Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Where Have All the Gears Gone?

Way back in the 1950s I had access to the most modern piece of computing equipment – A Friden calculator. In essence it was an adding machine driven by an electric motor. In graduate school at Kansas I became an expert on the Friden, along with Monroes and Smith-Coronas.

On one occasion I took the case off of the Friden. I saw a mass of gears and levers and wheels all interconnected. My computer today, my MacBook, is too thin for gears and of course it doesn’t need them. It’s a mess of transistors. And I began to wonder – where have all the gears gone?

Remember the old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock? We kids would take them apart. There was another set of gears and levers. You could tinker with them and make the clock’s hands move a lot faster. Your alarm clock today is a printed circuit. No gears needed.

Our balloon-tired bicycles had coaster brakes, another set of gears, and we found it was wise not to mess around with those gears. Other parts of the bicycle were fair game. Today’s bikes with those hard little tires – bet they wouldn’t go far in the sandy streets of South Texas. And their gears are right out there for you to see.

Will transistors replace all our gears? I’ll bet that, if you brought a 1960’s automobile mechanic here to 2019, he’d recognize the gears in your modern car. Sure, there was lots of space under the hood in my 1956 Chevvy, and he might be puzzled by all that stuff crammed in under the modern car’s hood. But he’d recognize the pieces. The starter motor and alternator, the water pump and spark plugs. And the air filter, although it’s not on top of a carburetor exactly.

So here’s my question. Have our automobiles failed to keep pace with our modern society? Cars use electronics, sure, but the drive train is the same. The motor is still connected to the wheels in the same manner as always.

Is our system of “personal transportation” ready for a significant upgrade?

Dac Crossley
August 25, 2019

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” – Albert Einstein.

Is the Drought Upon Us Again?

You can count on it if you live in the Southwest. Every decade there’s gonna be a severe drought.

Down in Texas, drought is a change-maker. Texas opened its western lands to settlement in 1883. Farming families moved in to take advantage of new, free land. A major drought in 1884-1886 chased most of them back to the East.

Cabeza de Vaca, the old castaway, reached the area of modern Presidio down near the Rio Grande. Indians there were farmers. They thought de Vaca was a God because of his white skin. He’d played that card all across Texas. The Indians begged him to talk to the sky – ask it for rain.

I was still living in Texas during the great drought of 1950-1952, when water shortage in some cities became critical.

The anthropologist Brian Fagan recently published “The Great Warming,” about civilizations collapsing during the Medieval warming event. He concluded that it should be called the “Medieval Drought Period.”

Yes, we’re gonna have a drought. The question is, will the Democrats blame it on Trump? Will Trump blame it on immigrants?