string can phone

1985 car, a Yugo, run by 125-year-old technology — wood-gas.

A gentleman walks, or a gentleman rides. A velocipede is hardly a device for a gentleman; but we are not quite sure how to classify the Hudspith Steam Bicycle:

It all began in 1972 when I first had the notion of making a steam bike, thus combining my interest in cycles and motor cycles with my fascination and love of steam. I reallsed that in order to be able to see the water level, the boiler and engine would have to go in front of the rider. I experimented using a pannier bag loaded with four house-bricks hung from the side of a rack, mounted over the front wheel of a bicycle. Finding that I could still ride OK, providing the load was rigidly fixed, I desigued a tall, narrow boiler, to keep the centre of gravity as close in to the wheel as possible. The next few years were spent obtaining the materials and means of making the boiler and it took me until 1989 to complete it in its initial form. It is a semi-flash type, having a lower section of concentric spiral water tubes fed by a central downcomer, surmounted by a fire-tube header which has 24 × 3/8″ flues in a 4″ diameter, copper cylindrical shell. The whole assembly is silver soldered throughout, and contains less than 1 litre of water in total. The boiler is fired from below by a pressure-fed paraffin burner of the Optimus type.[….]

In 1972 in Oklo, Gabon, a uranium mine was being operated. But when was taken to be enriched, it was discovered that the U-235 to U-238 ratio was very odd. A careful examination of the mine turned up fossil evidence of several naturally occuring nuclear fission reactors. At least one of them was a fully functional breeder reactor: from the fissioning U-235 a neutron converts U-238 to U-239 which beta decays to Pu-239, and then that alpha decays to a new U-235. There is not much left to these reactors due to the mining, but there are a few remain, and number fifteen is typically described as “well preserved.” Here are a one page summary of the Oklo reactors and a more detailed discussion of Oklo. These natural reactors are not well known to the public, but well studied for insights into long term nuclear waste storage.

We remember visiting the last of the Horn and Hardarts many years ago. We would have expected these automatic resturants to have a natural appeal to the stereotypical computer user. Perhaps they are all too young to have known the Automat, however. That would explain the dearth of good websites. There is at least two worth the time to look at, though: theautomat.com with history, some photos, and information on buying automat machines; and theautomat.net which many exists to promote a book, but has some more photos.

Observe the military folly of days-gone-by in this Tzar Tank. Though production never went past two prototypes due to cost prohibitiveness, critics have observed that peasants could have disabled its movement py placing any long farm instrument, or a substantial stick perpendicularly through its spokes.

Mr. J. Walkenbach has encouraged our matriculation at Battery University, Isidor Buchmann’s extremely informative website. Whether you want to know when the battery was invented (1800, probably), the secrets of battery runtime, or how to service laptop batteries, Battery University will provide.

Mr. Buchmann is the founder and CEO of Cadex Electronics Inc., a Vancouver, BC manufacturer of advanced battery chargers, battery analyzers and PC software. His depth of knowledge is broad, generous, and discretely promotional. His excellent layout gives our hobby of complaining about web-design no outlet.

The Okla Nuclear Reactor is some 2 Billion years old. Some contend that it’s a relic of an ancient civilization, but despite the good photos at the last link, I remain dubious. There is a good amount of information on this poorly-designed site, too. Have no fear, due to the half-life of U-235, naturally-occuring nuclear reactors can no-longer occur, naturally. ::sigh::