PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

«‹›383 »

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Good thing she went down at night or who knows what might have happened to the people on board

The Carpathia was only about 60 miles away. The Mount Temple was even closer but was much slower and was approaching from the other side of the icefield, so never actually reached the site of the sinking. So the range of the wireless wasn't a factor - the Titanic was able to raise her sistership, the Olympic which was 500 miles away during the disaster.

The really horrible thing to think about is that the wireless set on Titanic actually failed on the evening of April 13, having previously broken down shortly after the ship left Belfast - the transmitting power of the set and the non-stop use it was getting was burning out the transformer winding insulation.

The Marconi Company rules were very clear that radio operators were not to make running repairs to the set - they were operators, not technicians. If the set broke then it would be out of action until the ship reached port.

But on the Titanic operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride broke the rules and patched up the set themselves using parts from the back-up transmitter on board. After seven hours of work the wireless was back in operation in the afternoon of April 14th, just hours before the ship struck the iceberg.

If Harold and Bride hadn't bent the rules, or if they hadn't had the technical knowledge of how to repair the set, or if they hadn't been the 1912 equivalent of computer geeks who were happy to go above and beyond, go without sleep and pull the set apart because they were two 20-somethings who had the jobs they did mostly because they loved working with this new and exciting technology, then the Titanic would have gone down without anyone knowing where or when, leaving 700 people bobbing around the North Atlantic in open boats with a gale arriving the next day.

You could have been looking at the Titanic as not one of the most tragic and well-studied disasters of history, but as the most compelling nautical mysteries of how a 50,000-ton brand new steamship with 2200 people onboard disappeared without trace on its maiden voyage.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 14:23

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 28, 2024 11:38

DurosKlav: Jun 13, 2003; Enter your name pilot!

Loxbourne posted:

And then the Titanic's radio operator is ordered to clear a backlog of messages from first class passengers, most notably a stack of bets and live horse-race commentary. This means when a neighbouring ship, the SS Californian, sends an alert that the Titanic is in the middle of an ice field and they are stopping all engines for the night for safety, he responds (with his big shiny transmitter) with "SHUT UP SHUT UP I AM WORKING CAPE RACE."

("Cape Race" in this case referring to the receiving station).

This stunning display of professionalism causes the Californian's radio operator to roll his eyes and go to bed, for which he was later slated by the Court of Inquiry. For not ten minutes later, Titanic hit the iceberg, and despite being close enough to render assistance and even see signal rockets being sent up, the Californian sailed on blissfully in ignorance of the Titanic's distress signals.

I'd say thats still pretty debatable. The cold water mirage theory that started within the last like 8 years seems to do a good job of explaining some of the mysteries of the night. Besides it was only about a hour or so between the moment where the Titanic fired its first rockets and when it sank. The Californian had stopped for the night due to ice fields. It would have taken time to get the engines back up and to navigate through the ice to reach the position of the Titanic. Not to mention the fact the location of the wreck and the location the Titanic gave out that night were some 13 miles away.

DurosKlav has a new favorite as of 15:06 on Nov 18, 2019

# ? Nov 18, 2019 14:55

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Funny thing is that until they did deep-sea expeditions to find the wreck, it was believed the Titanic sank in one piece rather than two. (hence Raise the Titanic being remotely plausible) Which was pretty recent I think, iirc Ghostbusters 1 or 2 has the gag with the Titanic pulling into port.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 15:24

DurosKlav: Jun 13, 2003; Enter your name pilot!

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Funny thing is that until they did deep-sea expeditions to find the wreck, it was believed the Titanic sank in one piece rather than two. (hence Raise the Titanic being remotely plausible) Which was pretty recent I think, iirc Ghostbusters 1 or 2 has the gag with the Titanic pulling into port.

It was 2, which actually came out after the discovery of the wreck. So it was just the ghost of the ship I guess. Also Cheech Marin is one of the dockworkers in that scene.

DurosKlav has a new favorite as of 15:39 on Nov 18, 2019

# ? Nov 18, 2019 15:32

BalloonFish: Jun 30, 2013; Fun Shoe

DurosKlav posted:

I'd say thats still pretty debatable. The cold water mirage theory that started within the last like 8 years seems to do a good job of explaining some of the mysteries of the night. Besides it was only about a hour or so between the moment where the Titanic fired its first rockets and when it sank. The Californian had stopped for the night due to ice fields. It would have taken time to get the engines back up and to navigate through the ice to reach the position of the Titanic. Not to mention the fact the location of the wreck and the location the Titanic gave out that night were some 13 miles away.

