Stunning engineering
It was my girls lantern parade, I got out my old Zippo lighter, (haven't smoked for decades), fueled it up. Mighty surprised the fuel was still good.
Worked first time and it had to just live in my pocket for the next week with me caressing it's lovely shape. Taking it out, flipping the lid, striking it. Flipping it shut every so often.
It is just a shiny solid brass one, no daft images or anything.
I had to put it away again when my daughter said "What are you doing daddy?"
I just couldn't get over how well designed it was, and how good it felt.
..and I didn't even crave lighting a ciggy... which did surprise me.
Apart from the Speccy, what other examples of excellent design are there?
Worked first time and it had to just live in my pocket for the next week with me caressing it's lovely shape. Taking it out, flipping the lid, striking it. Flipping it shut every so often.
It is just a shiny solid brass one, no daft images or anything.
I had to put it away again when my daughter said "What are you doing daddy?"
I just couldn't get over how well designed it was, and how good it felt.
..and I didn't even crave lighting a ciggy... which did surprise me.
Apart from the Speccy, what other examples of excellent design are there?
Post edited by dekh on
Comments
Those honeycomb sleeping quarters the have in Japan. Ya know, sleep overnight at the airport...those should be everywhere.
in a similar vein, the SR-71, just an amazing feat, considering the physics of flying at that speed (friction heating the airframe etc)
Nature itself has some stunning pieces of engineering (or rather bio-engineering?). The Human Body for example.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Probably one of the most useful things ever made.
Much less primitive than the original stab your fingers design, and a lot more reliable than a "This can weighs too much for it" electric one.
Well, the human body is a pretty good example of terrible engineering, really! Things like the wiring for the photoreceptors in the eye being in front of them instead of behind them, a high defect rate with the eyeball (how many of us wear glasses?), hair that falls out where we want it to stay, and hair that grows where we don't actually want it, a balance system that's not designed for standing upright, a back that's not designed for standing upright, a self-repair system that can repair everything except for the really important parts of the central nervous system...it could well have been designed at British Leyland. It's amazing it works at all, really - let alone as well as it does!
And they are still discovering things about it.
Apart from the obvious focus stuff from zero to infinity (defects aside).
Full colour vision in the visible spectrum, pretty good monochrome in very low light. The eye auto-refocuses from one set of photo receptors to another.
Self cleaning.
Until robots experiments took place, biologists couldn't fathom why the eye had such oversized muscles - it vibrates, constanly, that's why we have such sharp edge definition.
On strange wiring, the blind spot, is where you would expect the prime photreceptors to be.
Butterfly can opener, excellent choice. Ever used the stupid tin opener on a swiss army knife? Useless.
AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGHHHH
so like my dad's old video camera then
you point it at the thing you want to take a photo of, and it helpfully focusses on a tree 5 miles away for you
do you mean these ?
http://www.fleshlightuk.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=21
or is it a typo ?
before you ask I just googled these
You 'googled' one huh...hmmm maybe i'll have to try and 'google' one.
That's made my day that has :lol:
But the human body is very, very good considering that it does actually work (which is staggering considering it's the result of evolution and natural selection*), is self-repairing, and provides the host "person" with seventy years of life, mobility and the ability to procreate.
* Yes, evolution, not divine creation - surely if God had created the human body, then it would be much, much better?
They will be (eventually). Sooner, rather than later, going on the speed the human population is expanding.
Interesting note SR-71:
At take-off, the SR-71 bleeds fuel through the seams, but entering supersonic speeds, the seams shut tight and prevent fuel loss.
Interesting note Concorde:
The wing tips at supersonic speed (Mach 2) are over 100 degrees C.
In the main cabin, there develops a gap as the overall length of the fuselage grows about 50cm. On the few last flights, the flight engineer would put his cap in the seam which would shut tight at subsonic speeds. One of these concordes is in a museum. I forgot where.
its was the best thing in the world until sliced bread came along.
Good points all, I concede. But perhaps there is a reason for everything. With hindsight I'm sure we could pin-point minute faults in all our engineering marvels.
However, my point was actually the beauty of how over the course of evolution from simple-celled organisms, nature has somehow sought to engineer a bio-system that works for an average shelf-life of 70 (+- 10) with some of the most complex bio-mechanical/chemical actions whose secrets we are still yet to understand fully. And even those that we do understand are stunning for the way work. The heart-pump system, oxygen synthesis process, audio-visual process (the photoreceptor wiring notwithstanding), DNA , the central nervous system, etc are all examples of micro + macro engineering coming together in a cohesive way.
I find it very interesting that despite all the drawbacks of individual sub-systems the human body that we may care to point out, it performs remarkably well as a independent self-sustaining self-conscious propagative unit.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Remember the first time i saw one and fell in love with it !
Put tons of games on it, emulators, roms, movies, music, photos, flash files, spreadsheets/word docs all in this tiny device which is no bigger than my hand. 8 gig storage plus another 4 gig card all in one device.
I look back at the old computers i had in the 80's or 90's and now see the power this little chap has, wow oh wow
Seriously i love them ! Plus as memory cards are so much cheaper nowadays you can store tons. The PPC i have has dual cards, ones a 4 gig SD card and the other an 8 gig CF card. Put tons of stuff on there.
very usefull for the pervert on the move.