What Gave You A Love For Reading Books If You Have?

[DrB]

Anyone remember the CRC Book of Standard Mathematical Tables? I still have mine circa early 70's,  22nd Edition.  Carried that daily in my college days.

Dave..

[janice6]

Just now, railfancwb said:

Read in a book about making a Tesla Coil using a Model T spark coil for the intermediate transformer. At that time Model T spark coils were readily available and inexpensive at the local Western Auto.

Model T spark coils have a buzzer in the primary circuit to creat the current fluctuation necessary for an electric transformer to transform. A transformer will not work with pure direct current.

Dry cell batteries in the large economy size were expensive at my income level, but I had a toy train transformer which I hooked up to the primary of that coil. Model T batteries were 6 volts DC. I had at least 18 volts AC so that baby could REALLY spark.

Threw an arc at least a 1/2” long into my trigger finger. Had an ingrown wart where that spark hit for decades thereafter.


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That's an admirable feat, however.  At a surplus store in town, I bought an oil furnace igniter transformer.

I put two welding rods on the screw terminals and made a slight V about two feet long.

The kids were ecstatic when I packed it all up and they got to take it to grade school show and tell.  It generated an arc at the maximum width of 4 inches or more.  (air currents could break the arc)

It was magnificent and a great hit in the classroom.  You could smell the Ozone, it was fairly strong. 

I had numerous show and tell projects for my kids to take to class.  One was a neon laser hologram display.  I had the laser mounted on an Aluminum base with the glass plate hologram so you could look around the object in the picture and see the hidden parts.  This was when Holograms were just hitting the laboratories and they heard the words but never saw either a laser or a hologram, (we made it in-house.

Another was 2 Oz's of pure Gold in a ceramic crucible.  We used Gold vapor deposition in almost everything for integrated circuitry conductors. 

We had quite a bit of the stuff since we also had a large production line making magnetic thin film memories for the Navy fire control computers.

The teacher called me at work, and said that my kid claimed "that big chunk" was Gold.  She didn't believe it.  I assured her it really was.  It represented a fair amount of money.

Another was a magnetic thin film military memory on 2 mil thick glass substrate.  My kid had to explain how the magnetic domains switched from the electric field of the wires as a means of storing one's and zero's.

There were quite a few.  Each time the kids got a show and tell, I made sure that they could explain what was happening well enough so the other kids could appreciate it too. 

When my kids graduated out of grade school, one teacher came to me and told me how much they would miss my kids.  They had the best show and tells of all time.

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by janice6

[tous]

I have that as well as the 1970 edition of the CRC HandBook of Chemistry and Physics.

Both well-thumbed and at the time, valued beyond proce.

Still have them.

I used to go to library sales and bought old physics, chemistry and electronics text books.  It was fascinating to see how the technologies evolved and what was known in the past.

 

[railfancwb]

Raymond F Yates was an author specializing in non-fiction. Many of his books’ titles began “Boys Book of...” or “Fun With...”

Found many of those in the schools and public library when growing up. Enjoyed them and made various things described therein. The Tesla Coil experiments described earlier came from one. I built a small undershot waterwheel from another. And learned a lot from experiments and projects about which I read, even those I didn’t attempt.

I guess in today’s terminology his writing would be described as “accessible”. Or with an older usage “understandable”.


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[janice6]

Just now, tous said:

I have that as well as the 1970 edition of the CRC HandBook of Chemistry and Physics.

Both well-thumbed and at the time, valued beyond proce.

Still have them.

I used to go to library sales and bought old physics, chemistry and electronics text books.  It was fascinating to see how the technologies evolved and what was known in the past.

 

I may have mentioned this before, but one of my semiconductor texts I bought just for the quote inside.  A leading expert in the world on Semiconductors, had a quote in the text that said that Silicon would prove to be totally useless in Semiconductors and nothing would Replace Germanium for devices.

I loved that text if for nothing more than to remind me that because someone was claimed to be an expert, didn't mean they couldn't be as dumb as the next guy!  When I see the phrase, "Experts say", I take the BS that follows with a grain of Salt.

Always question experts!  It's the only way to find the truth!

Edited December 22, 2019 by janice6

[janice6]

Just now, railfancwb said:

Raymond F Yates was an author specializing in non-fiction. Many of his books’ titles began “Boys Book of...” or “Fun With...”

Found many of those in the schools and public library when growing up. Enjoyed them and made various things described therein. The Tesla Coil experiments described earlier came from one. I built a small undershot waterwheel from another. And learned a lot from experiments and projects about which I read, even those I didn’t attempt.