Very debatable, to say the least. While I don't think there's really any doubt that the Californian was looking at the Titanic (they saw a large ship come up from the east, stop at 11:40pm, fire off rockets between 12:15am and 1:50am and disappear at 2:20am...), I do believe that the exceptionally calm, clear and cold weather conditions that night caused all sorts of problems for the crew of both ships in sighting and messaging each other. Both Titanic and Californian flashed Morse lamp messages at each other without seeing any response. The Californian saw rockets, but the officer of the watch maintained that they burst below the 'mystery ship's' masthead light, when the Titanic's rockets would have burst at around three times the height of the masthead. No one on the Californian heard the loud explosive reports the rockets made when they burst or the equally deafening (and much longer) noise of the Titanic's safety valves lifting. I think the Californian was looking at a mirage of the Titanic that was much further away than it appeared to be, with the rockets bursting through an inversion layer above the ship and intermingling with the looming mirage. There was also the matter of the timing of the rockets being fired from the Titanic - irregularly at an average of one every eight minutes or so, but with some being a couple of minutes apart. That was not in keeping with the regulations on distress signals and that, coupled with the distortion effects of the mirage, was enough to prevent the officer on the Californian from realising what he was seeing and taking action.

It's all rather moot, as you say, because even if the Californian had got underway as soon as they saw the first couple of rockets they would, at the very best, arrive just as the Titanic slipped under and they lacked the boats or the crew to mount an effective rescue.

As for Phillips telling Evans on the Californian to 'shut up', this wasn't seen as an insult or angry put-down. It was entirely normal slang used between operators. Phillips was trying to work the distant station at Cape Race and hear its faint returning signal, which the Californian, only 20-30 miles away, was loudly 'overspeaking'. For his part, Evans didn't sign off and go to bed in a huff. But as a single operator he couldn't work all night, it was 11.30pm and if the Titanic was going to block the airwaves with its much more powerful transmitter sending out personal messages of no relevance then he might as well shut down the set.

The other tantalising thing is that the Third Officer of the Californian, Charles Groves, was interested in wireless telegraphy and held a Board of Trade signals certificate - he could read Morse by lamp and pass messages by flag and semaphore, but was teaching himself to hear and send Morse in the much more rapid-fire, slang-laden way used by the wireless operators. The Californian had only been fitted with wireless earlier in 1912 and Groves was making a habit of dropping into the radio cabin to try and get an ear for the transmissions. On April 14th his watch ended at midnight and shortly afterwards he went to the wireless cabin. Evans was already asleep but, just about the moment Titanic was sending it's first distress signals, he put the earphones on and closed the switch to put power to the set. Unfortunately Evans hadn't wound the mechanism of the detector which converted the wireless signal to an electric pulse, so Groves heard nothing. He switched off the set and went to bed.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 16:44

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

C.M. Kruger posted:

First a brief explanation of the behavior of radio waves, essentially the way things work is the lower the frequency the more distance you can get out of your signal. AM/Medium Wave and Shortwave signals can easily travel around the world, while VHF signals (TV and FM radio, ham radio walky talkies) are more local but still "bouncy" enough to get over the horizon, and UHF/microwave+ signals (TV, wifi, commercial FRS/GMRS walky talkies, LTE phones, microwave backbones for telcos, etc) are basically line-of-sight only but do have better performance inside buildings or in forests.

However there are two weather related phenomenons that allow VHF signals to travel much further than they usually go:
Tropospheric ducting, where the radio signals shoot through a atmospheric duct that is created when two weather systems of different temperature meet and create a temperature inversion.

and Sporadic-E, a phenomenon where parts of the ionosphere's E layer, which usually only reflects lower frequency AM signals, will become randomly charged and begin reflecting VHF signals for a short period of time. This is commonly used with amateur radio and CB radios to get temporary long distance contacts but will also affect FM and TV signals.

Reminds me of a plot point in Never Cry Wolf, where the guy that got dumped into the arctic wilderness uses his radio to contact someone in Peru, who eventually manages to get his request for help back to the people who can actually do something about it.

# ? Nov 18, 2019 17:01

Nckdictator: Sep 8, 2006; Just..someone

Loxbourne posted:

And then the Titanic's radio operator is ordered to clear a backlog of messages from first class passengers, most notably a stack of bets and live horse-race commentary. This means when a neighbouring ship, the SS Californian, sends an alert that the Titanic is in the middle of an ice field and they are stopping all engines for the night for safety, he responds (with his big shiny transmitter) with "SHUT UP SHUT UP I AM WORKING CAPE RACE."

