Silent letters
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Silent letters
In the word "SCENT" is the 's' or the 'c' silent ?
Re: Silent letters
And Scissors, and, and, and.
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That was my thought as well. There is no answer. 
Re: Silent letters
My late wife pronounces scissors as skizers, hi hi.
The real question is, is the C really silent or not?
Do you say Sent, Cent, and Scent in exactly the same way?
We may think we do, but if you unconsciously record your own voice and then play it back with a sine wave, you'll see we don't pronounce them exactly the same way.
On a totally different note and item, I won a bet with guy who had been driving motorcycles for over 30 years.
It could be because he really never noticed or wasn't thinking about it properly when he answered.
I simply asked, when making a corner on your bike, whether you are touching the handlebars or not, and perhaps you lean into the curve to get it to go that direction. Here is my question. Do you initially turn the wheel to the left to make a right turn? His first response was NO, which meant I won the bet! Then he thought about it for a second longer and decided to pay me my dollar bet, hi hi.
I honestly never expected someone who rode a bike most of his life to get the answer wrong, hi hi.
My only point in bringing that up at all is, folks do a lot of things unconsciously so often it becomes natural to them and they no longer think about it that way. Sorta like how you pronounce words.
If you know someone with a recording studio, don't ever take a bet that you pronounce Sent, Cent, and Scent the same way, because they will win every time, and you can see it plain as day on the oscilloscope patterns.
Trouble is, if you are conscious of what you are doing, you may mess up and make them sound the same.
But what they may do is have you read a paragraph from a script, and make a tape of it first.
Then they will ask if you say Sent, Cent, and Scent the same way.
You'll see in casual practice you don't say them the same way.
The real question is, is the C really silent or not?
Do you say Sent, Cent, and Scent in exactly the same way?
We may think we do, but if you unconsciously record your own voice and then play it back with a sine wave, you'll see we don't pronounce them exactly the same way.
On a totally different note and item, I won a bet with guy who had been driving motorcycles for over 30 years.
It could be because he really never noticed or wasn't thinking about it properly when he answered.
I simply asked, when making a corner on your bike, whether you are touching the handlebars or not, and perhaps you lean into the curve to get it to go that direction. Here is my question. Do you initially turn the wheel to the left to make a right turn? His first response was NO, which meant I won the bet! Then he thought about it for a second longer and decided to pay me my dollar bet, hi hi.
I honestly never expected someone who rode a bike most of his life to get the answer wrong, hi hi.
My only point in bringing that up at all is, folks do a lot of things unconsciously so often it becomes natural to them and they no longer think about it that way. Sorta like how you pronounce words.
If you know someone with a recording studio, don't ever take a bet that you pronounce Sent, Cent, and Scent the same way, because they will win every time, and you can see it plain as day on the oscilloscope patterns.
Trouble is, if you are conscious of what you are doing, you may mess up and make them sound the same.
But what they may do is have you read a paragraph from a script, and make a tape of it first.
Then they will ask if you say Sent, Cent, and Scent the same way.
You'll see in casual practice you don't say them the same way.
Re: Silent letters
Being a microphone test technician for a dozen or two years gave me many opportunities to view voice patterns as represented by various types of instruments. I must confess, however, we never checked out how people used or abused the language. You could be right about the pronunciation differences between sent, scent, and sent, but it's all psychological. We got into things such as psycho-acoustics where light, humidity, and temperature, and a few other things in a given environment made things sound different. So, I can assure you that those three versions of the word would also be perceived differently depending on the lighting, temperature, and humidity of the field in which you heard them. What you are pointing out is possibly true from a technical point of view. The voice envelopes may be different, but the perception on the receiving end is not. Regardless of what the eardrum records, the brain makes all three sound the same. They are homonyms. If all you have to go by is what you hear, you cannot distinguish which of the three versions is being pronounced unless the words are put into the context of a sentence. The written version of those words has no sound, thus the spelling must convey the intended meaning. I would make the conjecture that that is the only reason for the various spellings of words that sound alike.
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Back when I as doing electronic work, I learned a little bit about microphones, not much, but enough to be able to adjust circuits in such a way a microphone would not get feed-back from the speakers.
I'm sure you know what that is called, but I don't remember. Just that we had to reverse the phase to stop the squeal.
Technology has come a long long way in audio equipment, that's for sure.
In the early Windows XP days, I had a program that would display the audio frequencies as multiple sine wave graphs.
I could also play them into a program that would make sheet music from the audio too.
However, what I used the program for was to clean up a few old 78 rpm records.
I could pick the instruments out of the noise and scratch pops, and actually sit there an erase much of the noise.
The program I had was no where near as elaborate as the programs they have today for remastering a song.
Mine was all manual labor of erasing things from the screen that should not be there. Saving it and playing it back to make sure I didn't take out something I shouldn't have.
Then as one would figure, about the time I got my four or five favorite old songs nice and clean, along comes someone with a CD of one already remastered or remade just right.
From there I moved on to renovating old photographs, and actually turned it into a small business for a short time. Not enough money in it doing it all by hand with the free software that came with printers, hi hi.
One short lived business I did, back in the days of transistor radios, was only because I got some great 3 inch speakers on a deal. Instead of paper cones, these speakers all had a plastic cones which the original buyer said were too quick for is purpose. They were designed to go into a transistor radio, but also had a felt smaller cone glued over the circular center where the coil was. This meant they also would not fit into what he wanted to use them in.
