On this day one hundred years ago, March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the U.S. Senate for the second and last time. There had been a prior straight vote on the treaty, which was rejected. A second vote included fourteen reservations proposed by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. The final vote fell seven votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify.
The war formally ended for America in 1921 when Congress passed the Knox–Porter Resolution.
Due to the cornavirus pandemic, schools around the country and around the world are grappling with the issue of how to provide instruction to students by distance learning. It isn’t a new phenomenon, however, as shown by this article from the October 15, 1937, issue of Broadcasting magazinei
During a Chicago polio epidemic, schools were closed, and the city’s radio stations banded together to broadcast classes for students at home. The program was so successful that it was to continue even after school was back in session. Broadcasts would not duplicate material from school, but would supplement it, with a cultural value directed at both adults and children. The city’s stations would each donate 15 minutes per day of airtime to the programs.
Other schools facing quarantine were looking to Chicago’s successful venture as inspiration for their own. The Chicago schools had been contacted by educators and broadcasters in the U.S. and Canada for pointers.
The photo above is another example from 1938. This one isn’t because of an epidemic, but because of a fiscal emergency in Dayton, Ohio, as recounted in an earlier post.
During the pandemic, my family wants to keep to an absolute minimum our direct interaction with others. If they’re infected, I don’t want to catch it. And just as important, if I’m infected, I don’t want to spread it to them. To minimize the amount of shopping we need to do, I’ve decided to alternate between online orders at local stores, and Amazon orders. I think we have enough supplies for the duration, but it’s nice to maintain our normal diet, including things such as fresh milk and bread.
Today, I picked up our first Walmart
order, which was more or less a normal weekly grocery order, including milk bread, soft drinks, and canned goods. We happened to need some superglue, so we added it to the order, showing that you can order anything in the store.
I placed the original order online on Friday afternoon, and picked it up today (Monday). This was the earliest slot available, so the process does require some planning. As of today, no slots were available, and the website asked me to check later. So perhaps this is our one and only order. At the very least, the process does require some planning. However, once you reserve the slot and place the order, you are able to add and remove items from the order, up to about 12 hours before the pickup time.
Update: The Walmart site seems to have changed since I posted this. You can now make reservations only for “today” and “tomorrow.” The best bet seems to be to check the site right after midnight. For example, if you check at midnight Monday night/Tuesday morning, you’ll be able to reserve a slot for Wednesday.
Today, I received an e-mail telling me that my order was ready. The e-mail instructed me to check in on their app to let them know I was on the way, so I installed the app on my tablet. It turns out, however, that this is unnecessary. You can simply proceed to the store, park in the designated area, and then call from your car to the number posted there.
A couple of minutes after calling, the Walmart associate came out with our order and loaded it into the car. It was a well organized process. Our bags were in tubs labeled with my name. I noticed that some were marked “cold,” and some “ambient.” I apologized for not helping her load it, but I explained that I didn’t want to risk contaminating her. I did have to sign on a small tablet computer. Update: As of March 25, you no longer need to sign for the order. I was able to stand back 6+ feet the entire time. I got out my hand sanitizer, and sanitized my hands immediately after doing so.
When placing the order, I was able to select whether I would be willing to accept a substitution for items. Some items were out of stock, and I received a substitute item. In most cases, the substitute was a slightly different brand, size, or flavor. For example, they were out of the two-pound package of white cheddar cheese, so I received two one-pound packages of sharp cheddar, for one cent less than my original order.
The only case where the substitute wasn’t useful was our order of a spray can of Lysol (which we were ordering for a neighbor). In the case, they gave us Febreeze, which really wasn’t useful. However, the choices were e-mailed to us, and we had the option of removing the item. I told the associate that if it was difficult, not to bother, but she quickly found the item, scanned it in, and we were credited for the amount.
We ordered a package of toilet paper and were hopeful that we would get it, but it was out of stock and no substitution was available. We also ordered a container of Ensure for an elderly friend, but it was also unavailable.
Overall, the process worked very well. If it remains available during the current national emergency, we’ll definitely make use of it again.
The only glitch was, upon leaving, another customer backed into my car. Despite what sounded like a loud crunching sound, it left only a small dent in the rear door. I’m sure if I took it to a body shop and let them know the other driver’s insurance would pick up the tab, they would gladly replace the door for hundreds of dollars. On the other hand, it’s a twelve year old car, and I doubt if I’ll pursue the matter.
In the car, I had a pencil and sheet of paper, so I tore it in half, wrote my information on one half, and then had the other driver do the same. When she was finished, I had her keep the pencil. She was apologetic, and in better times, I would have shaken hands before we left. In the time of pandemic, we just went our ways.
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According to Wikipedia, MacGyver was born in either 1951 or 1952, so he couldn’t have been responsible for this wartime power supply. Instead, it was sent in to the the March 1945 issue of Radio Craft by one Richard F. Reed of Jacksonville, Florida. But MacGyver must have been inspired by Reed, since this power supply ingeniously makes use of available parts, despite wartime shortages.
Reed needed to 90 volt power supply, and used this circuit to get it out of a 1.5 volt battery. The transformer could have been an audio output transformer, but Reed had on hand a model plane induction coil, so he used that. In lieu of an inverter, he used a 1.5 volt buzzer in series with the transformer.
