AV Geeks 16mm Lunch 10-25-2024

e e for in I I I wow I'm like oh the childhood of Edgar alen Poe yeah that was somewhat morose uh Happy Birthday Lord engine uh old radios I'm sorry that your camera crapped out that you just got it happens eBay it is a wild west of a equipment uh some of which won't work at all I remember getting and paying a lot for a Ematic deck that basically when I opened it up because it wasn't working the inside of it was corroded uh not unlike what we talked about yesterday with the film corrosion uh it was all it looked like had been exposed to Sea Air um so nothing worked and uh I had gone past the time that I could return it because I'm dumb that way anyways uh I'm skip alheim welcome to the a Geeks lunchtime streaming show where we watch old 16mm films and try to understand the dollar really try to get our head wrapped around it well thankfully uh Coronet can help us with this [Music] understanding the dollar that means more than knowing what a dollar bill looks like or what a silver dollar is to understand the dollar we must know something about the human story of the dollar in the everyday business of living something of the functions and the value of the dollar oh good morning Mr bla how are you this morning Miss Mueller I'm fine I was in the kitchen I didn't hear you come down the stairs I'm in a hurry I have to be early to school today but I thought I'd leave you the rent check oh thank you uhhuh how's water this morning all right we are familiar with the story of how money makes possible the exchange of many different goods and services among many different people for his service as a teacher in the local High School Mr Blaine earns money in exchange for money he is able to obtain the use of the upstairs of Mrs Mueller's house for himself and his family wherever we go we see money being used as a medium of Exchange money allows a businessman to exchange part of his profit from his business for a daily paper money is a convenient method of exchanging many different kinds of goods and services among many persons money is also a standard of value the value of goods is stated in terms of money the auto dealer could not possibly State the price of a car as so many hours work for this Carpenter nor could he State the price as so many bushels of wheat from this farmer but a price in dollars is clear to each person money is a standard of value we can think of other purposes money serves the farmer has just sold this year's crop of wheat he has enough money to buy all his needs for the year to come but it is more convenient for him to keep the money now storing up purchasing power so that he can buy goods and services later as he needs them money in the bank is not actually wealth it is a means of storing up purch ing power that can be used later to obtain weal we have covered part of the story of understanding the dollar but there is more there is also the story of the value of the dollar which may decrease how does this happen why does the value of the dollar decrease and increase that is the story of comparative prices prices change demand and Supply government controls subsidies many things affect prices but another way to talk about price changes is to consider the value of the dollar let's say that $1 will buy five cans of soup we can think of the value of a dollar as five cans of soup another day if a dollar will buy only four cans its value has gone down when it will buy six cans the value of the dollar has gone up thus the price of soup determines the value of a dollar in respect to soup as the price goes up what the dollar will buy goes down and as the price goes down what the dollar will buy goes up so we say the value of the dollar is inversely related to prices now of course the price of soup is only one price the day the price of soup goes down the price of sugar may go up but sometimes the prices of many things move upward or downward at the same time time so when we talk about the value of the dollar we usually mean not the price of one article but the prices of many articles we're talking about general price levels as the general price level goes up the value of the dollar goes down as the general price level goes goes down the value of the dollar goes up but the changing value of the dollar has a human story too notice the Furnishings of Mrs Mueller's home they're old but this is in part because she likes them but also because of the changing value of the dollar Mrs Mueller is a widow her income in dollars has remained about the same for the last 10 years she has money from a pension and from the rent of the upstairs of her home because prices have increased her dollars have declined in value her situation is typical of what we call a fixed income with her income she can buy less in times of general price increases now the carpenter is a wer he depends on this old car to get him to work why such an old car well he wanted a new one some time ago but Rising prices put a new car out of his reach since then however his wages have increased today he can plan seriously toward buying a new car but remember prices went up first wages followed later this is called called a wage lag it is typical of wages in times of price increases what about Mr Blaine the school teacher his income has increased some but not much the wage lag for people on salary is often great salaries do not increase as rapidly as prices and Mr bla finds that he must work on another job part-time in order to live at the same level as before what about the profits of businessmen how do Rising prices affect this type of income Mr Samson is in the business of making scales in his store room there are stocks of raw materials his company has purchased for use these raw materials were purchased some time ago at a time when prices were lower but the goods being manufactured will be sold at the present higher prices so Rising prices often mean increased