[HN Gopher] We'll buy back your Typewriter for Uncle Sam
___________________________________________________________________
We'll buy back your Typewriter for Uncle Sam
Author : pncnmnp
Score : 113 points
Date : 2024-10-06 11:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pncnmnp.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (pncnmnp.github.io)
| kgeist wrote:
| >What's fascinating is that Smith-Corona is still in existence
| today. Wikipedia provides a great overview of how they have
| managed to adapt through several millennia of innovation
|
| Did they mean "decades"? (English is not my native language)
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| They meant centuries.
| pncnmnp wrote:
| Thanks, my mistake. I've corrected it. In my initial draft, I
| wanted to convey a sense of "enduring innovation" so I used
| that term symbolically as a placeholder. It went right past
| me during the final edits.
| initramfs wrote:
| https://ploum.net/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/index....
| sevensor wrote:
| That was a good read, thanks for posting! I suspect in 50 years
| it will become much clearer what the 50 year computer is. The
| leading edge still moves at a blistering rate, but computing
| devices are so widespread now that eddies full of slower moving
| technology are inevitable. I'm not sure the 50 year computer
| will happen on purpose, either. Just as likely, a community
| forms around some gadget that was made for another purpose, and
| in its afterlife it turns out to have been unusually well
| designed. Consider the surviving typewriters. Typewriters used
| to break down all the time. We had typewriter repairmen. The
| typewriters that remain were lucky: well designed, well
| maintained, well kept. A lot of bad typewriters are rusting in
| landfills.
| jdietrich wrote:
| This advertisement was published shortly before Smith-Corona
| started production of 1903A3 rifles.
|
| https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/the-smith-corona-mo...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The popular image of WWII is of the late-war technology. We
| have forgotten that when the US entered the war it did so with
| gun tech that was already forty years old, tech that was
| regarded as oldschool during the _previous_ war.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| This understates civilian firearms development that was
| cutting edge. Notably the Thompson gun and BAR. Of course the
| US then kneecapped the industry with the NFA. The 1911, while
| being an old design lasted for many more decades as well.
| mhalle wrote:
| NFA == National Firearms Act
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
| hotspot_one wrote:
| 1911 is still a great design. yeah, single-action trigger,
| but there are draw techniques which rack the slide and the
| gun is designed to enable these-- and double-action
| requires a heavier first trigger pull, which can throw your
| aim off both for the first shot (heavy pull) and second
| shot (massively easier pull but you are expecting heavy).
|
| Yeah, small magazine compared to 9mm, but that's because
| police tactics have changed; the 1911 was not designed for
| "fire and maneuver" tactics. 1911 is more "one shot stop",
| something which 9mm doesn't do reliably.
| dmoy wrote:
| I agree somewhat generally, but some minor things:
|
| > yeah, single-action trigger, but there are draw
| techniques which rack the slide and the gun is designed
| to enable these
|
| The 1911 is sorta designed to be carried with a round in
| the chamber and the hammer cocked, relying on the grip
| safety and thumb safety.
|
| But militaries often didn't (still don't sometimes?) have
| people outside of MP carry pistols that way, because the
| pistol is a last resort backup. The accident rate from
| stupid during normal times outweighs the benefit of a
| fractionally faster draw in the rare case of use.
|
| Which brings to the second point:
|
| > 1911 is more "one shot stop", something which 9mm
| doesn't do reliably.
|
| That was the working theory for many decades (like....
| 8-9 decades). That's been thoroughly disproved by modern
| science and ballistics. Size of pistol bullet doesn't
| really do anything (compared to other pistol calibers
| that can penetrate far enough), but increased accuracy
| does work much better. This is especially true in a
| military context where the rifle _is_ designed around one
| shot stop (mostly due to 3-4x faster velocities).
