David Foster

Interesting Finds

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Someone mentioned the inventor & entrepreneur Joesph Gerber as being the developer of numerically-controlled machines for fabric cutting, as well as a lot of other things. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen Gerber plotting machines in the past, but had never thought about the man behind the company name. He sounded interesting enough that I bought a copy of his biography, written by his son David Gerber: The Inventor’s Dilemma.  And it’s an interesting story indeed.

Joseph Gerber escaped Nazi Austria in 1940, coming to the United States where he completed high school in just two years while learning English and holding down full-time and part-time jobs. While a junior at RPI, he developed his first commercially-successful invention: the Gerber Variable Scale, which assists in multiplying graphical data by constants.  He later invented and marketed the Gerber Derivimeter, used to find the derivative at points on a curve and the Gerber Equameter, used to determine the equation of a curve based on a mathematical series such as Fourier series and polynomial expansions.  His company went on the pioneer the development of digital plotters and digitizers to convert graphical data into digital form.  Overall, he and the company he founded were granted more than 600 patents. Probably Gerber’s most significant work was in the development of numerically-controlled fabric cutters and numerically-controlled sewing machines–the trade magazine Bobbin Journal referred to him as Apparel’s Thomas Edison.

Researching Gerber and his accomplishments also led me to a remarkable trove of radio-program audio recordings from 1935 to 1953, the DuPont-sponsored series Cavalcade of America. This link contains 745 episodes of the program–the Gerber episode is #613, titled Young Man in a Hurry. It was broadcast in 1950, following Gerber’s invention of the Variable Scale but quite early in his career. More about the series and the Gerber episode here.

The Cavalcade of America series continued on television from 1952-1957, and quite a few episodes can be found on YouTube.

The idea that substantial parts of the apparel and shoe industries might return to the US has been derogated in some quarters, but one or two creative and entrepreneurial individuals of the Joe Gerber class might well make it possible.

An Unexpected Defeat

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‘When the crocus blossoms,’ hiss the women in Berlin,
‘He will press the button, and the battle will begin.
When the crocus blossoms, up the German knights will go,
And flame and fume and filthiness will terminate the foe…
When the crocus blossoms, not a neutral will remain.’

(A P Herbert,  Spring Song, quoted in  To Lose a Battle, by Alistair Horne)

On May 10, 1940, German forces launched an attack against Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Few people among the Allies imagined that France would collapse in only six weeks: Churchill, for example, had a high opinion of the fighting qualities of the French army. But collapse is what happened, of course, and we are still all living with the consequences. General Andre Beaufre, who in 1940 was a young Captain on the French staff, wrote in 1967:

The collapse of the French Army is the most important event of the twentieth century.

If it’s an exaggeration, it’s not much of one. If France had held up to the German assault as effectively as it was expected to do, World War II would probably have never reached the nightmare levels that it in fact did reach. The Hitler regime might well have fallen. The Holocaust would never have happened. Most likely, there would have been no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe.

This campaign has never received much attention in America; it tends to be regarded as something that happened before the “real” war started. Indeed, many denizens of the Anglosphere seem to believe that the French basically gave up without a fight–which is a considerable exaggeration given the French casualties of around 90,000 killed and 200,000 wounded. But I think the fall of France deserves serious study, and that some of the root causes of the defeat are scarily relevant to today’s world.

First, I will very briefly summarize the campaign from a military standpoint, and will then shift focus to the social and political factors involved in the defeat.

France’s border can be thought of in terms of three sectors. In the north, the border with Belgium. Early French military planning had been based on the idea of a strong cooperative relationship with Belgium; however, in the years immediately prior to 1940, that country had adopted a position of neutrality and had refused to do any joint military planning with France. In the south, the border was protected by the forts of the Maginot Line (the southern flank of which was anchored by mountainous territory bordering on Switzerland and Italy). In between these regions was the country of the Ardennes. It was heavily wooded and with few roads, and the French high command did not believe it was a feasible attack route for strong forces. Hence, the Maginot Line had not been extended to cover it, and the border here was protected only with field fortifications.

