disasters. While I was at Stanford in 1998, floods damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of books. Unfortunately, such events are not uncommon — a similar flood happened at Stanford just 20 years prior. You could read about it in The Stanford-Lockheed Meyer Library Flood Report, published in 1980, but this book itself is no longer available.

Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting.

The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal — to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders. As a result, we were able to work together to devise a settlement that accomplishes our shared vision. While this settlement is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, the real winners are the readers who will now have access to a greatly expanded world of books.

There has been some debate about the settlement, and many groups have offered their opinions, both for and against. I would like to take this opportunity to dispel some myths about the agreement and to share why I am proud of this undertaking. This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available either for a fee or for free with ad support, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders, be they authors or publishers.

Some have claimed that this agreement is a form of compulsory license because, as in most class action settlements, it applies to all members of the class who do not opt out by a certain date. The reality is that rights holders can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether. For those books whose rights holders have not yet come forward, reasonable default pricing and access policies are assumed. This allows access to the many orphan works whose owners have not yet been found and accumulates revenue for the rights holders, giving them an incentive to step forward.

Others have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, or asserted that it would limit consumer choice with respect to out-of-print books. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort. The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns. Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice — fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort. But despite a number of important digitization efforts to date (Google has even helped fund others, including some by the Library of Congress), none have been at a comparable scale, simply because no one else has chosen to invest the requisite resources. At least one such service will have to exist if there are ever to be one hundred.

If Google Books is successful, others will follow. And they will have an easier path: this agreement creates a books rights registry that will encourage rights holders to come forward and will provide a convenient way for other projects to obtain permissions. While new projects will not immediately have the same rights to orphan works, the agreement will be a beacon of compromise in case of a similar lawsuit, and it will serve as a precedent for orphan works legislation, which Google has always supported and will continue to support.

Last, there have been objections to specific aspects of the Google Books product and the future service as planned under the settlement, including questions about the quality of bibliographic information, our choice of classification system and the details of our privacy policy. These are all valid questions, and being a company that obsesses over the quality of our products, we are working hard to address them — improving bibliographic information and categorization, and further detailing our privacy policy. And if we don’t get our product right, then others will. But one thing that is sure to halt any such progress is to have no settlement at all.

In the Insurance Year Book 1880-1881, which I found on Google Books, Cornelius Walford chronicles the destruction of dozens of libraries and millions of books, in the hope that such a record will “impress the necessity of something being done” to preserve them. The famous library at Alexandria burned three times, in 48 B.C., A.D. 273 and A.D. 640, as did the Library of Congress, where a fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of the collection.

I hope such destruction never happens again, but history would suggest otherwise. More important, even if our cultural heritage stays intact in the world’s foremost libraries, it is effectively lost if no one can access it easily. Many companies, libraries and organizations will play a role in saving and making available the works of the 20th century. Together, authors, publishers and Google are taking just one step toward this goal, but it’s an important step. Let’s not miss this opportunity.

Posted by Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & President, Technology

(This first appeared in the New York Times, available here.)

How'd They Do That?: Poison Ivy and Carbon Dioxide Studies

2009-10-12T14:21:00.000-04:00

How'd They Do That?: Poison Ivy and Carbon Dioxide Studies: "

When I was visiting BoingBoing last spring, I told y'all about some research being done by Lewis Ziska from the USDA and Jackie Mohan from the University of Georgia on how poison ivy responds to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. (Answer: In a way that kind of sucks for people.)

What I didn't tell you was how the scientists figured out that CO2 makes ivy grow incredibly fast, and problematically poisonous. While some of the evidence comes from controlled studies done in a tidy, little lab, there's more to it than that.

These look a bit like high-voltage electricity transmission towers, or a Stonehenge-style monument built for some forest-dwelling version of Burning Man. Suffice to say, they are neither. Instead, they're actually giant structures of PVC pipe that Ziska, Mohan and their colleagues built to test the effects of CO2 on wild forest. The base rings are a 100 feet in diameter and vertical piping goes up to the very top of the forest canopy. Six towers total, in use from 1998 until 2004. Three blowing air. And three blowing a heady mix of air and carbon dioxide that pumped parts of the forest up to the ambient CO2 levels predicted for the year 2050.

And that was how the team learned something really neat. When I posted about this research before, somebody here asked whether other plants, besides poison ivy, got the same growth spurt from CO2 exposure. At the time, I didn't know. But talking to Mohan more, I found out that there's at least some basis for comparison. In particular, let's talk trees, turkey.

Both trees and poison ivy grew faster, when exposed to higher concentrations of CO2, than their oxygen-only counterparts. But poison ivy grew faster than the trees--150% faster, in fact, compared to a 20% increase in tree growth. The difference, according to Jackie Mohan, is that poison ivy, like all vines, is a bit lazy.

'Vines don't need to devote so much of their CO2 resources to growing these big, woody trunks,' she says. 'Instead, they can devote that to growing more green leaves, which increase photosynthesis some more. And it becomes a cycle.'

This study was the first time the effects of CO2 had been researched like this in the wild. The next step will be to see how the growth of poison ivy differs between rural areas and cities, where CO2 levels are naturally higher thanks to a higher concentration of cars and industrial pollution. Mohan is working on that now. It's too early to tell, but she expects to find that the urban ivy is bigger and tougher than its country mouse cousin.