|
| Law enforcement agencies will still make bad decisions
| around this for political / optical reasons. See e.g. the
| FBI's terrible choice of going to 10mm, backing off to
| 40s&w, and then finally coming around to 9mm
| bombcar wrote:
| Pistols are horrible weapons, and anyone who HAS to use
| guns will do anything they can to avoid having to rely on
| a pistol.
|
| You use a pistol because you need it to be small,
| unobtrusive, or it's your last option.
|
| A rifle or a shotgun is almost always better than a
| pistol if you don't have the size constraints (which are
| sometimes optics - a police office with a holstered gun
| looks way less threatening than one with a rifle).
| qball wrote:
| >something which 9mm doesn't do reliably
|
| Neither does .45, of course. Handguns (well, 9mm anyway)
| dispense what is functionally a single pellet of
| buckshot- the pellets (while still potentially lethal)
| aren't that powerful on their own, which is why the
| shotgun launches 8 of them at a time.
|
| >but there are draw techniques which rack the slide and
| the gun is designed to enable these
|
| The 1911 was designed back when pistol doctrine was
| "carry with chamber empty" and "fire one-handed", despite
| that not being particularly conducive to accuracy.
| Pistols are a badge of rank more than anything else; the
| overwhelming majority of military casualties caused by
| them are same-side (used on deserters, etc.).
|
| >small magazine compared to 9mm
|
| Not really. Remember that until the '80s, the concept of
| a "double-stack" handgun was limited to the Hi-Power;
| every other 9mm handgun had a capacity of 7-8 rounds,
| just like the 1911. And now you know why revolvers lasted
| so long in service- because not only were you not giving
| up capacity in those days, but you had a consistent and
| safe (though heavy) trigger pull, and you could use
| hollow-point ammunition without risk of a jam (which
| 1911s are just flat out unreliable with).
| youainti wrote:
| 45ACP has isn't much more better than 9mm (or even
| .380acp) at one shot stop.
|
| http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/an-alternate-look-
| at-h...
| vundercind wrote:
| A notable exception is the B-17, in use before the US entered
| the war. It's _the_ symbol of the US strategic bombing effort
| in pop culture, with a bunch of films centering around it.
| The B-29 only seems to get any notice because of the Enola
| Gay, and the B-24 Liberator is practically invisible in
| culture despite its large role.
|
| I think it's because the B-17 raids were so dramatic.
| Airspace still heavily contested, the Allies still figuring
| out how to use air power.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The B-17 was a big marketing and propaganda coup.
|
| It was pretty much obsolete at the beginning of the war.
| The "Flying Fortress" moniker, the (mostly bullshit) notion
| that the bomber would always get through and defend itself,
| the powerful imagery of battered bombers coming home, and
| the terrible sacrifices made by the crews made it a
| legendary symbol.
|
| The B-24 wasn't a pretty plane. The B-29 came too late in
| the war, and was only deployed in the Pacific.
|
| Personally, I find the glorification of the daylight
| bombing campaigns increasingly gross as I get older. Those
| men paid a very high price and I wonder if that sacrifice
| was truly justified.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Personally, I find the glorification of the daylight
| bombing campaigns increasingly gross as I get older.
| Those men paid a very high price and I wonder if that
| sacrifice was truly justified.
|
| German here. Given what they fought against, yes it was.
| Visit any of the too many concentration camp sites across
| Europe... it's definitely worth the time.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| > Given what they fought against
|
| Mass murder of civilians isn't morally acceptable no
| matter what the "other side" is doing.
|
| Firebombing a kindergarten in the Rheinland doesn't do
| anything to help someone in an extermination camp in
| occupied Poland.
|
| Post war analysis of allied strategic bombing indicates
| that it did not have a large impact on the war effort and
| probably wasn't worth the high rate of loss of the
| expensive airframes and crews.
| oneshtein wrote:
| MAD is accepted strategy of USA and other nuclear
| countries.
