I assume you don't mean \pounds 25.00 (A 'pony' is a slang expression over here for that sum of money). So I hace to wonder just what you want a young horse for (Ues, I am well aware that youngish girls often have this desite, but I didn't think that applied to you). -tony

On 10/16/10 5:21 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: http://www.funnypicturemarathon.com/pictureView.php?picId=6226 -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Sat, 16 Oct 2010, Roger Merchberger wrote: But a "pony car" isn't such a big deal

Chuck Guzis wrote: I thought the same claims were made about the Difference Engine #2, but there is now an existence proof that it works, since two working units have been made. Another claim was that in the 19th century, parts couldn't be manufactured to sufficiently tight tolerances. However, measurements of the portion of the Difference Engine #1 that was constructed by Babbage's engineer, Joseph Clement, from 1824 to 1833 show that he was in fact able to meet the tolerances required. It was Clement that proposed standardization of screw threads, a cause taken up by Joseph Whitworth.

With one big difference - it was basically unbuildable by the British machinists of the time. By the early 1830s or so, North American, and especially middle European, machinists had moved to more modern tooling and practices and displaced the British as the best machinists. By the 1860s the British were quite far behind. You can see this with guns, clocks, lab instruments, telescopes, and such. Had Babbage been German or Swiss or living in Rhode Island, things today might be very different. -- Will

On 17/10/2010 8:23 PM, Eric Smith wrote: I suspect it comes under *mass production * of parts all the same quality. That did not come about until the late 19 th century. Also I think I read that it was common to have errors in blue prints of the time, so industrial theft would be harder to achieve. Ben.

Real mass production? Enough to make a full Engine without having to pick and choose parts to get them all to work? The US armories were making pretty good guns with real interchangeable parts during this period, with the technology becoming child's play by the mid century. The same can not be said about the British armories. Guns and clocks are remarkably handy items for benchmarking mechanical technology. Two very different mass produced precision machines, basically. -- Will

there are some fascinating statements here that would indicate that clock making and the associated requirement for precision was *the* major force behind the start of mass production and that many early mass production advocates were far more concerned with precision and quality than is commonly assumed! www.infobritan.co.uk/mass_production.htm steve On 10/17/2010 8:13 PM, William Donzelli wrote:

that would make a lot of sense... if not leading, at least influencing and developing in parallel... steve On 10/18/2010 8:18 AM, William Donzelli wrote:

On 18 Oct 2010 at 12:41, Fred Cisin wrote: I seem to recall an article in Smithsonian or American Heritage some time ago that put forth the idea of crediting Eli Whitney with the mass production of interchangeable parts is overstating the point somewhat. He neither invented the concept (that goes to a Frenchman) nor did his muskets achieve the goal--parts required quite a bit of "tweaking" to get them to fit. --Chuck

On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, William Donzelli wrote: "FIRST" is always suspect in history, and particularly in technology. And the history books in the educational system are BOGUS.

I am loathe to extend this off topic further, but I can't pass up this lead in... For several decades my family was in the cotton ginning business. (As a slight nod to classic computing, I wrote a management system for the gin about 20 years ago.) So when dad was in college he was dating this one girl. When he told her that his family had a cotton gin, she responded: "I didn't know they made gin out of cotton!" BLS