The Lemon Fool

Gengulphus wrote:

scotia wrote:Do I have support for a petition to parliament?

That question puts the cart before the horse: the petition tells you whether you've got the support... But fortunately you don't need any support to start a petition - you just have to go to https://petition.parliament.uk/.

I shall watch future developments with interest! ;-)

Gengulphus

It being that time on a Saturday Evening when all good men try to distance themselves from the Television, I'll attempt to respond to your postulate. No - its rather like dangling a carrot in front of the horse to see if will move. If it had galloped - as determined by the number of recs, I would have moved forward to the petition, but I fear, apart from yourself, no one else has expressed any interest. Yet I was sure I was on the correct board - Pedant's Place - in a stream where there was a considerable interest in all things electrical and electronic. Maybe I should have attached to my planned petition an additional clause - the incorrect use of the word RAM. In a computer, tablet, or smart phone there are typically two types of memory - Read Only Memory (ROM) and Read Write Memory (RWM). Both are Random Access Memories (RAM). Yet the world almost universally uses RAM for RWM, when it is equally applicable to ROM. So the additional clause would be to replace RAM by RWM. Do you think this will fly (or gallop)? Your consideration would be much appreciated.

XFool wrote:

mc2fool wrote:

XFool wrote:When DID all electrical devices automatically become "electronic"?

"All" didn't but for those that did it's when they started containing "active" components, like valves, transistors, integrated circuits, etc, rather than just "passive" ones like resistors, capacitors, transformers, motors, etc ,etc.

Electrical devices use electricity simply for and as power whereas electronic devices manipulate electricity as an information medium (often to control electrical devices).

Nope!

e.g. The first 'computers' used electrical relays. Electromechanical, NOT 'electronic'.

And Babbage's machines would have been steam powered!

Anybody remember using a hand cranked Facit calculator? Useful for sums of squares as I recall.

TJH

tjh290633 wrote:Anybody remember using a hand cranked Facit calculator? Useful for sums of squares as I recall.
TJH

You have got me beat there! Our research lab had an electrical (not electronic) calculator - just a step forward from the hand cranked variety, which were still in use by other research groups.

scotia wrote:So the additional clause would be to replace RAM by RWM. Do you think this will fly (or gallop)? Your consideration would be much appreciated.

You make two interesting points which when I am more sober I may wish to consider. However, parliament tends not to define the use of language, it tends to evolve so you probably have to live with it.

cf Billion.

Which is perhaps more significant. I am not aware of anyone who uses the traditional English definition of Billion. I am not sure that many people know what it is.

johnhemming wrote:

scotia wrote:So the additional clause would be to replace RAM by RWM. Do you think this will fly (or gallop)? Your consideration would be much appreciated.

You make two interesting points which when I am more sober I may wish to consider. However, parliament tends not to define the use of language, it tends to evolve so you probably have to live with it.

cf Billion.

Which is perhaps more significant. I am not aware of anyone who uses the traditional English definition of Billion. I am not sure that many people know what it is.

I'm sober - but still avoiding Strictly. Maybe I should follow your lead.
Your response gave me a further thought. Make it compulsory to use SI units , where there can be no confusion. So we have a Mega-aire, a Giga-Aire and a Tera-aire. We can even bestow the title of Kilo-aire, which many could aspire to.

tjh290633 wrote:Anybody remember using a hand cranked Facit calculator? Useful for sums of squares as I recall.

Not me, but I do still know how to use a slide rule, which is a lost art at this point I believe. I still have the one my dad gave me around 1970 which, he felt sure, would give me an edge in the coming decades.

But the Random Access part is important, to distinguish from sequential memory devices.

So perhaps you should call for RARWM, or possibly simply 'M' as the other properties could be treated as assumed.

If you choose the latter the ROM makes sense, otherwise it would have to be RAROM. Then leading to EEPRAROM, of course.

Scott.

scotia wrote:

tjh290633 wrote:Anybody remember using a hand cranked Facit calculator? Useful for sums of squares as I recall.
TJH

You have got me beat there! Our research lab had an electrical (not electronic) calculator - just a step forward from the hand cranked variety, which were still in use by other research groups.

I've used the Facit, as well as the usual Brunsviga.

Lab I worked at bought the HP 35, first scientific hand electronic calculator I'd (we'd) ever seen. Amazing. Cost hundreds! Had to be sent back, I seem to remember something about square root of two squared equalled 2.01 or something...

Then there was the fully specified desktop HP 9100A with all its accessories. "I want one!" - Did eventually get an HP 25 (cost £199)
Effectively I taught myself to program on that 9100A.

XFool wrote:Lab I worked at bought the HP 35, first scientific hand electronic calculator I'd (we'd) ever seen. Amazing. Cost hundreds! Had to be sent back, I seem to remember something about square root of two squared equalled 2.01 or something...

Not quite right, but it was a long time ago...

Hewlett-Packard Integrity and "The Bug"

HP Museum

Log tables. Which my maths teacher preferred to the new-fangled slide rules.

He did, however, insist that if we were going to use a slide rule (dammit, dammit!), we should first make a mental ballpark calculation as to the order of result that we were expecting. Would it be 30,000 or three million?

It's a task that would have beyond the imaginings of the checkout assistant who once tried to charge me £150,000 for my week's shopping in Sainsburys. And it also encouraged us to use the most important piece of software in our bodies. No batteries required.

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:Log tables. Which my maths teacher preferred to the new-fangled slide rules.

He did, however, insist that if we were going to use a slide rule (dammit, dammit!), we should first make a mental ballpark calculation as to the order of result that we were expecting. Would it be 30,000 or three million?

It's a task that would have beyond the imaginings of the checkout assistant who once tried to charge me £150,000 for my week's shopping in Sainsburys. And it also encouraged us to use the most important piece of software in our bodies. No batteries required.

BJ

Yes, log tables (and the benefits of using natural logs) but over new-fangled calculators...

I still do rough-cut approximations so that any calculator typos become obvious. I also tot up the shopping as a matter of course as we add it to the basket. An old habit from early days, paying in cash and having very little of the stuff!

...to continue.

It's everywhere now.

BBC R4 News: "...a man arrested for the death of a woman in a speedboat incident is to be extradited back(sic) to the UK..."

madhatter wrote:

If I remember, "capacitor" was American for "condenser"

I don’t like the little box symbols for resistors though, the zigzag seeming more intuitive.

Easier for the old 'pen plotters ' to deal with. I still miss the zigzags.
At least we stuck with 'valves' rather than adopting the U.S. 'tubes'

AleisterCrowley wrote:At least we stuck with 'valves' rather than adopting the U.S. 'tubes'

I don't think youvalve would have caught on; it sounds more like a toilet accessory than a video channel.

VRD

I guess the TV 'tube' is one of the few exceptions. 'The Valve' with Jools Holland..hmm