star, have you seen fellow gulcher dkachel's photography?
http://www.davidkachel.com/index.html
he uses old techniques in the development of his monographs.
can you post with some pictures of your pottery?
I never tire of reading about artists who appreciate Rand and seeing their works.
another gulcher, vinay, has a FB page devoted to Rand romanticism and fine art, film, literature and music "Romanticism Watch"
https://www.facebook.com/groups/45734121...

I am one of the generation that has watched the technologies it was born with evolve away. Not just one or two generations as those of our forefather saw, but rather 3,4 or even more generations depending on the technology.

One of the special interests of my youth was photography. Having come of age in the late 60's, I saw the photographic process the first time on a high school field trip to a local newspaper. One of the staff photographers showed the class around the darkroom and I and one of my buddies hung back to ask a few questions. The guy turned out the white lights and showed us the magic of watching a B&W print showing up in the tray of developer, Stop and fix. We were both hooked and by the time the next week was over we had combined our allowances to buy a basic darkroom kit and were working to turn our long unused coal room into a darkroom. That began a life long love affair with the magic.

One of the first major changes that shook up the photographic community was that development of color photography for the home processor. Developing color and slide film had been around since the 40's, a spinoff of the war industry, but home color printing was a horrendously expensive process that was far outside the reach of anyone we knew. This giant step was actually a series of steps (as such things really are) but for me the development was punctuated by a term of service in the Navy that saw me serving half way around the world in a world where folks did not like us. ;)

When I returned "Color" was as much a reality to home processing as B&W had been when I left. Not as cheap as B&W, but just about everyone could make color prints.

In college on the GI Bill I was able to take my first of many photo classes which I was not too surprised ignored color. Only grad student were allowed to work in color since it was so expensive. Since I was an Engineering student, I was never allowed where they worked in a private "color only" darkroom.

The next color explosion was actually happening at the same time, however it was so remove from "normal" processing that most everyone in the Art world dismissed Polaroid's as little more that a gimmick or a fad.

In the very late 80's we began to hear of digital cameras. Not as a thing that we could go buy, but as was used by NASA on the Hubble telescope when it launched. It seems somewhat funny in that as much as the Hubble made us aware of Digital cameras, it was these cameras that delayed the launch as the tech went through generation after generation, improving by a order of magnitude in the space of a month or two. NASA finally decided that it would be launched with what they had and this was in no small part of the failure of the opening days of Hubble. It's horrible first images did not help us to accept digital.

Zooming forward to around the turn of the millennia and some of the first phone show up with digital cameras. For the home processor sloshing around in his darkroom, this was interesting but unless they were a prophotog they really could not afford to make "good" digital prints. The optics were good, the CCD technology had come along by leaps and bounds, but the ability to move from image on the screen to a printer with photo quality just was not there.

I built a darkroom in my workshop when we built this home. My shop is a 30x50' detached building that is heated and air conditioned and is used as a photo studio. My darkroom was state of the art and I began a serious pursuit of the craft. I love making B&W prints. But I knew that I could do better. So with the 1990s behind us I opened the new millennia by going back to school as a photo Art major. As I worked though the classes I began to see more and more full color printing AND I watched as it became accepted in the Art community as Art, not just a method that some dabbled in.

In 2005 I graduated with 2 BFA degrees. One was with a emphasis in Photography, the other was in Ceramics. Oddly it seemed I discovered that the thing I loved about photography was the craft of the darkroom. I'm an awesome photog in B&W, but where I'm really good is in the darkroom. For me, that's where the magic has always been. Now it's all but dead. The cost of photo paper and sheet film has made it so expensive that I just can't go out there and make prints for fun anymore.

9 years ago I locked the door on my darkroom as an artist for the last time. The next time it was opened it was to begin the selling of my equipment to make room for my ceramic studio. Clay has an eternal aura about it. It has not changed in centuries.