profits to businessmen in our story of understanding the dollar we have seen that money is a medium of Exchange it is a standard of value and it is a way of storing up purchasing power the value of the dollar changes in inverse relation to prices and we have seen some of the effects of generally Rising prices on people with various types of income now a question for you to think about and discuss us when prices go down when the value of the dollar goes up then how are these people with various types of income affected you continue the story of understanding the dollar [Music] thank you cornet for clarifying that um that's one thing like that I I kind of like about collecting these films is they're certainly they teach us how things used to be in our uh approach to different concepts and then we can do a comparison contrast with what how things are but sometimes they just straight up teach me something and I'm always up for learning something so um maybe not with this film but in General sometimes it's like oh I had no idea how that worked what do you know about that all right so this next film uh we're watching this because I really dug there's an illustration with hands that I really like that's awesome we should watch that uh so this film is uh like some of the films that we're showing uh today from the prelinger archive and uh Rick prelinger he and I uploaded several thousand films back in the early 2000s like 2003 2004 before YouTube existed and the deal was you couldn't watch it online there was no connection that anybody had that was fast enough so people had to download an MPEG 2 file and then they had to watch it um and so we did man thousands of them but uh my point is that now he's doing a whole new batch uh and is doing really beautiful uh scanning work using a laser graphic scanner which is what we have and that's not what beh is behind me it's that's a black magic but anyways so he's got all this great new stuff so I'm excited to be showing some of that stuff that we're also uploading to his channel on YouTube uh pringer channel so anyways here's speed and reflexes enjoy [Music] man's ability to drive an automobile has limited itations Beyond which he dares not go automobiles have been built to travel at higher and higher speeds but our own physical limitations plus the natural laws of friction centrifugal force gravity and kinetic energy all combined to prevent us from exceeding speeds which violate these natural laws violation of these laws brings immediate punishment it takes time to move even even the quickest move you can make requires time this machine called a reacto meter can measure in hundreds of a second your reflexes or the time it takes your eyes to see your brain to order and your hands or feet to carry out this test presents a very simple situation and the average reaction time is about 1/2 seconds under actual driving conditions your reactions are not quite so simple you may have to choose between several Alternatives and pick the right one while your attention is focused on driving the car hazards ahead and conditions around you this is called complex reaction time under these situations you will require from 3/4 to 1 second to react this device called a brake reaction Detonator measures reaction time time in distance the Detonator is hung on the front bumper the person making the test fires the first cartridge making a mark on the street at the sound of the explosion the driver applies the brakes causing the second cartridge to discharge making the second mark on the street this distance 22 ft is how far you travel at 20 mph before you can even begin slow down your car at higher speeds of of course the distance is proportionately greater in addition to our physical limitations there are natural laws which work automatically and are inescapable let us first consider friction the entire control of a moving car depends on the grip which four small areas of Tire surface each about as big as the palm of your hand have on the road this grip is called friction the friction between the the wheels and the pavement enables the car to start stop and keep moving friction plays its part when your car is rounding a curve but there is also another Force at work this is called centrifugal force a moving object tends to keep moving in a straight line a rock Whirled on the end of a string is pulled from a straight course by the tension of the string if the string should break centrifugal force would cause the rock to fly out into space the same law holds true when an automobile rounds a curve at a safe speed the friction of the tires on the road surface does the same thing that the string does to the stone holds it in its curv path if your centrifugal force is increased by additional speed your friction Bond will break the car will skid off the road the amount of friction between tire and roadway depends on the condition of the tires and the condition of the roadway wet or icy surfaces can increase your chances of skidding as much as 10 times at high speeds even on the best roads the force pressing against the tires varies due to unevenness of the road surface on bumpy roads the tires are actually off the road an appreciable part of the time every time the tire leaves the road the friction bond is broken it is just as necessary to reduce speed on a bumpy dry curve curve as on a smooth slippery curve safe speeds on curves depend greatly on the type of curve construction there are three General types of Curves flat banked and crowned the banked curve is the safest construction because the slope of the bank pushes the car toward the center of the curve this provides part of the force needed to overcome centrifugal force and helps to keep the car on the road on on flat curves the road push toward the inside of the curve is lacking centrifugal force is not counteracted sufficiently and increases so much with increased speed that you have