I guess in today’s terminology his writing would be described as “accessible”. Or with an older usage “understandable”.


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All my life I have believed Einstein's quote that, "If you don't understand the subject well enough to explain it to a child, then you don't understand it yourself!".

Knowledge is no good to anyone, if you can't explain the concept  to others.

 

Some people bluster and bloviate to cover up the fact that they don't know the details.

Edited December 22, 2019 by janice6

[DrB]

5 minutes ago, janice6 said:

I may have mentioned this before, but one of my semiconductor texts I bought just for the quote inside.  A leading expert in the world on Semiconductors, had a quote in the text that said that Silicon would prove to be totally useless in Semiconductors and nothing would Replace Germanium for devices.

Can you say Thermal Runaway???  I destroyed many of those back in the day.  Most times I said, Holey **** here it goes as I saw the smoke and heard the Puff of transistors dying...

Dave..

[DrB]

Nothing like the smell of burned electronic components in the morning......

[janice6]

Just now, DrB said:

Can you say Thermal Runaway???  I destroyed many of those back in the day.  Most times I said, Holey **** here it goes as I saw the smoke and heard the Puff of transistors dying...

Dave..

Aha!

My favorite subject back in the day.

I mentioned that we had a huge high vacuum production line continuously making magnetic thin film memories for the Navy Fire Control Computers.

These used vapor deposited Permalloy (Nickle, Iron, and assorted crap in the alloy).  The alloy was in chunks about three inches in diameter and about 1 1/2 inches thick.

These were called "melts".  The system used an intense Electron beam magnetically guided onto the melt and then rapidly "wiggled" to ensure that the alloy was deposited intact and not just some of it's constitutients.

I designed the Magnetic beam deflector used to control the Electron Beam on the melt.  The deflection was 270 degrees from the source to the melt.

I used Germanium Power Transistors because that was all there was at the time.  Of course with very high current the transistors got hot and went into thermal runaway.

I designed the circuit with an identical power transistor (using only the base emitter junction) in series with the base bias current of the control power transistor.

The end result was when the power transistor and the one in the base bias network increased in temperature (they both were side by side on the heat sink), The power transistor would start pouring current through the load, but at the same time the base bias transistor was pouring more current away from the base bias network.

I demonstrated that I could run the collector current so high I could boil water on the transistor case, but with the bias control transistor it couldn't go into thermal runaway.  It was great fun!

Edited December 22, 2019 by janice6

[Mrs.Cicero]

I enjoyed reading this whole thread. I was reading before I got to kindergarten, which bored me to tears for the obvious reason C-A-T... C-AT... CAT.  I can't  remember ever NOT knowing how to read (which caused me some difficulty homeschooling my kids, who were both late readers  - it was challenging for me to figure out an effective way to teach them to read, since I couldn't remember how I had learned it myself, and nothing that we tried with the usual curriculums worked at all for them.  Fortunately (FINALLY), one day at the ages of 8 for the oldest and 7 for the youngest, the light bulb went on for them, and they could suddenly read.  They can't to this day tell me what happened in their heads.  They both spend a huge amount of their spare time reading - partly because we homeschool, so they have more free time than they would otherwise, and partly because we have no cable or broadcast TV - the tv is only used to watch dvds.  They are in their teens, and I still read aloud to them every day - but now it is The Daily Stoic, and the Thomas Sowell Reader, instead of Dr Seuss and Fancy Nancy.

Growing up, I spent all my allowance, until I was a teenager, on books.  No records, no makeup, no clothes, nothing but books.  Mom drove me to the library ever other week, and I was allowed to check out 12 books at a time.  Her rule was for every 5 fiction books I checked out, I had to check out one non-fiction.  I really only wanted to read SciFi/Fantasy and Westerns, but I usually finished all those before the next library trip, so I would end up reading the non-fiction out of desperation waiting for my next fix of Andre Norton, Asimov, Lloyd Alexander.  I read all my Dad's old Zane Grey novels that had been his grandmother's. (I still have them).  When we visited my mom's parents' farm every year, I would read all the Tom Quest books her brothers had left when they moved out, and all the Hardy Boys, and the two Nancy Drew books she had... every year.  When my mom was young, she used to sneak off with a book, and climb a tree behind the barn to escape her siblings and her chores.  Where I grew up there were no trees, so I read on top of ladders wherever my dad left one up, and on top of the jungle gym in the backyard.  And I was forever getting in trouble in school for reading novels during class.  I always read the lesson first, and then stuck a novel inside the textbook or in my lap, and the teachers still had a fit. They should have been glad I wasn't whispering to my neighbors or throwing spitballs across the room.

