Please Note: The Net is operating on the Danvers Repeater, at 145.470-, (PL of 136.5). We thank the North Shore Radio Association (NSRA), for the use of its repeater during the time when the W1GLO repeater is being upgraded.
Embedded Files
Wednesday, February 7th: Topics with KC1HHK: Band-aids and An Wang
Robert Wood Johnson
American manufacturer of Surgical supplies and dressings – precursor to the Band Aid
Robert Wood Johnson (born Feb. 15, 1845, Carbondale, Pa., U.S.—died Feb. 7, 1910, New Brunswick, N.J.) American manufacturer who helped further the cause of modern surgery by developing antiseptic bandages and dressings.
Johnson began his career as an apprentice in a pharmacy and went on to become a retail pharmacist and then a drug broker in New York City. In 1874, he formed the partnership of Seabury & Johnson to manufacture bandages using a new formula employing India rubber. Eleven years later Johnson left that partnership to form the now well-known company of Johnson & Johnson with his brothers James and Edward. The company became known for its high-quality, inexpensive medical supplies and dressings. Johnson held the title of president from the time of the company’s founding until his death in 1910.
Johnson was an early proponent of the teachings of Joseph Lister (Listerene Mouthwash), who advocated antiseptic surgery and care of the wound to prevent infection. These theories were still novel during the late 1800s. Johnson worked to develop a dressing that would be as germ-free as possible, from its manufacture in his plants to its eventual use in surgeries across the country.
Baseball, apple pie, BAND-AID® Brand adhesive bandages. There’s no doubt about it: They’re an indelible part of our culture.
Most of us grew up using them—whether it was to patch up a scraped knee or tend to a paper cut—and you can probably still picture those iconic tins sitting in your family’s medicine cabinet. “The BAND-AID® Brand adhesive bandage was a very simple innovation, but it filled a great unmet need in consumer care,” says Margaret Gurowitz, Chief Historian at Johnson & Johnson.
And ever since their invention 97 years ago, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. has remained a pioneer in the field, consistently innovating improvements to the product—like the new BAND-AID® Brand Skin-Flex™ adhesive bandages that stay on for 24 hours, and are made with touch screen-friendly material.
Net Discussion:
Band Aids: are you loyal to the “Band Aid Brand” or do you use the store brands?
Wang Work processors – did you ever use one?
An Wang
Computer Pioneer – Word Processing, magnetic core memory inventor
An Wang ( born February 7, 1920 – March 24, 1990) was a Chinese–American computer engineer and inventor, and cofounder of computer company Wang Laboratories, which was known primarily for its dedicated word processing machines. An Wang was an important contributor to the development of magnetic-core memory.
He was born in Shanghai, China. His father taught English at an elementary school outside Shanghai, while his mother Zen Wan (Chien) Wang was a homemaker. He graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a degree in electrical engineering in 1940. He immigrated to the United States in June 1945 to attend Harvard University for graduate school, earning a PhD in applied physics in 1948. After graduation, he worked at Harvard with Howard Aiken on the design of the Mark IV, Aiken's first fully electronic computer. Wang coinvented the pulse transfer controlling device with Way-Dong Woo, a schoolmate from China who fell ill before their patent was issued. The new device implemented write-after-read which made magnetic core memory possible. Harvard reduced its commitment to computer research in 1951, prompting Wang to start his own engineering business.
Wang founded Wang Laboratories in June 1951 as a sole proprietorship. The first years were lean and Wang raised $50,000 working capital by selling one third of the company to a machine tools manufacturer Warner & Swasey Company.
In 1955, when the core memory patent was issued, Wang sold it to IBM for $500,000 and incorporated Wang Laboratories with Ge-Yao Chu, a schoolmate. The company grew slowly and in 1964 sales reached $1,000,000. Wang began making desktop electronic calculators with digital displays, including a centralized calculator with remote terminals for group use.