The French plan was based on the assumption that the main German attack would come through Belgium. Following the expected request from the Belgian government for assistance, strong French forces were to advance into that country and counterattack the Germans. In the Maginot and Ardennes sectors, holding actions only were envisaged. While the troops manning the Maginot Line were of high quality, the Ardennes forces included a large proportion of middle-aged reservists, and had been designated as lower-class units.

The opening moves seemed to fit expectations. The Germans launched a powerful attack through Belgium, and the Belgian government made the expected requests for help. Andre Beaufre:

Doumenc sent me at once to Vincennes to report to General Gamelin (the French supreme commander). I arrived at 6.30 AM at the moment when the order had just been given for the huge machine to go into operation: the advance into Belgium. Gamelin was striding up and down the corridor in his fort, humming, with a pleased and martial air which I had never seen before. It has been said since that he expected defeat, but I could see no evidence of it at the time.

There was heavy fighting in Belgium…but the German attack on this country had served to mask their  real  point of maximum effort. Early in the morning of the 13th, it became clear that massive German forces were moving through the Ardennes, which had turned out to not be so impassable after all. A massive German air attack paved the way for a crossing of the Meuse river and the capture of the town of Sedan. French officers were stunned by the speed of the German advance–they had expected delays while the Germans brought up heavy artillery, not understanding that dive bombers could play a role similar to that traditionally played by artillery. And the bombing was psychologically-shattering, especially for inexperienced troops. The famous historian Marc Bloch had been exposed to many artillery barrages while fighting in the First World War: in reflecting on his service in 1940, he observed that he found aerial bombing much more frightening even though it was, objectively, probably less dangerous. (Bloch later joined the Resistance and was captured by the Germans and shot.)

The French command never really recovered from the unexpected thrust through the Ardennes and the fall of Sedan. Beginning on May 27, the British evacuated their troops at Dunkirk. On June 14, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned. He was succeeded by Philippe Petain, a hero of the First World War, who immediately sought terms with the Germans. The “armistice”–basically a surrender–was signed on June 20. By Hitler’s order, it was signed in the same railway car where the armistice of 1918 had been signed. Hitler was present in person for the ceremony: William Shirer was fifty yards away, and was studying his expression through binoculars:  It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph.

Many military factors were involved in the defeat–obsolete doctrine on armored forces, inadequate use of radio communications, a strange and cumbersome military organization structure, and a rigid and formalistic attitude among the members of the General Staff. But the roots of the 1940 debacle are not to be found only, or perhaps even primarily, in strictly military matters. A major role was played by certain characteristics of French society and politics of the time, and some of these factors are spookily similar to things that are going on in America today.

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Thinking, Memorizing, and AI

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A remark by @autumnpard on Memorization reminded me of an analogy I came up with some time back: A song by Jakob Dylan includes the following lines: Cupid, don’t draw back your bow Sam Cooke didn’t know what I know …note that in order to understand these two simple lines, you’d have to know several things:

1) You need to know that, in mythology, Cupid symbolizes love 

2) And that Cupid’s chosen instrument is the bow and arrow

3) Also that there was a singer/songwriter named Sam Cooke

4) And that he had a song called “Cupid, draw back your bow.”

“Progressive” educators insist that students should be taught “thinking skills” as opposed to memorization, and the advent of LLMs has further driven such thinking But consider: If it’s not possible to understand a couple of lines from a popular song without knowing by heart the references to which it alludes–without memorizing them–what chance is there for understanding medieval history, or modern physics, without having a ready grasp of the topics which these disciplines reference?

And also consider: what’s important is not just what you need to know to appreciate the song. It’s what Dylan needed to know to create it in the first place. At least in theory someone who heard the song and didn’t understand the allusions could have spent 5 minutes googling and figured them out, although this approach wouldn’t be exactly conducive to aesthetic appreciation. But had Dylan not already had the reference points–Cupid, the bow and arrow, the Sam Cooke song–in his head, there’s no way he would have been able to create his own lines. The idea that he could have just “looked them up,” which educators often suggest is the way to deal with factual knowledge, would be ludicrous in this context. And it would also be ludicrous in the context of creating new ideas about history or physics.