All images courtesy Jackie Mohan and Duke University.

File:Lockstitch.gif - Wikimedia Commons

2009-09-30T14:31:00.000-04:00

File:Lockstitch.gif - Wikimedia Commons: "

via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lockstitch.gif

Unpowered mechanical gate opener, part 2

2009-09-29T15:41:00.000-04:00

Unpowered mechanical gate opener, part 2: "

Now here's a perfect example of why I love the MAKE community. In response to my earlier post about the possibility of modern mechanical gate openers, reader MichaelLubke went out and took these photos (1,2,3) of a real live working mechanical gate near his ranch. What's more, he ran down the original patent on the gate's design! This patent, US number 3,163,947, was issued to Mr. Alvin E. Gandy of Eden, TX, in the year of Our Lord nineteen-hundred and sixty-five. His invention, known as the 'Gandy Slide-A-Way,' is activated by the weight of one of your vehicle's tires on a short steel ramp built into the driveway right in front of the gate. I wonder how many of these were ever made?

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SGI releases personal supercomputer

2009-09-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

SGI releases personal supercomputer: "SGI -- formerly the titanic Silicon Graphics company -- has released a 'personal supercomputer' that can handle up to 80 cores and up to a terabyte of RAM. I used to do work for an SGI VAR and we had a running joke about the merged SGI-Cray unit shipping a water-cooled laptop. This isn't that far off.

Octane III is office-ready with a pedestal, one-by-two-foot form factor, whisper-quiet operations, easy-to-use features, low maintenance requirements and support for standard office power outlets. While a typical workstation has only eight cores and moderate memory capacity, the superior design of the Octane III permits up to 80 high-performance cores and nearly 1TB of memory for unparalleled performance...

Octane III is easily configurable with single- and dual-socket node choices, and offers a wide selection of performance, storage, graphics, GP-GPU and integrated networking options. Yielding the same leading power efficiencies inherent in all SGI Eco-Logical compute designs, Octane III supports the latest Intel processors to capitalize on greater levels of performance, flexibility and scalability.

SGI Unveils Octane III Personal Supercomputer

(via The Inquirer)

"

Whitelines

2009-09-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Whitelines: "

Anyone doing technical or design work has burned through reams of graph paper. I’m a designer, and I use Whitelines to do technical drawings in accurate scale, which are then turned into 3-D models and die tooling diagrams. Whitelines is the best graph paper I have ever worked with.

The concept is simple and powerful. Ordinary graph paper is paper with a graph of lines printed on it in a light color, often blue or gray. Whitelines is paper with a very light gray grid of squares printed on it. The graph is unprinted, hence, white lines.

This is genius. Pen strokes, and even pencil, are startlingly clear against the background. The distracting visual noise of a printed graph is gone entirely, while retaining the precision and ability to see scale, which is graph paper's reason for being.

I've been using Whitelines extensively for the past few months, mostly for technical drafting on the MakerBeam project, an open source metal building kit like Meccano for the Arduino set. The grid is .5 centimeter pitch, perfect for working on a metric standard. With ordinary graph paper, pencil lines are close in color weight to the lines themselves. When scanning pencil marks on ordinary graph paper, the pencil lines often vanish completely. With Whitelines, I can scan a pencil sketch, if I'm satisfied with it, without having to go back over it with pen.

Available in A4, A5 and pocket sizes, as tablets, spiral bound, perfect and hardbound, both lined and graph. Better graph paper makes better drawings, and this is genuinely better graph paper.

-- Sam Putman

Whitelines Perfect Bound A4 Squared Notebook

$10

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Whitelines

Related Entries:
Field Notes

Eames Design

UniBall Signo Bit 0.18mm Pens

How to surf the web anonymously on your Android device

2009-09-26T14:31:00.000-04:00

How to surf the web anonymously on your Android device: "

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to browse the web anonymously on your Android phone.

Start out by opening up the Android Market. Select Search from the options.

Enter the word torproxy in the search field, and run a search for it.

You should get two results: TorProxy and Shadow. Install both of them.

Once both TorProxy and Shadow are installed, open your applications list and select TorProxy

Here you’ll have to set your anonymous preference. Off will leave it turned off until you change that setting, on-demand will turn TorProxy on when an application (Shadow) requires it, and always on will leave it always running. The on-demand option is a good one.

Now launch Shadow from your applications list. One thing you’ll notice right away is that a “timer” will appear in your top menu, counting down. This is the TorProxy connection status, and it lets you know how long it’s going to take to make a connection. Once the timer hits 0, you should be connected.

Once you’re connected, the “timer” icon will change to an onion – and Shadow will notify you that you’re now browsing anonymously.

Shadow is similar to the built in Android browser. Click the menu button on your device, and the Shadow options will appear. Select Go to enter an address.

I visited http://whatsmyip.net to find out what IP address web sites believed I was ‘coming from’ (the Tor Proxy).

It also confirmed that I was browsing anonymously – the IP address displayed was not the one assigned to my Android device.

One thing you’ll notice while surfing with Shadow is that a little Cookies Blocked button will appear fairly often. This lets you know that the page you’re visiting wanted to issue a cookie to you, but Shadow blocked it. Tap that icon..

