Since there isn't much to do during the COVID-19 lockdown. I figured, why don't we have a Show & Tell event of our own!?! So I'll start off with my fallen meteorite from 2017. You guys remember, right? https://www.gardenstew.com/threads/a-fallen-meteorite-from-the-perseid-meteor-shower-2017-d.38981/ Anyway here is it again. Now it's your turn! Anything interesting to display - Something of historic value, or a very rare find, even an heirloom of sentinel value - Or a military war relic maybe? Challenge coins? How about a fossilized piece of dinosaur bone? Anything of archaeological or paleontological interest perhaps? Fine, I'll even settle for your own personal baby rattle... As long as you find it interesting, please share it's picture here.
I have something I am working on, will post it sometime on Tuesday oops sorry Wednesday...my time. Family history...involves explosives especially nitroglycerine.
There is a book named 'Roaring Ranger' by Boyce House. The town of Ranger was named for the encampment of Texas Rangers who lived there back in the 1800's My Great-Grandfather was Jack Rapp, called by some the Greatest Oil Well Shooter in the world. He moved his family from Pennsylvania to Ranger,Texas in the early 1900's and started a business named the U.S. Torpedo Company. He made nitroglycerine in the bathtub in his house, loaded up the back of a truck with specially made copper containers full of nitro (they slid into a set of carpet lined holes to keep them steady) and drove to oil wells from west Texas to Oklahoma and Arkansas, any place where drilling had stopped because of layers of rock that the drills could not get through. When they arrived at the drilling site, he would carefully pour the nitro into metal tubes much like the ones used for air conditioning duct work today. He would then carefully lower the tube down the drilled shaft, drop a metal weight down the hole, and run like the dickens to take cover before the really big explosion sent the black gold (Texas Tea) spewing up into the air. He did eventually have to buy some land way out of town and built a shed there to make the nitro. The mixing paddles and vats were all wood, and gravity fed the mix from one vat to the next. A small steam engine on the opposite side of the hill stirred the mix. Every 2-3 years he would have to blow up the shed. The materials used to make the nitro had nitrated the wooden shed and it could blow up on it's own in hot weather. He would blow up the old one, move to another part of the his land and build a new shed. My dad spent a few summers with him and learned to drive that truck on some of those trips. They had to drive at night and when his granddad got too tired to drive, he would go to sleep on the back seat and my Dad, at the age of about 11 would drive the truck loaded with containers of nitro on back roads, made of rock and gravel with no street lights along the way. Once, Great-Granddad had loaded 5 gallons (yes, gallons) of nitro into the tube and lowered it into the hole. When it was well on its way, he heard a rumble from deep in the earth. My Dad watched as Great-Grand Dad stepped to the hole and waited. The pressure down below had broken through and water came up pushing the nitro back out. He watched as his grandfather caught the nitro and held it steady until the water flow subsided. He asked his grandfather why he didn't run. The answer? "Boy, you can't run that fast."
That is such a wonderful family story! It just reminded me of an episode of MacGyver I saw in my childhood. It's the episode where they use nitroglycerin to put out an oil well fire. Of course, what we see on TV can't be compared to anything in reality. Mainly because we just can't squeeze a lifetime into a 45 minute long show. So just imagine what your great-grandfather must have experienced in his line of work - AMAZING!!!
Once upon a time, in days of yore, when dinosaurs roamed and the internet was a nifty idea that a few ivory tower types were pondering, remote communication with computers was done over regular dial up phone lines (and honest to gosh phones with handsets) at 300 baud. 300 baud was another name for 300 bits per second. Nowadays, internet providers that provide less than 50 million bits per second are considered slow. If you were one of the big players back then, you might have dedicated phone lines and dedicated, hardwired modems (that's the little box that you put the telephone handset in to connect the remote computer to the terminal on your desk). Most, however, just used the desk phone. That's fine when you're the one making the call, but if it's after hours, there's no one there to answer the phone an put it in the modem. Along came the auto-answer acoustic modem. Here, for your amusement, is an example. The box on the right is the modem, the metal box on the left goes on the phone to take it "off hook" when the phone rings. The box on the left has a microphone and actually listens for the ring. When it rings, the modem activates a solenoid and lifts a metal bar. This answers the phone and the modem sends a tone. If the calling modem answers, the phone stays off the hook and the machines on either end exchange data. When the caller disconnects, the modem de-energized the solenoid and hangs up the phone. Way back when, a company I worked for was tossing old equipment and I salvaged this, it's the only one I've seen in the last 30 or so years. Oh, by the way, remember rotary dial phones?
A classic museum piece for sure! Something kids of today will have absolutely no idea about! Reminds of this movie from 1983, (I saw it in 84 or 85). My school was the first in my country to have computers. So I was a bright 7 year old at the time. But computer to computer connectivity I had heard about, (also seen in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Discover magazines my father use to order) - But it was in 1996 when I got internet. And 2002 or 03 when I got broadband connection. Before that, information from computer to computer was physically carried. First with floppy disks, and later by CDs which we would burn ourselves. Unless of course one worked in a bank, which had it's own network. Or in law enforcement.
Toni while your great grand dad was making an honest living one of mine was providing horses, food and shelter to the Dalton and James boys. Being Irish he was a good story teller. My uncles recorded some of his stories and my mom was always enamored with those stories. At a family reunion in 1960 with the other side of the family my mom wanted to talk with great grandpa Mitchell about her grandfather. Great grandpa Mitchell had been a Texas Ranger during the same time period. Unfortunately for my mom grandpa Mitchell refused to talk to her after she asked about great grandpa Allen. Outlaws weren’t people to be admired. Here is my weird collection of petrified dinosaur poop, petrified fish and arrowheads my dad made when he was retired. When I went to search for the Dino poop, my DIL got to hear the story and be informed about what it was. Have a number of tourist things made by indigenous people of the Americas dating from the turn of the last century to about the 1970s but the historic value is only family memories. Kind of like my dad’s arrowheads.