difficulty holding your car on the road on Crown roads a car on the outside of the curve tends to slide down the crown and away from the center of the curve the pole of gravity on the car actually AIDS the centrifugal force only greatly reduced speed will keep a car that is rounding a crown curve on the road at all any moving object has stored or kinetic energy the greater the speed and the greater the weight the greater the stored or kinetic energy this energy is what keeps your car in motion when you disengage the clutch kinetic energy varies as the square of the speed which means that doubling the car's speed will quadruple the car's stored or kinetic energy extra speed adds frightfully to the power of your car to do damage at 20 mph the force of impact with a solid fixed object will do as much damage as though it fell from a one-story building at 40 m per hour the force of impact would equal that of a car falling 53 ft or from a very high four story building at 60 MPH the force would equal a fall of 120 ft or a building 10 stories high no driver can afford to deal lightly with such potential forces of impact in order to stop a car you must use up its kinetic energy the greater the speed the greater amount of energy that must be used up here is where friction again comes into use first the pressure of your foot on the brake pedal causes the brake bands to close around the brake gums creating a friction drag which is transferred to the tires this friction creates a back push of the road against the tires the car comes to rest only when this back push or braking Force has used up its stored energy when a car is going downhill the problem of stopping is further complicated you not only have to use up kinetic energy but you have to overcome the gravitational pull as well so your braking Force must act over a greater distance the Ste cheeper the hill and the heavier the car the greater the force that is pulling the car downhill brakes should be kept in proper adjustment if one brake takes hold more than the others it will cause a skid friction force is working harder on one side of the car which allows the kinetic energy to pull the car out of line take care of your brakes so they can take care of you now let's see what happens when we combine our reflexes with our speed with an average reaction time of 3/4 of a second at 20 mph you will travel 22 ft before you are able breakes at 40 mph you will travel 44 ft and at 60 you will travel 66 ft in other words if your speed is doubled your reaction time distance is also doubled braking distances increase as the square of the speed the car's kinetic energy must be used up by breaking force at 40 mph the distance is four times as great as at 20 at 60 it is increased nine times these are mathematical laws of driving that you can't beat your reflex time may be slowed down several times by fatigue driving efficiency Falls with increasing fatigue and you may doze off resulting in a fatal crash in addition to reflexes being slowed slow down your vision is impaired by fatigue it is difficult for the eyes properly to focus on distant objects a danger zone always extends ahead of you this is the distance within which you cannot stop as the reaction time of the driver increases the danger zone lengthens as the speed of the car increases this zone of danger stretches out much farther road conditions and breake conditions can make it still longer the danger zone should never be allowed to become greater than that distance ahead which you are sure is clear of Hazards this is especially true of night driving each time your eyes meet the headlight glare of an oncoming car your ability to see is reduced your visibility Zone may be only 50 or 100 ft while your danger zone May extend 3 or 400 ft the combination of our physical limitations plus the laws of nature prevent us from exceeding a safe speed we can evaluate approaching hazards only a few hundred ft ahead and at 60 M an hour we are approaching disaster at the rate of 88 the laws of nature cannot be broken without immediate punishment [Music] uh Progressive pictures supposedly they were uh mildly socialist uh that's what Rick pringer was telling me they were based in Oakland and they did a a lot of really great films uh including ones about driving pedestrian safety uh and some general uh bicycle safety films uh that we've shown we have some in our collection and Rick has some in his collection so pretty great all right we are going to uh show a film that I think I feel like I bought this on eBay like 10 years ago and I was like who is that W that actress I was like oh it's marriette Harley who remembers Marriott Harley um she was mostly or yeah uh mostly television actress she did show do some featur but um yeah her biggest kind of claim to fame uh for some of you might be that she did a series of of Polaroid commercials with James Garner and um to the point where people thought that she was married to James Garner and she actually is seen was seen wearing a t-shirt that says I'm not James Garner's wife um oh that's right she was on Star Trek I forgot about that yeah so she shows up a lot of stuff and so this is a film made by the Bell System or AT&T depending on um how you want to describe it and it's all about the wonders of information and technology and so it is a uh I want to say that this was made in the late 70s but I could be wrong it it will I think it'll show up um oh and oh thank you Jeremy for the uh for the money for soup and also thank you uh somebody mentioned uh transfusion by nervous norvis I have it handy uh but I dare not play it online because I might get um the copyright Hammer anyways okay so uh this film's called Discovery and it feels like it would be shown like at like some sort of World's Fair type of thing is like watch the film Discovery cuz it has that kind of big lofty um take on technology and how great the future is going to be and all