Are we better off in an age of microchips... Or not?

[sirhrmechanic]

Was at one of the best museums in the Northeast today, the American Precision Museum in Windsor, Vt. The cradle of precision in America and the headwaters of the Precision Valley that went from Vermont all the way down the CT River and the Hudson River to NYC.

And they had this gem on display. A 1930's optical analog bullet chronograph...

Reminds me of the first Geiger counter developed by the Curie's... (or maybe not a geiger counter... but a device to measure radioactive emanations...) it has the same insane genius. But it worked! And this was from the '30's! Well into the modern firearm era.

And now you know how they chronographed bullets in the pre-electronics age.

I really want to find one of these at a yard sale...

Sirhr

 

[pmclaine]

You just know some Pvt shot the brass column every once in a while......

 

[6.5SH]

The staggering bit there for me is it says patented in 1874.

 

[mtrmn]

Vintage awesomeness that today's dumbed down masses would never be able to invent.

 

[ZG47A]

The staggering bit there for me is it says patented in 1874.

It is my understanding that Navez, another Belgian artillery officer, patented the first practical chronograph but it had the disadvantage that you had to take the readings and interpret them by going to a table; whereas Boulenge improved the indicator part of the system. Great work by both men. I have read that Bashforth, in Great Britain, further improved the system.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

Bashforth... what a great British name....

Sirhr

 

[308pirate]

To be quite honest, I bet those men would have killed to have an Oehler system back then.

 

[RPN]

To be quite honest, I bet those men would have killed to have an Oehler system back then.

Someone would have had to invent the correct batteries first.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.....

 

[OREGUN]

That’s a cool piece of vintage ingenuity for sure. To answer the question though, we are way better off. I have no interest in living even one day in any past more distant than that which I can personally remember....and I wouldn’t choose to go back to the 80s.
Nostalgia for the good old days is more fantasy than reality.

 

[308pirate]

and I wouldn’t choose to go back to the 80s

I sure as hell would

 

[Charger442]

id have loved to be there when they measured that they broke 3,000 FPS with the .250...... the birth of the wildcat and firearms ammunition innovations flowed forth like a rushing river ever since.

 

[GrumpyOleFart]

As much as I love vintage craftsmanship, I'm also a fan of defibrillators, pacemakers, titanium and carbon prosthetics, microwave ovens, and Pornhub.

 

[Son of Dorn]

titanium and carbon prosthetics

Just saying, this is pretty damn badass for being made before that:

Object of Intrigue: the Prosthetic Iron Hand of a 16th-Century Knight

Fierce German mercenary knight Götz von Berlichingen loved a good feud. As a soldier for hire in the early 1500s, he and his rogue crew of rabble-rousers...

www.atlasobscura.com

 

[GrumpyOleFart]

I saw a ballista launched in Denmark.
Awesome.

 

[sirhrmechanic]

I saw a ballista launched in Denmark.
Awesome.

Right? A Civil War Mountain Howitzer with solid shot would smash a modern armored car like an egg...

A Tredegar Mountain Rifle of the same period put a 2" exploding shell into a flour barrel (the size of a double hung window) at one mile, first shot every time with a trained crew. And it fires on powder you can make in a sink.

A Whitworth Rifle from the civil war period made fatal shots at 1K yards. Minute of General on more than one occasion.

A Colt Walker has almost the muzzle energy of a .44 Magnum. And until the development of the Magnum, was the most powerful handgun ever fielded.

Don't write off old technology. It's not as easy. Or user friendly. And can't do what a Paladin can do. But damn straight it works.

SIrhr

 

[Son of Dorn]

I saw a ballista launched in Denmark.
Awesome.

My dad and I built a trebuchet almost 20 years ago for a school project (they clamped down on the trebuchet contest after that because my class went a bit... overboard). It's not really a siege weapon; it's too small and not powerful enough to fling heavy stone into a wall. But fit a heavy lead fishing weight to a length of cord with a loop on one end? It'll fling it quite a long ways and bury it half a foot into the ground. It's impressive enough seeing it loose, but a full-size one? Bet it'd be terrifying.

 

[GrumpyOleFart]

It was impressive.
They flung the blocks out into a lake.
By all accounts they had chucked one into a field, and it kept bouncing for another 300 or so metres.
I'll dig up the photos.
Nothing wrong with old technology.
It'll kill you as surely as new tech.
I have a book about General Lee's Sharp Shooters.
Some impressive shots, and a fair few Union officers fell to them.

 

[hlee]

Vintage awesomeness that today's dumbed down masses would never be able to invent.

I have a robot that sweeps my house, while simultaneously mapping it and adjusting for rearranged furniture and pets, that periodically returns to its base to recharge and empty its dust bin, on a schedule that I program, controlled from an app on my phone. But, yeah measuring bullet speed with 2 falling rods... It IS cool on its own merits.