Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?...

[Scott Lurndal]

Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> writes:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

[\"Followup-To:\" header set to sci.electronics.design.]
On 2023-02-18, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/02/2023 12:37, Max Demian wrote:
Steam locos were not rated in horsepower, but \'tractive effort\' . How
many tons of pull they could generate before the wheels slipped.

Sort of. The important factor is tractive effort; but horsepower was a
known factor as well.

Indeed. From Audel\'s volume 1:

\"Horse Power - This unit was introduced by James Watt to measure the
power of his steam engines; defined as 33,000 ft. lbs. per minute.\"
Audels Engineers and Mechanics Guide Vol 1. pg 78.

https://archive.org/details/audelsengineersm01grahrich/page/78/mode/2up

The first two volumes are a fascinating introduction into the theory
and mechanics of steam engines.

That\'s why they had a lot of driving wheels - at least four, generally 6
and up to 8.

10 and 12 were also used out west. And don\'t forget the articulated
options that had 12 or 16 (6 or 8 total drive axles). I think one of
the eastern roads went with a triplex design of 2-6-6-6-2 or something
like that; but it didn\'t work all that well (too steam hungry).

My favorite (At the California Railway Museum in Sacramento):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-8-8-2

It\'s much larger than it appears in the picture (look for the
placcard holders alongside for a sense of scale).

The cab was forward of the stack to avoid suffocating the drivers
in the long sierra tunnels.

 

[micky]

In alt.home.repair, on Wed, 15 Feb 2023 01:57:40 -0500, Clare Snyder
<clare@snyder.on.ca> wrote:

Mine has no output jacks or cords. Just a small nice wooden cabinet
with no holes, no jacks, maybe one 12\" wire as a transmitting antenna (I
have to go look again. Not sure if there\'s a wire.)

Ok, that\'s way more sophisticated, and more modern.
I\'ve never seen one like that.


Maybe 14 or 16\" square and 5\" high.

It might be from the 30\'s after my mother got married in 1929.

input of the radio, which was actually the audio amplifier section.

The radio could have a switch to disable the radio section or not, in
which case you would have to \"tune out\" the stations.

I have been lucky enough that there was no strong station at the
frequency. I left a note inside so I or the next owner doesn\'t have to
hunt for it.

The transmitter should be tunable.

...
Many were not, short of trimming the length of the antenna!!

I\'ll look, I\'ll even open it up eventually, but like most of what I own,
it\'s buried. I know where, but that doesn\'t help.

 

[NY]

On 17/02/2023 01:17, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On 2023-02-11 14:15, Commander Kinsey wrote:
What I\'ve never understood is people indicating the wrong way.  I know
someone who can\'t remember which is which - I pointed out you move the
stalk the same way you\'re going too turn then wheel, and she thought
that was some kind of brilliant idea.  And I know someone else who came
up with some crazy reason it\'s best to tell people you\'re going the
other way as somehow lying puts you at an advantage?

You don\'t need to remember anything, you move the stick the same way
you\'re turning the wheel!!!

I worked that out when I was about six or seven: the first time I had a
ride in a friend\'s Ford Escort. Fords were one of the first UK-spec cars
to have the indicator stalk on the left, at a time when both British and
UK-spec foreign cars still had the stalk on the right.

If you are turning the wheel clockwise (turning right), you press down
if the stalk is on the right or up if it is on the left - both times,
moving the stalk clockwise. Conversely for turning left.


My first car, a Mark 1 Renault 5, had *three* stalks: on the right, one
stalk for indicators and another stalk for lights; on the left, a stalk
for wipers. The unusual thing is that you moved the stalk up/down to
toggle between dipped and high beam, rather than pulling it towards you
or pushing away, as in most cars.

My Peugeot has a toggle for dip/high beam: you pull the light/indicators
stalk towards you on a spring to alternate between dip/high, so the
stalk is always in the same position when you want to alternate. If the
lights are on, that\'s what it does; if they are off, the same action
flashes the headlights.

Most cars you push the stalk away (and it stays there) for high beam and
pull it towards you (and it stays there) for dipped, which means the
stalk is in one of two different positions when you feel for it to
alternate the setting - not as easy to do by feel.

It\'s little things like that which make you think that someone has
actually tried both designs and decided which is easier.