that stuff so here it is Discovery enjoy [Music] to see through your own questions to understand the realities around you to participate in an adventure of discovery [Music] you are surrounded by answers and the question is do you have a question do you have any questions at all for often as important as answers are questions shall we ask a question what is nature [Music] what is nature we all have our own perceptions of it this is the way a curious artist might assemble Nature's shapes and colors discovering and communicating an interest in [Music] nature but when another with curiosity a scientist observes nature the arrangement might be somewhat different now I wonder why that is both artists and scientists are indeed curious about nature both in their own ways interpret nature seeking underlying Truths Behind The Mysteries scientists measure precisely record and classify look for orderly patterns and having found a pattern use it to predict a cause and effect relationship contributing knowledge about nature useful for mankind [Music] from many patient observations a creative mind will glimpse a pattern or form a hypothesis which then must be proven by more observations measurements and evaluations [Music] [Music] and after looking quizzically at nature a scientist today can use a computer to help find a pattern if it's lurking somewhere the granddaddy of modern experimental science had a great curiosity about nature Galileo started a trend turning to the great volume of nature is the way to make one look high he wanted to find out something about gravity so he tried an experiment will the heavy object reach the ground before at the same time or after the light object a scientist observes an event writes it down to better remember it to compare it with the memory of other events to see if they will form a pattern a scientist is very curious about what happens and why and seeing many things happen needs a kind of shorthand to express concisely what's been observed of course science does have a special language for this mathematics it's an ideal servant for remembering for comparing for understanding for communicating in its own right mathematics is a whole science and what a lovely symmetrical Dependable language it is and here we are again why when confronted by a natural event does the scientist react differently than say the writer or artist or musician here's another illustration which may help us consider this natural phenomenon Communications what we're doing right now transferring information from one place to another from one person to another it's a natural phenomenon like flight time heat color and magnetism the Curiosity about the transfer of information might have been what led the painter Monae to his series of studies of the quality of light a writer James Joyce created this book an experiment in the Stream of consciousness of a human mind put into writing too much old chat in it about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world oh let us have a bit of fun first God help the world a mathematician Claude Shannon while working at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1948 published a mathematical theory of communication this theory has its own drama poetry design and vision and like the painting in the book it is a description of the reality of a natural phenomenon as Shannon saw it we're going to be acting out the information theory for you because it's more fun than a chart because I understand it better this way myself a b c I'm the source where the flow of information starts all communication systems have a source a source might be a person talking a bird calling to its mate a computer or a radar tracking an aircraft I'm the encoder transmitter in our simplified demonstration I take the message from The Source encode it into some convenient form for transmission and send it on its [Music] way as the receiver decoder I take the messages out of the channel and decode them for the destination a as the destination I react to the content of the message these slips of paper represent the transmission channel in other systems the channel might be a pair of wires a ray of light or radio waves in space in this example the letters blur when written on blotting paper this interference with the message in the channel will call noise static all channels have it and it's unpredictable suppose I try to send twice as much information in the same amount of time will this increase efficiency that won't work the blotting paper will blur the small letter there'll be too much noise too much static the receiver won't be able to understand C suppose I try to send three times as much information in the same amount of [Laughter] time a simpler way is to code the letters so that the transmitter need only put a dot for one and leave a blank for zero through many experiments the mathematical theory of communication was developed it described for the first time the relationships between the parts of a communication system and how to code only essential information for transmission it's a thinking tool being used today for better understanding of information and transmission or think of it this way if information were water Shannon's Theory tells us how big and how good the hose has to be curiosity about why things happen as they do has led us to make a channel better fit a message Aloha someday the information Theory May rank with the discovery of the vacuum tube and the transistor in its contribution to Communications and I can't help thinking how lucky for us there are those like Claude Shannon whose curiosity about nature leaves them down practical paths behind this childhood toy is a common well understood natural phenomenon science has observed measured and classified magnetism about as thoroughly as any Force we know magnetism can be observed as it affects bits of iron and sand it's a force that continues to yield New Dimensions