| hollerith wrote:
| >Post war analysis of allied strategic bombing indicates
| that it did not have a large impact on the war effort
|
| The bombing didn't cause the German people to overthrow
| their government like Allied leaders hoped it would, but
| it did significantly impact the war IMHO by decreasing
| German production of essential materials like refined oil
| products, particularly lubricants, ball bearings,
| airframes and probably other materials.
|
| Even if _no_ factories had been hit, just the fact that
| the Germans underwent the expense and inefficiencies of
| distributing manufacturing among many small factories,
| some underground and some in caves (which the Germans did
| in fact do) would still have significantly decreased
| German production.
| vundercind wrote:
| One of those cold-calculus-of-war things is that if
| you're out-producing the enemy by (say) 5x, you can
| suffer 4:1 costs on an operation and still be "winning"
| in terms of causing more harm to their war effort than to
| yours. That is, you can spend four abstract units of war-
| fighting-capability to destroy one unit of theirs, and
| that's still a net-loss for them. If you don't have more
| effective ways to spend that (abstract) productivity, it
| may still be in your best interest to use it that way.
|
| It can make evaluating things like this tricky. So a raid
| that lost dozens of bombers and cost weeks in training
| time only put some part of their industry out of action
| for a couple weeks and diverted a week or so of other
| factory productivity for the rebuild and retooling effort
| --that looks bad, but could still actually be a deal you
| should take _every time_ under certain circumstances.
| vundercind wrote:
| I think the reference may have been to the efficacy of
| the effort at ending the war sooner, which is a topic of
| some debate I believe. You watch something like _12
| O'Clock High_ and wonder whether this "maximum effort"
| they were seeking to find (beyond which even the most
| dedicated and capable crewmen break down) was... worth
| it.
|
| The deliberate terror bombings that constituted some part
| of the effort, especially in the mid and late years, were
| also and separately awful, though the ethics somewhat
| muddied by the targeting of civilians having undergone a
| tit-for-tat ratcheting up early in the war, and yeah, the
| whole death camps thing. But there too the question of
| whether those deaths served any useful purpose, as far as
| ending the war sooner or reducing its scope, makes the
| whole thing even sadder.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > But there too the question of whether those deaths
| served any useful purpose, as far as ending the war
| sooner or reducing its scope, makes the whole thing even
| sadder.
|
| Well, given that an utter majority were supportive of the
| Nazi regime up until and even after the war ended... I'd
| say it was necessary, if only to set an example for any
| future offender just how brutal the crackdown will be.
|
| Unfortunately, the world failed to keep the reminder up
| on "genocide = bad and WILL lead to a brutal response" -
| the response towards Serbia in the 90s, Russia after 2014
| or Syria was way too lackluster IMHO.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I can accept that total warfare where the population was
| the target as a "thing" in that type of conflict. A dirty
| business, but reality.
|
| The daylight raid aspect, however, seems to me to be more
| grounded in ego and dogma than military utility. I don't
| think avoidance of civilian casualties was a deciding
| factor. Those airmen were sent into a meat-grinder.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The daylight raid aspect, however, seems to me to be
| more grounded in ego and dogma than military utility. I
| don't think avoidance of civilian casualties was a
| deciding factor. Those airmen were sent into a meat-
| grinder.
|
| They were, but also remember that back in 1945 there was
| no such thing as GPS or any kind of more precise
| navigation than a compass, a sextant and star charts. It
| was very easy to get lost at night or to hit some
| mountain, particularly as Germans were pretty strict in
| enforcing _Verdunkelung_ [1].
|
| Flying during daytime was obviously more risky because AA
| defense can see you, but it was also less risky because
| navigation was easier - and more precise, because you
| could actually see where you were.
|
| [1]
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdunkelung_(Luftschutz)
| bee_rider wrote:
| Like the concept of strategic bombing at all (which is
| pretty... questionable... in terms of effectiveness), or
| the idea of doing it in daylight specifically?