By 1970, the company had sales of $27 million and 1,400 employees. They began manufacturing word processors in 1974, copying the already popular Xerox Redactron word processor, a single-user, cassette-based product.
In 1976, they started marketing a multi-user, display-based product, based on the Zilog Z80 processor. Typical installations had a master unit (supplying disk storage) connected to intelligent diskless slaves which the operators used. Connections were via dual coax using differential signaling in an 11-bit asynchronous ASCII format clocked at 4.275 MHz. This product became the market leader in the word processing industry. In addition to calculators and word processors, Wang's company diversified into minicomputers in the early 1970s. The Wang 2200 was one of the first desktop computers with a large CRT display and ran a fast hardwired BASIC interpreter. The Wang VS system was a multiuser minicomputer whose instruction set was very close to the design of IBM's System/370. It was not binary-compatible because register usage conventions and system call interfaces were different. The Wang VS serial terminals could be used in data processing mode and word processing mode. They were user-programmable in data-processing mode and used the same word processing software as the earlier dedicated word processing systems.
In 1984, Wang and his family owned about 55 percent of the company stock, and Forbes magazine, estimating his worth at $1.6 billion, ranked him as the fifth richest American.
Wang Laboratories, which in 1989 once employed over 30,000 people, was headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts and later Lowell, Massachusetts. When Wang looked to retire from actively running his company in 1986, he insisted upon handing over the corporate reins to his son Fred Wang. Hard times ensued for the company and the elder Wang was eventually forced to remove his son in 1989.
Friday, January 31st: Topics with KC1HHK: A Space Twofer !
Explorer 1 - First American Satellite launched &
the accidental discovery of Earth’s Van Allen Radiation Belts
Sixty-six years ago today, the United States sent its first satellite into space on Jan. 31, 1958. The spacecraft, small enough to be held triumphantly overhead, orbited Earth from as far as 1,594 miles above and made the first scientific discovery in space. It was called, appropriately, Explorer 1.
The world had changed three months before Explorer 1’s launch, when the Soviet Union lofted Sputnik into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957. That satellite was followed a month later by a second Sputnik spacecraft. All the missions were inspired when an international council of scientists called for satellites to be placed in Earth orbit in the pursuit of science. The Space Age was on.
When Explorer 1 launched, NASA didn’t yet exist. It was a project of the U.S. Army and was built by Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. After the Sputnik launch, the Army, Navy and Air Force were tasked by President Eisenhower with getting a satellite into orbit within 90 days. The Navy’s Vanguard Rocket, the first choice, exploded on the launch pad Dec. 6, 1957.
The first scientific discovery in space came from Explorer 1. Earth is surrounded by radiation belts of electrons and charged particles, some of them moving at nearly the speed of light, about 186,000 miles per second. The two belts are shaped like giant doughnuts with Earth at the center. Data from Explorer 1 and Explorer 3 (launched March 26, 1958) led to the discovery of the inner radiation belt, while Pioneer 3 (Dec. 6, 1958) and Explorer IV (July 26, 1958) provided additional data, leading to the discovery of the outer radiation belt. The radiation belts can be hazardous for spacecraft, but they also protect the planet from harmful particles and energy from the Sun. Prior to 1958 scientists were aware that ions and electrons could be trapped by the Earth’s magnetic field, but not that such trapped particles actually existed.
Space scientist James Van Allen and his team at the University of Iowa were the first to discover the radiation belts, now also referred to as “The Van Allen Belts.” For some, this scientific discovery was almost a postscript to a crucial space age first – the experiment that discovered the belts flew aboard the very first American satellite, Explorer 1. Explorer 1 carried a micrometeorite detector and a cosmic ray experiment – a Geiger counter attached to a miniature tape recorder — designed by Dr. Van Allen and his graduate students.
