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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc.

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Old 28th Apr 2018, 1:53 am   #61
G8UWM-MildMartin
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

It's fun with English versus German time, e.g. half ten being 10:30, but halb zehn is 9:30, though all times other than half translate exactly.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 1:53 pm   #62
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I remember my sister who is now 33 having trouble using an analogue clock as all the clocks at my parent house were digital when she was young.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 3:18 pm   #63
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Not really technical terminology, but relevant to us. When did dismantling change into "disassembling", and/or "parting out", both alien to me.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 3:47 pm   #64
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I think 'parting out' is an American term.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 4:05 pm   #65
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When did a 'power cut' suddenly become a 'power outage' ?

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Old 28th Apr 2018, 4:31 pm   #66
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Disassembling must have come from the film Short Circuit surely.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 4:32 pm   #67
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When did a 'power cut' suddenly become a 'power outage' ?
When I was at Kirk o' Shotts back in '83 I was introduced to that expression. We were told that an 'outage' was a planned break; a 'cut' was an unplanned one. Since then, the boundaries have blurred.

Nowadays a planned break is an 'outage' and an unplanned break is an outrage.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 4:41 pm   #68
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

As far as telling the time is concerned, we usually want to know differential, rather than absolute time - e.g. how long it is until lunchtime. The analogue clock is far more useful than the digital for this. It used to be easy to demostrate that more often than not someone who had just looked at their (analogue) watch still didn't know what the time was, but nevertheless now knew that lunch was in half an hour or whatever.
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 5:35 pm   #69
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Not really technical terminology, but relevant to us. When did dismantling change into "disassembling", and/or "parting out", both alien to me.
I am not convinced those all have the same meaning.

Dismantling : Taking a piece of hardware apart for whatever reason (e.g. to repair it)

Disassembling : What you do to machine code (or microcode) to make it slightly easier to understand

Parting Out : Taking something apart with a view to using some of the parts separately. E.g. if you have a common radio with a burnt out mains transformer and badly broken case (and thus not worth repairing) you might 'part it out' to extract the IF transformers, output transformer, valve holders, tuning capacitor, etc to use in other projects or repair other sets
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Old 28th Apr 2018, 6:08 pm   #70
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Reminds me of a story told by an older colleague about his national service when his sergeant told them "Right men, I want you to dismantle those tables, take them to the next hut, and mantle them back together again.".
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 2:45 am   #71
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I like to use 'balls out' meaning flat out. My reasoning is, the more i use it the more people will know what it means! (and it always gets a reaction)
In NASA's lexicon "All balls" means a row of zeros; no error.

I first heard it as a 15 year old, during the Apollo 8 mission. I was intrigued by is but guessed it was referring to zeros on the DSKY, Amy's "Vintage Space" Youtube channel recently confirmed what I thought.
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 3:04 am   #72
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Reminds me of a story told by an older colleague about his national service when his sergeant told them "Right men, I want you to dismantle those tables, take them to the next hut, and mantle them back together again.".
I post in another place where the Furlong Firkin Fortnight system reigns supreme, work and money references are encrypted with ROT13 (jbex and zbarl), and making/building/constructing are all simply "molishing".
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 3:15 am   #73
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When did a 'power cut' suddenly become a 'power outage' ?
When did heavy pieces of military kit become "boatanchors"? it's not an expression I knew of when I had my R107

When did it become OK (not by me) for UK radio amateurs to call themselves "hams"? When I was first licensed there was an unwritten rule that we left that expression to the Americans and Tony Hancock.
(the rule was probably unwritten next to the one about not saying "over and out")
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 8:27 am   #74
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Vintage and current term of harmonic being multiple of original. This is easy to understand. Second being twice, third 3x etc. This reasoning would give the fundamental as being first harmonic. But it is not a multiple.
Nobody has ever given me an explanation as to why this is.
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 9:05 am   #75
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Yes, the first harmonic is an integer multiple, the integer being one. You have to remember that multiple in this sense means "multiplied by". The first harmonic is the first element of the harmonic series, where each element of the series is a positive integer multiple of a given starting frequency. In the mathematical sense of the term harmonic series, terms are in wavelengths rather than frequencies and the series goes: 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 ...

However, the term fundamental, although synonymous with first harmonic, belongs to a different nomenclature which goes: Fundamental, first overtone, second overtone etc.

Anyway, to clarify thought on the meaning of 'first harmonic', it's better to think of it as 'first element of the harmonic series'.

I blame it on the musicians. It's not the only place where they do this. With musical intervals (distances between notes on the scale) they have a similar 'off by one error' where the first interval is between the note and itself. Go figure.
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 10:08 am   #76
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Obvious now, multiplied by 1. Not a term I normally imagine. This is the first time I have received a full answer. I normally get blank expressions, what a silly question or like that is how it is.
I always thought of only quartz crystals being associated with overtones.
What a full reply, thanks.
Rob
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 10:44 am   #77
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When did heavy pieces of military kit become "boatanchors"? it's not an expression I knew of when I had my R107
I've heard of any heavy, not very useful pieces of equipment being called boat anchors. Jackie Stewart described the BRM H16 Formula 1 engines as such.
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 11:00 am   #78
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

There's one other confusion at risk here, the difference between overtones and harmonics.

If I take a signal and distort it, harmonics are created. The harmonics are absolutely precisely at integer multiples of the frequency of the original signal, So the frequency ratio between the fundamental and any harmonic is always an exact whole number.

If i take a stringed instrument and pluck it carefully I can get it to resonate at its natural frequency - a fundamental mode oscillation.

If I pluck it somewhat off-centre and choose the place carefully, I can get it to resonate on an overtone frequency. The overtone frequency is fairly close to an integer multiple of the fundamental mode but it isn't exactly so due to secondary effects called end-correction effects.

If I make a quartz crystal, like the gutar/violin string it has a load of resonance modes. I need to choose which one I want and design an oscillator circuit to favour that mode.

For a normal "Thickness-shear" AT cut crystal, the fundamental mode resembles holding a bathroom sponge between the palms of your hands and moving hands in opposition up and down. This can be viewed as a transversal wave bouncing to and fro between the parallel faces. The thickness of the material is about (end corrections again) half a wavelength at the speed of the wave in the crystal.

But I can vibrate it faster and fit in three half waves (plus end correction!) and get an oscillation close to three times the fundamental frequency.

So: Harmonics pertain to signal components and are on exact integer multiples of frequency

Overtones pertain to resonator mode and are not quite on exact integer multiples.


In loose talk they see to get used a bit too interchangeably and this risks losing the special difference.

David
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 11:41 am   #79
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When did a 'power cut' suddenly become a 'power outage' ?
About the same time a footpath became a footway.

gmb.
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Old 29th Apr 2018, 11:43 am   #80
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Footway is an old term, in mining circles at least.

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