James L Adams—People and Products

What happened to Standardization?

March 29, 2020

When I was young, there was a great deal of standardization, some because of monopolies (remember the black telephone with the dial), but more to ease the processes of manufacturing and repair.  Boy is that gone.  In the U.S, a tremendous cost is involved by not using the metric system, so we start out with the need for two sets of tools and the need to remember two sets of dimensions to fit our dizzying choice of fasteners, metal thicknesses, and other such things. I complained about the number of screw configurations in a previous post.But this is true at many levels level.  A very good friend of mine died a few months ago, and I inherited a whole garage full of tools.  Among the material were several hoses for compressed air.  I have a compressor in my garage, but had always carried hoses around to get where I wanted my compressed air to go.  I decided to take my new wealth of hoses (which were better than mine) and install them permanently, with couplings where I needed the air. For this to work I needed more couplings, since I wanted to have one each location,  but playing around with the existing couplings, as I suspected, there were several models involved.   Compressed air hoses are usually l/4, 3/8/or i/2 in size in the U.S., and there is a large difference in air delivery, but for home use I have found out that the 1/4 size is adequate for me.  But I had forgotten that many products these days have slight changes over older ones, perhaps because the manufacturer thinks they have improved them, or possibly wants to get around existing patents.  A good example the resulting confusion and a heroic attempt to describe them all can be seen at https://toolguyd.com/quick-guide-to-air-line-couplers-plugs. The author of this explanation of different types of connectors did a heroic job of attempting to explain the differences, but did not convince me that there is much of a difference between brands.  In fact he drew many outraged stories about keeping track of connectors for compressed air. If the owner mixes the connectors, he/she is doomed, because  it is almost impossible to tell them apart by looking at them.  It is necessary to first see if they fit each other, and then turn on the pressure and see if (a) the connector stays connected, (b) it stays together but leaks, or (c.) miraculously it works.  The two photos below show  two of the old connectors.  Look similar?  They don't fit each other.

Since the connectors were not that expensive, I ordered a whole bunch of color coded ones over Amazon, and redid them all.  Nice for the capitalistic system, but a real pain in the neck for me.   I could not help but feel a fondness for people who make garden hoses, and have had the sensitivity over the years to standardize the couplings.  In fact I was so pleased with my garden hoses I bought them all new gaskets.

Too Fast or Too Slow

Post, Mar. 6, 2020

I finished the book by  Ross Douthat (The decadent Society – How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success) I mentioned in a previous  post, and found it more than interesting. Douthat is a splendid writer with impressive credentials.  He has written several thought provoking books as well as this one , is a columnist for the New York Times, was a senior editor for the Atlantic, is the film editor for National Review, and is cohost for  the New York Times op-ed podcast The Argument. One reason I like his writings is that if I had to describe him (I don’t know him), I would call him a liberal conservative (rare and refreshing in these days of extreme right or left).

Douthat spends many paragraphs explaining what the word “decadent” applies to in this book, and I am not going to attempt that here.  One sentence he uses is “Decadence, deployed usefully, refers to economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development”.  He is definitely not thinking about “that’s really a decadent desert”

The world is unsettled these days, to put it lightly, and from my technological viewpoint, I tend to think one of our problems is that our technology, especially digital technology, is moving more rapidly  than we humans can comfortably change. Douthat has a different viewpoint.   He points out that historically, there have been periods of high excitement and change (1960), and we are presently suffering from being in a low period. He points out that these periods have occurred often in the past.  He uses the word decadence to describe them, and points out that in the past people have continued to live through these periods, some of them quite long,  relatively happily.  One of his examples is the Roman empire for four centuries – which W.H. Auden described as low in creativity, warmth or hope.  Apparently people were  not exactly unhappy (except for the slaves)—no barbarians, no major changes to worry about, just an established and accepted existence, even though some people were wealthy and famous, and some were very poor. 

He also compares shorter and more modern periods to apply his argument to the present.  For instance the period between 1970 and now, a period of only 50 years. At least on the technology side, it may appear that we have accomplished a great deal. We have built wonders such as the internet, the Global Positioning Satellite system, and the ability to place people in space and even on the moon. We have learned to read and alter DNA, made great strides in  medical treatments and  military strength, and increased  our understanding of our fragile environment and the nature of the universe. We have improved our wealth and health, but things seem to be about the same. These great accomplishments do not retain their miraculous nature very long. 

As a contrast, I was working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s during the “space race”  with the U.S.S.R. Even though the technology  is far advanced since then,  the public excitement has diminished. Then most people knew the names (and nature and background) of many of the astronauts. Do you know the names of any of the present ones? Are you really excited about Artificial Intelligence, 5-G, and the new Apple Smart Phone?  Are you finding traffic on the roads  improved over what it was before all the “road work” that is under way? Do you appreciate the U.S. political and economic position in the world?  If not, why not?  Maybe you are becoming decadent.

Read Douthat’s book and worry.  Or not. I found it re-assuring, in that it infers that we are in a period which will be followed by high excitement and pleasure about what we (and the rest of the world) are accomplishing to improve our lot.

On another topic, I read a very large number of relatively new books and other documents pertaining to creativity, innovation, and change while writing the 5^th edition  of my Conceptual Blockbusting book. Many of them are included in the text of the book. Others are included at the end of the book in the Reader’s Guide.  In the future I will be including them in my posts and on the book list in my blog.

Finally, I intend to write about the glory of working with the hands and my maybe too many machinery-rescue projects as soon as the weather cooperates.  But it has been too cold and windy to be much fun to work in the farm country in the Sacramento valley, where my targets are, and  because of the lack of rainfall, and its effect on the crops (and farmers).  But as a hint of the next couple of projects I have in mind (I will continue on the Peterbilt of course).  But the coming ones  are shown in the photos below— an excellentand complicated crane complete with dirt moving buckets, dating back to the 1930’s, and a very large road roller, dating back even further.  I acquired both of them many years ago in terrible shape and got them running (barely), de-rusted, and painted, but now I haven’t run them in years.  They now seem to not be eager to run,are missing a few parts, and the paint is peeling off.  Easy rescue.  I think (hope) they just want a bit of love and minor mechanical service.