The accidental part of this was - what they expected to see were just cosmic rays, which are a fairly low level of intensity, and they would see low counts on the micrometeorite detector. What they found instead was suddenly the count rate started to climb, and then it went to zero. And then, suddenly, it came back, and then it went back down. They scratched their heads for quite a while. And finally, what they realized was that there was so much radiation there that it was doing what's called saturating the detector. It just couldn't count anymore. It was overwhelmed. And then when the satellite would go out of the radiation belts, it would come back down to a reasonable level that it was designed for, and it would start counting again. And so it took them a little while to figure that out. But once they did, that was the discovery of the radiation belts known as the Van Allen Belts. Two NASA spacecraft, the Van Allen Probes, have been exploring this region since 2012.
Humans have long been shaping Earth’s landscape, but now scientists know we can shape our near-space environment as well. A certain type of communications — very low frequency, or VLF, radio communications — have been found to interact with particles in space, affecting how and where they move. At times, these interactions can create a barrier around Earth against natural high energy particle radiation in space.
VLF signals are transmitted from ground stations at huge powers to communicate with submarines deep in the ocean. While these radio waves are intended for communications below the surface, they also extend out beyond our atmosphere, shrouding Earth in a VLF bubble. This bubble is even seen by spacecraft such as NASA’s Van Allen Probes, which study electrons and ions in the near-Earth environment. The probes have noticed an interesting coincidence — the outward extent of the VLF bubble corresponds almost exactly to the inner edge of the Van Allen radiation belts, a layer of charged particles held in place by Earth’s magnetic fields.
Ham – the First Primate in Space
On January 31, 1961, Ham became the first chimpanzee in space.
Ham’s story spans the globe and into the reaches of space. Born in Cameroon in approximately 1957, Ham was captured and brought to a facility in Florida called the Miami Rare Bird Farm. In July 1959, Ham was transferred to Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, NM, to be trained for space flight as part of Project Mercury. Ham at the time was known as Chang, or #65, and was renamed at the time of his spaceflight after the acronym for “Holloman Aero Medical.” Ham and other young chimpanzees, including Minnie (the mother of two STC residents, Rebel and Li’l Mini) and Enos (who would become the first and only chimpanzee to orbit the Earth), were habituated to long periods of confinement in a chair, and trained to operate levers in response to light cues. After 18 months of training, Ham was selected as the chimpanzee whose life would be risked to test the safety of space flight on the ape body. On January 31, 1961, after several hours of waiting on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, FL, 3 ½ year old Ham was propelled into space, strapped into a container called a “couch.”
Ham’s flight lasted approximately 16 ½ minutes. He travelled at a speed of approximately 5800 mph, to a height of 157 miles above the earth. He experienced about 6 ½ minutes of weightlessness. Incredibly, despite the intense speed, g-forces, and weightlessness, Ham performed his tasks correctly. After the flight, Ham’s capsule splashed down 130 miles from its target, and began taking on water. It took several hours for a recovery ship to reach Ham, but miraculously he was alive and relatively calm considering his ordeal. When he was finally released from the “couch” however, his face bore an enormous grin. Although interpreted as a happy smile by many people, Ham’s expression was one of extreme fear and anxiety. That fear was demonstrated again sometime later through an act of defiance. Photographers wanted another shot of Ham in his “couch.” Ham refused to go back into it, and multiple adult men were unable to force him to do so.
Unlike the rest of the space chimps, Ham was spared decades of biomedical research, but he did have a lonely existence for many years. He was transferred to The National Zoo in 1963, where he lived alone for 17 years, before finally being sent to the North Carolina Zoo where he could live with other chimps. He died 22 years after his historic flight into space, on January 18, 1983, at the estimated age of 26.
Ham’s flight is remarkable for many reasons. Ham not only survived the flight, but performed his tasks correctly, despite the rigors of space flight and the fear he must have experienced. His courage and heroism paved the way for Alan Shepard, Jr., the first American in space. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story is often lost in all of the writings about Ham: he was a baby. Humans are often considered more intelligent than chimpanzees, yet it is hard to imagine a human toddler performing as well as Ham in this challenging task. It speaks to Ham’s character, intelligence, and bravery.
