And In Other Things I’ve Long Wondered…
Aubrey Turner has the scoop on why a pathetic nine minutes is so standard as a snooze button time on alarm clocks. I’d long wondered, and wished for a clock with a settable snooze length, perhaps with a variable length, perhaps with a variable volume as well.
When you think about it, taking new technology and doing something the same because of a limitation of the old technology is silly. It’s not uncommon as an approach, however.
For example, when electricity was relatively new, factories would use electricity rather than, say, water power, but would still deliver the power to individual machines through a series of drive belts powered from a master source. Eventually the idea of bringing the electricity directly to individual, motorized machines became dominant, in the course of electricity changing everything and delivering productivity that might not have been obvious at first. But I digress.
Mine has a 5-10-15 minutes option.
Posted by Patrick on 01/25 at 03:53 PMWhen I was in grad school I took a class on foreign policy and the professor told about his trip to Russia shortly after the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
He mentioned that many of the Russian factories were still ‘centralized’ (as their government was centralized) and everything was run from a single prime mover. They attacked many problems from a different point of view than the ‘western’ world, which led to some interesting (if few) technologies (like extruding metals) that the western industries either never tried or failed at…
but I digress. :D
Posted by Jon on 01/25 at 05:29 PMThe system of power delivery via shafts and belting made perfect sense with water power and steam power, but it also made sense in the early days of electric power because efficient small electric motors and the electrical distribution system to feed them had not been developed.
By the way, I know of one small factory in Chicago which as of the mid-90s was still running their machinery via shafts and belts.
Posted by triticale on 01/27 at 02:07 PM
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