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Re: [Amps] The genius of ham radio

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] The genius of ham radio
From: Paul <paul@g4dcv.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 10:07:33 +0000
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
Hi Charly

Really? Is that how you'd like commercial airline designers to work?

I can't let that reference to Richard Feynman go past without comment. He really was a genius. His Feynman digrams made Dirac's work on Quantum Physics accessible to many other scientists and he got the Nobel Prize as a result. Feynman was invited onto the Rogers Commission and although he was a theoretical physicist, he demonstrated what the problem was in a very practical way when he put the O ring material into iced water. He cut through all the smoke and mirrors to get to the heart of the problem.

BTW and as an aside. While there isn't any evidence I know of that Feynman was a radio amateur, he was very interested and almost one of us. He described how he loved messing around with old radios as a kid. And he pirated. In his book, Surely You are Joking Mr Feynman, he says of the time he was working in Brazil, "I found an amateur radio operator in Brazil, and about once a week I'd go over to his house. He'd make contact with the ham radio operator in Passadena. and then, because there was something slightly illegal about it, he'd give me some call letter and would say, "Now I'll turn you over to WKW, who's sitting next to me and would like to talk to you. The first guy went on vacation, but he gave me another amateur radio operator to go to. This second guy was blind and operated his station. They were both very nice, and the contact I had with Caltech by ham radio was very effective and useful to me."

73 Paul G4DCV

On 12/01/2015 06:51, Charles Henry wrote:
Roger roger, Roger......I have read about the best science of its age swearing the Earth 
is flat, torturing people saying the Earth circles the Sun, and lately that objects, 
matter, can be in two places at the same time.  "Knowledge" is a slippery thing.
My point is that the genius of ham radio, not highly financed esoteric 
research, is making things work, being the only way of getting a message 
passed, inventing cell phone systems, heck... inventing radio itself.
We have to listen to the one genius way down in the bowels of the hierarchy who 
keeps saying that a frozen bit of foam will puncture a big hole in the Shuttle 
wing or that a rubber O-ring freezes when there are icicles on the whole launch 
structure.   Oh, go ahead and launch... what does HE know!
73, Charly




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