I started working part-time in a bookstore after we moved for my husband's job... we stayed there long enough for me to work up to managing the store.  Of all my jobs, that was my favorite.  A ridiculous amount of my paycheck went right back to the store buying books.  About 10 years ago, I started getting rid of a huge number of the books I had.  While I prefer the feel of paper to the fell of my kindle, the kindle takes up a LOT less room.  I kept the best reference books that will never become outdated, and the books that had been father's, and my absolute favorites, but the rest are now in e-book form, or gone (I admit I gave some of them to my daughters).  I wish I lived in a house large enough to have a room with walls entirely made of bookshelves, but I do not, and I cannot abide clutter, and do not wish to spend any time dusting that can be avoided... and besides that, my husband still has 20 doc boxes full of books in the basement, that he refuses to get rid of, because he loves to read just as much as I do... which is nice because he is always sending books to my Kindle.

[railfancwb]

When doing book reports in English class in high school I would hold up whatever novel I was currently reading, give a teaser synopses to where I was, and conclude with “...and if you want to know the rest of the story you will have to read the book,”


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[janice6]

Just now, Mrs.Cicero said:

I enjoyed reading this whole thread. I was reading before I got to kindergarten, which bored me to tears for the obvious reason C-A-T... C-AT... CAT.  I can't  remember ever NOT knowing how to read (which caused me some difficulty homeschooling my kids, who were both late readers  - it was challenging for me to figure out an effective way to teach them to read, since I couldn't remember how I had learned it myself, and nothing that we tried with the usual curriculums worked at all for them.  Fortunately (FINALLY), one day at the ages of 8 for the oldest and 7 for the youngest, the light bulb went on for them, and they could suddenly read.  They can't to this day tell me what happened in their heads.  They both spend a huge amount of their spare time reading - partly because we homeschool, so they have more free time than they would otherwise, and partly because we have no cable or broadcast TV - the tv is only used to watch dvds.  They are in their teens, and I still read aloud to them every day - but now it is The Daily Stoic, and the Thomas Sowell Reader, instead of Dr Seuss and Fancy Nancy.

Growing up, I spent all my allowance, until I was a teenager, on books.  No records, no makeup, no clothes, nothing but books.  Mom drove me to the library ever other week, and I was allowed to check out 12 books at a time.  Her rule was for every 5 fiction books I checked out, I had to check out one non-fiction.  I really only wanted to read SciFi/Fantasy and Westerns, but I usually finished all those before the next library trip, so I would end up reading the non-fiction out of desperation waiting for my next fix of Andre Norton, Asimov, Lloyd Alexander.  I read all my Dad's old Zane Grey novels that had been his grandmother's. (I still have them).  When we visited my mom's parents' farm every year, I would read all the Tom Quest books her brothers had left when they moved out, and all the Hardy Boys, and the two Nancy Drew books she had... every year.  When my mom was young, she used to sneak off with a book, and climb a tree behind the barn to escape her siblings and her chores.  Where I grew up there were no trees, so I read on top of ladders wherever my dad left one up, and on top of the jungle gym in the backyard.  And I was forever getting in trouble in school for reading novels during class.  I always read the lesson first, and then stuck a novel inside the textbook or in my lap, and the teachers still had a fit. They should have been glad I wasn't whispering to my neighbors or throwing spitballs across the room.

I started working part-time in a bookstore after we moved for my husband's job... we stayed there long enough for me to work up to managing the store.  Of all my jobs, that was my favorite.  A ridiculous amount of my paycheck went right back to the store buying books.  About 10 years ago, I started getting rid of a huge number of the books I had.  While I prefer the feel of paper to the fell of my kindle, the kindle takes up a LOT less room.  I kept the best reference books that will never become outdated, and the books that had been father's, and my absolute favorites, but the rest are now in e-book form, or gone (I admit I gave some of them to my daughters).  I wish I lived in a house large enough to have a room with walls entirely made of bookshelves, but I do not, and I cannot abide clutter, and do not wish to spend any time dusting that can be avoided... and besides that, my husband still has 20 doc boxes full of books in the basement, that he refuses to get rid of, because he loves to read just as much as I do... which is nice because he is always sending books to my Kindle.