The older I get the more I enjoy things that don't change. 9 years on and I still love playing in the mud.

oh, ok then, humor is good.
This topic is an area most of us in here don't know that much about and so it's hard to add anything to what you've already told us.
You usually will frame up the discussion in the notes section. You haven't done that on several posts lately

jarvisc- For years I kept this book on a coffee table. Written for children (of all ages), the drawings are great. The author has weritten scores of books-again for children but the detail and thorough explanations of how things are made intrigue us all-including engineers. Another one of his books is a fiction title: "Unbuilding" in which the author discusses the fictitious dismantling of the Empire State Building. But here's a link to "The Way Things Work"
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/way-thin...

Madam, you wound me. My intention was light; and I joined in the drift.

"As distressing as the topic drift is..."
that's kinda snarky. If you want the topic to go in a certain direction, why didn't you frame the discussion for us?

I remember a TV show..."How It's Made"...something to that effect. A vicarious education is better than none. Get rid of that regret...no place for it if you are really going to live. I mean this with all the enthusiasm I can muster.

Part of why I realy like the engineering drawings of then VS now... A lot of these "engineers" have no practical experience, and have only seen the business end of a CAD/CAM server display... Never been on the floor of a pattern shop or inside a foundry or stamping mill... rely solely on "book smarts". I showed someone my as builts on a structure I once worked on (rather famous bridge on the west coast)... along with some of the design working drawings and engineering notes. Not only told me what and where the rivet placement was, but more importantly the *why*, which enabled us to determine how to adapt modern materials to 1920's and 30's technology.

Not to mention the sheer beauty of the hand-rendered drawings... 'when you looked at those, you looked not at a computer rendering, but into a person's mind, and his soul. Breathtakingly gorgeous.

A young software engineer myself but I regret the loss of "dirt under the nails" these days and the fact my own upbringing / education did not including "making stuff." It was interesting to hear your comments, and thanks.

Well met!
Ironically.....a lot of my exposure is in the locomotive industry. G.E., Electromotive, Harsco/Fairmont. I see above named deficiencies in Cat, Bombardier, .....on and on.
LOS and JIT can turn and "bite" one on occasion. In 08 some of Electromotive Corp's critical suppliers were going "under"....I fixtured 40 new products of some of the most God-awful geometries imaginable. 50% of those parts required extra holding points to expedite manufacture.....production lines were shut down. No time to get their engineering approval....we cut off the "excess material" and buffed em up a bit!

Manufacturing data gives reference datums/locations for making "parts". The engineers of former days had "dirt" under their nails"...real hands-on skills. When looking at older blueprints the designs often, explicitly, define holding and reference points. Often enough, extra machined features for reference, were designed in for manufacture of a component but were not relevant to the final function of said. This type of data is missing in much of the 3D modeling environ of today. The cost of extra fixturing or number of operations performed on a part can be reduced substantively by understanding the equipment/process of manufacture and acommodating on the drawn info.
Hope this clears things up a bit.

nice review. This book seems like an interesting gift choice. The pictures are very intriguing.

You have hit upon the ideas related to continuous improvement and Lean Operating Systems. This is an area I am somewhat of an expert

"The simple placement of a work-holding point could save 10 - 30% on the manufacturing costs." This sentence is intriguing but I don't quite follow. Would you care to elaborate?

I do recall that...been a while...love Asimov.
A case in point MikeMarotta has illustrated.
I've been watching the information and formatting of manufacturing blueprints over a history from the mid-30's to today. It is evident that the culture of "specialization" is emerging overwhelmingly. The simple placement of a work-holding point could save 10 - 30% on the manufacturing costs.
Hmmmmm.....I smell "PROFIT" Already cultivating consultation business.

Kerry Trask, Univ. Wis.,held aloft a history textbook the first day of class: "This is someone elses interpretation of history", he declared. Wherewith he stooped five times and place five full file boxes of original documents upon a long table: "This IS history",; he gestured.