Friday, January 26th: Topics with KC1SOO: What is your favorite radio brand?
What's your favorite ham radio brand?
Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood, oh my! The world of ham radio is buzzing with fantastic brands, each boasting loyal fans and dedicated followers. But in the heat of experimentation and QSOs, one question always sparks debate: who reigns supreme in the realm of rigs?
Join us today as we delve into the passionate world of brand loyalty. We'll dissect the features, dissect the feels, and dissect the "why" behind your unwavering allegiance. From rugged mobiles to sleek handhelds, let's uncover the magic that makes your chosen brand tick.
So, grab your favorite brew, crank up the antenna, and prepare to share your love (or maybe a friendly critique) for your go-to radio gear. Whether you're a seasoned DXer or a fresh-faced Technician, your voice matters. Let's turn the dial on brand bias and discover the true gems of the ham radio universe, one shared experience at a time.
Ready, set, discuss!
Net Discussion Questions
What is your favorite radio brand?
Wednesday, January 24th: Topics with KC1HHK: The Six-Pack is Born! 1933
The Six-Pack is Born: The first beer can debuts’ today in 1933
The first brewery to take the chance and package beer in cans was the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Co. of Newark, New Jersey. In November of 1933, Krueger signed an agreement with the American Can Co. to create the first beer cans to go into production. By the end of that November, American had installed a temporary canning line and delivered two thousand cans of Krueger's Special Beer. These Krueger Special Beer cans were filled with 3.2% beer, the highest alcohol content then permitted by law. Beer can history was made. Krueger's Special Beer became THE first beer can ever produced.
The interest in packaging beer in metal cans dates to before Prohibition in America. The 18th Amendment prohibition against the transport and sale of alcoholic beverages became effective on January 16, 1920. Before Prohibition, beer was distributed mostly in bottles, kegs and directly from the tap (either at a local bar or at the brewery itself). At this time, other foods were packaged in metal cans and the American Can Company began looking into the feasibility of canning beer.
Packaging beer in cans presented a number of technical and marketing issues. One engineering challenge was to find affordable materials and methods of producing cans strong enough to withstand the high pressure that occurs during pasteurization. Another issue was the reality and the perception that the metal beer cans would negatively affect the taste of the beer.
Shortly before the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the American Can Co. solved the problem with its "Keglined" cans. These cans were structurally capable of withstanding the high pressure and were internally sealed to prevent the transfer of a metallic taste from the metal can to the beer. These first cans were made of a heavy gauge steel and required a church-key opener or other tool to punch a hole in the solid, flat top (hence these cans are referred to as "flat tops.").
The December 28, 1933 issue of Brewer's News featured a photograph of 2 Krueger Special Beer cans. There are, at best, two examples of this can known to exist today.
When the survey came back, 91% gave Krueger's Special Beer in cans the thumbs up, and 85% said it tasted more like draft beer than did bottled beer. Encouraged, Krueger went full steam ahead with canning beer and never looked back. On January 24, 1935, Krueger's Cream Ale and Krueger's Finest Beer in cans was introduced to the market.
Krueger enjoyed great success with canned beer and by August, 1935, Krueger was buying 180,000 cans a day from American Can Co. This regional brewery began claiming a percentage of the market dominated by the three large breweries (Anheuser-Bush, Pabst & Schlitz). Pabst had seen enough and introduced its Export Beer in these flat tops cans in July of 1935.
Schlitz also joined the canning craze but introduced its Lager Beer in a beer can that was quite different than Krueger's and Pabst's flat tops. Schlitz Lager was introduced in a flat bottom, inverted rib cone top can made by Continental Can Co.
Net Discussion Questions
Are you a can or a bottle person when it comes to drinks?
Opening mechanisms for canned drinks
Church key?