I wish cars would standardise on putting the hazard lights switch on the
end of one or other of the stalks, rather than putting it in some
arbitrary position on the dashboard. It means the driver can hit the
hazard lights switch without having to take his hands off the wheel and
his eyes off the road; the downside is that it can\'t be reached by a
passenger. On my Peugeot 306, I learned how to reach the switch without
taking my eyes off the road

- hand on gear-lever when in 5th/6th
- move hand away to the dashboard keeping it at the same level
- move hand up or right (I forget which, now) an inch
- there\'s the switch, recessed slightly so you know when you\'ve found it

On my Peugeot 308 it\'s higher up and there isn\'t anything obvious to
feel for, as a reference point. Likewise for my wife\'s Honda. Having to
take your eyes off the road to turn the hazard lights on (eg when you
come up behind queueing traffic on a motorway) is a Bad Thing.

 

[Scott Lurndal]

rbowman <bowman@montana.com> writes:

On Sun, 19 Feb 2023 12:41:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

It is quite hard in the UK to get a mortgage on a 100% timber frame.

That would explain the Soviet style apartment blocks I see in British
films. Some attempt to dress up the poured concrete construction with
limited success. Almost all new construction in this area is platform
framed wood construction, sheathed with OSB, wrapped in Tyvek, and some
sort of decorative siding applied. The exception is multistory commercial
buildings.

Hardly a fair comparision given the abysmally low population density
in \"your area\".

There were plenty of those concrete monstrosities built in the large
cities of the american east as well as the UK during the 1950/60s.

 

[Jim Joyce]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 20:27:02 +0000, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

English probably could do with a plural form of you; the
distinction between familiar and formal is less important.

I live in the American South. We have you, y\'all, and all y\'all, for
increasing levels of plural you.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 15/02/2023 10:48, Mike Monett VE3BTI wrote:

Replace filament bulbs with LEDs. The power savings is amazing. For example,
a 100 W LED bulb only draws 12 watts. A 60 W LED bulb only draws 9 watts.
This is low enough that I keep the one in the bathroom turned on all the
time. The main switch is in an awkward location, and I hate having to search
for it in the dark.

You have just illustrated perfectly the paradox that making devices more
energy efficient can have the perverse effect of wasting more energy!

Original 60W light on for perhaps 1 hour per day - uses 60Whr
New LED 9W light on 24/7 - uses 216Whr

So your energy efficient LED light bulb means you now use 3.5x times as
much energy every day as a result of it not being worth switching off!

I use a replace on fail strategy for my lights (some of which are still
CFLs rather than modern LEDs) so the seldom used lights in spare rooms
and the loft are still incandescent.


--
Martin Brown

 

[rbowman]

On Sun, 19 Feb 2023 12:38:00 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

In practice the railroads were built to run steam trains with up to 8
close spaced driving wheels, and if that made life difficult, tough.

The big 8 wheelers were more suited to the USA with bigger steeper
inclines but seldom tight curves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geared_steam_locomotive

https://fortmissoulamuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Brief-History-
of-Engine-7.pdf

The Mount Ranier museum has a working Willamette but they shut down during
the covid panic. They\'re supposed to be back in business in 2025. Logging
operations were nothing but steep grades and tight curves and required
specialized locomotives.

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 14/02/2023 22:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:

For instance, the book I started learning English taught the expression
\"it is raining cats and dogs\". Most of the times I tried to use it,
nobody understood it and I had to explain 😂

That is sadly, because most English people today are not taught English.
They can\'t pronounce it, spell it, or use correct grammar.

An educated Indian speaks better English.


--
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over
the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Max Demian]

On 15/02/2023 16:29, Cindy Hamilton wrote:

On 2023-02-15, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:
On 15/02/2023 11:40, Max Demian wrote:
On 14/02/2023 18:31, SteveW wrote:
On 14/02/2023 17:35, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 12/02/2023 21:42, Mark Lloyd wrote:
I know someone who can\'t tell left from right without touching herself.

When I was a kid I used to look as the small mole on my right hand to
remind myself. It didn\'t help that I when I as taught to write it was
\"No, the other hand\"... These days I have no trouble with left or
right, nor port and starboard, or clockwise, or any of the others.

Turnwise and Widdershins? Yes the latter is a genuine wo

Deiseil is more common for clockwise, or sunwise, sunward. (These
alternative names are only needed when discussing the origin of the
direction of clock hands.)

