James L Adams—People and Products

Product Quality: Is small always beautiful?

The U.S. has been in love with miniaturization for a long time.  I clearly remember that in the 1960’s “space race” we were forced to miniaturize spacecraft and components as much as possible because our launch capability was extremely limited compared to that of our competition, the Soviet Union.  But we of course easily convinced ourselves that our equipment was more sophisticated, because it was more miniaturized.

 Small has always been attractive—the works of mechanical watches, dollhouse furniture, model trains, etching details on a dollar bill.  We have been thrilled as computers and smart phones have shrunk.  But is there a limit?  Yes, unless we shrink.

 I am getting more and more requests for information on so-called thumb (flash) drives—  The little gizmos that stick into your USB slot and provide external (and portable) memory.  On the large size, these devices are approaching one terabyte, but still have significant size.  The Kingston HyperX Predator 3.0, when available, will apparently have a capacity of one terabyte, but be approximately 2.8 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.8 inches thick.  With an attached chain, it should be both easy to hand around, and easy to keep track of.

 But how about those of us with smaller data needs.  I am increasingly asked for 100 megabytes of information or so on a thumb drive, and often do not receive the drive back.  I therefore went off to Fry’s electronics to buy a few cheap ones, and found that four gigabyte drives (a lot of information not too long ago) were selling for under five dollars.  So I bought four of them.  They came in the usual nearly unopenable package, but once adequate shearing and prying took place, I could see what I had bought. 

 Without their tiny chain (included, but one of which broke easily), they measured under an inch long, less than ½ inch wide, and less than ¼ inch thick.  Impressive amount of data in such a small package.  But I got ahead of the point I wanted to make in this post, because I had unwrapped one in my office, and it took me several minutes to find it so I could measure it.  The photos  show one of  them in  my hand, one of them taken from waist height (no zoom) which I had intentionally dropped on the ground, and one disappearing under papers on my desk.  My life is not consistent with keeping track of these tiny things. Cute and powerful, but not designed to the same scale I am. I predict that in a relatively short time I will have lost all three of them, and be worrying about whether there is anything on them I would not like other people to see.

 Controls too small for fingers, letters too small to read, fasteners too small for common tools, and objects too small to keep track of simply do not fit humans.  High quality products should be consistent with full-sized people.  

Product Quality: UAVs (Drones) —The Biggest Potential Nuisance Ever?

An interesting list compiled this year by the American Institute of Aeronautics and and summarizing activity on the design and production of so-called unmanned aerial vehicles, contains 960 distinct aircraft being developed and produced by 270 companies in 57 countries.  The corresponding figures two years ago were 675 aircraft. 226 companies, and 44 nations. There is clearly fast growth here.  If you would like to scan the list, it is here.    .

 An article discussing the situation is in the July-august 2013 issue of Aerospace America, a publication of the AAIA, and the link is here.

 There is obvious attraction to these machines for military purposes, in that they are relatively cheap, versatile (observation to weapon platform), and do not risk human crew members.  They are also capable of maneuvers and missions that humans cannot, or would rather not do. Of course there is a great debate going on about their use, because they can, and have been used as assassination machines, and such things are controversial in military and government circles, especially if one is on the short list of potential victims.

 But many spokespeople for UAVs predict that they will soon be more heavily used for non-military government and commercial purposes — enforcing the law, dealing with fires and natural disasters, and enforcing environmental rules, as well as learning more about transportation and people, advertising products, aiding contractors and landscapers in their search for work, and other such seemingly innocuous tasks.  If they are right, I hope a lot of early thought goes into regulating the things.

 A short-range low cost hobby drone can now be built for on the order of 1000 dollars, and a reasonably reliable one perhaps adaptable to commercial use for 10,000 dollars.  Higher production and advanced technology will continue to reduce the cost of many components, although  if  UAV’s have commercial application, increased capability will offset this.  And with the technology presently available, they will be noisy.