… and you can change the setting to allow cookies for that domain (whitelist).

If you bring up the Notification window while TorProxy is running, it will be displayed. Tap its entry.

From here you can change the settings, turning TorProxy off etc.

---
Related Articles at Simple Help:

The complete step-by-step guide to rooting your Android phone

2009-09-26T14:28:00.000-04:00

The complete step-by-step guide to rooting your Android phone: "

This tutorial will guide you every single step of the way through the process of rooting your Android phone, and installing the Cyanogen ROM.

I’ve created this guide by using several other sources I found online. None were (in my opinion) as comprehensive and easy to follow as this one.

If you’re wondering why you’d want to root your Android phone, give Lifehackers Five great reasons to root your Android phone a read.

It should be noted right up front: following the steps in this tutorial may void the warranty on your phone. All of your settings and applications will be wiped out (but the data on your SD card will remain intact).

Note: the steps and screenshots in this tutorial are specific to the HTC G1. It’s my understanding that this process will work perfectly fine with the myTouch 3G, but I cannot personally confirm that, as I don’t have one.

Here goes:

Start out by plugging your your phone into your PC via USB. Once it’s connected to your PC, you should see a small USB icon in the upper left corner of your phone. Drag the “menu bar” down and there will be an entry titled USB connected. Tap (or click) it.

Now tap the Mount button.

In your browser, visit this page and download the latest stable release of CyanogenMod. The file will be in the format of update-cm-x.x.x-signed.zip (make sure to download the zip file and not the md5sum file). At the time of this tutorial, update-cm-4.0.4-signed.zip was the latest CyanogenMod. Use the date column on the right side of the page to determine which one is the latest version.

Once you’ve downloaded the file, copy it to your Android’s SD card. The SD card can be found by going to My Computer and locating the drive that represents your SD card.

After you’ve copied the CyanogenMod .zip file to the SD card on your phone, slide down the menu bar again and this time tap Turn off USB storage.

You’ll be prompted with a Turn off USB storage window – tap the Turn Off button.

Now open the browser on your Android phone. Enter the URL http://ryebrye.com/files/flashrec.apk.

The file is just about 4MB in size, so it might take a minute or three to download.

Once the download has completed, tap the download entry for that file.

If you haven’t previously enabled installing 3rd party applications, a warning window will pop up. Click the Settings button on that screen. Note: if you have previously enabled installing 3rd party apps, skip down to step #12.

The Application settings window will open. Tap the ‘grayed out’ check mark next to the Unknown sources entry (so that a green check-mark appears).

Tap OK on the warning window.

Use the Back button to return to the downloads list. Now tap the download entry for flashrec.apk again. This time you’ll be prompted to install it. Click the Install button.

Once the installation has completed, tap the Open button.

On the Recovery Flasher window, tap the Backup Recovery Image button.

Let the recovery flasher do its thing. It’ll only take a few moments.

Once the backup has completed, you should be presented with a screen that says Backed up. at the top. Now tap the Flash Cyanogen Recovery 1.4 button.

Once this process has completed, you’ll be presented with a screen that says Flashed new recovery image. at the top.

At this point you need to power your phone off. Hold down the power button and select the Power off option.

Tap OK to shut your phone down.

Hold down the Home button and click the power button to turn your phone back on. It’s very important that you hold down the Home button when turning your phone back on or Android will over-write the recovery image that you just installed.

When Android powers up, you’ll be presented with a new screen – the Cyanogen recovery image. Use your trackball and navigate down to nandroid v2.2 backup. Click this entry with the trackball.

Cyanogen will now create a recovery image for you. This is very helpful if you ever need to restore your Android phone. Don’t skip this step.

Once the backup has completed, you’ll see a screen with Backup complete! at the bottom.

Now scroll down to the entry titled wipe data/factory reset and click it with your trackball.

You’ll be asked to confirm this action by clicking the HOME button on your phone. Do so now.

Cyanogen will now wipe your Android phone. Once this process has completed, scroll to the apply any zip from sd entry and click it.

Select the .zip file that you copied to your SD card way back in step #3. Again, this file should be titled something like update-cm-x.x.x-signed.zip. Once you’ve selected that file, click it (using the trackball-button).

Click the HOME button to confirm this action.

The process of applying the CyanogenMod can take a couple of minutes to complete, so don’t worry if nothing seems to be happening.

Once it says Install from sdcard complete at the bottom of your screen, scroll to the reboot system now entry and click it.

Your phone will now restart. You’ll notice that the boot screen is slightly different now. This is a good sign.

Once your device finishes starting up, right away you’ll notice a new background image.

If you’d like to confirm everything installed, open your Settings, scroll down to About phone and select it. There should be a new entry in that list titled Mod version. It should say CyanogenMod-x.x.x (where x.x.x is the version you downloaded and installed).

Once again mount your SD card in Windows (see steps #1-3 above). There should be a new file on your SD card titled recovery-backup.img. Copy this file to your PC. This is the backup that you created in step #14, and it’s very important and helpful to have if you should every decide to restore your Android phone. It’s also a good idea to copy this file elsewhere – to your online backup service, a DVD, an external drive etc. You may even want to email a copy to yourself if you use an online email service like Gmail, so that it will always be stored on the Gmail servers.

