IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

The New Hole - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

At this one company, there was this drawing of a sheet metal part. It was part of the chassis metal of an item of military electronics equipment. Its drawing was needed by various departments and persons, so copies of that drawing were run-off on a copier.

However!!

As the drawing of the sheet metal part went through the copier, instead of the copier making clean drawing reproductions, the copier put a small circle right in the middle of the print and at first, nobody noticed.

Copyright Capp Enterprises, Inc.   Used with permission.

The Other Particles - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

There are said to be some tales of The Golden West that stir up visions of things never imagined by the pioneers on their westward treks.

There was, for example, the immensely massive Higgs Bison. Vast herds of these glorious beasts are said to have once thundered across the open plains, usually in circular paths seventeen miles in diameter.

It was initially planned to domesticate them, to fit them out with specially designed saddles called Gluons, but all such efforts never stuck. Their spirits would simply not be bound.

Technical Progress - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Technical advances don't usually occur in a steady progression of events. False starts, incorrect theories, misjudgments, clashes of ego and outright fraud have been well documented throughout the course of progress, even if General Electric did long ago pay Ronald Reagan to intone "Progress is our most important product."

Still, we do manage to advance. The much ballyhooed picture telephone that was introduced by Bell Telephone at the 1964 World's Fair in New York City was a marketing dud, but now we have cell phones and services like Skype.

Skeletor's Virtues - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

In the Mattel character line-up of He-Man,  the epitome of evil was the character Skeletor.

I submit that Skeletor was gravely misunderstood and that, in fact, he had many admirable qualities.

Skeletor was highly intelligent and very well educated. He was also multicultural. He was literate in, and he fluently spoke, several different languages. In wanting to rule all of the planet Eternia, he was simply ambitious. He had great administrative, technical and financial skills having put together his enclave, Snake Mountain, with all of its capital equipment.

The Theory of Everything - Albert Eynstein, Consultant, Genius

Any student of The Theory of Everything must master a whole new set of mathematical disciplines.

The most important of these was first recognized in the 1950's by Walt Kelly, creator of the cartoon Pogo who, with inspiration taken from The New Math debacle of the early post-Sputnik years, led us into a study of The After Math which describes what's left after everything else has been destroyed. The answer to every calculation is zero.

Later theoretical work by researchers who chose to remain anonymous (for obvious reasons) led to the following extremely important result, The Apathy Integral.  

The Placebo Button - John Dunn, Consultant Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We've seen these pushbuttons at many street intersections. They're supposed to be a safety enhancement for street crossing pedestrians. When you see either the word "walk" or an LED image of a walking man, that's when one is supposed to embark on that brief foray to the other side of the street.

Things don't always seem to work out that way, unfortunately.

  

Captain Easy - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

There was once a comic strip entitled "Captain Easy", created by Roy Crane in 1929. Please see http://www.toonopedia.com/easy.htm for more information about that.

Two of the recurring characters in that comic were a neer-do-well man named Kallimak (his first name now forgotten by yours truly) and his rather dim witted son, Buster who one day came across a flying saucer that had crash landed on the beach.

Being a sort-of helpful, but quite opportunistically inclined pair, father and son met what turned out to be a little green man (an LGM) and asked him what was going on.

The N-1 Law - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

When I was still a young engineer, my boss told me of his absolute belief in "The N-1 Law" which may be stated as follows:

"If for any purpose, a quantity of 'N' items is required, availability shall be limited to a maximum of 'N-1'."

With this tidbit of wisdom once again repeated to me on one particular occasion, he sent me to the company stockroom to obtain exactly six six-lug phenolic terminal strips. Don't come back with five, I was told. Make sure you get six of them. Off I went.

Ground isn't Ground by Larry Rachman

A recent article by John Dunn (Ground - 6/9/11) brings to mind a classic story. Its most likely an urban legend, but its such a good one that it bears retelling, especially for the young folk among us who may have never heard it. It dates back to when telephones were too big to lose, and  actually had wires attached to them.

The phone man was sent out on a call with the following bizarre

complaint: When the little old lady received a phone call, the caller complained that the phone had rung many times before she answered. But she knew she answered on the second ring. Interestingly enough, though, whenever the phone was about to ring, her dog barked first.

Ear Wax - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The goal was to devise a customized infrared sensor for remote temperature measurements, something similar in purpose to hand held sensors already being sold. Using a blackbody hot plate as an infrared emitter, I arranged an infrared lens and a thermocouple to monitor the emissions. Thermistor readings were also acquired for comparison purposes.