Widdershins is the only one I *have* heard of. Turnwise, Deiseil,
Sunwise/Ward - can\'t say I\'ve ever heard of those.

Clockwise is all very well until you see a clock like this

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0602/4056/0354/products/OldPeculierBackwardClock-TheTheakston-29-07-22-4530.jpg?v=1660143292

which is a very \"peculier\" way of telling the time. The one I have used
a conventional self-contained quartz clock mechanism (ie no after-market
1:1 gears to reverse the direction) which suggests that they had the
mechanisms specially made - maybe with the stepper motor wired the
opposite way round.


It had never actually occurred to me until now that \"clockwise\" is the
same way that the sun appears to move in the sky, so the hour hand will
follow the sun (except at double speed). I must have been singularly
incurious to accept what \"clockwise\" meant without relating it to the
direction of movement of the sun.

Think about sundials for just a moment.

I did, for more than a moment, and decided that the explanation is
inadequate.

--
Max Demian

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 14/02/2023 22:46, Ian Jackson wrote:

In message <2betbjxebg.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>, Carlos E.R.
robin_listas@es.invalid> writes




For instance, the book I started learning English taught the
expression \"it is raining cats and dogs\". Most of the times I tried to
use it, nobody understood it and I had to explain :-D

English (well, British English) is absolutely saturated with such
expressions, and this must mystify and confuse the benighted foreigner.

IIRC, the theme of one of the early Startrek episodes was devoted to
understanding the inhabitants of a planet whose language consisted
almost entirely of metaphors and the like.

Wait till you hit Cockney rhyming slang or Polari.
You\'ll be well cattled.



--
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over
the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Peeler]

On Fri, 17 Feb 2023 11:52:04 +0000, NY, the really endlessly blathering,
notorious, troll-feeding, senile asshole, blathered, yet again:


> I worked that out when I was about six or seven: the first time I had a

<FLUSH another load of the usual almost endless senile crap unread>

Just WTF is WRONG with you blithering senile assholes? Is your endless
blather caused by your \"special\" medication? <G>

 

[Peeler]

On 19 Feb 2023 18:37:18 GMT, lowbrowwoman, the endlessly driveling,
troll-feeding, senile idiot, blabbered again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geared_steam_locomotive

https://fortmissoulamuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Brief-History-
of-Engine-7.pdf

The Mount Ranier museum has a working Willamette but they shut down during
the covid panic.

LOL!!! What a blathering IDIOT!

--
Gossiping \"lowbrowwoman\" about herself:
\"Usenet is my blog... I don\'t give a damn if anyone ever reads my posts
but they are useful in marshaling [sic] my thoughts.\"
MID: <iteioiF60jmU1@mid.individual.net>

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 15/02/2023 00:45, rbowman wrote:

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 22:48:01 +0000, SteveW wrote:

I don\'t know any Spanish. I only did French and Latin at school.

Ah, French... Amazon Prime has a series \'Three Pines\' that is set in
Quebec. I couldn\'t figure out one of the detective\'s names until I saw it
written Jean-Guy. I would have picked up on Jean-Paul or Jean-Marie but
Jonkey left me puzzled.

Should have been yjohnghee.
--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.

 

[Bob Engelhardt]

On 2/14/2023 12:49 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Blue Origin makes a big lunar announcement without any fanfare
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/blue-origin-makes-a-big-lunar-announcement-without-any-fanfare/

\"Blue Origin\"? Oh yeah, the suborbital-tourists-flights company. Their
announcements will have a lot more weight when they even manage orbital
flights.

 

[Tabby]

On Sunday, 19 February 2023 at 12:21:48 UTC, Don Y wrote:

Our refrigerator costs $76/year to operate (based on *some* sort
of \"standard\" which may or may not reflect how we will use it).
Other models of comparable capacity/features are $71 - $83 to
operate. Should we have opted for the $71/yr model (ignoring
all else)? Would that $5/year have made a difference for a
$4000 refrigerator?

why on earth would anyone pay 4k for domestic fridge? If it\'s a catering walk-in type, fair enough. Last I looked the standard new fridge was around 150.

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 14/02/2023 18:13, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2023-02-14 18:55, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 10:48:29 +0000, Vir Campestris
vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 11/02/2023 15:56, John Larkin wrote:
But I guess 240v is a lot nastier than 120, so more ground fault
sensing makes sense in europe.