That’s it! You’ve now rooted your phone and installed the CyanogenMod mod. Explore your Applications and phone – you’ll notice a number of new apps and features. One of which is that you now have 5 ‘home’ screens instead of 3. You should also notice that your phone is considerably faster – one of the main reasons to go through this process.

---
Related Articles at Simple Help:

Water powered cable trains

2009-09-25T14:15:00.000-04:00

Water powered cable trains: "

Cable
trains (or funiculars) are one of the most energy-efficient modes of
transport out there. A large portion of the power required to pull up the ascending
car is delivered by the counterweight of the descending car. Many
historical systems used this efficiency and took it one step further with systems exclusively powered by water and gravity.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cable trains first appeared within the second half of the 19th century. Many of them have survived and continue to be utilised
(mostly in a modernized form) and new systems are being developed. A cable train system is operated on a steep slope with a
gradient of up to 55 percent and consists of two passenger cars which are
connected by a steel cable. Both cars travel on the same single track,
which is undoubled in the middle so that they can pass each other.

Cable trains prove extremely energy efficient because a large share of the power
required to pull up the ascending car is delivered by the counterweight
of the descending car. Since the system only needs one track and can go
straight up a mountain, it also saves a lot of materials and space (some systems use
two tracks but follow the same principle).
A funicular should not be confused with a cog wheel train - even though
many older cable cars applied a similar mechanism, as a braking system and speed governor, not as a traction
method.

Water powered cable trains

Originally, cable train systems were even more energy-efficient than they are
today. Instead of using an engine to pull the cable, the extra power
required to overcome friction and to pull up the ascending car was
delivered by filling the water reservoir of the upper car (see an
example of the mechanism below).

Before
departure, the employee in the upper station was informed of the number
of passengers that had entered the ascending car. He then knew exactly
how much water the reservoir of the descending car should contain
(around 80 litres per passenger).

From the moment the
descending car became heavier than the ascending car, the brakes were
loosened and both cars were set in motion powered solely by gravity.
Once the descending car arrived, its water reservoir was emptied and
the process was repeated.

Most cable trains using water counterbalanced energy have been replaced
by systems that utilise engines. One famous example is the Funiculaire de Montmartre in Paris, France,
which was operated by water power from 1900 to 1930 and
transported one million passengers per year (illustration below).

Thankfully, a few water powered cable cars continue to be in service, and have remained so for over a century. The Elevador do Bom Jesus in Braga, Portugal, has been in use since 1882. The Nerobergbahn in Wiesbaden, Germany, has been working since 1888, the Lynton & Lynmouth in North Devon, UK since 1890, and the Funiculaire Neuveville-St.Pierre in Fribourg, Switzerland since 1899 (see picture intro, note the water filling system on the side of the car).

Perpetuum mobile

Most water powered cable cars
require energy to operate the pump that transports the water up the
hill again, so of course, perpetual motion does not exist. There are however some exceptions to this. The 120 metre track in
Fribourg, Switzerland, operates without a pump.
It makes use of the natural flow of water along the track, more
specifically the waste water infrastructure which connects the upper
and the lower part of town.

How it works is this (illustration above, source):
The
waste water flows into a reservoir of 100,000 litres. From there it
flows in the water tank of the rail car . Around 1,500 litres of water
is required to pull up the other car from 60
meters below, and it takes 3 minutes to fill up the tank. After
approximately 1.5 minutes, you will have arrived at the ground station.
The reservoir is
then emptied and the water continues its way downwards through the
sewer
system. The train route was designed as a (very creative) way to lower
the flow of the fountains in the lower part of town.

Gravity

To add to this, in
the case of the Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway, no water is pumped
from the bottom to fill the tanks at the top station - the water is
taken from a nearby river. Moreover, at this track the method is reversed.
Both car tanks are full of water, the tank of the bottom car is
partially discharged until the bottom car becomes lighter than the top
car, and gravity takes its course (source & more info). The Centre for Alternative Technology built a similar system in 1992 with a lake at the top of the mountain supplying the railway with water.

The
main disadvantage of a water-balanced railway (just like any other use
of hydro power) is that it cannot be operated when the water freezes
over. Bummer.

You need a mountain as well, of course.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Related:

The zeppelin that never lands

Electric road trains, 1901-1950

Cargo ships, then and now

Extreme low-tech cars

Ocean liners

Sailrockets & kiteboats

The age of speed

Only idiots travel by train

Trolleybuses and trolleytrucks

Quattroporte Quadro refrigerator by Rex-Electrolux

2009-09-21T22:44:00.000-04:00

Quattroporte Quadro refrigerator by Rex-Electrolux: "

Quattroporte Quadro features a modern shape, straight lines and new handles that allow a perfect aesthetic combination with the ovens and dishwashers in the same range. The main features of 90 cm wide Quattroporte fridge-freezer are 470 liters capacity, maxi vegetable drawer on telescopic slides suitable to store large quantities of fruit and vegetables, wide shelves that can host serving trays, large dishes, baking sheets and roasting pans that cannot be stored inside standard fridges. It has 'A' energy class rating thanks to improved performance and further reduced energy consumption. The FI 5004 NFAX comes with electronically controlled dual cooling engine, Dynamic Air Cooling MiniDAC internal ventilation system, a freezer with No Frost technology and FastFreeze feature, digital display and high temperature/open door audible alarm. Price is around 2,500 €. Rex-Electrolux.