I believe that reading has the most rewards of anything else you can do.  You learn things, you learn grammar, writing, construction by exposure to good writers, you learn to find information, and you learn to sift through what you find to get a consensus.

I learned what little I know of writing from all the reading I did, and still  do. I found that reading is a simple means to develop your imagination and with a good imagination you acquire creativity.  With creativity you can make a new world!

My Grand Daughter in college is going for her PhD in Veterinary Medicine.  She love research as I do and I encourage her to read Science Fiction and fantasy stories to attune her mind to new things.  And the concept that if it doesn't exist, it means you might create it.

I read all the time and forward the best of what I read, to her.  She says we are much alike.  I want her to have as much fun in life as I did, doing what she loves.  Then it's not work!

Learning from books gave me the feeling that I didn't care if I failed.  I just changed the direction and started anew.  Children need an active imagination more than anything else.  It gives them confidence, and us hope.

[railfancwb]

A friend from high school days is equally enthusiastic as a reader. When she spies a novel which looks interesting she jumps to the last few pages and reads them. If she likes the ending, she gets the book and reads it. If not then not.


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[DrB]

Thank you, am glad I started it to see all the responses.  Way cool and I like reading the replies...

Again thanks...  Dave..

[railfancwb]

My late wife and I both loved reading. On vacation road trips she and I took books into the restaurant and read while waiting for the meal. Older child, a daughter, picked up on this and was soon reading while we were. Son was bored and antsy, so we told him he might as well read also. He got the idea, and soon all four of us were happily reading while waiting. Modern families might look up from their smart phones long enough to ding us about being unsociable.


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[tous]

Like Mrs. Cicero, I could read long before first grade and I was bored to tears, so I would attempt to entertain the class.

And like 6 of janice, I had teachers that challenged me with age-advanced books and stories rather than just try to keep me quiet.

I swear, if I were in school today I would have been on Ritalin since age five.

Far easy to drug a student than find a way to teach them.

Any of you old geezers remember the SRA color-coded reading system?

You were supposed to take a school year to make it through; I finished it in three months.

Thank you, my teachers.

[DrB]

The Tesla Coil we had was over 8 ft. tall on the small winding tower. Don't know how  many miles of enameled Magnetic Wire it had in the tower.    The bottom with the heavy coiled wire was probably over 4 feet.  Thing was huge and would dim the lights in that portion of the building when we fired it up.  

Was in Mr. Bitters Lab.  He could of passed as Einstein.  Small man white hair and always wore the same suits.  Told us he had 7 or so identical so he could always have one or two at the dry cleaners and still have one to wear.  Made choosing clothes easy in the morning.  Yes, he had the messy white hair also.

We got to play with some of the things he built.  I still remember the fluorescent lights glowing in waves in the hallways when we fired it up.  Strange things happened to radio waves as well.

Sad he died before we could learn more from him...

Dave..

 

 

 

 

 

[tadbart]

I gotta admit, there isn't a whole lot on these last two pages of thread that I understand, but it sure is cool seeing you guys (and gal) converse about it.

[Borg warner]

4 minutes ago, tadbart said:

I gotta admit, there isn't a whole lot on these last two pages of thread that I understand, but it sure is cool seeing you guys (and gal) converse about it.

Me too. My father was a aeronautical engineer who calculated rocket fuel and hydraulic systems back in the late forties and early fifties using a slide rule (the Bell X1A and numerous experimental vertical takeoff and landing projects) but I barely learned basic arithmetic and an abacus makes more sense to me that a slide rule.

I suffer from innumeracy which is the mathematical form of illiteracy. Part of the reason is that I'm dyslexic. And for some reason that never affected my ability to read. I suppose I was just a lot more interested in reading than I was in mathematics and that gave me the motivation to overcome the dyslexia when it came to words, but not numbers.

[tadbart]

2 hours ago, Borg warner said:

Me too. My father was a aeronautical engineer who calculated rocket fuel and hydraulic systems back in the late forties and early fifties using a slide rule (the Bell X1A and numerous experimental vertical takeoff and landing projects) but I barely learned basic arithmetic and an abacus makes more sense to me that a slide rule.

I suffer from innumeracy which is the mathematical form of illiteracy. Part of the reason is that I'm dyslexic. And for some reason that never affected my ability to read. I suppose I was just a lot more interested in reading than I was in mathematics and that gave me the motivation to overcome the dyslexia when it came to words, but not numbers.

