Re: A Sad Day

all I know is the sensitivity and enhanced s/n ratio of the
Gallium-Arsenide semiconductor can be used to great advantage in ones
front end... (don't know about girls though, their front ends are best
handle with bras I believe--or no bra even works for me! <grin>)

John

"Dave Heil" <k8mn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9OxEe.2945$Uk3.2149@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> LenAnderson@xxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>> From a quick trip to the living room bookshelves -
>>
>> "...the fountain pen was invented in 1884. Then in the 1930s
>> Ladislau Biro, a Hungarian artist and journalist, invented the
>> ball-point pen in Budapest. He fled when the Second World War
>> broke out, eventually reaching Argentina."
>> " With the help of his brother Georg, a chemist, he perfected
>> the pen and manufactured it in Buenos Aires during the war. In
>> 1944 he sold his interests in the invention to one of his
>> backers, who produced the Biro pen for the Allied air forces
>> because it was not affected by changes in air pressure."
>>
>> From Reader's Digest "How In The World?" 1990, published
>> in Pleasantville, NY, and Montreal, Canada, page 14.
>>
>> In fiction, novelist Len Deighton's excellent 5th book in his
>> 'WWOCP' espionage series, "Horse Under Water," 1963, is the
>> discovery of a ball-point pen in the submerged wreckage of
>> a German submarine, said submarine supposedly sunk prior to
>> 1944 (it wasn't and was used in post-WW2 times to smuggle
>> contraband and heroin - the "horse" of the title).
>>
>> A ball-point pen requires SOME air pressure INSIDE the ink
>> reservoir in order for it to feed ink. Without that, there
>> would be a partial pressure loss inside the ink tube that would
>> inhibit ink flow. Yes, it works by capilliary action at the
>> TIP, but that requires feeding from the ink reservoir INSIDE
>> the pen. The ink is oil-based, of more viscosity than the ink
>> in fountain pens (which are entirely operating on gravity and
>> capilliary action). While a ball-point pen can operate at
>> high altitudes much better than a fountain pen, both are
>> inhibited in writing action in microgravity. The "Biro Pen"
>> use by the RAF in 1944 may lead, erroneously, to its alleged
>> ability to be used in microgravity.
>>
>> Similarly, the Phase-Locked Loop or PLL was invented in France
>> in 1932! The basic PLL principle was not adaptable to any
>> consumer electronics frequency control applications until the
>> 1960s and the availability of digital circuit packages. That
>> principle led to the Fractional-N frequency synthesis and,
>> quickly, to the Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) now found in
>> single chip products of Advanced Micro Devices. An offshoot
>> of the original PLL was the "locked oscillator" operating at
>> a multiple of a reference frequency. The locked oscillator
>> principle was used in early TV receivers for sweep circuits
>> but its fussiness in operation confined it to limited
>> commercial applications.
>
> Fascinating! It is really tough to write with one of those PLLs.
>
> How about filling us in on Gallium-Arsenide substrates, Len?
>
> Dave K8MN


.

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