Join The Crystal Set Society

2009-09-21T17:36:00.000-04:00

Join The Crystal Set Society: "

The Xtal Set Society was founded in 1991. Although the name evokes a 1980s synth band, they're actually a bunch of radio geeks who experiment with electronics - especially crystal radios.

Because components are sometimes hard to find, the Society offers an inventory of kits and parts for the discerning radio experimenter. The My Marconi 2106 Crystal Radio Kit ($59.95) includes everything you need to build a double-tuned crystal radio set that can pull in the full AM radio band. A lexan front panel with printed graphics and a cabinet enclosure kit are also available to protect your radiophonic masterpiece.

As a kid, I played for hours with my dad's Grundig shortwave. It picked up all manner of weird and wonderful transmissions from around the globe. The memory of those late night listening sessions drew me to the My Marconi Shortwave Crystal Set. It's related to the AM kit, but features a single-tuned front end followed by a shockingly modern dual transistor audio amplifier. The $59.95 kit includes a 10 mil Lexan front panel with professionally screened graphics.

For budget builders, there's a $12.95 oat box radio kit that provides everything you need to build an ultra-affordable radio around an (empty) Quaker Oats box. If you're a real skinflint, just download the plans and manual. We'll still love you.

Visit The Xtal Set Society

PS: Check out MidnightScience Ultrasonics, an offshoot of the Society dedicated to all manner of ultrasonic experimentation.

Sofa with PC, two pop-up displays offers connected relaxation

2009-09-21T16:46:00.000-04:00

Sofa with PC, two pop-up displays offers connected relaxation: "

You'll never have to look at each other again with the Athena sofa, equipped with two LCD displays that pop out of each armrest. Hidden underneath is a PC with an iPod/iPhone dock, and the thing is bristling with speakers in addition to an 8-inch subwoofer.

Looks like the perfect complement to that chrome dinette you've had your eye on since the early '70s.

This is one fancy piece of furniture, whose monitors store away in a flush position, always ready to appear when it's time to do some computing. Plunk down $15,436 for this two-screened media pit, or maybe you could just build your own for a price of about 50 times less.

Artanova, via Oh Gizmo

JUSTICE Act: a bill to restore the Bill of Rights to America

2009-09-21T15:26:00.000-04:00

JUSTICE Act: a bill to restore the Bill of Rights to America: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston has a post about the new JUSTICE Act:

Today, Senators Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin -- along with eight other Senators -- have taken the Administration up on its offer by introducing the JUSTICE Act, which would rein in the worst excesses of PATRIOT and last year's FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The announcement of the bill's introduction, along with a fact sheet outlining the bill's details, is here; the text of the JUSTICE Act is here (the 'JUSTICE', if you're wondering, stands for Judiciously Using Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts').

The JUSTICE Act would renew two of the three expiring PATRIOT provisions, PATRIOT sections 206 (John Doe roving wiretaps) and 215 (FISA orders for any tangible thing), but would also add strong new checks and balances to those provisions and to the PATRIOT Act in general, especially those provisions dealing with the government's authority to issue National Security Letters. If passed, the bill would also establish critically important protections for Americans against surveillance authorized under the FAA. Of particular importance to EFF's clients in the Hepting v. AT&T case and to the preservation of the rule of law, JUSTICE would completely repeal the FAA provision intended to legally immunize telecoms like AT&T that illegally assisted in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. Last summer when Congress passed the FAA, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated his intention to revisit that law as part of the PATRIOT renewal debate, and we're very glad that Senators Feingold and Durbin have kick-started that process.

EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity

"

AZF Explosion

2009-09-21T14:53:00.000-04:00

AZF Explosion: "

8 years ago today, on 21 September 2001, a huge explosion occurred in the AZF (AZote Fertilisant – nitrogen fertiliser) factory in Toulouse, France. Three hundred tonnes of ammonium nitrates blew up, creating a 200 m wide crater up to 30 m deep.

Steel girders were found 3 km away from the explosion, which itself was heard 80 km away (50 miles).

29 people died as a direct result of the incident, and over 10,000 people were injured – many thousands by the flying glass from the two thirds of the city’s windows that were shattered. Around 40,000 people were also made homeless for several days.

The official enquiry stated that the ammonium nitrate had exploded following “improper handling”, but there were unconfirmed rumours at the time that suggested that this tragedy was actually the result of a terrorist attack.

Just to the east of the crater is a large pixelated area. The Street View imagery isn’t pixellated though, and shows gives a fairly clear view of a factory. I wonder what it is?

There’s more information and theories available at Wikipedia.

Thanks to @KeirClarke.

Locations: France / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

View in Google Earth

Why (and How) to Root Your Android Phone

2009-09-19T16:21:00.000-04:00

Why (and How) to Root Your Android Phone: "

I’m not dead. I’ve just moved into a new place where there is no internet connection yet, which is the equivalent of dead when you work and live online. Up until now I’ve resisted “rooting” my Android phone because I didn’t want to go down the iPhone jailbreak road. (A major reason I have Android is so I don’t have to jailbreak my device to get it to do something interesting!) But desperate times call for desperate measures. Living somewhere with no computer internet connection is a really good reason to root your Android phone. With a rooted phone, you can tether your Android device to your computer and get some internet love wherever you are. (There are quite a few other good reasons to root Android, too, not the least of which is speed boosts and early Donut access.)

