Static & Crosstalk
Dr. E. Thomas Chesworth
Horse Feathers
In the 19th century Victorian Era, the world changed in Great Britain and in most of the rest of the world too. We call that period of change the Industrial Revolution. It was driven by the steam engine, which multiplied our ability to perform work. With a steam engine you could run a mill. The engine powered a bellows system that allowed us to make iron and steel. It turned spindles that allowed us to make cloth, and it later freed us to go to school till we were adolescents and so learn to read and gain leisure time to watch Monday Night Football.
A horse is only one horsepower; a steam engine can be hundreds of horse power. Mounted on a wagon, an engine could get you from London to Edinboro in a few days instead of a few weeks, and mounted on a boat, it took you from Bristol to New York in a week instead of a month. You didn't have to live in California to eat oranges -- you only had to live within a mile of the railroad.
Later, in the 20th century, electric motors, Otto cycle and diesel engines took over some of the work, but most electric generators are run by steam engines -- even the nuclear-powered ones. Otto cycle engines and gasoline may be on the way out. In any case the Industrial Revolution seems to have cooled down but another revolution has taken its place -- the computer-driven Information Revolution.
Information revolution is a bit of a misnomer since it is more of an intellectual revolution. Just as the steam engine multiplied man's ability to perform physical work, the computer multiplies man's ability to think. With a computer you can predict the weather ten days in advance. You can overlay star images and discover planets -- literally hundreds of planets that belong to other stars in our galaxy.
You can even learn to fly an airplane in a flight simulator that does everything but kill you if you crash. I have been in a ship's bridge simulator that makes you seasick if you don't have sea legs and lets you practice pulling an oil tanker into the harbor at Valdez without alarming Green Peace. I was amazed to find that most modern ships are run by computers. Using GPS they can sail right out of a slip in New York harbor to Charlotte Amalie in the Caribbean without intervention by captains, mates or able seamen. The only reason for an officer on the bridge is to decide what to do if a sailboat or fishing boat gets in the way. There's no use ramming a fishing boat, but a sailboat is different. You get ten points for sinking one.
You also can get the computer to solve the complicated field equations that describe the interference fields generated and emitted by a piece of electronic equipment and present three-dimensional images in glorious colors, even if the equipment hasn't been built yet. You can move clads and components around and put in grounds and bypasses all before the board is laid out and be about 95% certain that the physical realization of your design will have predicted the EMI fields.
If you make a model of the airplane, it will not fly but will fall to the ground like a rock. It really is flying by wire and the computer is pulling the wires.