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Another fascinating and refined mechanical contraption killed by solid state innovation
by Gravityloss 3y ago
Another fascinating and refined mechanical contraption killed by solid state innovation
- gumby 3y agoDefinitely. Though being a 21st century mechanical device it was heavily instrumented and had an electronic control system. Amusingly, our electronic cylinder indicator showed a problem in one of the stages but the old-school mechanical one did not. The ME's told me "your instrument is bad" but when the stage was taken apart...sure enough the head gasket had a hole. The advantage of the mechanical system is that it would last indefinitely and could be repaired on site. People in India could make most of the spare parts themselves and do the maintenance themselves. But the advantages of the semiconductor + battery systems were: 1 - no moving parts and 2 - massive economies of scale due to mass factory production of highly uniform parts that could be used in lots of applications. Makes sense that it won -- our approach was superior only in certain applications.