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 motor has been replaced by battery driven smaller motors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

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

This Gilbert Erector Set motor appears to be even older than the one I
had as a kid back in about 1950, and it still has intact the worm gear
on one end of the spindle.  That worm gear is the one I always broke
trying to make cranes and things.  BIR I broke one, and then its
replacement, before finally giving up on using that gearbox thing.

I think those old Erector sets were a good thing for learning by a young
person - teaching manual dexterity, how to use simple tools, how things
go together in 3D and etc.  I haven't seen newer sets, but think the
ones like I had would now be declared by the CPSC or some other
gummint agency to be an urgent "DANGER" in case of a child swallowing/
choking on those little screws, nuts, washers and etc. Bah! I never ate
a single piece, and darn sure never choked on one.

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

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

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



 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,
 RJT> which I *hate*. And what kept going through my head, over
 RJT> and over, during a lot of my time in that store was how
 RJT> _MUCH_ of what they were selling was just differently
 RJT> shaped and colored bits of plastic. Probably 90%+ of what
 RJT> was in that store consisted of that and packaging...

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

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

_But_ when swinging on that rope, she can't just sit on a board like you
and I did when we were kids, she gotta be sitting in this
red-blue-yellow plastic seat thing by "Little Tykes", with strong
plastic thing between her legs and safety straps up across her chest so
she couldn't possibly fall out. Its kinda like those harnesses in the
safety seats when you put the little ones in the back of a vehicle. And
little Katharine is safety-conscious also - she won't let me start to
swing her until she is securely belted and latched into that plastic
seat thingie.

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

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

- - -  JimH.

... Good old days?  Heck, Jim, what was good about them? - Bubba.
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