Bottle opener?
pop tab?
pull tab?
push tab?
stay on tab?
Friday, January 19th: Topics with KC1SOO: SSTV Picture Transmission
Slow-scan television (SSTV) is a picture transmission method used by amateur radio operators to send and receive static images via radio. SSTV transmissions can be in a variety of modes, including black-and-white, color, or color coding. The picture resolution varies from 120 x 120 to 640 x 480, and the transmission time can range from 8 seconds to over seven minutes.
The two main modes that beginning operators should be concerned with are Scottie-1 and Martin-1. Scottie-1 is the most popular mode of transmission in the United States, while Martin-1 is more favored by Europeans.
Licensed Amateur Radio operators can also transmit live action color video and sound to other hams on the 420 MHz and up Amateur bands.
The most popular version of SSTV is the Martin M1, which has 256 lines per frame in two minutes. Other modes of the Martin system have either half the line or half the horizontal resolution of the best quality M1. The mode M4 has the lowest quality and 128 lines.
Net Discussion Questions
Have you used SSTV?
What equipment do you use for SSTV?
Wednesday, January 17th: Topics with KC1HHK: Corvette Debut & Crime of the Century
Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut
On January 17, 1953, a prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors’ (GM) Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette, named for a fast type of naval warship, would eventually become an iconic American muscle car and remains in production today.
In the early 1950s, Harley Earl (1893-1969), the influential head designer for GM, then the world’s largest automaker, became interested in developing a two-seat sports car. At the time, European automakers dominated the sports car market. Following the debut of the Corvette prototype at the Motorama show in January 1953, the first production Corvette was completed at a Flint, Michigan, plant on June 30, 1953. The car featured an all-fiberglass body, a white exterior and red interior, a relatively unremarkable 150-horsepower engine and a starting price tag of around $3,500 (not including taxes or an optional AM radio and heater). In an effort to give the Corvette an air of exclusivity, GM initially marketed the car to invitation-only VIP customers. This plan met with less-than-desirable results, as only a portion of the 300 Corvettes built that first year were sold. GM dropped the VIP policy the following year; however, Corvette sales continued to disappoint. In 1954, GM built around 3,600 of the 10,000 Corvettes it had planned, with almost a third of those cars remaining unsold by the start of 1955.
There was talk within GM of discontinuing the Corvette; however, GM rival Ford launched the sporty two-seat Thunderbird convertible in 1955 and the car quickly became a hit. GM didn’t want to discontinue the Corvette and look like a failure next to its Big Three competitor, so the car remained in production and performance enhancements were made. That same year, a Belgian-born, Russian-raised designer named Zora Arkus-Duntov became head engineer for Corvette and put the car on a course that would transform it into a legend. Duntov had applied to work at GM after seeing the Corvette prototype at the 1953 Motorama show. According to The New York Times: “Once hired, he pushed through the decision to turn the Corvette into a high-performance sports car with a succession of more powerful engines. Chevrolet offered a 195-horsepower engine on the 1955 Corvette, a 240-horsepower engine on the 1956 Corvette and a 283-horsepower engine on the 1957 model.” During the second half of the 1950s, Corvettes began setting speed records on the racing circuit. The car also got a publicity boost when it was featured on the TV show “Route 66,” which launched in 1960 and followed the story of two young men driving around America in a Corvette, looking for adventure.
In 1977, the 500,000th Corvette was built. Two years later, according to the Times, yearly Corvette production peaked at 53,807. In 1992, the 1-milllionth Corvette came off the assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
The “Crime of the Century”
On January 17, 1950, 11 men steal more than $2 million ($29 million today) from the Brink's Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the perfect crime—almost—as the culprits weren’t caught until January 1956, just days before the statute of limitations for the theft expired.
The robbery’s mastermind was Anthony “Fats” Pino, a career criminal who recruited a group of 10 other men to stake out the depot for 18 months to figure out when it held the most money. Pino’s men then managed to steal plans for the depot’s alarm system, returning them before anyone noticed they were gone.