If you’re paying attention and reading the instructions, the rooting process isn’t that difficult. I made the mistake of trying this out without my phone’s USB cable (which was still packed away in some box) and in a loud sports bar during the first Chargers game of the season, with one eye on my screen and the other on my beer. Things didn’t go so well. This morning I was able to finish up the process and get tethering working just fine. Here’s what (and what NOT) to do when you root your Android phone.

Note: You WILL have to wipe your phone of all your data and apps in order to do this. Yes, that is really annoying.

First things first: fully charge your phone. Connect it to your computer and mount the SD card so you can read and write to it in Windows Explorer. Now, you’re going to grab the latest stable version of the custom Android build you’ll install on your device (which includes root access). Go to this listing of stable Cyanogen ROMs on your computer and download the latest one, i.e., the file with the most recent date. (Make sure it’s the .zip file, not the md5sum). It will be named something like update-cm-4.0.4-signed.zip. Copy that .zip file to the root of your phone’s SD card.

Now you’re ready to “flash” your phone with a boot image that will let you install that file. Do exactly as this guy in this video tells you to do.

Don’t do what I did and download a different version of the Recovery Flasher application. (I tried this one and it works differently than any of the instructions I was referring to, which screwed me up.) Visit http://ryebrye.com/files/flashrec.apk on your phone and download it directly to your phone, then follow the instructions in the video.

Note that this boot recovery image only works once. If you boot into Android proper (i.e., you don’t hold down the Home key on startup), Android will rewrite your recovery image. Trying to get back into Cyanogen’s recovery image will leave you with a big honkin’ error, one that I couldn’t get out of without removing my G1’s battery. If you have to do this, start FlashRec again and reflash the Cyanogen image.

Once you’ve followed the instructions in the video (i.e., backed up your system and flashed the recovery image in FlashRec, shut down, booted into the recovery image menu by holding down the Home key during startup, wiped your system, and applied the .zip update you saved on your SD card), you’re good to go. Your device will restart and prompt you for your Google login credentials.

Once my phone was up and running, immediately I headed straight to the Android Wi-Fi tether app to get internet connectivity in the barren wasteland that is my new home. There are other apps and tweaks available for root users available for exploration, and you can also further speed up, update, and back up your rooted Android device. But that’s a project for tomorrow. (Thanks to Kevin at Lifehacker for being the canary in the Android-rooting coalmine.)

In the Maker Shed: Basic Laboratory Equipment Kit

2009-09-19T16:12:00.000-04:00

In the Maker Shed: Basic Laboratory Equipment Kit: "

Our Basic Laboratory Equipment Kit includes the essential specialty labware you need to perform a wide variety of experiments in chemistry and the other sciences. It's an excellent choice for home schoolers on a tight budget or DIY science enthusiasts who are just getting started putting together a home lab.

Read more | Permalink | Comments |

Read more articles in Maker Shed Store |

Digg this!"

Peace Frog Indian

2009-09-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

Peace Frog Indian: "

If you’re wondering what the famed Indian badge is doing on such a delicate, lightweight motorcycle, read on. After the Second World War, Indian changed ownership and stopped producing its traditional big motorcycles. In the US, new owners released small and somewhat under-engineered models: the Arrow, Super Scout and Warrior. In England, a company called Brockhouse rebadged Royal Enfields, and sold those as Indians. And that’s what this bike seems to be. It’s a very unusual custom from a small (they don’t yet have a website) but rather interesting shop called Peace Frog, based in Kumamoto in southern Japan. Perhaps it’s based on the Royal Enfield Crusader, which had a 248cc pushrod OHV. Peace Frog exhibited at the recent New Order show in Kobe, Japan’s premier custom event. Hopefully they can hold it together and become a fixture on the Japanese scene. Indian proved less adept at the business side of things—in 1953, the company stopped manufacturing its own motorcycles and sold repainted, badge-engineered Royal Enfields imported from Britain. [With thanks to Malcolm Collins.]

Cool Bikes

2009-09-19T15:42:00.000-04:00

"Very cool bikes - http://www.wrenchmonkees.com/bikes.html"

Build your own computer desk

2009-05-12T18:12:00.001-04:00

How to Make Your Own Ergonomic Computer Workstation - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com

May 11, 2009, 4:44 pm

How to Make Your Own Ergonomic Computer Workstation

By Sonia Zjawinski

There’s nothing I like more than peoplewho scoff at expensive home office furniture and, instead, get down and dirty and make their own. Samuel Blanco of Helotes, Tex., did just that when he saw a pricey ergo piece by Biomorph. Rather than pay $430 (minimum — other models cost more than $2,000), he tapped in to his junior-high wood shop skills and custom-designed a desk for his room’s dimensions and computing needs.
Mr. Blanco, a video editor, was using a plastic picnic table as a makeshift desk. “It was quite embarrassing having my Mac Pro and 30-inch Cinema Display sitting on it,” he admits. His goal was to create a desk that didn’t take too much space, had a modern feel and was a smart solution for organizing cables.
He found a DIY project that solved many of his needs on Simplified Building Concepts, and then adjusted it to make it his own. The most significant modifications included not using SBC’s leg system and subbing in Golden Oak ¾-inch plywood for MDF. “I soon found out why they used MDF (edges can be routed cleanly – I substituted edge banding), but am still very glad I used real wood.”
Total Approximate Costs:
Golden Oak Sheet (3/4″ 4X8′): $38
Legs: $58
Articulating Keyboard Arm: $55
Stain and Polyurethane: +/- $15
Edge Banding: $14 (2 rolls)
Wood Filler: $5
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/how-to-make-your-own-ergonomic-computer-workstation/
Total cost: $185
Any DIY projects you’d like to share? Send e-mail to sonia.zjawinski@nytimes.com to submit your solutions for future posts.