 I see them from the bias of a person who grew up in an area with low population and generally hates the noise of such things as heavy traffic, construction noise, powered yard equipment in general and leaf blowers in particular.  The latter are particularly interesting, because do we really need such things?    My neighborhood is seldom without noise from them, and I did grow up thinking it was normal for trees to have leaves under them, and if not acceptable, there was always the rake.  Stanford’s campus is rather remarkable, in that it has a large number of trees, but almost no leaves on the ground—and apparently few rakes.  We (mostly my wife) are the only people in our area that do our own yard work, which is healthy outdoor exercise.  To us it beats going to gyms, pedaling stationary bicycles, using weight machines, and inhaling other people’s sweat.

 I cannot help thinking of UAV’s buzzing around helping issue speeding tickets (we have an okay balance now between police and speeders),  checking to see if my yard is a fire hazard and whether I need a new roof, checking crowd size or composition, pulling banners advertising sales at the local car dealers, or just providing entertainment to people who want to check out the neighborhood or practice their hobby.  I must admit I am influenced by the fact that Stanford’s medical center helicopter often flies over my house, private planes do their barely muffled thing, and we do live close to the landing patterns of at least two major airports (although the heavyweights do seem now to be quieter than the private planes).  But my life would be more pleasant if early in the game, yard equipment had not been allowed to use two cycle engines, and better yet had been restricted to electrical power or manual labor.  Hopefully we will think ahead more carefully on UAVs If we aren’t careful, we are going to annoyed by technology we don’t really need. Let's think seriously about what really need UAVs for?

 But the good news is that we are still allowed to kill pests such as bedbugs, yellow jackets, mice, rats, moles, and gophers,  Maybe we will be allowed to kill annoying UAVs.  The problem is that unless they are incredibly miniaturized, their falling dead or dying bodies may hurt innocent people.   

Related articles

Drones to fly U.S. skies, FAA approves 1st civilian UAVs

Drones to fly U.S. skies, FAA approves 1st civilian UAVs

Craftsmanship, Guy Watson, Ole Fahlin, and Propellers—Post #2

I am not  an extreme airplane freak, although I must admit I like them a lot—and I did serve a brief tour in the Air Force at Edwards A.F.B. after college, and worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab for a number of years.  But I have always been particularly fascinated by propellers, because they combine sophisticated function with elegant beauty.  So it was easy to be caught in the spell of   my friend Guy Watson and his mentor Ole Fahlin (see my post of July 22), due to their combination of knowledge, enthusiasm, experience, and skill.

 You can find an old short interview with Guy about making propellers here.   The person doing the interview is clearly trying to avoid technical material and asks very naïve questions, but it gives a bit of insight into manufacturing at the Ole Fahlin Memorial Propeller Shop.  Commercial and high production propellers are made with numerically controlled machines and duplicating machines.  But at the propeller shop, they are essentially hand-made one at a time using such basic machines as a drill press, bandsaw, belt and orbital sanders, and various hand tools, and when I first encountered the process, a frightening cutting tool driven by a flexible shaft.  It was the process of making these highly precise and sophisticated devices from wood by hand that particularly caught my attention.

 Another thing I found attractive was the quality of the wood needed to make propellers—  straight grain, no knots, no flaws.  A far cry from what one can get at Home Depot, or even at a major lumber yard.  It seemed an honor to be able to work with such material.

 In order to learn more about the process of making propellers, I commissioned Guy to make me one, and requested that he  work on it only while I was present so I could watch.  Step one was to find the wood and a glue a number of boards together under very high pressure.   Step two, as the video shows, was to drill a hole in the middle.  So far, so good.  He then drew a profile of the propeller on the blank with a template and used the band saw to cut close to the line—still fairly straight forward.  Then, to my amazement, Guy drew some rudimentary lines on the sides of the blank, and proceeded to push  it through the band saw time and time again, until he had a rough propeller form that was within ¼ of an inch or so of the final shape.  I had never seen a band saw used in this way—as a large carving tool—and it was clear that not only had he done this many, many  times, but he had a very clear three dimensional vision of what the propeller would look like.  He reminded me of the teacher of a sculpture course I once took.  When he worked by removing material, say from a stone or block of wood, he would begin by removing very large chunks. When I once asked him whether he wasn’t afraid he would take too much off with these initial chunks, he replied “Oh no. My sculpture is in there and I know exactly where it is”.