 To use a computer analogy, the things you know aren’t just data–they’re part of the program.  I’ve seen no evidence that there exists a known body of “thinking skills” so powerful that they bypass the need for detailed, substantive knowledge within specific disciplines. And if such meta-level thinking skills were to be developed, I suspect that the last place to find them would be in university Education departments.

There are skills which facilitate thinking across a wide range of disciplines: such things as formal logic, probability & statistics, and an understanding of the scientific method–and, most importantly, excellent reading skills. But things like these certainly don’t seem to be what the educators are referring to when they talk about “thinking skills.” What many of them seem to have in mind is more of a kind of verbal mush that leaves the student with nothing to build on.

There’s no substitute for actual knowledge. The flip response “he can always look it up” is irresponsible and ignores the way that human intellectual activity actually works.

None of which is to say that traditional teaching practices were all good. There was probably too much emphasis on rote memorization devoid of context–in history, dates soon to be forgotten, in physics, formulae without proper understanding of their meaning and applicability. (Dylan needed to know about Sam Cooke’s song; he didn’t need to know the precise date on which it was written or first sung.) But the cure is to provide the context, not to throw out facts and knowledge altogether–which is what all too many educators seem eager to do.

There really does seem to be a deep-seated hostility toward knowledge itself among many who define themselves as “educators.”  And a lot of students today are all too eager to use LLMs to do all of the work…or as much of it as they can get away with…to guard themselves against either learning anything at all or developing the ability to do focused and concentrated work.

See my earlier Thinking and Memorizing post, also Classics and the Public Sphere.

Your thoughts?

Retrotech: Technology in 1925–Transportation

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The twenties.  An era of Prohibition (and gangsters)…jazz…flappers…The Great Gatsby…and an accelerating stock market. I thought it might be fun to take a look at the state of technology as it stood a century ago, in 1925.  This second post of the series is focused on transportation: land, sea, and air.  (The first post, centering on communications and entertainment, is here.)

Land Transportation. Although there was much excitement and innovation around aircraft and automobiles, in 1925 the railroads still ruled, they were vital for passenger as well as freight transportation.  John Stilgoe’s book Metropolitan Corridor is an interesting exploration of the psychological and cultural impact of the tracks that connected the country.

No traditional spatial term, not urban, suburban, or rural, not cityscape or landscape, adequately identifies the space that perplexed so many turn-of-the-century observers. Reaching from the very hearts of great cities across industrial zones, suburbs, small towns, and into mountain wildernesses, the metropolitan corridor objectified in its unprecedented arrangement of space and structure a wholly new lifestyle. Along it flowed the forces of modernization, announcing the character of the twentieth century, and abutting it sprouted new clusters of buildings. Its particular juxtaposition of elements attracted the scrutiny of photographers and advertising illustrators; its romance inveigled poets and novelists; its energy challenged architects, landscape architects, and urban designers. Always it resisted definition in traditional terminology.

To many rural Americans, the Corridor was the connection to a more exciting and glamorous kind of life:

So magnificent was the Illinois Central crack express–The Panama Limited–that every day for twelve years the Sixth Mississippi District Court at Vaiden recessed so that everyone could watch it come through the station…Until the 1920s, such trains represented prosperity and the promise of greater prosperity, luxury, futuristic design, and urbanity. To some Depression-era watchers, the expresses announced good times returning; to others, they advertised an unequal distribution of wealth. Long before and well into the Depression, however, the fast trains bespoke a peculiarly American strassenromantik, one centered on cities flashing across farms and forests, attracting the wondering admiration of children and adults…Every railroad right-of-way shared in the glamor that lingered like a whiff of coal smoke left after the all-Pullman express had passed. In the remotest corners of rural American, in suburbs of broad lawns, in small towns, the luxury express advertised the crackling energy of urban industrial zones.