|
| I thought the one redeeming feature of daylight runs was
| that they could at least hit some targets, rather than
| just... hitting cities and towns in general.
| vundercind wrote:
| Especially in the early war, when navigation and
| targeting tech was worse, yeah, accuracy was a major
| concern.
|
| I think the benefits of night fighting were also more
| mixed than one might think, due to the increase of air
| accidents--the accident rate in the war was so high that
| it was responsible for the overwhelming majority of lost
| airframes, not enemy fire. If you need more missions to
| achieve the same effect on a target (because accuracy is
| worse) and your crash rate goes up because flying at
| night (enemy activities aside) is riskier than during the
| day, I could see that making it less of an absolute win
| even before considering increased collateral damage
| (which, at least at times, they do seem to have genuinely
| preferred to minimize)
| bluGill wrote:
| Lots of people wonder if it was justified. Since then
| many historians have examined this and concluded that
| many of those bombing increased enemy support for the war
| and so were counter productive. Bombing of munitions
| factories and other military installations is still
| useful, but bombing cities like was often done in WWII is
| not considered a good idea.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Tell this to Russians.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Well, Hitler could have told them that, certainly.
| Doesn't matter whether you're talking about the UK or
| Ukraine... bombing civilians pisses them off and
| redoubles their commitment to the fight. It's a waste of
| munitions, because you'll never kill enough civilians to
| matter.
| hollerith wrote:
| >you'll never kill enough civilians to matter.
|
| -- unless you use nukes.
| bluGill wrote:
| Even then I question if you can do so. You can level your
| enemy perhaps, but if the enemy is the US or Russia they
| have provisions to end the whole world after you level
| all their cities and so you don't win. If it is anyone
| else they might not end the world themselves, but there
| are good odds many countries that otherwise hate each
| other will join together to destroy you because they
| don't going nuclear to be an option for the next country.
| (basic physics and engineering can build a nuclear bomb -
| it isn't easy, but several countries have proven it can
| be done and most suspect more would if it was cost
| effective - but since you can't use them in war it isn't
| cost effective so they don't)
| hollerith wrote:
| No one can "end the whole world" or bring about human
| extinction using nukes even if that were their explicit
| goal.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Industrial civilization can be ended using nukes. Too
| many interconnected supply chains would fail, including
| those needed to produce fertilizer for modern
| agriculture.
|
| Possibly most human and land animal life could be ended
| if enough ground burst bombs were used to maximize
| fallout.
|
| Destroying all life is extremely unlikely, e.g. deep-sea
| hydrothermal vent ecosystems, cave-dwelling life,
| bacteria, and more will survive even deliberate
| coordinated attempts by all nations to nuke as much as
| possible with ground detonations to maximize fallout.
|
| Destroying the Earth (a
| 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of mostly iron)
| is not happening with nukes.
|
| When most people say "end the world" they mean "end
| modern civilization", not "make the planet Earth cease to
| be a body in hydrostatic equilibrium in orbit of Sol".
| hollerith wrote:
| Nukes cannot be used to end industrial civilization,
| either.
|
| Nuclear planners have always planned to use many ground
| bursts: on hardened targets like command bunkers, but
| also to destroy communications networks. Specifically, a
| "landing station" where transoceanic cables make landfall
| or wherever there used to be a 5ESS switch (the locations
| of which are publicly known) is a great place to hit with
| a ground burst to destroy much of the nation's non-
| wireless communications infrastructure. Estimates during
| the end of the Cold War are that about half of CONUS's
| area would be covered with lethal levels of fallout from
| these expected ground bursts. I guess if the Russians and
| Chinese were deliberately trying to cover as much area as
| possible with lethal levels of fallout (which they
| wouldn't because it is not an effective plan) they could
| cover 70 or 80% -- _if_ they had as many nukes _and_
| means to "deliver" them intercontinentally as the
| Soviets did, which the Russians don't unless they've been
| hiding them from US inspectors, but I consider it very
| unlikely that they could've managed that.