For a rectifier, he used the starter from a fluorescent light. He reported that the supply put out 95 volts at 25 mA.
Sixty years ago this month, the March 1960 issue of Electronics Illustrated showed this nuclear blast detector to be used in critical installations. The magazine noted that such installations were well protected, as long as they were away from ground zero. But they still had to button down at the last second by closing blast doors and closing valves on ventilation equipment.
The sensors here would detect the flash of the nuclear explosion and the gamma ray burst. This would sound an alarm that would automatically seal up the base prior to the arrival of the blast wave seconds or minutes later.
This handsome but utilitarian wartime cigar-box set was put together by G.L. Keirstad of Toronto, and described in the March 1945 issue of Radio Craft magazine. According to the author, the set pulled in all four of the local Toronto stations, as well as WGR and WBEN in Buffalo. At night, it would also get the New York stations with loudspeaker volume quite adequate for a personal radio.
For the aspiring scientist who is interested in earthquakes, today we show you how to build your own seismometer. If you started by searching for “science fair seismograph,” you were possibly disappointed at the initial search results. You undoubtedly found sites showing how to make a toy seismosgraph out of materials such as cardboard boxes. I’m sure these were fine projects for less advanced students, but they weren’t real seismographs. Instead, they were models that showed how a seismograph worked. You build the toy instrument, and then jump up and down in close proximity, simulating an earthquake.
We are glad that you kept searching, because we will show you how to build a real seismometer or seismograph, one capable of detecting distant earthquakes. If there are no earthquakes before the science fair, you can test the unit with nearby trucks and trains as they pass by. The unit shown here, for example, picked up trains a mile away. In addition, a very similar unit was used, in Texas, to detect underground nuclear tests in Nevada. So it’s not a toy–it’s a real seismometer.
The overall concept is clear from the diagrams shown above. A magnet is suspended from a wire or line attached to a sturdy beam of your building. In the final version, this pendulum is placed inside a pipe, to prevent air currents from disturbing it. The magnet is placed above a coil, and the slightest motion of the pendulum, caused perhaps by an underground nuclear test hundreds of miles away, induces a tiny electrical current in the coil. This is amplified by two op amps, and registers with an LED and/or a piezo buzzer.
The diagram above is from a book by Forest Mims III, Engineer’s Mini-Notebook: Science Projects, one of a series sold at Radio Shack. This particular volume was published in 1990. It’s available free online. The same author has another version of the seismograph at this site. You can also visit his website, forestmims.org.
Incidentally, as you can see above, the book contains the phrase, “when he was in high school in Texas, Eric Ryan Mims used a similar arrangement to detect underground nuclear tests in Nevada.” There is a multimedia CD by this long title by Canadian musician Matt Rogalsky. Inspired by that phrase, Rogalsky processed the output into ambient sound. While it is out of print, used copies are available on Amazon.
In March 1945, the war was still on, and that meant that there was no production of civilian radio receivers. But the manufacturers knew that there would be a big sales boom as soon as the war was won, and they were getting their name before the public.
This ad from Stromberg-Carlson appeared in Life Magazine 75 years ago today, March 12, 1945. And the company was betting on the miracle of FM being the wave of the future. These young people are listening to some postwar program daydreaming. The girl dreams of marrying the man of her dreams, and her tenderfoot little brother dreams of being the patrol leader of the best patrol in town.
On the first warm weekend eighty years ago, this couple were taking their portable radio for a spin around the lake. It was pulling in the stations thanks to their foresight in bringing it in to the dealer for a free check of the battery and tubes, and a reasonably priced tune-up.
This promotional poster appeared in the March 1940 issue of Radio Retailing. Presumably, the dealer cut the page out of the magazine and put it in his window or bulletin board. He then sat back and waited for the portables to start flooding into the store.
Due to the coronavirus, some items are unavailable in stores. If there are sick people in your house, it might become important to clean and sanitize more than usual. One convenient method is a product such as Clorox Wipes or Lysol Wipes. However, availability is currently very limited.
One excellent alternative for sanitizing is normal household bleach. The CDC offers guidance on their website. All of the stores I’ve been to in the last few days have had bleach, although there were gaps in the shelf. You probably already have a gallon of bleach on hand for normal laundry needs. If you don’t (or the bottle is getting low), I would recommend adding this to your shopping list.
The first caution is never to mix bleach with ammonia or other cleaners, as deadly fumes can result.
To sanitize surfaces, the CDC recommends one cup of bleach for 5 gallons of water. For smaller jobs, the recipe can be scaled down. For example, for a gallon of water, you would add 1/5 cup bleach. For a quart, you would use 1/20 cup, which is 2-1/2 teaspoons.
The agency recommends cleaning the surface with soap and water, rinsing, and then sanitizing with the bleach solution. Allow the surface to air dry. Try not to breathe in fumes, and keep windows and doors open.
While it’s unlikely that it will be necessary due to the coronavirus, for other emergencies, it’s good to remember that bleach can also be used to disinfect drinking water. The EPA provides instructions on their website. Generally, very small amounts of bleach are used, approximately 8 drops per gallon. The Clorox website also has instructions for sanitizing drinking water with bleach.
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