 Guy then used a large protractor device and a number of cross section templates at various stations along the propeller  to reduce it to the final shape using the previously mentioned frightening cutting tool and the sanders.  The process was both fast and slow—fast because of his skill, but slow because cutting too much means throwing away the valuable blank and the time spent. And the shape must be extremely accurate, not only for aerodynamic reasons, but also because the propeller must be perfectly balanced.  In fact he did the final balancing with the varnish that was applied to the finished wooden form along with the metal leading edge protection.

 The result was beautiful, but since I did not have an airplane to put it on, and since it was only six feet long, I took it home and hung it on the wall of my home office, where it still resides, as can be seen in the following photo.

But I was hooked.  I needed to make a propeller myself.  Looking through the many plans and templates in the shop, I found an eight foot propeller with a very interesting curve used on the Spad, a well known World War I fighter.  Guy agreed this was an excellent one for me to make, and so he found me the wood, we glued it together, and away we went.  I say we, because I had not spent years doing this, and was afraid that I would screw up this wonderful piece of wood.  So Guy hung over my shoulder and told me what to do and encouraged me until it reached close to the final form.  He then added a bit of skillful work with a balance stand and a thick coat of varnish and pronounced it beautiful, a finding that I agreed with 100%.  It is now inside the entrance hall to my house  over the front door—see photo below.

Being now fully challenged I requested that I be allowed to make another one.  This time I chose an 10 foot one that fit a 400 horsepower Liberty engine—also World War I vintage, and built in large numbers.  I did not have a Liberty engine, but I seemed to have managed to use my first two propellers to advantage to add beauty to my house, and I had my eye on a bare 10 foot stretch of wall in the upstairs hall over a couple of doors.

 This time, Guy stood further away from me, and even pretended that I was working on my own, even though I knew he was watching me like a hawk.  But everything went well, and I finished it in only about ten times the number of hours he would have required—see the photo.

What next.  Guy told me that at one time sixteen foot diameter four bladed propellers had been used on dirigibles and he thought he could get the plan for them.  But I think he was kidding me, and I had to admit that I would never have a dirigible and that a propeller that size could not fit in my house unless I removed the roof.  And also I realized I was up against one of my old problems, one that had arisen when I got on a run of making ship models (see terrible photo below—I didn’t want to take the glass off of the case) and found that this interest was eating up a frightening amount of my time.  After deep thinking and some valuable input from my wife Marian (what—are you crazy?), I decided to continue my career at Stanford rather than trying to qualify as Guy’s assistant.

 But it was sure fun, and now I like  propellers even more.

 

Craftsmanship, Guy Watson, Ole Fahlin, and Propellers —Post #1

The photo at the left shows Guy Watson, a friend of mine, with his P38 which he flew in the Pacific theater during World War II.  The one below shows him two days ago with Charlie, his perfectly restored MG.  The P38 went faster, and was more aerobatic, but the MG uses less gas and is cheaper to maintain. 

 After World War II Watson resigned from the Air Force, finished his engineering degree at U.C.Berkeley, worked as an engineer for the Coleman company , served as President of Midwest Plastic for three years, and then spent 25 years with the Lockheed Missiles and Space Division.  I met him during these Lockheed  years because he completed an M.S. and an Engineers Degree at Stanford, and took one of my courses—the kind of student you dream about.

 At Lockheed he met Ole Fahlin , who was one of the world’s experts at making wooden propellers, and in the early 1970’s he began to work with Ole on a Lockheed project, and also to learn the skills and the knowledge necessary to be a propeller expert.  I met Fahlin while visiting Guy at Ole’s propeller shop, which was then in Morgan Hill, California, in a round glass building at the entrance to an extremely airplane-oriented golf and country club which featured a restaurant called the Flying Lady (the wife of the owner) in which large models of airplanes continually flew over one's head on an endless chain as one ate one’s meal., several barns full of collections including a Ford Tri-Motor, and a runway down the middle of the golf course,

 Ole by then had become not only a legend, but a very amusing character.  Once I tried to find out from him how he had learned so much about propellers, and he informed me that he tested them after he built them, and had been learning since he had begun his business (by the time he died in his 90’s he had been building them for over 65 years).  But when I asked him what he learned by testing them, he simply would reply “whether they were right”, or “how to improve them”.  He not only had all the data, but clearly unprecedented “feel”.