It\'s a trade-off. More shocks with 240V; more fires with the higher
currents required at 120V.

Andy

If the breakers are sized for the wiring, there is no fire hazard
there. Romex doesn\'t get hot at rated current. Fires are started by
appliances like space heaters, which wouldn\'t be affected by the
voltage. Or overloaded extension cords, arguably a lesser hazard at
higher voltage.

Very old houses had knob-and-tube wiring with twisted junctions, in
walls and exposed in attics, and people tended to screw in bigger
glass fuses than the wire could handle. That was, sometimes still is,
a big fire hazard.


In my house, or rather my parent\'s house, fuses were just a strand of
wire wrapped around two metal screws or some metal something. When a
fuse blows, you just put another wire. It it blows again, they put two
strands. Next, they put three... you see the problem.

Of course you can use sealed fuses, or calibrated fuse wire (they sold
that in the UK). But it is just safer to use calibrated breakers which
\"blow\" and you just throw them back. Of course they can be intentionally
\"sabotaged\".

Luxury.

In my time around the Music business, the standard valve amplifier fuse
was 100mA or 200mA. Or thereabouts. Naturally a fuse that fine stuck on
top of a 120dBa sound box wasn\'t a particularly long lived item, so the
roadies simply wrapped them in the foil from a fag packet.

--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.

 

[Bob Engelhardt]

On 2/14/2023 4:55 PM, Don Y wrote:

A colleague sent along a copy of an article espousing a 2KW/hr/person
energy consumption rate as if it was a practical goal.
[...]

Any article that uses KW/hr loses a lot credibility right there.

 

[Peeler]

On 19 Feb 2023 18:08:32 GMT, lowbrowwoman, the endlessly driveling,
troll-feeding, senile idiot, blabbered again:

That would explain the Soviet style apartment blocks I see in British
films. Some attempt to dress up the poured concrete construction with
limited success. Almost all new construction in this area is platform
framed wood construction, sheathed with OSB, wrapped in Tyvek, and some
sort of decorative siding applied. The exception is multistory commercial
buildings.

Do tell, do you get some sort of tiny senile climax every time you write
your wordy flowery senile crap? You do, don\'t you? LOL

--
Yet more of the so very interesting senile blather by lowbrowwoman:
\"My family loaded me into a \'51 Chevy and drove from NY to Seattle and
back in \'52. I\'m alive. The Chevy had a painted steel dashboard with two
little hand prints worn down to the primer because I liked to stand up
and lean on it to see where we were going.\"
MID: <j2kuc1F3ejsU1@mid.individual.net>

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 14/02/2023 18:02, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:05:31 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 13/02/2023 21:08, SteveW wrote:
I\'ve never understood people who get left and right confused. I can
never remember which of the two is port and starboard (*), but left
and right are as ingrained in the \"immediate lookup table\" in my brain
as counting, addition and the days of the week are.

Two friends of mine took part in a driving challenge, part of which
involved driving a course blindfolded, with the passenger giving
directions. They had to resort to \"your side\" and \"my side\".

Probably apocryphal, but in the American civil war, the Confederate farm
boys had a piece of straw tied to one foot and hay to the other and were
drilled as \'Hayfoot!Strawfoot!\' etc.

They did know straw from hay, but not left from right. So the story
goes. Probably a lie. Most stories are.

In SW Louisiana the local language was Cajun French, not very
intelligible to Parisians. In WWII draftees were forced to speak
English, which contributed to the decline of French in Louisiana.

Try speaking Afrikaans in Holland, they will understand you, but laugh.

--
“Some people like to travel by train because it combines the slowness of
a car with the cramped public exposure of 
an airplane.”

Dennis Miller

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 17 Feb 2023 09:21:10 -0500) it happened Bob Engelhardt
<BobEngelhardt@comcast.net> wrote in <q3MHL.658423$MVg8.446886@fx12.iad>:

On 2/14/2023 12:49 AM, Jan Panteltje wrote:
Blue Origin makes a big lunar announcement without any fanfare
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/blue-origin-makes-a-big-lunar-announcement-without-any-fanfare/


\"Blue Origin\"? Oh yeah, the suborbital-tourists-flights company. Their
announcements will have a lot more weight when they even manage orbital
flights.

I understand your point, but the merit is on the invention.
Even if somebody else uses it on the moon.
How\'s your spacecraft coming along?