Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2008 14:54:32 GMT -5
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Reiska
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Post by Reiska on Apr 23, 2008 15:45:08 GMT -5
Excellent pictures from a sad incident. I remember you mention that Promaster before. You used it on D100 with excellent results too. It is a superb lens being old and a zoom. That latent light is best for that kind of an object. The contrast is nice. I remember your pictures from that fire. Excavator brands are today Samsung, Komatsu, Huyndai... where are those Cat(erpillars), Americans and Cases...? I still remember when I as a young boy admired an Caterpillar bulldozer working on my home island in the early Fifties. It was huge (then), almost 10000 lbs
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 23, 2008 19:15:18 GMT -5
Reijo wrote: Very much OT but I had to mention the most popular construction machines in the UK, made by the remarkable JCB company. Back in 1945, Joseph Cyril Bamford was a 28 year old man with 50 shillings (five bucks), and a vision. That vision was a British engineering industry as pre-eminent in the world as it was in the 19th century when British factories, driven by steam power, built locomotives, steam engines, machine tools, mining equipment, ships, textile and other factory machines ... you name it ... for the world. He also had the entrepreneurial spirit of those 19th century engineers who helped to put the Great into Great Britain. He rented a lock-up garage in Uttoxeter in the industrial Midlands and spent his five bucks on a welder. His first product was a trailer which he built from war-surplus material and sold for £90. Today, JCB has a turnover of several hundred million pounds, has won seven Queen's Awards to industry, has 10 UK plants and manufacturing plants in US, Brazil, Germany, India and China. In 1984, thirty nine years after it was founded, JCB took 17% of the world market in construction and agricultural machinery. Quite a step up from a rented lock-up and a five-buck welder! Joseph Bamford died in 1981 at the age of 84, and the company chairman since 1976 has been Joseph's son Anthony, now Sir Anthony - in 1990 he was knighted for services to industry. JCB is very socially aware, and sends machines to help out after natural disasters all over ther world. The latest venture towards realising Joseph Bamford's vision is a plan to set up an Engineering Academy to train young people between 14 and 19 wanting to start a career in engineering, not just with JCB but with other British engineering companies. It will be run in conjunction with the County Council, the Department of Education and the leading engineering universities. Anyone who's interested can read about it on www.jcb.co.uk/jcbacademy/pressreleases/PlansUnveiledForJCB.pdfTo promote British engineering, JCB took its standard four-cylinder diesel engine, developed it and put it into a world-record breaking car which in August 2006 took three world records at Bonneville to become the world's fastest diesel powered car at 350.092 mph. Sorry to rave on so OT, but for me, JCB is a British engineering company to be proud of. Since 1975, UK manufacturing employment has fallen from 7.7 million to under four million. In the same time, JCB’s workforce has doubled. The company may well see Joe Bamford's vision realised. You can't develop Third-World countries, build roads, build railways, build factories, build ships and aircraft, dig quarries or manufacture goods with plastics and electronics alone. You also need good old-fashioned metal mechanically engineered machinery. PeterW
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2008 21:17:01 GMT -5
Peter: That's like the Morrison Knudsen Company, founded in Boise Idaho more than 90 years ago by Harry Morrison, with a team of horses and a wagonload of shovels. MK built the Hoover Dam, the Oakland Bay Bridge and many other famous construction projects around the world. MK employees fought side by side with American Soldiers on Wake Island. Some we kept on the island as slave labor after the surrender and later were executed by the Japanese. Other died in captivity. A few survived the war. MK kept going strong until the Morrison family turned the leadership over to a William Agee who ran the company into near bankruptcy. Today it is called The Washington Group and although it still is involved in construction it is a mere shadow of MK International.
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Reiska
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Post by Reiska on Apr 24, 2008 3:46:33 GMT -5
Peter, don't worry. I will bring this back on trails.
My moaning after the Cats and Cases meant my worry about the unavoidable tendency, that work and perhaps wealth is moving toward east. For instance, Finnish shipyards has been the world's largest builders of cruise ships and which have either built or has to day in the order book the 15 largest cruise ships in the world . For example, the first of two Genesis class cruise ships will be launched in 2009. Some facts of “Genesis”: It will be 220,000 gross registered tons and weigh in at about 100,000 tons based on displacement — a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier comes in at about 97,000 tons. The ship’s length is 394 yard and it’s three main propellers will swivel 360 degrees on independent bearings. All will be driven by electric motors powered by the ship’s central bank of six diesel generators, and steered by an integrated navigation and control system. From the bridge, the captain will be able to move the ship in any direction — forward, backward, sideways — with the flick of a joystick. No tugboats needed. Building the ship will take 12.000 man year which means, that if it will be built by one man the building should have been started before Bronze Age. Some of the docks are now sold to Korea. The Korean company is still building those ships in Finland, but how long. They are now learning the skill and when it is done, I’m afraid, all are mowing to east. I understand, that it is a time for love and a time for building ships.
A Finnish success story could be the Nokia Company. It started in 1865 as a grinder room, in 1898 it started to make rubber shoes and this lead to electric cables and the rest you might know. The name comes from the Nokia town. Nokia is one of the world biggest camera manufacturers with it’s more than 200 million phone cameras per year. Ain't we on topic now ;D
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2008 9:49:21 GMT -5
Great job!
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