 When Ole retired, Guy took over the business and began manufacturing and repairing propellers for experimental and antique airplanes.  When the Flying Lady went out of business, the Wings of History Museum  in San Martin California offered Guy and his crew space, and the result is now the Ole Fahlin Memorial Propeller shop, the only one of its kind licensed by the F.F.A.on the west coast.

 In the time that he has spent  building propellers, Guy has replaced Ole as the go-to-man in the field.  Although he retired last year, he now consults for the group, and is often found in the shop. The Photographs at the bottom of the post show a Watson propeller he built for the man on the left, who owns a Fokker D-VII.  The second shows  one he built for a Jenny.  The third  shows one that is on a Sopwith Snipe that hangs in the World War I area in the National Aerospace Museum in Washington D.C.

 Not only are these propellers extremely technically sophisticated products, but they are beautifully made and not only functional, but beautiful forms.  This is craftsmanship of the highest level.  In my next post I will tell you a bit more about Watson and the making of wooden propellers, and my narrow escape from dropping my professor job, my consulting, and my income, and going to work as a beginning  apprentice with him.  As I have mentioned, I love working with my hands, and what he does is the ultimate, with high level technology thrown in for good measure. 

 

 

 

 

Product Quality—More Old Machines With Soul

In my last post I talked about two reasonably small machines I have restored.  I received a question as to whether I had restored larger ones.  Sure.  Many.  Here are photos of three.  The first is a John Deere Model 55 Harvester, produced in the late 1940’s.  A nice feature is that all mechanisms are exposed, rather than being hidden behind sheet metal, as is the case of modern harvesters.  Perhaps a bit unsafe, but you can see what it does by looking at it

 The second is an Austin road roller built around 1914 and weighing about 15 tons.  It is powered by a large single cylinder engine equipped with huge 5-1/2 foot diameter flywheels intended to smooth out the power to the wheels.  It was eventually replaced with a roller using a two-cylinder engine and smaller flywheels, a combination that could be better balanced and therefore have less tendency to leave ripples in the asphalt.  It is a work in progress and I am now planning to fit it with it’s
emergency brake and an a compressed air starting system.

 Finally the third is a Northwest crane, built in the 1930’s and capable of being used not only as a crane, but to move dirt and rocks when equipped with a drag line or clamshell bucket, or rigged as a power shovel.  I have the buckets but  unfortunately I am missing a winch and a clutch necessary to rig it as a power shovel, but I will eventually find (or make) them.

 The crane is a particularly interesting machine because of the mechanical gadgetry necessary to get all of the necessary motions (front and back travel and turns, boom swing and position, winch functions) out of a single engine.  It depends on a complicated collection of gears, clutches, and brakes, and operating it requires many more levers and foot pedals than the operator has hands and feet.  It is particularly challenging to work on, not only because of its complexity, but also because most of the parts seem to be slightly heavier than I can lift.  In a sense the older steam powered machines were mechanically simpler because they utilized a single boiler that fed steam to separate engines that powered the necessary motions.  But my gasoline engine does not require heating up, cooling down, or cleaning out when I operate it.

 Why do I do this kind of stuff?  I love old heavy machinery, and for me, finding it, learning about it,  restoring it, and fiddling with it has always been a terrific balance to being a professor. I am better at thinking esoteric thoughts if my fingernails are dirty.  I suspect Marian sometimes thinks I am weird for doing this sort of thing, but I suspect  she knows how really weird I would be if I didn’t. 