The steam locomotive was king, and hauled the vast majority of intercity traffic.  Some heavily-travelled corridors were electrified, as was freight service in some mountainous districts.  New York City had banned steam locomotives downtown effective in 1908, leading to the electrification of the relevant lines and the covering over of the New York Central tracks, thereby creating new and highly valuable real estate. (“Taking wealth from the air”)  Gasoline and diesel power were largely limited to rail yard work and local/suburban passenger service, but a  demonstration locomotive for diesel-electric power had been built by American Locomotive Company, GE, and Ingersoll-Rand in 1923, with the first commercial diesel-electric locomotive delivered in 1925.

The steam locomotive had been greatly improved from its earlier days. Boiler pressures had increased to around 200-250 psi, and superheaters had become common, increasing efficiencies by 25-30%.  Although manual firing was still used on smaller locomotives, the automatic stoker had been introduced in the early 1900s and was now common (I believe legally required) on larger engines.  Compound locomotives had been developed, and significantly improved efficiency, but were more commonly used in Europe than in the United States. Why? An article in the 1930 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine explains that while compound locomotives did save fuel, they required more maintenance-and in Europe, fuel was more expensive than in the US, but labor was cheaper–an interesting point, I think.

Safety by 1925 had been greatly improved from the early days of railroading; the air brake was key to this accomplishment, as were sophisticated interlocking signal systems. Centralized traffic control systems, which allowed a dispatcher to observe track occupancy and control signals and switches from an office dozens of miles away, were on the horizon–CTC would be introduced on the New York Central in 1927.

Electric trolleys were pervasive in most cities of any size–they had replaced earlier horse-drawn services that ran on tracks–but their dominance was beginning to be challenged by buses and automobiles.

On the roads, the Ford Model T was still the dominant product, with 15 million units being sold from its introduction in 1908 up through its replacement by the Model A in 1927.  The newer Ford would feature a self-starter and a three-speed transmission, as opposed to the hand-cranking and two-speed transmission with the Model T.  There were no automatic transmissions in 1925.  For manual shifting, the synchromesh had been invented in 1918, but it wasn’t introduced until 1928.

A Model T touring car in 1925 was priced at $260–that’s about $4700 in 2025 money. It’s estimated that about 40-45% of American families owned cars.  There were still at lot of working horses in the US–22 million in 1925, not that many below the 25 million in the peak year of 1920.

Trucking was primarily local, due in large part to the poor condition of intercity roads and the high state of development that had been reached by the railroads. If you were in a rural area and ordered something large and heavy from Sears or other mail order vendor (furniture, appliances), it would likely be delivered via rail to your local train station and you’d need to pick it up from there, or get somebody to do it for you.

Sea Transportation. Cargo ships were mostly powered by reciprocating steam engines, but there were still quite a few sailing vessels in use. Passenger liners were usually driven by steam turbines. The transatlantic speed record in 1925 was still held by the RMS Mauretania (sister ship of the Lusitania), with a service speed of 25-28 knots.  She carried 2165 passengers and also had a government mail contract.

Conversion of shipping from coal to oil fuel had begun in the early 1900s, but there were still a lot of coal-powered ships operating in 1925. Some experiments with steam-electric propulsion had been conducted immediately prior to WWI, but this propulsion mode turned out to be inferior for most purposes to the steam turbine with reduction gears.

Container freight had not yet been invented, so the loading and unloading of cargo at ports was very labor-intensive.

In naval warfare, the battleship still ruled at sea, but was being challenged by air-delivered bombs and torpedoes. In 1921, airpower advocate Billy Mitchell demonstrated that he could sink warships with bombs–including the former German battleship Ostfriesland, a ship that had proven its robust qualities by surviving 18 hits from British battleship guns and then striking a mine.

Air Transportation.  The aviation industry was advancing rapidly in 1925, but there was not much scheduled airline service yet in the US.  Air mail had been introduced in 1919, with a route between New York City and Washington DC, soon expanded to encompass NYC–Cleveland–Chicago.  Transcontinental service was introduced in 1920, using a combination of air and rail to avoid the need for night flying; 1924 marked the beginning of night airmail service. A major institutional change affecting aviation in 1925 was the Kelley Act, which provided that airmail would hence be carried by private contractors rather than government employees.

