4 ms·

The whole site for this is great. I really like the multitude of variations they had in early steam/IC engines[0]; it reminds me a lot of the expirementing we h

The whole site for this is great. I really like the multitude of variations they had in early steam/IC engines[0]; it reminds me a lot of the expirementing we have in the software ecosystem today [0a]http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/unusualICeng.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/unusua... [0b]http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualsteameng/unusualsteameng.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualsteameng/unu...

MisterTea 8y ago
I too think of these analogies buy my favorite subject is the early power industry. In the early days you had a multitude of frequencies and voltages. Higher frequencies were desired for flicker free lighting but low frequency was desirable as you could directly run commutated DC motors on low frequency AC without brush arcing. This was important as AC was displacing DC in distribution. Frequency selection was a compromise between motor reuse/longevity and lighting flicker. In the end Westinghouse settled on 60Hz and GE moved from 40Hz to 50Hz, then finally to 60Hz. German AEG which was a licenser of Edison Electric/GE patents stuck with 50Hz and the rest is history. The competition between AEG and Westinghouse is also why part of Japan is 50Hz, the other, 60Hz. Little known fact: California was 50Hz until 1948 as GE was more popular on the west coast. And to add to your original thought: If you watch Star Trek, everything is ran by LCARS and everything seamlessly integrates. I wonder how and where the industry will settle. Right now it feels like we're partly moving into a post OS ecosystem where the applications have been abstracted from the underlying system. I feel that it's a stop gap between something more akin to LCARS or real life distributed systems like Erlang or Plan 9.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Southern Ontario was still running on 25hz and only finished the transition in the late 50s. http://www.execulink.com/~ocbogs/hist/oxhquiz/oxha046.html http://www.execulink.com/~ocbogs/hist/oxhquiz/oxha046.html A steel mill still kept a hydroelectric station running in Niagara Falls at 25hz until 2009: http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/interest/rankine-generating-station/ http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/interest/...
  - lb1lf 8y ago
    Trains in Norway (and, presumably, also elsewhere) run on 16 2/3Hz AC. This is a historical artifact - back in the day, electrical motors didn't fare too well if fed with 50hz, so a lower frequency was desirable. In airplanes, on the other hand, AC supply is typically 400Hz - as higher frequency equates a smaller, lighter transformer for a given throughput.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Re: 400hz: and smaller magnets for the generators/motors. Just like how a higher frequency antennas can be smaller for the same amount of gain.
    - usr1106 8y ago
      16 2/3 Hz or 16.7 Hz as the newer standardization says is used by all countries that used AC early. 50 Hz wasn't feasible for railways before the 1960s or so. 16 2/3 Hz is at least in use in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, and Norway. In Germany development started already in the 1920s and regular usage in the 1930s. France, Finland, and Denmark for example were later with AC and they chose 50 Hz.
- amelius 8y ago
  And for high voltages, systems are moving back to DC again, because of lower transmission losses.
  - bsder 8y ago
    And modern semiconductors. The original Pacific DC Intertie used enormous mercury vapor tubes.
    - bacon_waffle 8y ago
      There's a high voltage DC link between the North and South islands of NZ, it used mercury arc valves until the 1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island
cr0sh 8y ago
If you enjoy "unusual" engines from that site - these seem very scary: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/petrol/petrol.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/petrol/petrol.htm Imagine a steam engine - in which the working fluid come from boiling gasoline...

MisterTea 8y ago

I too think of these analogies buy my favorite subject is the early power industry. In the early days you had a multitude of frequencies and voltages. Higher frequencies were desired for flicker free lighting but low frequency was desirable as you could directly run commutated DC motors on low frequency AC without brush arcing. This was important as AC was displacing DC in distribution. Frequency selection was a compromise between motor reuse/longevity and lighting flicker. In the end Westinghouse settled on 60Hz and GE moved from 40Hz to 50Hz, then finally to 60Hz. German AEG which was a licenser of Edison Electric/GE patents stuck with 50Hz and the rest is history. The competition between AEG and Westinghouse is also why part of Japan is 50Hz, the other, 60Hz. Little known fact: California was 50Hz until 1948 as GE was more popular on the west coast. And to add to your original thought: If you watch Star Trek, everything is ran by LCARS and everything seamlessly integrates. I wonder how and where the industry will settle. Right now it feels like we're partly moving into a post OS ecosystem where the applications have been abstracted from the underlying system. I feel that it's a stop gap between something more akin to LCARS or real life distributed systems like Erlang or Plan 9.

Scoundreller 8y ago
Southern Ontario was still running on 25hz and only finished the transition in the late 50s. http://www.execulink.com/~ocbogs/hist/oxhquiz/oxha046.html http://www.execulink.com/~ocbogs/hist/oxhquiz/oxha046.html A steel mill still kept a hydroelectric station running in Niagara Falls at 25hz until 2009: http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/interest/rankine-generating-station/ http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/interest/...
- lb1lf 8y ago
  Trains in Norway (and, presumably, also elsewhere) run on 16 2/3Hz AC. This is a historical artifact - back in the day, electrical motors didn't fare too well if fed with 50hz, so a lower frequency was desirable. In airplanes, on the other hand, AC supply is typically 400Hz - as higher frequency equates a smaller, lighter transformer for a given throughput.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Re: 400hz: and smaller magnets for the generators/motors. Just like how a higher frequency antennas can be smaller for the same amount of gain.
  - usr1106 8y ago
    16 2/3 Hz or 16.7 Hz as the newer standardization says is used by all countries that used AC early. 50 Hz wasn't feasible for railways before the 1960s or so. 16 2/3 Hz is at least in use in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, and Norway. In Germany development started already in the 1920s and regular usage in the 1930s. France, Finland, and Denmark for example were later with AC and they chose 50 Hz.
amelius 8y ago
And for high voltages, systems are moving back to DC again, because of lower transmission losses.
- bsder 8y ago
  And modern semiconductors. The original Pacific DC Intertie used enormous mercury vapor tubes.
  - bacon_waffle 8y ago
    There's a high voltage DC link between the North and South islands of NZ, it used mercury arc valves until the 1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island

cr0sh 8y ago

If you enjoy "unusual" engines from that site - these seem very scary: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/petrol/petrol.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/petrol/petrol.htm Imagine a steam engine - in which the working fluid come from boiling gasoline...