A Technology Tale

If you're old like me some of you reading this will recall the technology boom that began in the 1990s, gained steam in 1995 and peaked in March of 2000.  This capital markets era of growth coincided with the adoption of cellular technology, the World Wide Web and embrace of the internet.  It was known as the Dot Com Boom.

As a financial guy it was hard to ignore the rapid growth in valuations of dot.com startups. Amazon comes to mind and companies that made no sense at all as they were experiencing soaring stock valuations based on a mere idea.  No assets, no sales, no earnings - just an idea.  At least Amazon was an online bookseller.  And following the peak on March 10, 2000 the tech bubble burst leading to a large market correction and a larger reckoning for those chasing the clown car and bandwagon of exaggerated stock valuations.  There's an old saying in the trade; Bears and Bulls make money - pigs get slaughtered.

Anyway, not all was ephemeral, this financial guy used some fundamental research to acquire shares of a company in 1991, or thereabouts, for not a lot of money.  This company went on to develop a nifty cellular communications device reminiscent of the communicators used by the crew of the Star Ship Enterprise.  It was a Flip Phone and it became immensely popular.

Anyway, in January of 1990 I presciently sold those shares and used the proceeds (almost entirely profit) to pay cash for the first new structure on our property.  I used the other people's money to erect a nifty Forest Construction metal shop building on a concrete slab and electrify it in relatively short order.  

Welcome to Motorola.  

Founded in Chicago on September 25, 1928 by brothers, Paul V. and Joseph E. Galvin this company has been around for awhile.  Originally established as the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, like most start-ups it began on a shoestring of $563 of working capital, $750 in equipment and five employees operating out of rented quarters.  

And the Galvin brothers had a novel idea; a device that would allow a battery-powered home radio to be wired into a vehicle.  

And in 1930 the affordable car radio was born.  Paul Galvin named it the Motorola - "Motor" for motorcar and "ola" for Victrola.

Galvin Manufacturing didn't stop there.  They developed one of the first gasoline-powered car heaters capable of instant heated comfort, an AM-Band two-way police dispatching radio and with the onset of WWII the development of the Handie-Talkie, the first handheld, single operator two-way radio.  An FM-Band backpack model with greater range followed.

At the close of the war the company was firmly committed to wireless communications and in 1947 adopted Motorola as its new name.  Today you will find Motorola handheld radios used in my household for hunting and marine frequency use.  Two way police and taxi communications became their trademark line-up and persist today.  If you talk to anybody in law enforcement they will tell you:  Bad guys cannot outrun Motorola.

By 1951, home television was transitioning from a post-war novelty into a living room fixture and Motorola paired their technology with fine furniture styling and cabinet design.  It was Motorola who adopted full-view rectangular Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) that allowed the image to fill the entire screen without cropping or distorting the edges.  Motorola pioneered additional technologies that reduced glare, improved focus, high-frequency tuning, audio enhancements and chassis shielding that reduced household signal interference.

Aside from the Flip Phone, Motorola advancements in transistor technology replaced tubes, Motorola designed and built the Unified S-Band radio transceiver linking voice, video and telemetry between astronauts, the lunar lander and NASA's Mission Control.  In 1973, company engineer, Martin Cooper, made the first public handheld cellular phone call with a Motorola prototype on a Manhattan street corner.  In 1979 they introduced the 16/32 bit microprocessor that became the foundation for modern personal computing and gaming.  And it was Motorola who delivered the world's first 5G smartphone connectivity by connecting a consumer device to Verizon's commercial 5G network and bringing gigabit data speeds to everyday users in 2018.

So, now you know the rest of the story, insofar as where it's advanced.  Who knows what the future holds....

Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

This was a popular advertising slogan from the 1970s for cassette recording tapes that Millennials are unlikely to identify-with as they're not going to recognize the marketing campaign.  Nevertheless, if you are a baby boomer you already know that the Memorex brand audio recording tapes claimed to offer such an authentic playback experience that the listener would not be able to differentiate a live performance from an audio recording. 

I still have a soft-sided case of Memorex mix tapes in my pick-up truck that are the industry's contribution to bootleg music recordings.  But I digress.