Wearing navy blue coats and chauffeur’s caps–similar to the Brink's employee uniforms–with rubber Halloween masks, the thieves entered the depot with copied keys, surprising and tying up several employees inside the company’s counting room. Filling 14 canvas bags with cash, coins, checks and money orders—for a total weight of more than half a ton—the men were out and in their getaway car in about 30 minutes.
Their haul? More than $2.7 million—the largest robbery in U.S. history up until that time.
No one was hurt in the robbery, and the thieves left virtually no clues, aside from the rope used to tie the employees and one of the chauffeur’s caps. The gang promised to stay out of trouble and not touch the money for six years in order for the statute of limitations to run out. They might have made it, but for the fact that one man, Joseph “Specs” O’Keefe, left his share with another member to serve a prison sentence for another burglary. While in jail, O’Keefe wrote bitterly to his cohorts demanding money and hinting he might talk. The group sent a hit man to kill O’Keefe, but he was caught before completing his task. The wounded O’Keefe made a deal with the FBI to testify against his fellow robbers.
On January 12, 1956, just five days before the statute of limitations was to run out, the FBI arrested Baker, Costa, Geagan, Maffie, McGinnis, and Pino. They apprehended Faherty and Richardson on May 16 in Dorchester. O'Keefe pleaded guilty on January 18. Gusciora died on July 9. Banfield was already dead. A trial began on August 6, 1956.
Eight of the gang's members received maximum sentences of life imprisonment. All were paroled by 1971 except McGinnis, who died in prison. O'Keefe received four years and was released in 1960. Only $58,000 of the $2.7 million was recovered, the rest is fabled to be hidden in the hills north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. In 1978, the famous robbery was immortalized on film in The Brink's Job, starring Peter Falk. O'Keefe cooperated with writer Bob Considine on The Men Who Robbed Brink's, a 1961 "as told to" book about the robbery and its aftermath.
Net Discussion Questions
Are you a Corvette fan? Would you own one?
What happened that led to the crime being solved?
Friday, January 12th: Topics with KC1SOO: Batman
TV series Batman premiered on ABC
Release January 12, 1966 – March 14, 1968
Batman is an American live-action television series based on the DC Comics character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson/Robin—two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City from a variety of archvillains.[1][2] It is known for its camp style, upbeat theme music, and its intentionally humorous, simplistic morality (aimed at its preteenage children. This included championing the importance of wearing seat belts, doing homework, eating vegetables, and drinking milk.[3] It was described by executive producer William Dozier at the time as "the only situation comedy on the air without a laugh track".[citation needed] The 120 episodes aired on the ABC network for three seasons from January 12, 1966, to March 14, 1968, twice weekly during the first two seasons, and weekly for the third. In 2016, television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked Batman as the 82nd greatest American television series of all time. A companion feature film was released in 1966 between the first and second seasons of the TV show.
Batman held the record for the longest-running live-action superhero television series (in terms of episodes) until it was surpassed by Smallville in 2007.
Net Discussion Questions:
1. Are you a Batman fan?
2. Who is your favorite Superhero?
Wednesday, January 10th: Topics with KC1HHK: Astronomy/Moon Bounce
The Birth of Radar Astronomy / First Successful “Moon Bounce”
Project Diana, named for the Roman moon goddess Diana, was an experimental project of the US Army Signal Corps in 1946 to bounce radar signals off the Moon and receive the reflected signals. This was the first experiment in radar astronomy and the first active attempt to probe another celestial body. It was the inspiration for later Earth–Moon–Earth communication (EME) techniques.
