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Re: Pipe scraps
Tesla List wrote:
>
> >From ed-at-alumni.caltech.eduTue Oct 8 22:27:01 1996
> Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 19:14:31 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "Edward V. Phillips" <ed-at-alumni.caltech.edu>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Pipe scraps
>
> Re:\"It is always a personal joy for me to see the worst looking and scrounged
> up kludges outperform the pretty and well thought out systems. Good
> goin' Barry!! The oval tubed, dozer crushed, TC will be hard to beat
> from a grungey esthetics point of view. You got me on that one. PVC is
> always a good TC tube material. Crushed or not!"
> It has almost always been my experience, both at home and at
> work, that the first cruddy, kludged together breadboard of something
> (even radar systems) seems to work better than the refined, beautifully
> manufactured "final model"..Some exotic form of Murphy's law, I think,
> but common knowledge among engineers.......
> Ed
Thanks Ed. Nice to note the key part of the last sentence here was "but
common knowledge amoung engineers"!! That gives affirmation to the big
difference between scientists and engineers. Engineers have to make
something work....right...not half-assed. Theory and math help us get to
the half-assed point....Fudge factors and inspired insight take us the
last mile or two as we battle nature to the mat for her last subtle
secrets to make smooth running systems.
Richard Hull, TCBOR