("Cape Race" in this case referring to the receiving station).

This stunning display of professionalism causes the Californian's radio operator to roll his eyes and go to bed, for which he was later slated by the Court of Inquiry. For not ten minutes later, Titanic hit the iceberg, and despite being close enough to render assistance and even see signal rockets being sent up, the Californian sailed on blissfully in ignorance of the Titanic's distress signals.

Linking this again.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FxRN2nP_9dA

# ? Nov 18, 2019 17:05

DurosKlav: Jun 13, 2003; Enter your name pilot!

Heres a good post about the Mirage theory. I do not know if its the actual guy who wrote the book about it or someone pretending to be him but it does a good job of explaining it.

And heres the show they made about it on the National Geographic channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxQvij8Ttug

I do agree that Stanley Lord and the Californian were negligent in their duty. They probably should have woken Evans up and got the radio going. But as I said before I dont believe the ship was really in any position to render any useful aid to the Titanic itself.

DurosKlav has a new favorite as of 02:13 on Nov 19, 2019

# ? Nov 19, 2019 01:50

Milo and POTUS: Sep 3, 2017; I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

BalloonFish posted:

The Carpathia was only about 60 miles away. The Mount Temple was even closer but was much slower and was approaching from the other side of the icefield, so never actually reached the site of the sinking. So the range of the wireless wasn't a factor - the Titanic was able to raise her sistership, the Olympic which was 500 miles away during the disaster.

The really horrible thing to think about is that the wireless set on Titanic actually failed on the evening of April 13, having previously broken down shortly after the ship left Belfast - the transmitting power of the set and the non-stop use it was getting was burning out the transformer winding insulation.

The Marconi Company rules were very clear that radio operators were not to make running repairs to the set - they were operators, not technicians. If the set broke then it would be out of action until the ship reached port.

But on the Titanic operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride broke the rules and patched up the set themselves using parts from the back-up transmitter on board. After seven hours of work the wireless was back in operation in the afternoon of April 14th, just hours before the ship struck the iceberg.

If Harold and Bride hadn't bent the rules, or if they hadn't had the technical knowledge of how to repair the set, or if they hadn't been the 1912 equivalent of computer geeks who were happy to go above and beyond, go without sleep and pull the set apart because they were two 20-somethings who had the jobs they did mostly because they loved working with this new and exciting technology, then the Titanic would have gone down without anyone knowing where or when, leaving 700 people bobbing around the North Atlantic in open boats with a gale arriving the next day.

You could have been looking at the Titanic as not one of the most tragic and well-studied disasters of history, but as the most compelling nautical mysteries of how a 50,000-ton brand new steamship with 2200 people onboard disappeared without trace on its maiden voyage.

Now this is why I click the thread

# ? Nov 19, 2019 03:04

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

BalloonFish posted:

As for Phillips telling Evans on the Californian to 'shut up', this wasn't seen as an insult or angry put-down. It was entirely normal slang used between operators. Phillips was trying to work the distant station at Cape Race and hear its faint returning signal, which the Californian, only 20-30 miles away, was loudly 'overspeaking'. For his part, Evans didn't sign off and go to bed in a huff. But as a single operator he couldn't work all night, it was 11.30pm and if the Titanic was going to block the airwaves with its much more powerful transmitter sending out personal messages of no relevance then he might as well shut down the set.

To elaborate on this a bit, spark gap transmitters are effectively the radio version of starting a irresponsibly large bonfire to make smoke signals. The signals were wide bandwidth, dirty and blotted out large sections of the bands available with what limited tuning was available with the pre-vacuum tube radios, and relied on dumping as much power as possible into the air to overcome the technical limitations they were operating under, so nearby stations would stomp on each other's signals or make it impossible for the other station to receive things while they were transmitting. By comparison Morse code sent in CW with a vacuum tube or transistor/solid state radio is going to be a 400hz wide laser beam. A single-sideband ham or military voice transmission will be around 2400hz, AM broadcast transmission is going to be like a 9000hz signal and FM broadcast is like 16,000hz, and all of these will be able to be tuned to different frequencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8EgTyzG1gI

Even ham radio operators had stopped using them shortly after tubes were invented, and by the late 1920s they had been banned entirely by the various regulatory agencies.

And it did result in one of the first "hacks" in history when a magician who'd been hired to spy on Marconi by the wired telcos played a prank on him:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440-700-dot-dash-diss-the-gentleman-hackers-1903-lulz/

quote:

Marconi claimed that his wireless messages could be sent privately over great distances. �I can tune my instruments so that no other instrument that is not similarly tuned can tap my messages,� Marconi boasted to London�s St James Gazette in February 1903.