History
Following the end of World War II, Col. John H. DeWitt Jr., Director of the Evans Signal Laboratory at Camp Evans (part of Fort Monmouth), in Wall Township, New Jersey, was directed by the Pentagon to determine whether the ionosphere could be penetrated by radar, in order to detect and track enemy ballistic missiles that might enter the ionosphere. He decided to address this charge by attempting to bounce radar waves off the Moon. For this task he assembled a team of engineers that included Chief Scientist E. King Stodola, Herbert Kauffman, Jacob Mofenson, and Harold Webb. Input from other Camp Evans units was sought on various issues, including most notably the mathematician Walter McAfee, who made the required mathematical calculations.
On the Laboratory site, a large transmitter, receiver and antenna array were constructed for this purpose. The transmitter, a highly modified SCR-271 radar set from World War II, provided 3 kilowatts (later upgraded to 50 kilowatts) at 111.5 MHz in 1⁄4-second pulses, applied to the antenna, a "bedspring" reflective array antenna composed of an 8x8 array of half wave dipoles and reflectors that provided 24 dB of gain. Return signals were received about 2.5 seconds later, the time required for the radio waves to make the 477,000 mi round-trip journey from the Earth to the Moon and back. The receiver had to compensate for the Doppler shift in frequency of the reflected signal due to the Moon's orbital motion relative to the Earth's surface, which was different each day, so this motion had to be carefully calculated for each trial. The antenna could be rotated in azimuth only, so the attempt could be made only as the Moon passed through the 15 degree wide beam at moonrise and moonset, as the antenna's elevation angle was horizontal. About 40 minutes of observation was available on each pass as the Moon transited the various lobes of the antenna pattern.
The first successful echo detection came on 10 January 1946 at 11:58am local time by Harold Webb and Herbert Kauffman.
Project Diana marked the birth of radar astronomy later used to map Venus and other nearby planets, and was a necessary precursor to the US space program. It was the first demonstration that terrestrial radio signals could penetrate the ionosphere, opening the possibility of radio communications beyond the Earth for space probes and human explorers. It also established the practice of naming space projects after Roman gods, e.g., Mercury and Apollo.
Project Diana demonstrated the feasibility of using the Moon as a passive reflector to transmit radio signals from one point on the Earth to the other, around the curve of the Earth. This Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) or "moonbounce" path has been used in a few communication systems. One of the first was the secret US military espionage PAMOR (Passive Moon Relay) program in 1950, which sought to eavesdrop on Soviet Russian military radio communication by picking up stray signals reflected from the Moon. The return signals were extremely faint, and the US began secret construction of the largest parabolic antenna in the world at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, until the project was abandoned in 1962 as too expensive. A more successful spinoff was the US Navy Communication Moon Relay or Operation Moonbounce communication system, which used the EME path for US military communication. In January 1960 the system was inaugurated with a lunar relay link between Hawaii and Washington DC. Moonbounce communication was abandoned by the military with the advent of communications satellites in the early 1960s. Since then, it has been used by amateur radio operators.
Today, the Project Diana site is part of the Camp Evans Historic District, InfoAge Science History Learning Center and Museum, and is maintained by the Ocean-Monmouth Amateur Radio Club. The antenna array was removed earlier and is now presumably lost.
-wikipedia
Net Discussion Questions:
1. Have you ever done a Moon Bounce?
2. What equipment does one need to do this: radio / freq. / antenna?
Friday, January 5th: Topics with KC1SOO: Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
Construction start January 5, 1933
Construction end April 19, 1937
Opened May 27, 1937; 86 years ago
Golden Gate Bridge, suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate in California to link San Francisco with Marin county to the north. Upon its completion in 1937, it was the tallest and longest suspension bridge in the world. The Golden Gate Bridge came to be recognized as a symbol of the power and progress of the United States, and it set a precedent for suspension-bridge design around the world. Although other bridges have since surpassed it in size, it remains incomparable in the magnificence of its setting and is said to be the most photographed bridge in the world. It carries both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) across the strait and features a pedestrian walkway.
The bridge’s orange vermilion color, suggested by consulting architect Irving Morrow, has a dual function, both fitting in with the surrounding natural scenery and being clearly visible to ships in fog. At night the bridge is floodlit and shines with a golden luminescence that reflects off the waters of the bay and creates a magical effect.