New Revelations one such Revelation magnetic bubbles is a good example of science finding new circumstances in which predictable patterns occur in the late 60s search was begun with very thin sheets of special magnetic material what's special is that the lines of magnetism in these tiny sheets only go up and down perpendicular to the plane of the thin sheet under a microscope the magnetic areas can actually be seen with the help of polarized light the wiggly lines are the areas of the same magnetic direction or magnetic domains now bring a magnet close to the thin sheet to boost either the UPS or the downs and indeed one side does get larger and then the domains can be made to snap into circles we've called them bubbles because of the way they look under the microscope tracks or patterns of metal can be printed on the thin sheets to guide the bubbles and act like shelves for storing them with the aid of more magnets the movement of the bubbles can be controlled consider each bubble a bit of information think of a bubble is one the absence of a bubble is zero a binary number system when the magnets pull the bubbles past a counting device they register as numbers because the bubbles are so tiny a combination of 14 of these tiny sheets can store well over a million bits of information when the watching and measuring and evaluating are done nature rewards the Curious with new information provable repeatable and something of value to mankind [Music] how much does science really know about our world as one great man Isaac Newton put it we are still like children playing with pebbles on the seashore as the great ocean of Truth rolls on unexplored beyond our reach the secrets still locked in these walls of rock dwarf the knowledge man has been able to collect research has not fully unraveled the secret of life and may [Music] never long after our questions may have ceased the Stars will continue to shed their secrets on the earth when will we learn all we need to know or will we ever we have learned to thrust ourselves through space but unfortunately people have not learned enough about human nature to stop the possible misuse of [Music] knowledge despite our curiosity are all the answers within the grasp of science or technology science or technology there is the basic difference and to be realistic about achieving goals we should understand the distinction for example when the moon trips were first announced by President Kennedy he knew we would succeed because science was no longer the key to the completion of the program enough basic scientific questions about how to get to the moon and back had been answered what still had to be solved were the technical questions materials design engineering and a massive effort by thousands of brilliant creative people would and did bring success [Music] but let's consider another goal conquering cancer these destructive cells why won't a similar multi-billion dollar Mass effort bring predictable results in a predictable time because why cancer happens has not yet been fully answered all the science is not yet known putting twice as many people on a scientific task will not ensure it's being done in half the time a scientific breakthrough a discovery is needed in simplest terms science asks why what happens in the middle of the last century a great scientist studying natural phenomena made a major contribution which changed the pattern of Our Lives James Maxwell a Scottish scientist after tirelessly making exact mathematical descriptions of electric and magnetic Fields predicted that light was electromagnetic not mechanical in nature the line of force from the Sun spread out from him and when they come near a planet curve out for it so that every planet diverts a number depending on its Mass from their [Music] course his Revelations led to better understanding and ultimately to the discovery of radio waves which has made much of today's mass communications possible most importantly Maxwell's mathematical genius helped us understand that visible light radio and other radiation were all part of the same Spectrum [Music] [Music] by the late 1940s they found that these waves just longer than infrared waves could be carried in hollow tubes while the science for millimeter wave guide tubes has been known for 30 years the knowledge has been banked here is an example of Technology being in no hurry to exploit what science has discovered only now when today's Avalanche of data has created a need has the communication system moved out of a laboratory the diligent work of many people has created a system that can transmit almost a qu million simultaneous phone conversations or when coded into pulses of digital information the equivalent of this 20 volume encyclopedia could be transmitted coast to coast in an instant like this Optical fibers hold another great promise for the future of communication [Music] using light itself to carry information is another possibility now under practical consideration light is projected through tiny glass fibers each fiber is only a few thousands of an inch in diameter and because of the high frequency of light it can carry a vast amount of information we are not completely sure just how the human eye changes light and color into images for the brain but we know it works better than anything man has yet invented and so perhaps instinctively we use the eye as a model here's a fascinating example remember the magnetic Bubbles at Bell Laboratories they're investigating an electronic equivalent of the magnetic bubble it's called The Charge couple device and like the magnetic bubbles it may be used for the storage of information an extraordinary thing about the charge couple device is that it also has a imaginative possibilities is an image device for making electronic pictures it works something like the human eye in the eye light falls on nerve ends called rods and cones which point by Point