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Use Your Imagination to Hide Ugly Gadgets

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6 Comments

1.
May 11, 2009 8:28 pm
Link

This is great but he has the computer against a wall. Isn’t that bad for your eyes?
— MacAholic

2.
May 12, 2009 2:52 am
Link

Put the cpus on bricks to make drives more easily accessible.
— Bernard Dickman

3.
May 12, 2009 8:11 am
Link

I’d recommend more structure underneath, however. His tabletop is finished only one side, which will likely lead to bowing as time goes on.
— JimS

4.
May 12, 2009 9:08 am
Link

I used filing cabinets for my supports. I then had all of my paper files within reach of my desk.
— burnsey

5.
May 12, 2009 11:18 am
Link

Can you now find someone who puts together a hi speed Pc computer system that can run Mac leopard and at a price that doesn’t make fools of us all? That would be useful in these troubled times.
— barry p beckett

6.
May 12, 2009 4:24 pm
Link

Sorry Barry, looks like Uncle Steve has you over a barrel. If you want the Mac OS, you must buy a Mac, as Uncle Steve has decreed. It’s sort of like how evil Bill Gate$ (aka $atan) says that you can only run Windoze on Micro$oft PCs. But hey, I hear that the Mac tax is but a figment of your imagination.
— Antiseptic white box

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Recent Posts May 12(6 comments)Yo Jude! Debuts to Help You Solve Tech TroublesGetting good photos out of your camera means taking control of the flash. Here’s how.

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May 11(6 comments)How to Make Your Own Ergonomic Computer WorkstationWith 10 hours and less than $200, one reader was able to create a PC workstation for as little as a tenth of what it would’ve cost him from a catalog.

May 08(5 comments)10 Ways to Design a Good Web Site LogoLots of sites have logos, but few have well-designed ones. Here’s how you can come up with one that works.

May 08(11 comments)Hints That iPhone OS 3.0 is NearApple will now only accept mobile apps that work with the upcoming iPhone operating system, 3.0–a sign the new release is getting near.

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About Gadgetwise
Gadgetwise is a blog about everything related to buying and using tech products. From figuring out which gadget to buy and how to get the best deal on it to configuring it once it's out of the box, Gadgetwise offers a mix of information, analysis and opinion to help you get the most out of your personal tech.

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Latest in Personal Tech State of the Art: Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe NeededBy DAVID POGUENovatel’s MiFi 2200 provides the unthinkable: a universal wireless bubble you can take anywhere.

Q & A: Getting Data From an Ex-PalmBy J.D. BIERSDORFERMy Palm organizer died. Is there any way I can get all my contact and datebook information from it and moved to Outlook?

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Very cool DIY computer desk

Ponoko

2009-05-12T17:43:00.001-04:00

Ponoko – Buy Make and Sell Almost Anything

Very cool idea. You can design build and sell your product all from one site.

La Quercia - "The best prosciutto imported or domestic you can get in America."

2009-02-03T15:24:00.000-05:00

We make artisan salumi using traditional dry curing.
This is a millenia old method that involves salting and drying to
preserve meat and then aging to develop flavor internally. The length
of aging depends on the size of the piece of meat. We use no nitrates,
nitrites or their vegetable derived substitutes. Because we use only 2
(pork and sea salt) or 3 (pork, sea salt, spices) ingredients, the
quality of the meat we use very clearly expresses itself in your eating
experience. And since the animals and the growers are our neighbors, we
directly benefit from and appreciate the extra care and effort involved
in humane and organic animal production.

link

An open letter to the Western banking establishment.

2009-02-02T11:35:00.000-05:00

Re. your unauthorised overdraft

Dear Western banking establishment,

I notice that your unauthorised credit facility from international lenders of last resort now totals approximately $10 trillion. As a taxpayer and therefore your largest shareholder I would be grateful if you could repay this facility at your earliest convenience. I have charged you an additional £30 for this letter and a monthly unauthorised overdraft fee of £28. If you do not repay this facility shortly I will have no choice but to become further massively impoverished along with legions of fellow taxpayers for multiple generations to come.

With Ses Petites Mains, I'm not mourning the end of summer quite so much

2008-10-03T10:34:00.001-04:00

Sent to you by ritilan via Google Reader:

With Ses Petites Mains, I'm not mourning the end of summer quite so much

via Cool Mom Picks on 9/30/08

If you're in love with the truly inspired handmade clothes from Ses Petite Mains like I am, you'll be happy to know you can now find the entire collection in one place: Their very own online shop.