Product Quality and The Soul of Old Machines

I have just completed rescuing and restoring an old drag saw, which was the predecessor of the chain saw and used for logging felled trees.  A photograph is below, with my chain saw under it  for scale.  The drag saw does not cut nearly as well as my chain saw, but for those fond of old machinery, it has obvious advantages.  The next photo gives one a chance to compare the mechanical drive for the two.  How will I ever be satisfied with my chain saw again?

The functioning of the parts of the drag saw is obvious, and watching it in action is a
meditative (although a bit loud) experience.  It takes one back in time to a more colorful period of logging.  And having taken it apart, tended to its unwell parts, and reassembled and painted it, I have a detailed knowledge of exactly how it works, have gained a number of hours of therapy through working with my hands, have added to the beauty of our yard, and saved the saw for future generations.

 I do not have a “before” photo of this project, but I will attach three photos to show you a similar project—the resurrection of a Gravely garden tractor.  How can one start with the rusty, although it turned out surprisingly complete, pile of junk shown in the first photo and produce the beautiful functioning machine shown in the second and third without feeling happy?  And wonders of wonders, old machines in the “before” condition shown cost nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

I am not alone.  This is a compelling hobby, and an excellent escape from the internet.

Product Quality, Computers, and the Internet

I am still working on the Trillions book by Lucas, Ballay, and McManus that I mentioned in my last blog.  The major message in the book is that as computer capability and information on the internet continue to increase (which they will) we will hit a wall with our present approach to information and the internet; that our use of server-client channels, company owned seperate “clouds”, differentiated hardware and software, and retention of old and once adequate formats will result in death through complexity and frustration on the part of users. Not being a computer person, I am going to discuss this book with a couple of friends who are, before I comment on such larger issues.

 However, I must admit I resonate with many smaller examples of increasing problems in the book.  I am finding it takes more time to find what I want on the internet because of the increasing number of locations my search engine finds for me, and more and more redundancy and unsubstantiated opinion on the internet in general. I just looked up bed bugs on Google, and of course received 3,400,000 pertinent pages in 0.25 seconds.  But most of the pages I looked at (many fewer than 3,400,000) said the same thing (they don’t carry germs, they feed at night, they are flat, etc.) and suggested the same cure (tear up your bedroom, look for black bug poop, vacuum, etc.).  A few were more valuable than the others.  I would have liked to just be guided to the few.  Same results if you look up anything having to do with medicine.  Ten pages would be enough and easier to deal with in most of these searches. But more and more appear, since there is no barrier to putting them up.

 One of my favorite escape-book authors is a very prolific Pulitzer Prize winning journalist named John Camp, who writes under the pen-name John Sandford.  In  one of his latest books, Silken Prey, he features a couple of satisfyingly edgy computer experts.  The hero, a detective named Lucas Davenport, also has a computer background.  At one point Davenport, while trying to research some suspects, states “I really need to get background on them.  But all I get from Google is a lot of shit”.  One of his experts, a woman who goes by the name of ICE, replies “You know that old thing about “Garbage in, garbage out?”  “Yeah” says Lucas. " "Google is now the biggest pile of garbage ever assembled on earth”, ICE says.  “Give it a couple of more years, and you won’t be able to find anything in it”.

 When feelings are common enough to make it into a John Sandford book, they are common indeed.

 As to software,  some time ago I replaced a dead Mac, and the new one came with a OS 7 level operating system, which did not like my Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft office suite, resisted showing me the scan bar, and refused to offer up the two little arrows on the right of the page which let one move incrementally through a document or photograph.  It also offered me new “features” which I found unnecessary and complicated.  I went back to OS 6.8, which although perhaps not as “advanced”, was one with which I was totally familiar, more than adequate, liked the applications I was used to, and did not require that I acquire new habits and skills. I was reminded of the days in which Dell would for an extra $150 sell a PC with Windows XP, which Microsoft had announced they would no longer service, rather than one containing the newer Windows Vista.  They had lots of buyers.  I am still using my Mac OS 6.8 and happy with it, but soon something will make it inconvenient for me to do so, and I will be spending time learning how to do things I once knew how to do in a different way and cursing because I can't disable features I don't want.