The northern terminus of the Akashi Strait Bridge in Terumi ward, southern Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, west-central Japan. The bridge spans the Akashi Strait and links Awaji Island to Honshu.
Its construction, under the supervision of chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss, began in January 1933 and involved many challenges. The strait has rapidly running tides, frequent storms, and fogs that made construction difficult. During one such fog on August 14, 1933, a cargo vessel collided with the access trestle, causing serious damage. Workers also had to contend with the problem of blasting rock under deep water to plant earthquake-proof foundations. A movable safety net, innovated by Strauss, saved a total of 19 men from falling to their deaths during construction. However, the safety net failed on February 17, 1937, when it gave way under the weight of a scaffolding collapse; of the 13 men who were on the scaffolding, one jumped clear, two survived the fall into the water, and 10 were killed. One other worker fell to his death during the construction, for a total of 11 worker deaths over four years.
The bridge opened to vehicular traffic on May 28, 1937, under budget and ahead of schedule. The main span, 1,280 metres (4,200 feet) long, is suspended from two cables hung from towers 227 metres (746 feet) high; at midpoint the roadway is 81 metres (265 feet) above mean high water. Until the completion of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City in 1964, it had the longest main span in the world.
-Britannica
Net Discussion Question:
Have you visited the Golden Gate Bridge?
What is your favorite landmark?
Wednesday, January 3rd: Topics with KC1HHK: Apple Computers incorporated on this date in 1977
Apple Inc., American manufacturer of personal computers, smartphones, tablet computers, computer peripherals, and computer software and one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It was the first successful personal computer company and the popularizer of the graphical user interface. Headquarters are in Cupertino, California.
Garage start-up
Apple Inc. had its genesis in the lifelong dream of Stephen G. Wozniak to build his own computer—a dream that was made suddenly feasible with the arrival in 1975 of the first commercially successful microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which came as a kit and used the recently invented microprocessor chip. Encouraged by his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club, a San Francisco Bay area group centered around the Altair, Wozniak quickly came up with a plan for his own microcomputer. In 1976, when the Hewlett-Packard Company, where Wozniak was an engineering intern, expressed no interest in his design, Wozniak, then 26 years old, together with a former high-school classmate, 21-year-old Steve Jobs, moved production operations to the Jobs family garage. Jobs and Wozniak named their company Apple. For working capital, Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak his programmable calculator. Their first model was simply a working circuit board, but at Jobs’s insistence the 1977 version was a stand-alone machine in a custom-molded plastic case, in contrast to the forbidding steel boxes of other early machines. This Apple II also offered a color display and other features that made Wozniak’s creation the first microcomputer that appealed to the average person.
Commercial success
Though he was a brash business novice whose appearance still bore traces of his hippie past, Jobs understood that for the company to grow, it would require professional management and substantial funding. He convinced Regis McKenna, a well-known public relations specialist for the semiconductor industry, to represent the company; he also secured an investment from Michael Markkula, a wealthy veteran of the Intel Corporation who became Apple’s largest shareholder and an influential member of Apple’s board of directors. The company became an instant success, particularly after Wozniak invented a disk controller that allowed the addition of a low-cost floppy disk drive that made information storage and retrieval fast and reliable. With room to store and manipulate data, the Apple II became the computer of choice for legions of amateur programmers. Most notably, in 1979 two Bostonians—Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston—introduced the first personal computer spreadsheet, VisiCalc, creating what would later be known as a “killer app” (application): a software program so useful that it propels hardware sales.
While VisiCalc opened the small-business and consumer market for the Apple II, another important early market was primary educational institutions. By a combination of aggressive discounts and donations (and an absence of any early competition), Apple established a commanding presence among educational institutions, contributing to its platform’s dominance of primary-school software well into the 1990s.
-Britannica
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