Comments on: You can smoke a cigar next to it as you weld it

By: Graf von Zeppelin

Graf von Zeppelin — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 05:15:17 +0000

South Korea was built on the experience of 40 years of industrialization by the Japanese. They had plenty of roads, railroads, and ports, built by Korean workers and Japanese (and later Korean) engineers.

Seoul National University of Science and Technology traces its origin to a public vocational school founded in 1910. And Keijo Imperial University (renamed to Seoul National after the war, the Harvard of Korea) had an engineering department in 1938.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 17:32:08 +0000

Steel became unsexy when Lawyer Central Command decided to shiv real industrial production (dirty and manly) and replace it with computer-based pixel-pushing makework (clean and feminine).

If you’re looking for the real locus of power, by the way, avert your eyes from the clown show on television and start eyeballing the American Bar Association, National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (a.k.a. Uniform Law Commission), American Law Institute, National Judicial College, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, University of Chicago Law School, and so on.

Did you know that substantially every judge in the U.S.A. is trained at one facility in Reno, Nevada? It’s true.

By: Ray Hall

Ray Hall — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:29:01 +0000

Bob Sykes’ comment is interesting. I agree about the importance of oral transmission of knowledge, but there is a counter example. I understand that South Korea built some of its industrial infra-structure with virtually no tradition of industrial know-how. They used textbooks, even in things like road-building. It can’t have been easy.

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 11:30:08 +0000

Another story of a (almost) lost technology. How did Musk’s engineers not know about the earlier use of stainless steel?

Someone asked a NASA engineer why NASA wasn’t using the F1 engines that powered the Apollo missions. He answered they didn’t know how to build them. The existing drawings and specifications were not detailed enough.

I used to tell my students that nothing important was written down. All the important stuff was transmitted orally, person to person.

That is why the loss of industrial jobs is so important. The US has literally forgotten how to build things.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 17:51:52 +0000

Elon Musk, Man of Steel.