An example of progress in product quality

A few years ago I bought the remote battery operated irrigation timer shown in the first photo. The control screen was visible through the plastic shield for a few months, but then the shield clouded over and it became necessary to remove it to change the control settings.  It worked well, but as can be seen from the second photo below (minus the shield), the numbers were miniscule and usually difficult to see because of faucet location, and in order to set it, it was necessary to go through the modes shown in the even smaller text at the top of the screen and press the necessary buttons.  This was not straight forward unless one had the small manual at hand, and not only does one lose manuals and not want to spend the time to try to find them on the internet, but really, a single-channel irrigation timer should not require a manual.

 The other day I bought another one made by the same manufacturer (Orbit) and found an amazing improvement, as can be seen in the third photo.  All of a sudden the settings are visible to the normal human, and the functions are obvious, as are the settings.  I am presently reading a book entitled Trillions; thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology, by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus, respectively  professor of Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, former head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, and president and CEO of MAYA Design, a consulting firm specializing in digital networks and communication. They believe that we are in an early phase of digital communication and heading in the wrong direction—one that will drown us in complexity.  Among other strong feelings is that computers and associated networks must speak our language—we have already gone too far in accommodating to them.

 The timer in the third photo speaks our language.  That in the first does not.  Good for Orbit. 

 I will talk a bit about design of the cyber world in future posts.  I will begin by talking a bit about the Trillions book.  I tend to resonate with its arguments, having been influenced by people who have also influenced the authors (Henry Dreyfuss, an early mentor).  In the last few weeks I have gone through the usual projector and sound system problems in various new and technically sophisticated buildings on campus, spent a ridiculous amount of time integrating a new blu-ray player into my excellent (but pre-hdmi) home system, unjamming my fairly new printer, attempting to re-do my unworkable user name and password collection, and trying to figure out how to live with the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of the knowledge on the internet. I have a life to live and I don’t need this kind of stuff.  It’s time for the digital world to get over itself and start growing up.

Fireworks: A Good Product (at least I think so)

Happy Fourth of July.  Go watch a fireworks show tonight.  The inventors of gun powder (see my last post) used it for fireworks over 1000  years ago.  Although these days fireworks seem to be a bit  controversial, they still thrill—a good break from reading about international problems and the economy.

 

 

 

Product Quality, Invention, and China

We seem to be fascinated with China, these days. But conversations about such things as outsourcing, competition, and such often seem to assume that China has historically been backward nation until it began copying and cheaply producing parts and products ten or twenty years ago.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

 A well written book that might clear up the picture is The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester (Harper Collins, 2008).  More information is available by clicking the book icon on the right.  It is the story of an extraordinary British scientist named  Joseph Needham, who fell in love with China and spent his life living in it, studying it, and interacting with people ranging from peasant to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. 

 He arrived in China during World War II and decided to study the scientific and industrial history of China.  The result was a 24 volume work entitled Science and Civilization in China.  I have not read it, nor probably will you, but it is considered one of the great works of literature.  The Man Who Loved China book gives a good flavor of it, and establishes that before the European Renaissance, the Chinese did the majority of inventing in the world.  In the sixteenth century, scientific advances moved to the West, and Chinese creativity and commerce seemed to fade away.  No one seems to agree on the cause for this long quiescent period in science and technology, but clearly it has returned with a bang.

 In the index to Winchester’s book is a list of Chinese Inventions and Discoveries and dates that Needham found them first mentioned in old documents.  Some 250 are mentioned and not only cover an incredible range, but are astonishing for their age. You probably know about gunpowder ((9^th century A.D., and printing (wood block 7^th century AD, bronze type 1400 AD).  But  ball bearings in the 2^nd century B.C.? Seismograph in AD132? Stirrup in 300 AD?  Axial rudder 1^st century AD?

 And I can remember being solemnly told that U.S. engineering students were superior to Chinese engineering students, because the Chinese have never been as creative.  Isn’t self delusion wonderful?

 I think you will find Winchester’s book a wonderful read, not only for insight into Chinese history, but because he is a terrific writer and story teller.