I'm sharing this anecdote as further evidence that nowadays you cannot expect that everything you see on the interweb or social media is real.  It may very well be an AI fake.

For instance this advertisement for the Spacematic Food Spinner 2000, boldly marketed by the Spacematic Corporation as The Futuristic Food Preparation Center for Today's Space Age Family!   According to the ad it is an all-in-one tabletop unit that can spin, mix, blend, heat and serve an entire meal visualized thru a See-Through Dome.  It comes equipped with a One-Touch Control Panel and a Revolutionary Gyro-Mix Feature that cooks food evenly in individual wedges.  All of this George Jetson Family space-age technology is yours for only $19.95 (plus tax).

Pretty cool, eh?

Nope.  It's all made-up.  It never existed.

This is a clever piece of AI-generated art that perfectly captures the atomic-age aesthetic of the late 1950s or early 1960s.

How to tell?  

The text lacks any specific details ordinarily included in a vintage Sears or Montgomery Ward advertisement. The capsule structure behind the tidy nuclear family looks like a spaceship instead of a suburban kitchen.  The food in the spinner is indistinct and doesn't include any jello.  Finally there's the RetroFuture Vault watermark in the bottom right corner.

It's certainly entertaining; but you won't find one on EBay....

Friday Morning Technology

I've touched on the nostalgia of 80s computing technology and pricing before. 

Here's a nostalgic compilation of television advertisements featuring home computing pioneers such as Apple, Atari, Commodore, Tandy and Texas Instruments.  Early marketing strategies featured family educational applications, gaming, the transition from typewriters to word processors and the quantum leap to 24K of memory.  

Burgess Meredith does voice-over for Commodore, Ed Grover was the voice of Apple in the 80s and even Bill Cosby pitches  for Texas Instruments.

Oh to be able to travel back in time to share the capabilities of the latest and greatest iPhone. 

Wash, Rinse and Repeat

 

When I had a day job I used a Bluetooth device similar to this to talk on the phone. Hands free I could access a file, use my desktop computer or walk about the entirety of the office suite and speak with anyone on the phone. 

Naturally, when I retired I purchased one so hands free I could putter-about my workshop, the machine shed, the garden and make or answer a call. It’s slicker than snot when you're sitting in a deer stand. Best of all with satellite radio and YouTube apps on my device I can listen to music, talk radio or a podcast without bothering anybody.

Last weekend it went missing. And it was maddening to not have a clue as to where it went. So we ordered a replacement from Amazon which arrived the day after the missing device turned-up.

In the dryer.

Apparently I put it in the cargo pocket of my shorts and it went thru a complete wash and dry cycle.

And following a stint on its charger it still works!

Tough device the Plantronics Voyager Legend is.  It earns the absentminded old guy seal of approval.

Crop Duster

I was puttering in my raised garden beds when a shriek from The Missus pierced the air.  This was followed by urgent commands to the dog.  

The cause of the ruckus was this...

There was the Mother of all unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) westbound, coming straight for our driveway only to stop at the property line, pirouette and head eastward all the while spraying the neighbor's field.  The drift smelled of fertilizer; nevertheless, since the dog decided to chase-down the alien contraption when we finally collected her she got a bath.

I recently took delivery of a UAV of my own; a DJI Neo, a small drone that I could use for photography and scouting that doesn't require a pilot license.  The very same company manufactures a heavy-lift agricultural model in the Agras lineup - the DJI Agras T40 and successor DJI Agras T50.  They're difficult to tell apart from one another but they're considered the gold standard of drones designed specifically for precision farming.

The basic design includes a four-arm layout featuring coaxial twin rotors - notably two sets  of propellers per arm totally eight blades.  Brushless motors drive the 54-inch carbon fiber props.  There is landing gear and a tank set-up that can be swapped-out in minutes for both spreading dry product (fertilizer, lime and seed) or liquids (fertilizer, herbicide or insecticide).

You'll note from the videos that there are no traditional high pressure nozzles.  Instead the drone utilizes spinning discs that atomize the liquid to an adjustable mist producing droplets ranging from 50 to 500 microns in size.  Impeller pumps deliver a flow rate of 16 to 24 liters per minute and an application swath can range from 22 to 36 feet depending-upon altitude.  Tipping the scales at a paltry 4.8 ounces (including battery) my miniature DJI Neo pales when compared to its farming cousin.  The AG version boasts a takeoff weight (aircraft, battery and payload) of up to 227 pounds and can fly at 15-20 mph.