|
| And bomb fallout is very different from radioactive
| contamination from accidents at nuclear power plants:
| basically no area continues to have lethal levels of bomb
| fallout 4 weeks after the last bomb explodes. The method
| for decontaminating your house is to get up on a ladder
| and wash down your roof with a garden hose, then wash
| down all driveways and sidewalks.
|
| So, again, nukes cannot be used to end industrial
| civilization. Note that this means that if the US ever
| nukes Russia with everything it has, Russia would bounce
| back and would again be a military threat (whether that
| takes 3 years or 15 years I don't know) so it makes
| little sense to nuke Russia unless the US is going to
| follow up with a long-term occupation of Russia's ports
| and maybe some key transportation hubs.
|
| The USSR knew it had no chance to occupy US ports or
| occupy a substantial portion of US territory: their plan
| for followup was to grab the rest of the European plain,
| which includes most of Germany and all of northern France
| to the border with Spain.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _And bomb fallout is very different from the radioactive
| contamination from accidents at nuclear power plants:
| basically no area continues to have lethal levels of bomb
| fallout 4 weeks after the last bomb explodes. The method
| for decontaminating your house is to get up on a ladder
| and wash down your roof with a garden hose, then wash
| down all driveways and sidewalks._
|
| Assuming they all have enough supplies to shelter in
| place for 4 weeks. Sure, they do. Oh, and where does all
| that runoff go?
| hollerith wrote:
| Most of the runoff probably ends up far enough away from
| your house that it doesn't harm you. Again: its very
| different from power-plant contamination: its
| radioactivity is diminishing very quickly.
|
| If you were lucky enough that your home was not covered
| in lethal levels of fallout, then it is likely that all
| the land within miles of your home is similarly safe, so
| you can range around looking for water, and most people
| can survive without eating (or eating only what food they
| happened to have around at the time of the attack) for a
| few weeks. It wouldn't be pleasant, of course (and I sure
| would prefer to be in a fallout shelter pre-stocked with
| food and water when the attack happens) but the point is
| that many people would survive even in the countries that
| were attacked.
|
| There's probably enough food in the US right now (mostly
| intended to be fed to farm animals, mostly stored on
| farms) to feed half of the US population. 2 weeks after
| the attack, it starts to makes sense for altruistically-
| inclined people (particularly if they have a Geiger
| counter) to load such food (along with a mill with which
| to turn it into flour -- also a common item stored on
| farms) on a truck and take it to where hungry people are.
| Old people are a good fit for this task: if you are 60
| years old, then the prospect of developing cancer in 20
| or 30 years is not exactly pleasant, but not particularly
| scary either.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _So you can range around looking for water_
|
| Which most folks know how to do, of course. And we can be
| sure that when they encounter other groups of people at
| their favorite puddle, everyone will get along just fine.
|
| _Most people can survive without eating (or eating only
| what food they happened to have around at the time of the
| attack) for a few weeks._
|
| And wouldn't be in the least motivated to leave their
| shelters. Howabout you try it first, and report back to
| us?
|
| Look, I'm not trying to be cute here. And we agree that
| it won't end global industry capacity (and even the
| countries directly affected would eventually spring back,
| as after WW2). I've also done my time in physics classes,
| and know about all that neat physics stuff.
|
| But your arguments sound _very_ hand-wavy, and something
| tells me you 're glossing over lots and lots of
| additional factors, and are basically trying to spin the
| situation as being far less of a calamity than it
| actually would be.
| hollerith wrote:
| Let's take a step back and recall what I'm arguing
| against: I never argued or meant to imply that there
| wouldn't be tremendous suffering and death. I'm only
| arguing that nuclear war is extremely unlikely to end
| industrial civilization (though it can sure suppress
| industrial capacity for a few years and possibly if we
| get very unlucky for a few decades) and is extremely
| unlikely cause human extinction.