That things would not go smoothly for Marconi and Fleming at the Royal Institution that day in June was soon apparent. Minutes before Fleming was due to receive Marconi�s Morse messages from Cornwall, the hush was broken by a rhythmic ticking noise sputtering from the theatre�s brass projection lantern, used to display the lecturer�s slides. To the untrained ear, it sounded like a projector on the blink. But Arthur Blok, Fleming�s assistant, quickly recognised the tippity-tap of a human hand keying a message in Morse. Someone, Blok reasoned, was beaming powerful wireless pulses into the theatre and they were strong enough to interfere with the projector�s electric arc discharge lamp.

Mentally decoding the missive, Blok realised it was spelling one facetious word, over and over: �Rats�. A glance at the output of the nearby Morse printer confirmed this. The incoming Morse then got more personal, mocking Marconi: �There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily,� it trilled. Further rude epithets � apposite lines from Shakespeare � followed.

The stream of invective ceased moments before Marconi�s signals from Poldhu arrived. The demo continued, but the damage was done: if somebody could intrude on the wireless frequency in such a way, it was clearly nowhere near as secure as Marconi claimed. And it was likely that they could eavesdrop on supposedly private messages too.

Marconi would have been peeved, to say the least, but he did not respond directly to the insults in public. He had no truck with sceptics and naysayers: �I will not demonstrate to any man who throws doubt upon the system,� he said at the time. Fleming, however, fired off a fuming letter to The Times of London. He dubbed the hack �scientific hooliganism�, and �an outrage against the traditions of the Royal Institution�. He asked the newspaper�s readers to help him find the culprit.

He didn�t have to wait long. Four days later a gleeful letter confessing to the hack was printed by The Times. The writer justified his actions on the grounds of the security holes it revealed for the public good. Its author was Nevil Maskelyne, a mustachioed 39-year-old British music hall magician. Maskelyne came from an inventive family � his father came up with the coin-activated �spend-a-penny� locks in pay toilets. Maskelyne, however, was more interested in wireless technology, so taught himself the principles. He would use Morse code in �mind-reading� magic tricks to secretly communicate with a stooge. He worked out how to use a spark-gap transmitter to remotely ignite gunpowder. And in 1900, Maskelyne sent wireless messages between a ground station and a balloon 10 miles away. But, as author Sungook Hong relates in the book Wireless, his ambitions were frustrated by Marconi�s broad patents, leaving him embittered towards the Italian. Maskelyne would soon find a way to vent his spleen.

One of the big losers from Marconi�s technology looked likely to be the wired telegraphy industry. Telegraphy companies owned expensive land and sea cable networks, and operated flotillas of ships with expert crews to lay and service their submarine cables. Marconi presented a wireless threat to their wired hegemony, and they were in no mood to roll over.

The Eastern Telegraph Company ran the communications hub of the British Empire from the seaside hamlet of Porthcurno, west Cornwall, where its submarine cables led to Indonesia, India, Africa, South America and Australia. Following Marconi�s feat of transatlantic wireless messaging on 12 December 1901, ETC hired Maskelyne to undertake extended spying operations.

Maskelyne built a 50-metre radio mast (the remnants of which still exist) on the cliffs west of Porthcurno to see if he could eavesdrop on messages the Marconi Company was beaming to vessels as part of its highly successful ship-to-shore messaging business. Writing in the journal The Electrician on 7 November 1902, Maskelyne gleefully revealed the lack of security. �I received Marconi messages with a 25-foot collecting circuit [aerial] raised on a scaffold pole. When eventually the mast was erected the problem was not interception but how to deal with the enormous excess of energy.�

It wasn�t supposed to be this easy. Marconi had patented a technology for tuning a wireless transmitter to broadcast on a precise wavelength. This tuning, Marconi claimed, meant confidential channels could be set up. Anyone who tunes in to a radio station will know that�s not true, but it wasn�t nearly so obvious back then. Maskelyne showed that by using an untuned broadband receiver he could listen in.

Having established interception was possible, Maskelyne wanted to draw more attention to the technology�s flaws, as well as showing interference could happen. So he staged his Royal Institution hack by setting up a simple transmitter and Morse key at his father�s nearby West End music hall.

# ? Nov 19, 2019 10:56

Cacafuego: Jul 22, 2007

C.M. Kruger posted:

Turn of the century trolling

Milo and POTUS posted:

Now this is why I click the thread

# ? Nov 19, 2019 13:08

The_White_Crane: May 10, 2008

C.M. Kruger posted:

Maskelyne came from an inventive family � his father came up with the coin-activated �spend-a-penny� locks in pay toilets.

