technical museum day 2

 William Shaker

 

I found the part of the technical museum that didn't cover medical history quite interesting. The guided tour was great, but the most personally relevant items were some I found during our "free time", like the old belt driven machine tools. As someone who's used lathes powered from an overhead belt, and who still owns what was once a belt driven drill press, I find it really interesting that they incorporated that into the history of steam power and the like, as they were all tools that would have been used to create further power equipment. I also found the various aircraft quite interesting, especially with the airliner and the note about intentional stress concentrators. The windows were triangular, while almost every airliner after the De Havilland Comet issues had round or rounded rectangular windows to try and reduce the amount of stress (and reduce resulting strain) placed on the structure of the aircraft. Instead of doing that and having to inspect hundreds of points, they appear to have designed in spots that would intentionally fatigue faster (the corners of the rounded triangular windows) which would greatly reduce the need for inspecting every single structural member (or at least it would in theory, however most aviation regulations will still require essentially a full inspection annually and likely more for commercial aircraft.