[78-L] fwd: The Fading Sounds of Analog Technology (ramble alert!)

[DanKj]

 Yes, but there's no 'normal' speed for a car. Not that it makes much 
difference - I see very few drivers who care whether their speed is safe or 
legal!  I bought a car from somebody who must have seen the temperature 
pointer ALWAYS at "C", yet that meant nothing to him - the instruction book 
was still sealed in a plastic bag in the glove compartment.  The thermostat 
was jammed wide open, so the engine took forever to warm up, heat to the 
interior quit whenever in motion, and it sucked gasoline.  I think he 
figured me for a sucker, buying his crummy vehicle. So, the old-fashioned 
pointers probably got me the good deal.

 Did someone mention steam locomotives? I think they did ... I have some 
recordings made by a train enthusiast in Buffalo, circa 1948-1952.  He used 
a wire recorder to capture puffing locos, clanging bells, shrieking 
whistles, slipping drivers, clanking rails, etc.   I find them fascinating, 
for more than the train sounds - you can also hear industrial noises when he 
was near factories (none of that, today!) and when in quiet areas, even 
though in the middle of a city, NO high-speed traffic noise - just birds, 
the wind in the trees, crickets and cicadas, the occasional honk of a horn. 
The dense canopy of street & yard trees might have been at work, breaking up 
noise - Buffalo's 40sq miles had 400,000 trees in 1950, just on City 
property.  Aerial photos from 1951 were taken in June or July, and they show 
very little of the city - mostly tree tops, touching each other and hiding 
most streets and buildings.

 Here's a rare sound:  a real, motor-operated siren .  Not a lot of real 
church bells on newer churches, either.  The college near me has a clock 
tower with real bells,  playing the familiar Westminster chimes on the 
quarter-hours.  Well.  About 20 years ago, its closest neighbors whined long 
& loud enough to get the bells turned off after 10pm.  That's in a 
neighborhood with a busy expressway & 2 main N-S avenues running through it! 
Maybe they liked the traffic noise & the bells were drowning it out?

okay, everybody kill me for rambling about this off-topic topic. Lionel sold 
train sounds on 7" 78s,  and a cheesy phono inside a model station, I do 
believe.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Breneman" <david_breneman at yahoo.com>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 3:17 AM
Subject: Re: [78-L] fwd: The Fading Sounds of Analog Technology



--- On Fri, 3/4/11, DanKj <MLK402 at verizon.net> wrote:

>  Not to forget car buyers' apparent
> demand for a clock-like speedometer which only vaguely
> indicates speed, instead of a
> precise digital display.

There have, however, been a lot of studies that show that
the best way of conveying simple information at a glance
is with while numbers on a black round faced instrument,
with "normal" being at roughly the same place (12:00, 6:00,
etc.) on all the dials.  This has been known for a long
time, and it's why even digital displays in things like
airplanes, etc., still convey a lot of their information
in a way that looks like a gauge.  It's far easier, in a
car, to glance at the oil pressure gauge and see that the
needle is in the normal range, than to read the number
"65" and try to compute if that's good or bad, for which
model car.





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