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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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How Differential Gear works

An evening pause: Though the first 1:50 of this very well done 1930s industrial is somewhat irrelevant and can be skipped, I think it is worth watching anyway. And the rest does a great job of explaining this mysterious piece of automobile equipment.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • mpthompson

    I saw this several years ago in the Internet Archive as part of the Prelinger Collection which is a massive collection of 10,000’s of “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films spanning much of the 20th century. There are many other similar movies if you care to look for them at:

    https://archive.org/details/prelinger

  • wayne

    Edward– good selection.

    The Jam Handy Organization produced 100’s of these short “industrial” films on topics such as this, and Chevrolet was a big client for over 30 years.

    The http://www.Archive.org folks have an extensive collection, all of which are available on-line, in numerous downloadable & streaming formats, and all are in the public domain & free for use.
    Tangentially– when you visit–check out the Archive’s (growing) collection of public domain Feature Films. Lots-o-obscure material, you can’t find anywhere. (Over 4,200 Titles.)

  • wayne

    mpthompson–
    you beat me to it!

    Highly recommend the Archive!
    You can get totally lost in their various Collections and download hundreds of gigabytes of audio/video.
    (-They also have an extensive collection of digitized 78 rpm records as well.)
    Their collection rivals the Library of Congress in scope, with the complete upside that you can download everything they have, immediately, for free, in numerous formats.

    The Archive is also part of “Project Gutenberg”– they designed inexpensive, specialized scanning-equipment, using off-the-shelf components, and have been busily scanning & digitizing literally millions of books and other “ephemeral” texts.

  • Joe

    Great vid Edward, many people, including some fellow mechanics don’t equate levers to gears or gears as levers and torque multipliers, lots of fun!, this is torque being applied to to different sized levers equally.

  • Alex

    To all: Automatic Transmission, How it works ?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugao6jTyM7k

  • wayne

    Alex-
    Good video!

    Another Jam Handy Gem, that directly address’s Joe’s comment:

    “Spinning Levers”
    Jam Handy & Chevrolet 1936
    https://youtu.be/aFvj6RQOLtM
    (9:39)

  • Steve Earle

    Great video! I now have a much better understanding of how that part works. The MC riding team was a bonus :-)

  • Mitch S.

    Love those old training films.
    They put real effort and production value into them – really tried to engage the students.

    Here’s a favorite.
    It stars Rube Goldberg of the famous contraption cartoons.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGrrMr8Wv7U

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