Technical Wonders Are Nice to Know About

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
October 28 1953

   WHEN so many people know so many things that you don't, you are forced to a couple of conclusions. Either you didn't go to the right night school or aren't alive enough to notice what's going on.
   It forever puzzles me how the other guy knows all about radio and television and automobiles and photography.  All are now part of the everyday.  People know about color tubes and how automatic transmissions work and about compression ratios and tape recorders and wide-angle lenses and exposure meters and communication gimmicks.

   EVERYBODY does but me.  All I know is when a tire is flat and when I need gas.  I know when the radio is out of kilter and when the phone line is busy.  That about covers my capacity in the technical field.
   A pal of mine, name of Bill Weber, knows all about these mysteries, though and took up the technological cudgels in my behalf a couple of years ago.  He soon should be convinced he's tilling barren ground.  I'm as dumb now as I was then and why he bothers I don't know.  Maybe because when our canasta group gets together and he isn't telling about the traveling salesman he usually yaks about the march of science and would be happier if my responses were a shade sharper than "You don't mean to tell me!" or "For gosh sakes!"

   TO HELP get me abreast of today's world he invited me to an open house at the phone company last winter.  I covered 12 floors and saw science at work on each one but all I took away was a souvenir key ring and a rose for my wife.
   They exposed  me to crossbar switches, line finders, horizontal intermediate distributing frames, circuit breakers and normal post-contacts and I didn't get the foggiest notion of what any of it was about.
   I saw a microwave demonstration and , on a burst of mad impulse, asked the guide why they still used wire if microwave was so hot.  Why not put the whole works on a radio relay system and get rid of all that wire?  I doubt that my proposal went into the company suggestion box.  The guide gave me a smile both patronizing and withering, like it would be just as well if I would keep my ears open and my mouth shut.

   BILL SAID the other night we should go to the camera show at the Radisson and maybe I could pick up an interesting hobby and also learn to take pictures.  I told him I already could.  My wife gave a bitter laugh at that and recalled the snaps I took last summer with the heads cut off.  I said maybe I should take our box Brownie to the camera show and make like one of the boys but she thought that would be a bit ostentatious.
   While we drove to the show in Bill's car he explained about the transmission.  He said it had a direct drive clutch which engaged when you were going from 20 to 60 miles an hour--depending how hard you poured on the gas.  Torque-converter action then stopped, he said, and the car was in solid mechanical direct drive.  Just like it was, I guess, after they got rid of the horse.
   I didn't know what he was talking about so had no notion whether the contraption was good or bad.  My only conviction about cars is that the motor industry's finest hour came with the self-starter and when they abandoned the notion that the side-curtain was adequate for keeping the riding public out of the wet.

TO ANYONE who doesn't know an F 2.8 lens from the butt end of a beer bottle the camera show was quite an eye-opener.  I trailed along behind Bill, letting him ask the questions while I gaped around and mumbled "gee whiz" and "what will they think of next?"
   When I got home I told my wife it was high time we got into the three-D home movie act.  I told her about the tape recorders and fancy cameras and projectors I had seen.  I said we should begin enjoying such stuff right away.  I said it was time we began living.
   "You can't get into an argument with me there," she said.

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