Um, bellcranks are still used to control planes today.
It works perfectly well in my Cherokee 180.
I think your way off base here.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Isbell, W5JAI" <jim.isbell at gmail.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Cc: "Tom Jennings" <tomj at wps.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: origins of "kludge"
Actually the term goes back much further than
that. Back in the early
days of flying machines the French were in the forefront of aircraft
design. In the early days the use of a "stick" to control the flying
surfaces used various levers and lines. The French used a system
whereby the "stick" was connected to a bell shaped device with lines
connected to both the forward and aft sides of the bell that
controlled the elevators and lines connected to the right and left
sides of the bell to control the ailerons. When the bell was pushed
forward at the top the forward edge went down and the line was
extended and the rear edge went up, pulling on that line. This
deflected the elevator..etc...etc...
This was a rather unwieldy system to say the least....but hell, what
would you expect from the French?
The French word for "bell" is "cloche" which is pronounced not
un-similarly to kludge. Thus, this word was bastardized by the
Americans and an unwieldy arrangement came to be known as a cloche or
later as a Kludge.
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:57:18 -0800 (PST), Tom Jennings <tomj at wps.com>
wrote:
I know this could be the start of YET ANOTHER
thread "Oh I think
it's older than that..." but to avoid that, let's raise the
standard from opinion/hearsay to printed word.
Man I wish I had a collection of pre-1980 DATAMATIONs!
From _ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMPUTER SCIENCE_(Van Nostrand), 1976:
KLUDGE
The word "kludge" is a term coined by Jackson Granholm in an
article "How to design a kludge" in _DATAMATION_ (February 1962).
The definition is given as "an ill-sorted collection of poorly
matched parts, forming a distressing whole". The design of every
computer contains some anomalies that prove to be annoying to the
users and wghich the designer wishes he had done differently. If
there are enough of these, the machine is called a "kludge".
By extention, the term has come to be applied to programs,
documentation, and even computer centers, so that the definition
is not "an ill-conceiverd and hence unreliable system that has
accumulated through patchwork, expediancy, and poor planning".
The first kludge article triggered five others ("How to maintain a
kludge", etc) in subsequent issues of _DATAMATION_. Four of the
articles may be found in the book _FAITH, HOPE AND PARITY_ edited
by Josh Moshman, Thompson Book Company, 1966.
-- F. Gruenberger
[Said book found at abebooks...]
--
Jim Isbell
"If you are not living on the edge, well then,
you are just taking up too much space."
W5JAI
UltraVan #257
CAL - 27 #221