# ? Nov 19, 2019 17:38

small ghost: Jan 30, 2013

C.M. Kruger posted:

To elaborate on this a bit, spark gap transmitters are effectively the radio version of starting a irresponsibly large bonfire to make smoke signals. The signals were wide bandwidth, dirty and blotted out large sections of the bands available with what limited tuning was available with the pre-vacuum tube radios, and relied on dumping as much power as possible into the air to overcome the technical limitations they were operating under, so nearby stations would stomp on each other's signals or make it impossible for the other station to receive things while they were transmitting. By comparison Morse code sent in CW with a vacuum tube or transistor/solid state radio is going to be a 400hz wide laser beam. A single-sideband ham or military voice transmission will be around 2400hz, AM broadcast transmission is going to be like a 9000hz signal and FM broadcast is like 16,000hz, and all of these will be able to be tuned to different frequencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8EgTyzG1gI

Even ham radio operators had stopped using them shortly after tubes were invented, and by the late 1920s they had been banned entirely by the various regulatory agencies.

And it did result in one of the first "hacks" in history when a magician who'd been hired to spy on Marconi by the wired telcos played a prank on him:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440-700-dot-dash-diss-the-gentleman-hackers-1903-lulz/

Is that the same Maskelyne as the guy who made Alexandria Harbour vanish, or is this just a family of insanely precocious magicians?

# ? Nov 19, 2019 19:34

Loxbourne: Apr 6, 2011; Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

Werong Bustope posted:

Is that the same Maskelyne as the guy who made Alexandria Harbour vanish, or is this just a family of insanely precocious magicians?

Same guy. Very good at what he did (stage magic), but an insufferable arsehole. His memoirs pretty much claim he single-handedly won WW2 and are several hundred pages of pure :smuggo:

# ? Nov 19, 2019 20:43

Weembles: Apr 19, 2004

Loxbourne posted:

Same guy. Very good at what he did (stage magic), but an insufferable arsehole. His memoirs pretty much claim he single-handedly won WW2 and are several hundred pages of pure

I think the WWII Maskelyne (Jasper) was the radio Maskelyne's (Nevil) son.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Maskelyne_(magician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Maskelyne

They were the son and grandson of this guy:

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

# ? Nov 19, 2019 20:54

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

During the Little Rock school desegregation riots, one of the cops there to �protect� the black students suggested that the easiest thing to do would be to let the mob hang one to calm them down

# ? Nov 19, 2019 21:33

Suspect Bucket: Jan 15, 2012; SHRIMPDOR WAS A MAN
I mean, HE WAS A SHRIMP MAN
er, maybe also A DRAGON
or possibly
A MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM
BUT HE WAS STILL
SHRIMPDOR

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

During the Little Rock school desegregation riots, one of the cops there to �protect� the black students suggested that the easiest thing to do would be to let the mob hang one to calm them down

Yes, mob violence usually chills out once they've tasted blood.

# ? Nov 20, 2019 00:00

small ghost: Jan 30, 2013

Weembles posted:

I think the WWII Maskelyne (Jasper) was the radio Maskelyne's (Nevil) son.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Maskelyne_(magician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Maskelyne

They were the son and grandson of this guy:

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

So it's basically generational one-upmanship.

# ? Nov 20, 2019 02:06

Milo and POTUS: Sep 3, 2017; I will not shut up about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I talk about them all the time and work them into every conversation I have. I built a shrine in my room for the yellow one who died because sadly no one noticed because she died around 9/11. Wanna see it?

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

During the Little Rock school desegregation riots, one of the cops there to �protect� the black students suggested that the easiest thing to do would be to let the mob hang one to calm them down

Probably had experience with that sort of thing

# ? Nov 20, 2019 03:40

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Image gallery https://imgur.com/gallery/DcRXrl3

# ? Nov 20, 2019 08:00

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Carbon dioxide posted:

Image gallery https://imgur.com/gallery/DcRXrl3

From the comments section;

# ? Nov 20, 2019 08:03

MAKE NO BABBYS: Jan 28, 2010

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

During the Little Rock school desegregation riots, one of the cops there to �protect� the black students suggested that the easiest thing to do would be to let the mob hang one to calm them down

It�s almost like all cops are bastards 🤔

# ? Nov 20, 2019 11:18

Mister Mind: Mar 20, 2009; I'm not a real doctor,
But I am a real worm;
I am an actual worm

https://twitter.com/evanmcmurry/status/1197870602603913216?s=21

The linked article - https://apnews.com/6368125c7a2f4389adbc07b1030afc5a

# ? Nov 22, 2019 16:47

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Carbon dioxide posted:

Image gallery https://imgur.com/gallery/DcRXrl3

Merry loving christmas.

