Re: van de graaff tube (fwd)

[<sroys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 14:52:12 -0800
From: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: sroys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: van de graaff tube (fwd)

"Computers are tools, not religions."

	An excellent point but lot of guys seem to forget that.  With modern
modeling tools it's possible to iterate many designs but I'm not sure
that the real savings in time compared to old-fashioned paper and pencil
calculations is really significant.  Fun video games, of course.  

	When I started out in radar engineering back in 1945 a guy was luck to
have a good slide rule and the man with a desk calculator (mechanical of
course) was really lucky.  When we designed and built stuff it stayed
checked out!  Over the next ten years or so radar "went digital" and the
troubles really started; now the cost of "system software" often exceeds
that of the hardware and the product is seldom really stable.  I've just
been involved in the planning for flight test of a new radar system and
the flights devoted to "system software development" outnumber those for
hardware checkout by a factor of about four.

	As for the Mac, I have a lot of application programs for it which I
haven't found for the PC and continue to use it for mail and anything
which doesn't take too much speed.  I started out with a TRS-80 which
really served me well for many years, then graduated to the Mac while
also condemned to work with a Zenith Data Systems PC which was in a
secure tank.  I hated that thing so much  (it must have had DOS 0.0 on
it!!!) that it was many, many years before I bought a PC for home use.

	Not much connection with High Voltage I guess. 

Ed

[Monitors use high voltage flyback transformers.  But enough computer
talk...back to ozone! SRR]