Bell Telephone: Explaining mobile phone technology, c1946

An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who notes that he watched this video on his modern mobile phone.

What strikes me is how much we take this capability for granted, especially when you watch and see how “compact” the car units were. Yet, in the 1940s when this technology was first being developed the use of telephones themselves was only a few decades old. The very idea of being able to communicate instantly with anyone over long distances was still relatively new. Now it included talking to people at random locations. For the people of that time, this was exciting news harboring a bright future.

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Stockholm 1913

An evening pause: The footage is gently colorized but with little else changed. Like previous such pauses showing film footage from the past, it gives us a glimpse into a different world that appears more dignified and civilized.

Hat tip BjΓΆrn “Local Fluff” Larsson, who notes, “All men wear suits and hats. All ladies are dressed up. All buildings are beautiful. Then socialism happened.”

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Apollo 16 Lunar Rover “Grand Prix”

An evening pause: This seems especially appropriate with the arrival of another rover on Mars last week.

On their first day of three on the lunar surface, John Young and Charles Duke deployed their rover and took it for a test drive before heading out to nearby Plum Crater for two hours of sample gathering and exploration.

This footage shows Young driving with Duke filming and reporting what he sees. The goal was to gather engineering data on how the rover’s wheels functioned in the very dusty lunar soil.

This short clip nicely illustrates the ambitious achievement of the American Apollo missions that should give pause to any arrogant modern young engineer. This was before home computers and CAD-CAM. It was designed by hand and slide-rule, using inches, pounds, and feet. And it worked, and worked magnificently. Oh if we today could only do as well.

Hat tip BjΓΆrn “Local Fluff” Larsson.

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George Washington – “I did!”

An evening pause: On this, the birthday of George Washington, let us hear from the man himself. The speaker is an actor, but the words are Washington’s late in his life, reflecting on his life as well as on the future of the nation he more than anyone else helped create.

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Iron Butterfly – In a Gadda Da Vida

An evening pause: Hat tip Mike Nelson, who adds this tidbit of the song’s history:

The lyrics are about Adam and Eve living β€œIn the Garden of Eden” but Doug Ingles, the composer, consumed an entire gallon of wine the night he wrote it, and when he sang it to a bandmate to transcribe the lyrics he slurred words so badly it got transcribed as In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida instead, which in the end stuck.

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Abraham Lincoln – an annual tribute

An evening pause: On this, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, I must once again honor his memory, most especially because the Marxist, anti-American bigots who are now running roughshod across our once free nation wish to cancel him by actually accusing the man who freed the slaves of being a racist.

And though he freed the slaves, I think Lincoln’s most enduring contribution to American history, a contribution that now has sadly been lost, was his limitless good will for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. Had he not been assassinated, American history might have been far better because Lincoln would have had the clout to ease the worst elements of Reconstruction, while forcing through reforms in the former southern slave states.

The modern Democrats in Congress — and their supporters nationwide — might benefit by reading some history about Lincoln. Alas, I have no hope of this.

As I wrote for last year’s tribute,

Lincoln stood for freedom for all humans, the central heart of the American experiment. He was willing and did die for that stance. We should all be willing to do no less.

The video below shows probably every photograph ever taken of Lincoln, in chronological order. You can see him age and mature. You can also see a gaunt and serious man who appears to care deeply about whatever he does.

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