Aircraft were still mostly fabric-covered, and biplane construction was common. In 1925, the Ford Motor Company began production of the Ford Trimotor, an all-metal monoplane which carried 8-9 passengers, in addition to pilot, copilot, and stewardess.  Almost 200 of them were ultimately built, and quite a few of them are still flying. Cruising speed was 92 knots (107 mph). However, they weren’t yet available for service in 1925.

Gyroscopic instruments had solved the problem of maintaining control of an airplane without outside visual references, but this did not solve the problem of navigation in low visibility or at night.  The problem of navigation at night was partially solved by the construction of the lighted airways, with the major airways having been completed by 1925. Radio-range navigation would come later, although there may have been some limited use of radio direction finding to take bearings from commercial radio stations.

Dirigibles were viewed as an up-and-coming technology.  Germany had been a pioneer in the lighter-than-air field, having operated both military aircraft and limited passenger services in the years before the First World War.  Construction of large airships was not permitted by the terms of the Versailles Treaty; however, this provision was relaxed in 1925 and construction of the transatlantic airship Graf Zeppelin was begun.  The US Navy was excited by the potential of dirigibles as adjuncts to the surface fleet. The Los Angeles (pictured above) was built in Germany and delivered to the US as war reparations in 1924.  Among other things, it was intended as a flying aircraft carrier which would serve as a base for small fighter and observation planes.  She served until 1939.  The first helium-filled airship was another US Navy aircraft, the US-built Shenandoah, which first flew in 1923 and made the first crossing of North America by airship. She was destroyed in a squall line over Ohio in October 1925.

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Coupling (rerun with updates)

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(I was  reminded of this 2018 post by the massive power outage in Spain and Portugal)

No, this post is not about sex…sorry. Nor is it primarily about electrical engineering, though it might at first give that impression.)

The often-interesting General Electric blog (now defunct, following the breakup of GE into three separate companies) had an article about drones, linked to a cloud-based AI platform, which are used to inspect power lines and detect incipient problems–for example, vegetation which is threatening to encroach on the lines and short them out, or a transformer with a tendency to overheat.  The article mentions a 2003 event in which an encounter between an overgrown tree branch and a sagging power line resulted in a wide-area blackout that affected 50 million people.

The inspection drone sounds like a very useful and productivity-improving tool: obviously, inspecting thousands of miles of power lines is nontrivial job. But the deeper issue, IMO, is the fact that one problem in one place can propagate over such a wide area and affect such a vast number of people. Power system designers and the people who operate these systems are certainly aware of the need to minimize fault propagation:  circuit breakers and fuses, network analysis tools,  and the technologies of protective relaying were developed, by GE among others, precisely for reasons of fault localization.  But experience shows that large-scale fault propagation still sometimes does take place.

This problem is not limited to electrical systems.  The mention of the tree-branch-caused 2003 blackout reminded me of a passage from the historian Hendrik Willem Van Loon:

Unfortunately in the year 1914 the whole world was one large international workshop. A strike in the Argentine was apt to cause suffering in Berlin. A raise in the price of certain raw materials in London might spell disaster to tens of thousands of long-suffering Chinese coolies who had never even heard of the existence of the big city on the Thames. The invention of some obscure Privat-Dozent in a third-rate German university would often force dozens of Chilean banks to close their doors, while bad management on the part of an old commercial house in Gothenburg might deprive hundreds of little boys and girls in Australia of a chance to go to college.

This probably overstates the interconnectedness of the global economy as it existed in 1914, but would fit our present-day global economy very well.  (The author was talking about the origins of WWI, which he blamed largely on economic interconnectedness…not correct, IMO, but the war was largely caused, or at least reached the scale that it did, because of another type of interconnectedness…in the shape of alliances.)

I think much of the reaction against globalization is due to a realization, often-subconscious, that coupling can have bad effects as well as good ones…especially, a feeling that events are beyond the control of those who are most affected by them and have instead passed under the control of those with no “skin in the game”, to use Nassim Taleb’s terminology.

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