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Old 6th Mar 2014, 6:18 pm   #81
short wave
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Default Re: Forgotten Knowledge

As we discuss forgotten knowledge / (skills), not all of it electrical / electronic here are a few more..
1) the relationship between an audio cassette and a hexagonal pencil
2) filling an ink pen with ink from a bottle /cartridge
3) sharpen a pencil with a pen knife
4) building a tree-house
5) building a go-cart (2 bits of wood ,pram wheels , wooden box , nails , the important nut and
bolt (washer) and some rope) “ bogie “as we say in Leeds... nothing to do with noses!
6) climbing trees (let alone a conker one!!!)
7) rope swings..... and how to get the leader line up in the 1st place
9) simple maths (My bill came to 70p I gave the ”youngster” £1.20 ,they
were most insistent about giving me back my 20p until I said ring it up on the till ,
(one 50p coin later it was all clear) less change for me, more change for the shop if
required.
10) the art of conversation/ talking to friends ..... face to face ..not texting etc
11) the ability to fix things , in this “throw away age”

Other things on the “endangered list” are “please” and “thank you”

In reply to others...
“Laying a coal fire“ by Herald1360 /post #2 does this include “drawing” the fire with a sheet of newspaper and knowing what to do when the paper catches light!?.
“Using a saw properly, all the teeth” by Robin Coleman post #46 ...can I add files to this?
Such a growing thread!! 60 replies in 2 days , a record?
I'm off for a lie down now!!
S-W
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Old 6th Mar 2014, 6:53 pm   #82
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Omegaman View Post
Holding an intelligent conversation face to face.

My daughter sits in silence with her phone and her thumbs moving like a Bees' wings apparently 'talking' to her friends on Facetube (Or whatever they call it).
She once showed me a series of text messages on her phone. The guys at Bletchley Park would have struggled with these......

Last week the wireless router died. Good God!! It must be the end of civilisation as She knows it. She went to stay at my Sons' house until it was fixed....

By the way, She's 24.

Oh Well, technology, Eh?
Another one of those 'twas ever thus' moments I fear .

"I don't know. Ever since that wretched Mr Gutenberg invented movable type all my daughter does is sit in silence with her eyes going from side to side like the clappers and her head in that ... what do they call it ... 'book'. I tell you it'll be the death of saga-singing. And can you find a decent scribe or illuminator these days ... ?" .

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 6th Mar 2014, 7:32 pm   #83
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Typesetting.
Screen printing.
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Old 6th Mar 2014, 9:11 pm   #84
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Sharpening and setting a saw.

(I only learned this through the step-by-step illustrated instructions printed on the sleeve of a circular saw that Dad bought for his "Selecta" home workshop).
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Old 6th Mar 2014, 9:35 pm   #85
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If you try to reset some modern saws, the teeth snap off.

Fortunately my eye wasn't in the way!
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Old 6th Mar 2014, 10:00 pm   #86
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Saws are now a disposable item. Builders merchants stock them by the 1000 at a few quid each.
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Old 6th Mar 2014, 10:44 pm   #87
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Station X View Post
If you try to reset some modern saws, the teeth snap off.

Fortunately my eye wasn't in the way!
Modern saws have the teeth induction-hardened after initial setting and sharpening. The edge of the blade is heated by using a high-frequency electromagnet to induce eddy currents deliberately in a very small region where the field is concentrated, so only hardening the metal where it is required.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 12:50 am   #88
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulM View Post
A shade under 20 years ago I had a young electronics undergraduate student working with me on a new design. Brilliant with the digits, attitude first class and bright too. Whilst reviewing the draft circuits I mused that part of the system controlling some high voltages would be best done with a relay. 'Relay?' says my young friend. 'A relay' says I. The puzzled look went on until it dawned on me that he didn't know what a relay was! No idea what it was - never heard of them. One year short of graduation and no concept of a relay! Well, I began with electromagnets (he'd 'done' those) and switches (he'd used those) and conceptually put the two together for him. Bingo! Relays understood, at least in principle, if not the why and when.

So, my nomination is: relays.

Best regards,

Paul M
I had one who did not know what a solder tag was and another, while discussing power supplies, gave me a puzzled frown when I suggested using a crow bar circuit.
When I asked another what was 13 x 5 he replied that he would tell me once he returned to his desk and where he had a calculator.

Material things? Using Fluxite, rewinding cassettes with a Bic Biro and adding currency to the powers (or should it be Base) of 4, 12 and 20. And what's a Guinea anyway and I am not talking about the Pig!
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 1:20 am   #89
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21/- or £1-1s-0d.