Things you can do from here:

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Heading to Africa

2008-08-07T23:24:00.001-04:00

I am off to Rwanda and then to South Africa.
I will post some pics.

Otherpower.com

2008-03-02T18:01:00.001-05:00

We are a group of alternative energy enthusiasts who want to spread the message that It's EASY

to make your own power FROM SCRATCH. Otherpower.com's headquarters is located in a remote part of the

Northern Colorado mountains, 12 miles past the nearest power pole or phone line. All of our houses and shops run

on only solar, wind, water and generator power...not because we are trying to make some sort of political or environmental

statement, but because these are the only options available. And we refuse to move to town.

Great site for alternate power options.

My Produce Guy - Online Groceries in Atlanta

2008-03-01T16:37:00.001-05:00

Woot! Web Van came and went and I miss it. Well in Atlanta we now have myproduceguy.com
a local company that delivers fresh produce to your door.

Diagramming the Preamble

2008-01-20T11:49:00.001-05:00

Harry Stephen Keller

2007-11-24T16:01:00.001-05:00

HARRY
STEPHEN KEELER (1890-1967) is one of the strangest writers who ever
lived. In his time, he was pegged as a mystery novelist who also wrote
some science fiction. Today, if you've heard of him at all, it's as the
Ed Wood of mystery novelists, a writer reputed to be so bad he's good.
Actually, no genre, nor "camp," can much suggest what Keeler is all
about. Take some typical Keeler situations:

Learn A Foreign Language For Free

2007-07-25T18:33:00.001-04:00

FSI Language Courses

This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. This site is not affiliated in any way with any government entity; it is an independent, non-profit effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages. Courses here are made available through the private efforts of individuals who are donating their time and resources to provide quality materials for language learning.

Link

Test Post

2007-07-24T15:16:00.000-04:00

Test post of ritilan.com on blogger

Philco Predicta

2003-05-09T18:08:00.000-04:00

My favorite television the Philco Predicta a true classic.
http://www.predicta.com/

Very Slick Case

2003-05-09T15:42:00.000-04:00

This has got the be the best case mod I have seen.

The Curta Calculator

2003-05-09T15:39:00.000-04:00

The image is of the only pocket sized completely mechanical calculator
ever built. And how do I want one.

The Amazing CURTA!
by Bruce Flamm

Perhaps no calculator of any type has generated more discussion than the Curta. Although a book could be written on this incredible device and its inventor, I will limit this article to a very brief summary. In the future I'll discuss more details and explain how this wonderful machine actually works.

What is it? The Curta looks like a small metal pepper-mill or coffee grinder. It is, in fact, a precision instrument which performs calculations mechanically using no electric or electronic parts. I can best describe the sensation of turning the crank on a Curta as being similar to winding a fine 35mm camera. To the best of my knowledge it is the smallest mechanical calculating machine ever built.

Who invented it? Mr. Curt Herzstark of Austria.

How was it invented? Over the years I've heard rumors that Mr. Herzstark secretly developed the Curta while imprisoned in a German concentration camp. Apparently this is almost true. Herzstark was a prisoner at Buchenwald but the camp leaders were aware of his work and encouraged it. They apparently wanted to give the invention to the Fuehrer as a victory gift at the end of the war! Herzstark was given a drawing board and worked on the design day and night. The camp was liberated in April, 1945 by the Americans. Herzstark survived as did his revolutionary concept for a miniature calculator. (More details about how Curt Herzstark ended up in a concentration camp in a future issue.)

When were the Curtas made? Although several prototypes were made, the first production began in April, 1947. The last Curta was made in November, 1970 but they were still sold until early 1973. By then, pocket electronic calculators were selling for under $100 and a precision mechanical instrument like the Curta could no longer compete.

Are there different Curta models? The Curta II is slightly larger than the original Curta. It was first produced in 1954 and has a larger numeric capacity than the Curta I.

How many Curtas were produced? In 1949 only about 300 Curtas could be produced each month. By 1952, production had increased to about 1,000 units per month. Over the course of about 20 years approximately 80,000 of the Curta I and 60,000 of the Curta II were constructed.

Are there any Curta prototypes? Mr. Herzstark kept three prototypes in his home in Nendeln, Liechtenstein. Upon his death in 1988 they were sold to a private collector.

Are there different protective cases? Since the Curta is a precision instrument, it was sold with a protective capsule or case. These are screw-top cylinders often with internal padding. Some plastic capsules were made but these were found not to be suitable so production was stopped and the metal cases again prevailed. Apparently Prince Heinrich von Liechtenstein found the metal case to be to rigid for a precision instrument so he had a special leather case crafted for his Curta.

Why does the cap of the Curta's protective capsule screw on backwards? I had always assumed that this was to prevent someone from hastily unscrewing the cap and dropping the fine instrument on the floor. I recently learned that this was actually a design change made to prevent the accidental turning of the Curta's operational crank when the case was screwed shut. This accident would leave the Curta not ready for calculation when the case was opened. Early metal cases having a clockwise closing cap are apparently quite rare.

Special thanks to member Bob Otnes in Palo Alto, CA and Peter Kradolfer in Germany for providing information used in this article. Please send any interesting information that my be helpful for future articles on the Curta to Bruce Flamm, 10445 Victoria Avenue, Riverside, CA, 92503.