JIM HOLSONBACK wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

 JH> Hello, Roy.  I overheard you and Charles Angelich talking about - -

 CA>> I got a runaround about erector sets here too. I did find
 CA>> some but it is very expensive now and the larger plug in
 CA>> motor has been replaced by battery driven smaller motors
 CA>> that use gearsets to generate enough power for a ferris
 CA>> wheel (for instance).

 RJT> I thought that they had both at one time? I remember that
 RJT> plug-in motor, and grinding gears to the point where I
 RJT> actually stripped one in the "transmission" that was
 RJT> attached

 JH> Recent garage\estate sale in our neighborhood.  The widow had died
 JH> or moved to nursing home.  Husband must have died earlier.  Of
 JH> course, I went straight to the garage.  Hubby was apparently a bit
 JH> of a packrat, having saved things like the guts from old electric
 JH> can openers.  I found, and bought for nostalgia purposes, an
 JH> Erector set electric motor, and a Lionel electric train 90W
 JH> transformer.

I would love to start going to that kind of sale,  but not now.  I have too
much *stuff* here that I need to get better situated,  stuff in the storage
unit,  weed things out,  etc. and I surely don't want to collect much more
until such point as we get our place that we're working toward...

 JH> This Gilbert Erector Set motor appears to be even older than the
 JH> one I had as a kid back in about 1950, and it still has intact the
 JH> worm gear on one end of the spindle. 

That's the one I remember,  the worm gear on one side,  a fairly short
shaft coming out the other side.  The worm gear side is where they had that
"transmission" attached,  and apparently the gears in there were
some sort of cast metal.

 JH> That worm gear is the one I always broke trying to make cranes and 
 JH> things.  BIR I broke one, and then its replacement, before finally 
 JH> giving up on using that gearbox thing. 

 JH> I think those old Erector sets were a good thing for learning by a 
 JH> young person - teaching manual dexterity, how to use simple tools, 
 JH> how things go together in 3D and etc.

That's why I bought one for my grandkid.  Unfortunately the newer version
that I got for her had a bunch of different sized screws,  and they called
out the lengths for them in fractional metric (!) sizes.  The one good
thing was that they'd gotten away from those old slotted screws and had an
allen wrench in there for the new fasteners.

 JH> I haven't seen newer sets, but think the ones like I had would now 
 JH> be declared by the CPSC or some other gummint agency to be an 
 JH> urgent "DANGER" in case of a child swallowing/ choking on those 
 JH> little screws, nuts, washers and etc. Bah! I never ate a single 
 JH> piece, and darn sure never choked on one.

Yeah,  anyway!

 JH> I also had a Gilbert Chemistry set.

As did I.

 JH> Had a lot of fun/learning with that. Nowadays, probably a "DANGER" 
 JH> per the above, because of the possibility of boiling over and 
 JH> shooting bad chemicals into the eyes/face of a kid holding test 
 JH> tube over that little alcohol burner thingie.

I not only had that,  but also had a pretty nifty book that showed you how
to make a lot of your own gear,  tripod stands out of wire hangers and
similar stuff,  how to find all sorts of chemicals in common household
products,  etc.  I can still remember that a bit of manganese dioxide from
an old battery would act as a catalyst in peroxide to generate oxygen. 
  You probably couldn't find such a book out there these days.

 JH> I also had a Gilbert Microscope set.  Tops was 210 power, BIR. 
 JH> Another good learning experience.

I had one of those too,  all metal,  and it worked,  though I don't
remember the brand on it.  Bought my grandkids a microscope set,  and it's
all plastic, and doesn't work nearly as well,  the viewing in it is truly
horrible.

 JH> A few months back, there was a TV special about the Gilbert founder
 JH> -  I think his name was A. C. Gilbert.  Very interesting.

I'd like to have seen that.  I wonder when all that stuff went off the market?

 JH> 

 RJT> Speaking of that toy store, I had the misfortune to work a 
 RJT> "season" at one of those, a few years back. Third shift, which I 
 RJT> *hate*. And what kept going through my head, over and over, 
 RJT> during a lot of my time in that store was how _MUCH_ of what they 
 RJT> were selling was just differently shaped and colored bits of 
 RJT> plastic. Probably 90%+ of what was in that store consisted of 
 RJT> that and packaging...

 JH> Our daughter and SIL and SIL's family have bought a _lot_ of that 
 JH> plastic stuff for our granddaughter. Some of it battery-powered 
 JH> like a silly little fake cel-phone.  Punch the buttons and hear 
 JH> stuff.

Yeah.  And they pay extra to have various trademarks attached to the
packaging or on the thing itself...  :-(

 JH> But sometimes, the older simpler pleasures win out.  
 JH> Grand-daughter Katharine will be here in a couple weeks, and when 
 JH> she is here, one of her favorites involves a $5 piece of rope - - 
 JH> I get it up over a limb about 20' high in an oak tree, and that is 
 JH> a "real" swing. "Whee!"

Yep!

 JH> _But_ when swinging on that rope, she can't just sit on a board 
 JH> like you and I did when we were kids, she gotta be sitting in this
 JH> red-blue-yellow plastic seat thing by "Little Tykes", with strong
 JH> plastic thing between her legs and safety straps up across her 
 JH> chest so she couldn't possibly fall out. Its kinda like those 
 JH> harnesses in the safety seats when you put the little ones in the 
 JH> back of a vehicle. 

This state has recently passed a safety seat law that has requirements that
I consider to be a bit absurd,  with regard to ages and such.  By the time
a kid is 4-5 years old they don't want to be sitting in one of those,  even
if you have one that's big enough.  The law requires the seat to be
"certified",  but doesn't stop sales of those that aren't.  And
of course those that are cost more...

 JH> And little Katharine is safety-conscious also - she won't let me 
 JH> start to swing her until she is securely belted and latched into 
 JH> that plastic seat thingie.

I have all these little ones wearing seat belts while in the car.  I think
they're a good idea,  though to me it's sensible and the fact that there's
a law about them bothers me,  I don't think we need one,  and if people
wanna be stupid,  well,  the gene pool could be cleaned out a little.  We
didn't have them when I was a kid and there wasn't any lasting damage done.

 RJT> Oh, it sure is. People deal with entirely different levels of 
 RJT> stuff these days. I do too, for the most part, which is why it's 
 RJT> kinda funny that I have all this knowledge that I don't use about 
 RJT> the technology, and all these parts that I'll probably never go 
 RJT> through, and spend more time than anything else sitting here 
 RJT> interacting with _software_ instead.

 JH> Oh, yeah.  That was one of the original selling pitches for pnp 
 JH> and Windows for the masses - - "Our users" will only have to 
 JH> interact with the software, so they don't have to worry with the 
 JH> hardware, and those hateful jumpers and all, and  "We're only 
 JH> trying to give our users what they want." (Excuse me while I barf).

Heh.

No,  I meant actually that I spend more time working with the user side of
the machine,  looking at what's on the screen and not messing around with
the inside of the box too much.  That'll change a bit later today as I try
to get this test fixture to take a Slackware install for the third time, 
with some different ram in the box.  Assuming of course that I can get the
clutter in here reduced to the level where I have some room to work on
stuff,  that is. 

Gotta open up the laser printer and see what I can see as to why it's
making horizontal lines across the page,  which it didn't used to do.  Then
I need to get my resume updated...      :-(

And print some out.  And so forth...

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