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> It’s also not clear from the available records how much [cesium] was necessary per gallon of [jet fuel] Come on, you lazy reporter! Go find a jet engine and
by tlb 7y ago
> It’s also not clear from the available records how much [cesium] was necessary per gallon of [jet fuel]
Come on, you lazy reporter! Go find a jet engine and some cesium and a radar reflectometer and make a graph of reflectance vs. cesium content.
Presumably, some engineer at Lockheed in the late 50s got exactly that assignment, with a budget. There would be a notebook with a table of numbers and a hand-drawn graph. Those would be amazing to see.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoMight want to cross reference the Nazi studies about what that concentration of spent cesium would do to a human population living below over time.
- VonGuard 7y agoI have visions of exploding journalists.... For Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55kgyApYrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55kgyApYrY
- taneq 7y agoDo you have visions in higher than 240p? :S
- taneq 7y agoI would love to see some kind of web database of old engineering notebooks like this, surely there are enough now kicking around in boxes of "grandad's junk".
- CamperBob2 7y agoA nice one from Tektronix, c. 1979, just surfaced: http://w140.com/tekwiki/images/b/bd/Tek_7854_design_team.pdf http://w140.com/tekwiki/images/b/bd/Tek_7854_design_team.pdf
- faizshah 7y agoSome cool ones here: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/fairchild/ https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/fairchild/ Would be cool to see some old notebooks from Bell Labs tho like Ritchie or Thompson. I just found some old AT&T training manuals on Perl, TCP/IP, Bash, C and Unix internals, they are really cool.
- _jal 7y agoAlong the same lines, my bedside-book for the last few months has been Engineering and Operations in the Bell System[1]. It is... from another time. Both the quality of the engineering and the quality of the documentation simply don't happen anymore outside of very narrow niches. And then you look at the Death Star now, and their core competency is lobbying. Priorities certainly have changed. [1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/engineering-and-operations-in-the-bell-system/oclc/11756737 https://www.worldcat.org/title/engineering-and-operations-in...
- Aloha 7y agoI have the full set of books in this series, took me a couple months to track down. There are no organizations left in the world like pre divesture AT&T - While I think divestiture was a net gain, it's clear that some things were not positive, and some stuff was irrevocably lost.
- exikyut 7y agoWhat were the other books in the series? I've only read about the AT&T divestiture in the "pro-antitrust" light; that AT&T owned all the telephones, you weren't allowed to connect your own, etc etc. Where can I read other angles to this story? Thinking about it, I wonder if this isn't a similar story to Eternal September.
- Aloha 7y agoThe History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - The Early Years (1875-1925) The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - National Service in War and Peace (1925-1975) The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Switching Technology (1925-1975) The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Physical Sciences (1925-1980) The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Communications Sciences (1925-1980) The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Electronics Technology (1925-1975) The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System - Transmission Technology (1925-1980) There are two editions of Engineering and Operations in the Bell System one from 1983 and one from 1977. Another one worth looking at is Transmission Systems for Communications. For more information about divestiture, read Heritage and Destiny - https://www.amazon.com/Heritage-Destiny-Reflections-System-Transition/dp/0275917142/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=heritage+and+destiny+bell+system&qid=1568579694&s=gateway&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Heritage-Destiny-Reflections-System-T... At least some of these are available as PDF's from archive.org Another thing looking at is back BSTJ articles: https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/bstj-archive https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/bstj-a... AT&T was anti-competitive, but it also spent much money on the public good, its a mixed bag - we did lose something with divestiture.
- mNovak 7y agoI realize this is a joke, but just wanted to add that Rogoway is a consistently great and thorough writer on defense subjects. I've been reading his stuff since the Foxtrot Alpha days.
- nabla9 7y agoI completely different view. Rogoway's is not into critical thinking or good analysis. He is also deeply into monetizing Navy-UFO conspiracy.
- dmix 7y ago> He is also deeply into monetizing Navy-UFO conspiracy. A lot of these otherwise sensible warfare blogs are getting heavily into this. I don't understand it. But clearly it attracts a big audience and they've always been a niche blog topic so I guess they like the attention.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAttention -> pageviews -> ad money. The fundamental value chain of most news reporting today.
- austinheap 7y agoFeels like a stretch that multiple military personnel went on record and conspired to make this up for the clicks on a blog? Far easier ways to drive traffic.
- ridgeguy 7y agoWell, what I could find quickly comes from the 1960s, out of Avco Laboratories and the Naval Research Labs: "Plasma Diagnostics in Supersonic Flow Containing Cesium and Potassium" [1] Burn Cs in a rocket engine, check for absorption up to 70 GHz (or cps, in those days). Looks like fun work. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4323385 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4323385 (paywalled)
- Kliment 7y agohttps://sci-hub.tw/https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4323385 https://sci-hub.tw/https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4323... (anti-paywalled)