# ? Nov 22, 2019 21:24

JnnyThndrs: May 29, 2001; HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Looks like Rob Zombie is putting out a Christmas song w/video.

# ? Nov 23, 2019 02:42

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻

Carbon dioxide posted:

Image gallery https://imgur.com/gallery/DcRXrl3

Absent friends [Natives]

# ? Nov 23, 2019 07:28

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Codpiece-talk in the #blessed thread led me to this amazing thing. It leads in by talking about traditional Faroese lovers' presents such as homemade jewelry, carvings, tools, clothes, etc. Then continues:

quote:

En mere pikant k�restegave, som ikke er s� kendt eller omtalt, er kallv�ttur, som ogs� g�r under navnet purriv�ttur. En lille vante, som pigen strikkede til sin forlovede og gav ham som k�restegave. Kallur betyder mand. Purra betyder p� f�r�sk testikler og pung. Den skulle strikkes af mj�kaste h�vdaull � den bl�deste hoveduld. Denne bekl�dningsgenstand skulle beskytte hans �dlere dele mod det, som p� f�r�sk kaldes purrikuldi � n�rmere betgnet kulde i lem og n�rliggende omr�der.

J�an Pauli Joensen, I �rlige brudefolk: bryllup p� f�r�erne (Museum Tusculanum, 2003), p. 40

In translation:

quote:

A more racy lovers' present which isn't as known or spoken of, are kallv�ttur, which are also called purriv�ttur. A small mitten, which the girl knitted for her fiance and gave to him as a present. Kallur means man. Purra means testicles and scrotum in Faroese. It should be made from mj�kaste h�vdaull � the softest wool from a sheep's head. This garment was to protect his private parts against what is known in Faroese as purrikuldi � that is, coldness in the penis and surroundings.

_{An endnote (no. 162, p. 267) also mentions that the clitoris is called purrifinna, which I'm pretty sure etymologically means "small female testicle" lol}

# ? Nov 25, 2019 00:51

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

https://twitter.com/ASimon67/status/1118117212433342464

Carthag Tuek has a new favorite as of 01:44 on Nov 25, 2019

# ? Nov 25, 2019 01:40

thepopmonster: Feb 18, 2014

Krankenstyle posted:

https://twitter.com/ASimon67/status/1118117212433342464

Soft wool from sheeps' head and cold that has bitten
Fiancee crafted warm ballsack shaped mittens
Kept on by cunningly intertwined string
These are a few of my favorite things

# ? Nov 25, 2019 02:47

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Well don't wear them in warm months or non-nordic climates, the whole reason testicles are out of the body is because a lower than body temperature keeps the sperm healthy.

# ? Nov 25, 2019 08:00

Beachcomber: May 21, 2007; Another day in paradise.; Slippery Tilde

thepopmonster posted:

Soft wool from sheeps' head and cold that has bitten
Fiancee crafted warm ballsack shaped mittens
Kept on by cunningly intertwined string
These are a few of my favorite things

# ? Nov 25, 2019 08:10

BattyKiara: Mar 17, 2009

Carbon dioxide posted:

Well don't wear them in warm months or non-nordic climates, the whole reason testicles are out of the body is because a lower than body temperature keeps the sperm healthy.

So early form of birth control?

# ? Nov 25, 2019 15:47

Brute Hole Force: Dec 25, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Definitely will be if you're dumb enough to need it pinned to a jacket.

# ? Nov 25, 2019 21:05

Shit Fuckasaurus: Oct 14, 2005; i think right angles might be an abomination against nature you guys; Lipstick Apathy

Found this in the Funny Panels thread in BSS of all places

Johnny Aztec posted:

Let's learn about the history of ZIP CODES! Doeasn't that just sound great, kids?!

During World War II, thousands of experienced postal employees left to serve with the military. To offset the loss, in May 1943 the Post Office Department began a zoning address system in 124 of the largest cities. Under this system, delivery units or zones were identified by one or two numbers between the city and state — for example, Birmingham 7, Alabama — so that mail could be separated by employees who did not have detailed scheme knowledge.

Twenty years later, the Department implemented an even farther reaching plan, the Zoning Improvement Plan (ZIP) Code.