transmit impulses along the optic nerve to the brain in the charge couple device at each point on the picture light creates an electrical charge a lot of charge where the light is bright no charge where the point on the picture is black [Music] the charges each carrying information about one point of the picture are moved out one after the other and at a receiver changed back into points of light that make up the picture again charge couple devices May someday revolutionize how television cameras and video telephones see they also can have major impact on information storage and communication switching devices some of our most basic questions about nature have yet to be answered what actually happens at the instant a photon of light strikes a molecule of chlorophyll in this leaf or when light excites any other molecule what is happening in such an excited state of matter answering the question is a contribution to the bank of knowledge that Science and Technology will one day draw upon with every scientific discovery with every technological solution we gain increasing respect for nature we can better understand we can direct but we cannot change [Music] nature as the painter paints as the writer writes so does the scientist create and communicate his understanding of reality the medium is different but the personal rewards of Art and Science are remarkably parallel a scientist has to be somebody who tries to understand the real world or understand the world scientists are basically Craftsmen that get their pleasure and their reward out of the work they're doing and they are not uh necessarily competing so much against other people than against their own brains science is more probably more open to people of every sort and it's probably a profession that people are judged really on their merits than almost any other profession in the scientific field it's not who you are or how old you are it's always how well the work was done for us it's just the excitement of discover and the hope of uh finding that you had a really creative idea that ultimately works out that's the thing that really keeps us moving attitude of questioning things trying to get your answers in an objective Manner and observing what you see if they're really curious that would be the most important thing science people are aiming to gain understanding of why a thing happens the scientist is closer to the real thing than other people they're a little bit more part of it and have a little bit more understanding of what is really scientist I would think that scientists are a creative people just like artists and so on that need a lot of imagination in order to be a good scientists one thing is sure patience and perseverance are qualities needed in a successful pursuit of science some problems yield only to long sieges and there are people who patiently spend years attacking old problems indeed these aree frequently the key positions of greatest value in the search for new knowledge such a quest was followed by Bratton Bine and shle their discovery of the transistor was no accident but was a product of a decade of careful thoughtful purposeful investigation for something better than the vacuum tube sometimes science yields to fortuitous accidents so if your mind is prepared to recognize the value of an incident you can reap the fruits of a great spillover that single flash of intuition the Thunderclap of [Music] insight the concept of magnetic bubbles actually spilled over into an idea for a similar electronic invention and in an hour the concept of charge couple devices had been chalked on a Blackboard [Music] patience [Music] discipline [Music] intuition the joy of Discovery these are all part of Adventure and understanding a [Music] nah [Music] [Music] science does not pretend to have all the answers but the search can be as exciting as the achievement sometimes without recognizing them the answers can trickle through your fingers or if you recognize it you may hang on to a grain of Truth in fact a grain of sand silicon dioxide was the key material in making transistors adaptable to a wide variety of applications so if you have an appetite to discover to contribute keep curious look everywhere and remember this valuable clue it's a clue revealed 400 years ago by Sir Francis Bacon who had this to say things not yet invented will be discovered by ways not yet thought of [Music] wow 1973 that's uh I for some reason I pegged it in my head that it was late ' 7s but no that's straight up early' 70s and uh yeah some of thatch technology came to light it appeared and then disappeared um and that uh so the company that made that film uh made another amazing film which I Delight in showing uh Tonia which is a musical about how to use a dial telephone uh which we have shown a couple of times here on the show um let's see thank you Ryan for uh your coffee donation uh that is one way you can support us besides commenting and watching and sharing with other people uh and hitting the thumbs up and the like button you can also donate via the super thanks button or go to ko-fi.com Geeks or patreon.com avgeeks uh those are all great ways to support us so thank you for that um yeah so that was what we just watched was a puff piece made for AT&T to talk about how great they are how great the future is and so you know they would would show it I'm sure wherever they could and uh we're on The Cutting Edge AT&T we're on The Cutting Edge don't break us up don't do it uh so anyways uh thanks everybody for tuning in very much appreciate your eyeballs and uh join us on Monday it it'll be we have to start moving stuff out of the archive I I just talked with the contractor today and he's like yeah all that stuff in the back's got to go so all that stuff in the back has to go that's just kind of the way it is so um thanks again everybody have a great rest of your day and your weekend uh and we will see you soon