Missing Links Remembered

[Nodak]

In the 50s there was still a traveling salesman on the back roads around Pembina County. He was Syrian and everyone knew him as Boomarod, at least that was as close to his real name as people could pronounce. He traveled in a wagon with a team of horses and had pots, pans, cloth and God only knows what else in his wagon. He would stop at farm houses to sell goods and sharpen knives if needed. If it was late in the day people would give him a place to stay for the night. He passed away in the mid 70s at 90 years old.

 

[Htown Harry]

I imagine large-scale physical models of facilities are also a thing of the past?
My dad was an engineer, he designed oil refineries. It was >amazing< to go to his office and see the model of a refinery--pipes, valves, pumps, vessels, cooling towers, access walks and ladders--every major part was there. The thing was huge,and all the parts had to be custom fitted just like the real thing.

I'm sure a digital representation offers utility far beyond what a physical model can provide, but it just seems more real when you can touch it.

Physical models are still built from time-to-time, but not nearly as much as in the past. Here's one that was put together last year.

Zoo Interchange model on display at courthouse | TrafficWatch 12 - WISN Home

You are correct about the utility of a digital renderings. Under the hood of the 3-D animation software that produced this video, the number of cars and their movements would have been loaded into a computer model that calculates vehicle speed, volume and density by road segment. The digital output of that model is mashed with the physical road and bridge data produced from CADD drawings to produce an animation. It not only shows the physical layout but also the way the roadway will operate.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a model provides a few thousand and a 3-D animation is worth several thousand.

I-430 and I-630 interchange construction animation - YouTube

 

[samclem]

back to the model planes... made many of these: baby R.O.G.'s
carving the propellor... hardest part for a 7 year old.
http://www.modelaircraft.org/files/babyrogconstructionarticle.pdf

Thanks for that. I built several of the Guillow's balsa-and-tissue models of WW-11 fighters: they didn't look great, but they looked better than they flew! I would have been better off building a simpler plane.
Carving a prop as a 7 year old--that will teach a guy perseverance!

 

[rmark]

Library card catalog

(which we still have a few of in our university library, but not for public use, just used by a few departments as a historical record. Solid maple, heavy as heck even when empty)

 

[Calico]

Library card catalog

(which we still have a few of in our university library, but not for public use, just used by a few departments as a historical record. Solid maple, heavy as heck even when empty)

One of the many part-time jobs I had while working my way through college was filing cards in those old maple card catalogs. When I first heard our local library was getting rid of the card catalogs and moving all the records online I felt sad. End of an era.

 

[JakeBrake]

I was a member of the national test group for Salk polio vaccine at my elementary school in about the fifth or sixth grade.

They never told the parents who had the real vaccine and who had the placebo. However, the results were so obvious that they curtailed the test and began full scale dispensation over the entire USA.

Since they never said who had the real vaccine, everyone in my class had to be vaccinated again. That time they gave us the Sabin vaccine on a suger cube.