My first tranny was 101/2Gns
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 1:47 am   #90
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What a wonderful thread, best one for a long time!

Quote:
Laying a coal fire“ by Herald1360 /post #2 does this include “drawing” the fire with a sheet of newspaper and knowing what to do when the paper catches light!?.
My dad used to do that trick, but with several sheets of the Daily Telegraph-it's size meant it bridged the fireplace. He must have done it hundreds of times and as far as I know the newspaper never caught fire. He also taught me how to lay a fire.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 3:05 am   #91
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How to use a steel pen.


Thanks for the info on modern hard point saws: all mine are "vintage"! I could add "how to sharpen a masonry bit", now disposable like saws: my dad's first rotary bit, a "Mason-Master", came with an illustrated leaflet giving the correct angles for the DIY resharpener, and a voucher for sending it back for a free resharpening.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 4:33 am   #92
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Ask city kids where there food comes from - Tesco. Get a coal fire going.
Rice, oats are grasses. Na mait, grass is dat green stuff for playin footy. U no, dat green stuff U av to cut wiv a mowa (have to cut with a mower). It took me a while to "tune in"
to the local lingo!
When living in London - Westham I asked a lad to draw a map of where he lived. The result was an inverted T. He explained. Dats to wes counry(west country), das to safend (southend) & das upnorf . Any land beyond Rickmanworth is Scotland.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 5:17 am   #93
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This thread is a bit of a misnomer. By definition this knowledge is not forgotten, it's just passing into history like much before it, including 90+% of species that ever existed.

I remember banking the fire up with slack at night, then drawing it next morning. I also remember the resulting smog. We had a working gas light in our first house in the 60s, and not long before that the last gas street lights were converted (how long would the exposed lamps last now).

I went to secondary school in short pants, and we would take off our hats when a hearse passed by. Dogs roamed, but they were mostly harmless mongrels. You would hold the door open for both sexes, and when I left school, the thought of owning a car didn't cross my mind.

Materials were expensive, Labour was cheap, so make do and mend persisted long after the War. It's the opposite now, hence the wasteful throwaway society and loss of associated skills.

We all have examples, depending on Geography, age, occupation etc. The best you can hope for is that the last survivors find a home in a Museum, if any survive, or there's always the Internet. Used wisely it's a time machine.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 9:26 am   #94
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Dare I say it.................making a crystal set(although I have built several and never got any to work)
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 9:33 am   #95
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V24/RS232 interface.

Male or female connectors?
9 pin or 25 pin?
Gender benders?
Straight or crossed connections?

In our office we reckoned that V24 meant it took 24 hours to get it working. It generally required the use of a break out box and wire jumpers to work out the correct connections before making up a lead. Many a time I just looped back pins 4 & 5 and 6 & 20.

Having done that you had to do the software settings or DIL switch settings.. Speed, bits, parity, Xon/Xoff flow control etc. etc.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 10:31 am   #96
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How to use a projector with a laptop.

This must hold the record for the fastest forgotten knowledge because at every meeting in every company, the three most highly paid people in the room spend 20 minutes trying to get the same stuff going time and time again. I know it's recent technology, but it's a fine example of how quickly knowledge can vanish. What's embarrassing is the groundhog day nature of it all.

David
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 10:46 am   #97
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The interesting thing I'm finding about this thread is how many of these things I actually do on a regular basis. I sharpened and set a saw yesterday for instance.

I remember going to the Elsecar Heritage Centre with a mate a few years ago and going 'round the museum saying: "Got one of those... Got one of those... I was USING one of those last week."

- Joe
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 10:47 am   #98
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Sorry if this has been mentioned before but I'm really irked by people who begin an answer to a question with 'So,...'. 'So' implies that I have just been made aware of something, and that now a consequence is about to be revealed. English is fast becoming a lost skill.
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Old 7th Mar 2014, 11:00 am   #99
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Cableform lacing.
 
Old 7th Mar 2014, 11:01 am   #100
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Quote:
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Sorry if this has been mentioned before but I'm really irked by people who begin an answer to a question with 'So,...'. 'So' implies that I have just been made aware of something, and that now a consequence is about to be revealed. English is fast becoming a lost skill.
Oh don't. This seems to be very common now. I think it started of in the world of academia - as every morning on 'Today' we would hear some University bod starting his spiel with 'So...'.

Eg;

John Humphreys: Now Professor, you've been tackling this issue with gene splicing. How does this work?

Prof: So..what we do is...

It drives me nuts, and I find myself shouting at the radio 'SO WHAT!?'
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