The social correspondence of the 19th century had given way, gradually then explosively, to business mail. By 1963, 80 percent of all mail in the United States was business mail. The development of the computer brought centralization of accounts and sent a growing mass of utility bills and payments, bank deposits and receipts, advertising, magazines, credit card transactions, mortgage bills and payments, and Social Security checks through the mail. Yet while mail volume grew and while the Post Office Department had been at the forefront of advances in transportation, the methods and much of the equipment used to sort mail in thousands of Post Offices remained the same as in Benjamin Franklin’s day. A better way to sort mail was needed.

In June 1962, after a study of mechanization, the presidentially appointed Advisory Board of the Post Office Department made several recommendations. One was the development of a coding system, an idea the Department had considered for a decade or more. A number of coding programs were examined and discarded before the Department selected a system advanced by Department officials. Postmaster General J. Edward Day announced that the ZIP Code would launch July 1, 1963.

Preparing for the new system involved a realignment of the mail system. The Post Office Department had previously recognized that new avenues of transportation would open and had begun to establish focal points for air, highway, and rail transportation. Called the Metro System, these transportation centers were set up around 85 of the country’s larger cities to deflect mail from congested city streets. The Metro concept was expanded and eventually became the core of 552 sectional centers, each serving between 40 and 150 surrounding Post Offices.

Once these sectional centers were delineated, the next step in establishing the ZIP Code was to assign codes to the centers and the postal addresses they served. The existence of postal zones in the larger cities, set in motion in 1943, helped to some extent, but in cases where the old zones failed to fit within the delivery areas, new numbers had to be assigned.

By July 1963, a five-digit code had been assigned to every address throughout the country. The first digit designated a broad geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the Northeast to nine for the far West. This number was followed by two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional centers accessible to common transportation networks. The final two digits designated small Post Offices or postal zones in larger zoned cities.

The ZIP Code began as scheduled. At first, use of the new code was not mandatory for anyone, but in 1967, the Department required mailers of second- and third-class bulk mail to presort by ZIP Code. The public and business mailers alike adapted well to its use. n

# ? Nov 26, 2019 18:09

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

We got postal codes in Denmark in 1967. They're 4 digits, beginning in central Copenhagen with 1xxx (every street has its own), then 2xx0 for the major districts, and finally the rest of Denmark in sections. Before that, addresses would be written for example "Blistrup pr. Helsinge" (with per in the archaic sense of via), the latter town being the distribution center for smaller surrounding villages. England had a similar system with for example "Rowlands Gill, N^r [ie. near] Newcastle-upon-Tyne".

Going back further, there wouldn't be house numbers, just "name, street, town"; and even further back, no street names either � just "name, town". In some of my ancestors' letters, they direct the recipient to send their response to an inn or a store (that is, some permanent location that would be able to hold the letter).

# ? Nov 26, 2019 18:34

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

The development of phone numbers is similar and also interesting. Originally all the exchanges were local and connected by physical human operators with switchboards. For local calls you just entered the basic number, for calls outside your network you would need to tell an operator where to connect you on which exchange. As human operators were unable to keep with the growing volume of calls and phones after World War II, they had to develop electro-mechanical systems that would automatically route calls. They added additional numbers (initially based on the acronym for the physical exchange location) and used in-band signaling where tones sent down the line by dialing would tell the system how to route the call.

This is also what allowed phone phreaking to develop! In order to keep silence on a call from triggering an automatic disconnection, the Bell system delivered a constant 2600 hertz tone down the line when it was unused. If you blasted this tone into your handset (such as with the famous Cap'n Crunch bosun whistle prize John Draper discovered), it would think the call disconnected and you could now play the appropriate tones to dial a number into the phone. Phreakers quickly began getting free calls by building tone generators called blue boxes, calling a toll-free number, and then using the blue box to disconnect the call and connect to the actual number they wanted.

A similar technology was the red box, used to get free payphone calls. Payphones would use a series of beeps sent down the line to indicate that certain coins were being inserted to allow the system to know when change had been paid, so you could likewise play the beeps into the handset to trick the system into thinking you paid for a call.

# ? Nov 26, 2019 18:51

Domus: May 7, 2007; Kidney Buddies

My dad was a phreaker back in his 20's. He used to use an exchange in France to get free calls to my mom across the state. Or so he claims anyways. He also claims to have once accidentally caused a nearby Air Force base to scramble their jets, because no one knew what the mysterious tones on their emergency line meant. Take it with a grain of salt, in other words.