Avionics include a phased array radar, binocular vision and real time kinetic positioning guided by Global Navigational Satellite System (GNSS) ensuring no overlapping or missed crop rows.   There is a camera for piloting by First Person View; however, once a field has been flown for mapping purposes control is handed-off to an autonomous system for flight.  The T40 and T50 drones can spray 50-52 acres in less than an hour of flight time without breaking a sweat.  Power is supplied by a 26 pound battery than can be charged from empty to 100% in 9-12 minutes allowing a two-battery rotation to run continuously all day long.

As a consequence of being well over the weight threshold for a hobbyist like me, operation requires a specialized FAA Part 137 agricultural pilot certificate and a Class 2 medical certificate.  Just like barnstorming an old school crop duster; only the pilot never leaves the ground.

Unfolded, and configured for flight, the aircraft measures roughly 9 by 10 feet from blade tip to blade tip; or about the size of a compact car.  Watching one of these in flight, up close and personal, is indeed impressive.

Starting price for a T50 heavy-lift, LIDAR-equipped quadcopter is $29,646.  

Think of the possibilities....  

All Wound-Up

I can remember this from my childhood.  We didn't have one as it was a luxury feature on your typical suburban lawnmower.  A neighbor had one however; and come to think of it, this was a technological marvel of the time.

The Briggs & Stratton wind-up starter, technically an impulse starter, was a mechanical alternative to the more common rope-pull recoil starters that persist to this day.  (My cursed rototiller has a rope-pull).  

Anyway, in the 1960's this breakthrough allowed a user to start a lawn mower without yanking on a rope multiple times.

The technology relied-upon a spring that stored energy as it was wound with a crank. Flipping a release lever allowed the spring to snap back, spinning the crankshaft much faster than a yanking on a rope and starting the engine.  The Briggs Easy Spin version incorporated a patented camshaft feature that kept the intake valve open slightly longer on the compression stroke thereby reducing the force needed to turn the engine over.  Spiffy.

A victim of their own complexity and as electric starters became more affordable this technology fell out of favor.  It persists - although you won't find it in your garage.  In situations where there is no electricity (lifeboats, military applications, generators, disaster relief) impulse starters are used for diesel engines.  

Speaking for myself, rope pull starters suck.... 

You can be sure..

  ...if it's Westinghouse!

This vintage commercial for the Westinghouse Food File Refrigerator highlights the product's design solutions for growing families who now find their post-war models too cramped.

Storage capacity offered more than twelve feet of storage space - considered cavernous in the mid-1950s.  Westinghouse's Food File organizer with a place for everything and everything in its place; included patented roll-out shelves, a Meat Keeper, Humidrawers for produce, in-door storage sections for fruit, cheese butter and eggs and a full-width freezer overhead. 

Naturally, the commercial concludes with the brand's long-standing slogan:  "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse"

Other brands of that era included Frigidaire, GE and Kelvinator.  I cannot recall seeing full size Westinghouse fridges on a showroom floor when we were looking a few years ago.  The US market for this brand is mostly compact, beverage and specialty models.  Nevertheless, kitchen models continue to be manufactured and sold globally.  The interweb tells me they're the top choice for Australians.  How 'bout that, mate!

Before the tariff regime hit we replaced all of our major kitchen appliances and our three-door GE Profile fridge sports many of the same features 70 years later.  Except it has 27 cubic feet of storage space and manufactures ice faster than a thirsty deer camp can consume it. 

Red Dogs

A week and a half ago doggo and I were out to finish cleaning-out nest boxes and running the trail camera trap line. 

From trail camera central set to capture short, silent, video vignettes there were couple of red dogs.

Same location one day apart.

Local resident red fox and my sidekick, Ruby, The Red Rocket...  

 

Inasmuch as both camera and background are stationary and only the animals are in motion it a terrific way to ballpark and compare relative size between a couple of adult canines.

Redheads too.... 

Sunset

Good look’n sunset tonight. 