| vundercind wrote:
| How bad it is very much depends on how long it takes to
| restore meaningful amounts of the power grid. If it's
| north of 60 days, forget it, you're losing 90+% of your
| population.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _basically no area continues to have lethal levels of
| bomb fallout 4 weeks after the last bomb explodes_
|
| While this may be true enough for 'conventional' nukes,
| there have been proposals to intentionally salt bombs
| with elements such as cobalt that can render large areas
| of territory unfit for habitation for many years.
|
| This isn't fiction or speculation, it's basically what
| MacArthur wanted to do in Korea.
| bluGill wrote:
| I think enough people will die that we cannot sustain
| civialization. It takes a lot of people to get oil from a
| well to the pump and too many of them will be dead. You
| can keep things going in degraded form but eventually you
| can't make replacement parts for the refinery to a level
| of quality that allows for current output and so you lose
| trucks and tractors. Steel refineries need some weird
| subblies that you won't be able to source well enough.
|
| There are many different things that we need that nobody
| thinks of and all those are disrupted with loss of
| important people at once.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Currently, it's Russia leveling their own Russian cities
| with guided bombs.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the area bombing falls into the category of stuff
| which on an individual action level was a horrendous
| waste of life on both sides, but on a strategic level was
| essential to the Allied victory, because British bombing
| raids on German cities provoked Hitler into focusing
| German efforts on bombing British cities, _which was
| considerably less useful to the Germans than the military
| targets they were hitting before_ , in the context of
| Britain desperately trying to avoid the Germans
| establishing the degree of air superiority that would
| allow an invasion of the British Isles.
|
| A corollary of this is that the sacrifices made on
| bombing raids later in the war, including by US forces,
| were a lot less relevant. US bombing strategy was
| typically more targeted towards military assets than UK
| bombing though
|
| (There is of course also the massive can of worms of how
| necessary the atomic bombs were: obviously unlike other
| bombings they actually did bring about immediate
| capitulation, but in the context that parts of Japanese
| High Command were opening tentative discussions in the
| full awareness that they were losing the war, and
| possibility the US might have been able to offer its
| surprisingly reasonable ultimate terms instead of
| unconditional surrender)
| dTal wrote:
| >obviously [the atomic bombs] actually did bring about
| immediate capitulation
|
| Not at all obvious:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-
| kuznick-hi...
|
| (this op-ed is the first thing that popped up on a quick
| google but it has been covered much more thoroughly
| elsewhere - the short of it is that having a city bombed
| to oblivion wasn't actually a terribly novel thing for
| Japan at this stage of the war, whereas the Soviet
| invasion of Manchuria was a Big Deal)
| cafard wrote:
| What about the Garand M-1?
| somat wrote:
| Untrue. The US entered the war with what is wildly regarded
| as the best rifle of the war.
|
| The Rifle M1 designed by John Garand was adopted as the
| standard service rifle in 1936. and on their entry into the
| conflict the US was the only belligerent that issued a self
| loading rifle to the general troop. well, except for Uncle
| Sam's Misguided Children, they always seem the be last in
| line to get new toys and were still using the 1903
| springfield as the standard service rifle.
|
| Unless you are talking about guns in the strict military
| sense(artillery) in which case I have no idea how advanced US
| artillery was at the start of the war.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| You are leaving out a major part. Such as that there were
| not nearly enough. Adopting a "new & shiny" is a long way
| from all the troops actually having it. My father was in
| WWII; he was drilling with 2x4s, because they didn't have
| rifles. The entire division only had two Sherman tanks. A
| lot of our overwhelming production was 1943 and later.
| ZiiS wrote:
| I know the article is new; but given the title is straight from
| the Ad it would be clearer suffixed (1942).
| pseingatl wrote:
| Orders had to be typed. In 1943 or 1944 a Liberty ship carrying
| only typewriters went down in the English channel.
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