# ? Nov 26, 2019 19:25

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Domus posted:

My dad was a phreaker back in his 20's. He used to use an exchange in France to get free calls to my mom across the state. Or so he claims anyways. He also claims to have once accidentally caused a nearby Air Force base to scramble their jets, because no one knew what the mysterious tones on their emergency line meant. Take it with a grain of salt, in other words.

John Draper and Steve Wozniak were notorious for the crazy pranks they pulled.

quote:

SS: I want to go through some of your famous pranks: you were able to place a call to the White House and get connected to Richard Nixon. Could you do that today if you wanted? Could you actually call and somehow get connected to Obama?

JD: Definitely not.

SS: Why not?

JD: You�ve got to understand, this occurred back in mid-seventies, and I was at a party, and I was doing some scanning around and then I found, by accident, the CIA crisis hotline number to White House. It was an 800-number and the person who answered the phone was extremely rude to me. So, I� �social engineering� � probably the first time I did social engineering, and what I did was, I basically told them that I was a test technician for the phone company and I needed to know what number we dialed. And the person obliged by telling us that this was a CIA crisis hotline. So, I accessed the line for a while, and this goes back to when you could sit and tap lines and tap calls and numbers, so we just sat there and waited for call to come in � and somebody said �Olympus� and person that came on the line � My God, that was Nixon! Oh my God! - I couldn�t believe it. So then at a party about two weeks later we decided to call him up and tell him that we had a national emergency on our hands, that we were out of toilet paper. We were the first persons ever to prank the President.

SS: So, what was his reaction, what happened?

JD: Well, then another voice came on the line and said �who is this?� and they were obviously pretty tipped off, so I didn�t stick around to talk to him, we just hang up. Because when we called that number, we made sure that we had quite a few links between us and the White House phone number, their crisis line. It was possible to go from WATS extender to WATS extender � we did about three or four loops around, so he couldn�t trace the call. We didn�t stay long enough for them to trace the call.

SS: So, you�ve prank-called President Nixon and you also prank-called the Pope. At that point, did you feel there was no limit?

JD: Woz was the one who called the Pope. Let me explain that story. Wozniak has read the article �Secrets in Little Blue Box�, 1971 October issue of Esquire, and Woz and Jobs wanted to build one of the Blue boxes, so Woz built a Blue box and he contacted me, because I did an interview on KKUP, and Woz called in and said �Can we meet?� and I said �Sure, I guess so�. I made sure I didn�t have any equipment with me, and I went to UC Berkeley, a dorm, and that�s where I met Steve Wozniak for the first time. He showed me his Blue box, and it was horrible, and every time he tried to use it, it would drop a trouble card, and you would get noticed, and in fact, that�s how I got busted � one of the guys bought Steve Wozniak�s box and guy used it incorrectly and got busted. Woz asked me, he said �can we call the Pope?� � and I said �Sure, let�s see, that�s three, two...� � I forget the area country code of Italy, I think it was 38 or 39, and so we called Rome information and we got number of Vatican and we called Vatican � and this is, like, 4 in the morning � and it took us a while to find an English-speaking person, and once I got an English-speaking person I just handed the phone over to Steve and said �here�s the Vatican, ask for the Pope� � and so he did. Of course, the Pope wasn�t there, because it was 4 in the morning, but he did try to convince them, he told the person that answered the phone that �this is Henry Kissinger and I have to call the Pope because I have to confess.�

# ? Nov 26, 2019 19:29

NFX: Jun 2, 2008; Fun Shoe

Krankenstyle posted:

We got postal codes in Denmark in 1967. They're 4 digits, beginning in central Copenhagen with 1xxx (every street has its own), then 2xx0 for the major districts, and finally the rest of Denmark in sections. Before that, addresses would be written for example "Blistrup pr. Helsinge" (with per in the archaic sense of via), the latter town being the distribution center for smaller surrounding villages. England had a similar system with for example "Rowlands Gill, N^r [ie. near] Newcastle-upon-Tyne".

Going back further, there wouldn't be house numbers, just "name, street, town"; and even further back, no street names either � just "name, town". In some of my ancestors' letters, they direct the recipient to send their response to an inn or a store (that is, some permanent location that would be able to hold the letter).

Ireland only got (national) postal codes a 5 years ago.

# ? Nov 26, 2019 23:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 28, 2024 11:38

Biplane: Jul 18, 2005

Never thought postal codes would be interesting.

# ? Nov 26, 2019 23:30

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF Historical Fun Fact: (USER LOSETH POSTYNG PRIVILYGES FOR FOUR AND TWENTY HOURS)

«‹›383 »