What exactly is "exact" (was Clean Singleton Docstrings)

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 19 July 2016 13:46:37 Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

> On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 12:07:25 AM UTC+12, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > This klystron amplifier, a new one of which was north of $125,000 in
> > the 1970's when I learned about them, is a long tube, around 5 feet
> > long with alternating sections of copper tubeing and ceramic
> > insulators separating the copper sections. Typically 4 ceramic
> > sections, each of which was sealed to a section of copper equiped
> > with contact rings on each end of the copper sections. A tunable box
> > cavity connected the copper sections together, bridging the ceramic
> > spacer, so that when the tube was "dressed" with these cavity's, and
> > lowered into its focusing magnet, (2200 lbs) you could feed about 1
> > watt of signal into the top cavity...
>
> What is this “watt” of which you speak? How much is that in
> foot-poundals per second?

A unit of electrical power, simplified to 1 volt at 1 amp = 1 watt when 
that currant is passed thru a 1 ohm resistor.  But since the majority of 
radio frequency stuff is designed for a characteristic impedance of 50 
ohms, then the currant is 20 milliamps while the voltage rises to 50 
volts.

And I am not familiar with this foot-poundals per second that you 
question about, but just from the wording I'd say it is a fifty dollar 
way to say horsepower. Which is defined in the area of exerting a force 
to a 440 pound weight, sufficient to lift that weight one foot in one 
second.

Thats for an average horse. I was once in the seat of a stuck in the mud 
clear above the drawbar of a 1930's Case LA farm tractor. About 8500 
lbs. Daddy whistled up King & Colonial, a pair of perches that between 
them weighted a hundred or so above the 4000 pound mark on the dial at 
the elevator. :) He also dug out a brace & bit to make a new double-tree 
out of a 7 foot length of well seasoned Iowa oak cut full native size of 
2" thick by 12" wide.  And despite the rationing in effect at the end of 
WW-II when this took place, found a lb of sugar cubes for his overall 
pocket.  Harnessing up the perches, he hooked the traces to this new 
double-tree, and cleviced a 75 foot length of 1/2" chain to it. He 
brought them down to where the tractor could be reached from fairly dry 
ground, drug that chain down and hooked it to the back frame of the 4 
bottom 16" plow I was pulling at the time, pulled the hitch pin after 
digging down to it, waded back the the perches and took a place where he 
could grab the bridals and made tsk tsk noises. Pulling the plow was 
done so it would not be in the way.  Lead them back and brought the 
chain back & hooked it to the drawbar.  Walking back to the horses he 
had a small handfull of sugar cubes in each hand and gave it to them. 
Then grasping the bridals again, a push forward with the tsk tsk. Then a 
whoa. They had found they were stuck and would need to put some real 
pull on that chain the next time, which they did, digging a trench under 
their bellies for about 10 feet when daddy said whoa again. The tractor 
had moved.  So he gave me instructions to put it in reverse and to be 
ready to slam the clutch lever home the next time it moved.

After a breather, wash, rinse and repeat and the tractor was back on dry 
ground.  At peak pull, that 75 feet of 1/2" log chain was up in the air 
about 6" in the middle.  Now if any of you know how to convert that 
mid-sag amount, the pull on the chain can be deduced, its called the 
intercept point method. My guess is that that 4100 lbs of horseflesh 
were peaking at 10,000 lbs on the far end of that chain.  They of course 
can't do it for very long, 10 seconds perhaps, but by then I was loose 
and all they were dragging was the chain.

The horses got the rest of that pound of sugar cubes.  Those were the two 
most gentle giants I have ever lived around. WW-II ended just a couple 
months later with V-J day.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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