Shot an azimuth to record Old Sol’s relentless march north. 

Love me some spring…..

 

May Astronomy

Monday evening before bedtime I took the pup outside for last call. The Flower Moon was bright and there was some interesting cloud action.   

The current moon phase for May 4, 2026 is known as a Waning Gibbous phase. 

Yesterday the moon was 17.9 days old and 89.21 percent illuminated. 

So I took some photos. 

And while I had some downtime in my busy day this afternoon I fiddled with some filters on one photo.  The moon is not very distinct (a shortcoming of even an iPhone 14 Pro).  But the Google Snapseed filtering allows for some interesting results.

Original, enhanced color spectrum and artsy black and white.

Pro Tip - Snapseed is a free app...
 

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

The device in the photo is the real deal.  A bizarre as it appears it is not AI generated,  photo shopped or a social media hoax.  It's a modern day Hookah.  If you came of age in the 1970's you would know what a water pipe or Hookah is.  But I digress.

The Robot Smoker was a novelty ashtray sold by Sears, Roebuck & Company around 1957.  It has a modern-sounding name but wasn't at all robotic; just playing on the technological advancements of  and more likely a play on the 'Space Age' aesthetic of the time.

You placed a lit cigarette into the holder of the weighted base and a long, flexible tube allowed you to have a smoke at a distance without getting up from your chair, interrupt your television viewing, putting down your book or paper or getting out of bed.  The only thing even close to robotic was the Automatic Butt Ejector; a spring-loaded feature that flipped the spent filter our so you didn't have to touch it.  Priced at $2.97 (roughly $30 nowadays).  An extra dollar got you an upgrade for a two person model to accommodate whomever you were sleeping with. 

Sears sold all sorta stuff throughout its long merchandising lifetime including novelties and gadgets.  Unlike a useful Craftsman wrench this device never became a household staple.  Within a couple of decades the health impacts of tobacco use became better-known and elaborate smoking apparatus fell out of favor. 

A couple of my pals are firefighters with the local department and they would likely be horrified by this.  The ad explicitly suggests its use while lounging in a chair or in bed.  Vintage collectors will tell you that if you coughed or sneezed into the tube you could launch a lit cig across the room.  Sounds like a peril that might very-well void the homeowners insurance you purchased from Sears as well.

Fast Fact:  Elektro the Moto-Man was a giant seven foot tall robot that demonstrated its ability to smoke cigarettes at the 1939 World's Fair ostensibly to demonstrate its air-intake system.  Maybe that's the inspiration for the name?  Alas, all is lost to history.

My smoking history was short-lived.  Good thing.   

American Culinary Dominance

The TV dinner represents a major shift in our 20th Century lifestyle - the moon shot  moment the aluminum-plated frozen meal met the living room.  To be clear, I haven't had a TV dinner in more than five decades; however eating in the living room persists as a cultural shift.

Believe it or not, this uniquely American gastronomical contribution to our rich culture heritage has an origin story involving C.A. Swanson & Sons.  Seems that following Thanksgiving in 1953, the company found itself with 260 tons of unsold frozen turkey sitting in ten refrigerated rail cars.  

Gerry Thomas, a Swanson salesman, inspired by the tiered aluminum trays used by airline commissaries envisioned a complete frozen meal that could be heated and consumed smack dab in front of a television.  In 1954 Swanson launched the TV Dinner and sold 10 million turkey dinners that year.  The original price was 98 cents. 

Naturally, this coincided with the launch of the space race and all things aluminum and before too long menu offerings included entrees like fried chicken, Salisbury steak, meatloaf and eventually a fourth compartment featuring a dessert such as a brownie or fruit cobbler.  Swanson ditched the 'TV Dinner' name from their packaging by 1962; nevertheless, just like Kleenex tissues the name stuck as part of our vast genericized American cultural lexicon.

With the proliferation of microwave ovens, by the mid 1980s plastic and paperboard packaging conspired to deliver your frozen gourmet feast in less than ten minutes!  

Sure, I'm being modestly snarky because I'm a food snob but I admit that this mash-up of industrialization and frozen food technology was a boon to working families struggling to get dinner on time and on the table.  Trust me, I've eaten my share of frozen Banquet turkey pot pies served at the temperature of molten lava on the surface of the planet Mercury.   You might have too.

