GOT THE BLUES?
THERE HAS been a lot in the news these days about the color blue: a new African monkey, the male of whom has an astonishingly blue butt; a berry reported … Continue reading
THE SCIENCE OF ARMED FORCES SONGS
I ENJOY Sirius XM satellite radio, everything from Radio Classics (channel 82) through Met Opera Radio (channel 74) to ’40s on 4 (you guessed it, channel 4). Likely because of … Continue reading
INTEROP
WHEN I send an e-mail from my PC to someone using an iMac, or when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Summit, Utah, we both counted on … Continue reading
HYDROGEN I.C., PART 2: MAZDA
MY FIRST hydrogen internal-combustion drive came in 1994 when Mazda invited me to Vancouver, B.C., to experience a special Miata. This one had an RX-7 rotary engine fueled by H2. … Continue reading
HYDROGEN I.C., PART 1: BILLINGS
HYDROGEN IS extremely flammable (“Oh, the humanity!”). However, this is one reason why it’s a much better energy carrier than, say, potatoes, which are not flammable. And while hydrogen fuel … Continue reading
THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE—FACT AND FICTION
CHARLES BABBAGE was a nineteenth century mathematician who recognized the computational drudgery of assembling tables of logarithms, trigonometric and other mathematical functions. This was the Industrial Age, after all. Why … Continue reading
W. EDWARDS DEMING—A MAN OF HIGH QUALITY
IT’S RARE that one person can be credited with transforming an industry—not to say a country. However, there’s a good argument that W. Edwards Deming did just that. It was … Continue reading
A GLOSSARY OF COOL
CHANGES ARE coming in the refrigerant used in automotive air conditioning, so it seems a good time to bring things up to date with a Glossary of Cool. Also, it’s … Continue reading
COOLSPRING POWER MUSEUM
INTERNAL COMBUSTION engines built before 1900 are celebrated as “centennial engines.” And, among enthusiasts of things mechanical, the Coolspring Power Museum is a real treasure trove of these wonderful devices. … Continue reading
ENDEAVOUR 2012, MAIA/MERCURY 1938
CALIFORNIA IS home to a lot of the space industry, and many of us here were wacko about seeing the welcome-home flybys of the Space Shuttle Endeavour atop its Boeing … Continue reading