Math ain't my strong suit, either.  They tried to tell me "math is like a language."

Well, okay. That works for regular +-*/, but then again, you don't see folks throwing Greek and Cyrillic symbols in when they write about seeing Spot run. Math was cool. Then they added letters. THEN they added formulas. And then, as if that wasn't enough, freakin Greek letters. At that point, I was just like "F you guys. I'm gonna go sell drugs."

[Jack Ryan]

On 12/21/2019 at 11:00 PM, Walt Longmire said:

I have an original of that book.

I've probably donated and given away a hundred copies in paper back over the years and years since first reading it. I believe it to be a HUGE opportunity to promote hunting and firearms acceptance.

Plus the liberals hate it.

[janice6]

1 hour ago, DrB said:

The Tesla Coil we had was over 8 ft. tall on the small winding tower. Don't know how  many miles of enameled Magnetic Wire it had in the tower.    The bottom with the heavy coiled wire was probably over 4 feet.  Thing was huge and would dim the lights in that portion of the building when we fired it up.  

Was in Mr. Bitters Lab.  He could of passed as Einstein.  Small man white hair and always wore the same suits.  Told us he had 7 or so identical so he could always have one or two at the dry cleaners and still have one to wear.  Made choosing clothes easy in the morning.  Yes, he had the messy white hair also.

We got to play with some of the things he built.  I still remember the fluorescent lights glowing in waves in the hallways when we fired it up.  Strange things happened to radio waves as well.

Sad he died before we could learn more from him...

Dave..

 

 

 

 

 

When I started work in the Physics Research Lab at Univac, the people wandering around were the technical authorities on Magnetics, since we were the authority on thin magnetic film memory.

You could expose the memory to the radiation burst equivalent to an atomic blast, and it still worked afterwards.  it defined, Non-Volatile memory.

One of them  was a fun little guy.  Dr. Sidney Rubens.  He was the epitome of the absent minded professor.

One day I stopped to pick him up from a body shop on the way to work.  The body man said they he was one of their best customers.  He had a charge account on body work

One day he said he lost his car.  I asked him where he lost it and he said St. Paul, somewhere.

I turned out that he was driving home and saw a friend of his sitting on a bench waiting for a bus.  He stopped and started up a conversation with him and when the bus came he and his friend got on it and went home.

Yes the St. Paul Police found his car for him.

We had a marvelous time with Magnetics and memories back in the day.

[Mrs.Cicero]

On 12/22/2019 at 8:03 PM, tous said:

 

Any of you old geezers remember the SRA color-coded reading system?

You were supposed to take a school year to make it through; I finished it in three months.

Thank you, my teachers.

ROFL.  I am now an old geezer?  My mother was a teacher.  We had the entire SRA crate in the basement.  I read them all one summer.  I wonder whatever happened to that?

[Mrs.Cicero]

On 12/22/2019 at 11:46 PM, tadbart said:

Math ain't my strong suit, either.  They tried to tell me "math is like a language."

Well, okay. That works for regular +-*/, but then again, you don't see folks throwing Greek and Cyrillic symbols in when they write about seeing Spot run. Math was cool. Then they added letters. THEN they added formulas. And then, as if that wasn't enough, freakin Greek letters. At that point, I was just like "F you guys. I'm gonna go sell drugs."

When they say math is like a language, they just mean math is like grammar.  The only explanation for mathematical functions that ever made any sense to me was the day somebody told me a function was just a mathematical "if-then clause".  That analogy would have made the Finite Mathematical Models textbook a hell of a lot easier for me to understand.  After that explanation, I realized languages like Polish with its cases and inflectional endings were algebraic, but English was geometric.  That's the point at which my fellow language majors who hated math told me to shut up and have another whiskey.  I don't like my math adulterated with Greek letters.  Except pi.  I like pi.  I don't like my whiskey adulterated either.  Except with honey when I'm sick.  Like now.  I'm going to have another.

[Walt Longmire]

I don't remember color coded reading. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, I just don't remember it. We had a speed reading machine. It could be set up a lot of different ways. We had tests. I made it higher than anyone else in the class except for one other guy, but when it came time for the comprehension test, I beat him. Also I took typing. On MANUAL machines. I could do 95 words a minute on those ancient machines. I asked the teacher if I could practice for a few days on one of the electrics since I was certain I could break 100. (we had 2 electric typewriters in the class and only the girls were allowed to use them) Teacher said no because it was unlikely I was going to need typing skills like the girls would.