Anyway, the Chopped Sirloin of Beef (hamburger) swimming in a ubiquitous brown gravy highlighted a partnership between Swanson and Pepperidge Farm featuring a blueberry muffin in the fourth compartment thus elevating the culinary experience to the level of festive celebration.  Mad Men advertising brilliance!

Between you and me the inclusion of crinkle-cut fries and buttered peas is a monument to the pinnacle of American industrial processed food know-how, sodium content and poor food pairings.  The birthday candle and even the smiling cat screams domestic tranquility.

Dammit; this is the Right Stuff.  This is what Made America Great!  

---

Raising An Eyebrow

This is both strange but true.

The Eyebrow Auto Brake—a car braking system operated by the driver’s eyebrows—featured in Popular Mechanics magazine, 1965.

It is not a real safety system.  Rather, it is a tongue-in-cheek illustration of a car that braked when the driver raised their eyebrows.  The idea played on the notion that drivers instinctively widen their eyes (and lift eyebrows) in moments of surprise or danger.  Sensors were humorously depicted as detecting eyebrow movement and triggering the brakes.

Mid-1960s Popular Mechanics occasionally published April-Fools-style concepts and speculative futurism.  Naturally,these columns appeared during an era when:  Power brakes were still not universal, seat belts were controversial and real automated safety systems were a figment of most people's imagination.

Fast forward to today - six decades later - and safety technology commonly found in today's vehicles.  Including but not limited to:

Seat and shoulder belts, anti-lock brakes, airbags, crumple zones with passenger cabin safety cages, traction control, rear-view camera, adaptive cruise control, speed limit recognition, automatic high beams, electronic stability control, blind spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, front and rear parking sensors - including autonomous parking, automatic reverse braking, lane departure warning and lane-keeping assistance, forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking, intersection collision detection with evasive steering assist and 360 degree camera systems.

And let's not forget the eyebrows; there is driver attention and drowsiness monitoring too.  If my eyes wander for only a second too long my daily drive issues a visual and audible warning.  Don't think about this very hard - this technology is going to keep older drivers on the road; longer and safer than ever before.

Popular Mechanics may have been pulling someone's leg in 1965 yet they were prescient. 

Incredible Hockey Shot

Now that the 2026 Milano Cortino Winter Olympic Games are behind us​, this retired curler had to share this classic.

Further evidence of how much mobile technology, and videography, have advanced  since this Samsung Mobile Explorer advertisement from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games sixteen years ago.

Adding an entirely new emphasis on the slap shot; hockey meets curling...

On This Day In History

On Valentine's Day 1990, thirteen years after leaving earth, Voyager 1 directed its cameras back towards the sun and took a series of images of the planets, creating the first ever 'family portrait' of our solar system.

Image credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Cal tech

Famed astronomer Carl Sagan spent years trying to convince NASA to have Voyager 1 turn around and take this picture on the way out. The picture is actually a mosaic that combines sixty frames.

Friday Music

 Not much to say about a music machine with 2000 marbles.....

2025

On this last day of the year it seem appropriate to share some highlights of those brief, fleeting, moments associated with family, travel, food, community and more.

Google Photo periodically furnishes unsolicited photo vignettes using their AI platform

Happy New Year and thank you for reading, following and sharing.  See you next year on the flip side....

December Night Sky

Before sunrise today.

View west, the constellation Gemini above, top center (two stars at top).  Jupiter (brightest object) upper left of center.

click on image for a closer look

 

Screen shop of star map from Night Sky app.

If you have clear and dark viewing conditions there is more meteor shower action on tap for tonight.

It was pretty cool (pardon the pun) last night. 

-3F around these parts... 

Portraits

One of the interesting things about Google photos is that from time-to-time the oracle sends me a notification on my device that I have photos to view.  It's like a this date in history feature since the photos are always one or more years in the past.

Sometimes it involves food.  Sometimes travel, gardening or hunting. 

Like this...

Vroom!

Behold: The Fastest Car in The World That You’ve Never Heard Of

This is an extreme example of the "throttle" response EV drivers get. 

The video of the test run on a track in Germany is remarkable....