On 2007-08-08, Don Pearce wrote:
On 08 Aug 2007 09:30:25 GMT, John Phillips
wrote:
For which reason Scientific American is now rather boring. I sometimes
wish we could still see articles on making 2-metre-long zinc powder and
sulfur (sic) powered rockets that could reach 1,000 metres, etc.

And don't forget the instructions for making Tesla coils. Happy days.

Indeed. And things like the 1 MWatt pulsed-UV nitrogen laser.

It seems like articles of the sort were the making of today's engineers.
Nowadays for budding engineers it's a matter of cutting "dangerous" code
instead of winding coils. And even that may be outlawed by emerging
statute.

Maybe (to return to the topic) homebrew tube amplifiers is one of the
right engineering playgrounds for today.

--
John Phillips

John Phillips wrote:
On 2007-08-08, Don Pearce wrote:

On 08 Aug 2007 09:30:25 GMT, John Phillips
wrote:

For which reason Scientific American is now rather boring. I sometimes
wish we could still see articles on making 2-metre-long zinc powder and
sulfur (sic) powered rockets that could reach 1,000 metres, etc.

And don't forget the instructions for making Tesla coils. Happy days.


Indeed. And things like the 1 MWatt pulsed-UV nitrogen laser.

It seems like articles of the sort were the making of today's engineers.
Nowadays for budding engineers it's a matter of cutting "dangerous" code
instead of winding coils. And even that may be outlawed by emerging
statute.

Maybe (to return to the topic) homebrew tube amplifiers is one of the
right engineering playgrounds for today.


Could be some truth in that, I spend my working day writing code, so
playing with valves appeals to the same thing that made me do the sort
of (now) entirly inappropiate things I did as a kid.

--
Nick