Got what was left in the cases, all were full except one, so I had about 185 speakers.
I bought some cardboard tubes to try something. Glued the speakers about 2 inches into the ends of the tubes, with the back of the speaker facing the close end where I did the gluing.
Man did they sound GREAT in those tubes.
So I bought enough tubes, some Ivory colored textured paper to glue around the tubes, and some speaker grill cloth for the ends. I also needed to buy a smaller size tube to put the grill cloth on first, that slipped into the tube where I locked it in place with three short pins, then I wrapped the tube in the paper.
I could buy the speaker wire with a jack on the end for a fair price and soldered these to the speakers before I glued them in, allowing the wire to come out the back between the grill cloth and tube housing.
The completed assembly got glued to a small piece of 1x2 I painted to keep it from rolling around.
They looked nice. Counting the cost of all the parts, and my labor at 5 bucks an hour back then, it came out to like 8 bucks a unit cost. I could only make like 175 of them with the materials I bought. Decided to sell them for 9.95 wholesale or 14.95 retail. Went up to Venture Department Store, who already bought other things from me, and they took 150 of them on sight. I assume they sent them out to their other stores too. They paid me an even 1,500 dollars. I sold the other 25 to individuals around town without problems, some for 15 bucks some for only 10 bucks.
At my full-time job, I only made about 150 bucks a week back then, so this was a windfall for me, hi hi.
I'm sure you know what that is called, but I don't remember. Just that we had to reverse the phase to stop the squeal.
Technology has come a long long way in audio equipment, that's for sure.
In the early Windows XP days, I had a program that would display the audio frequencies as multiple sine wave graphs.
I could also play them into a program that would make sheet music from the audio too.
However, what I used the program for was to clean up a few old 78 rpm records.
I could pick the instruments out of the noise and scratch pops, and actually sit there an erase much of the noise.
The program I had was no where near as elaborate as the programs they have today for remastering a song.
Mine was all manual labor of erasing things from the screen that should not be there. Saving it and playing it back to make sure I didn't take out something I shouldn't have.
Then as one would figure, about the time I got my four or five favorite old songs nice and clean, along comes someone with a CD of one already remastered or remade just right.
From there I moved on to renovating old photographs, and actually turned it into a small business for a short time. Not enough money in it doing it all by hand with the free software that came with printers, hi hi.
One short lived business I did, back in the days of transistor radios, was only because I got some great 3 inch speakers on a deal. Instead of paper cones, these speakers all had a plastic cones which the original buyer said were too quick for is purpose. They were designed to go into a transistor radio, but also had a felt smaller cone glued over the circular center where the coil was. This meant they also would not fit into what he wanted to use them in.
Got what was left in the cases, all were full except one, so I had about 185 speakers.
I bought some cardboard tubes to try something. Glued the speakers about 2 inches into the ends of the tubes, with the back of the speaker facing the close end where I did the gluing.
Man did they sound GREAT in those tubes.
So I bought enough tubes, some Ivory colored textured paper to glue around the tubes, and some speaker grill cloth for the ends. I also needed to buy a smaller size tube to put the grill cloth on first, that slipped into the tube where I locked it in place with three short pins, then I wrapped the tube in the paper.
I could buy the speaker wire with a jack on the end for a fair price and soldered these to the speakers before I glued them in, allowing the wire to come out the back between the grill cloth and tube housing.
The completed assembly got glued to a small piece of 1x2 I painted to keep it from rolling around.
They looked nice. Counting the cost of all the parts, and my labor at 5 bucks an hour back then, it came out to like 8 bucks a unit cost. I could only make like 175 of them with the materials I bought. Decided to sell them for 9.95 wholesale or 14.95 retail. Went up to Venture Department Store, who already bought other things from me, and they took 150 of them on sight. I assume they sent them out to their other stores too. They paid me an even 1,500 dollars. I sold the other 25 to individuals around town without problems, some for 15 bucks some for only 10 bucks.
At my full-time job, I only made about 150 bucks a week back then, so this was a windfall for me, hi hi.
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A lot of people other than myself loved Bose speakers. I got a pair for my computer when I bought Windows 98. Those speakers were still around and functioning when we moved to this house, but I did not bring them with me. The sounds those speakers reproduced from my Windows 98 computer was remarkable. It seems to me, but I really don't recall, that the Bose line was a little more expensive than the average speaker for playing music. Since they sounded great and were full range there was no need to look for alternatives. A couple years before we moved and not too long after I moved up to Windows Vista, I read a review about Bose speakers. They were reviewing whatever was the speaker platform de jour but I recall the author saying that the entire line of Bose products is akin to being fake. They were made of the cheapest quality materials you could find and the construction wasn't exactly state of the art. But, he did admit, they sound great. The reason for the great sound had to do with the baffles and the enclosure for the individual speakers. The way Bose did it didn't demand a high quality speaker in order to sound wonderful. The conclusion in the article is that Bose is acceptable but if you are looking for something with a bit more quality built in, look elsewhere.
I think you could have worked for Bose given your invention. LOL
Audio feedback is the bane of most hearing aides. A lot of that phenomena has to do with proximity of input vs output devices, and you don't have a lot of separation in hearing aides. When mom was being fitted for hers I was amazed that they would work at all, but they performed well most of the time. Mom was really hard of hearing and had to turn up the amplification which is when the feedback would kick in. The whistle was maddening and if she backed off she could not hear everything she wanted to hear. The physics of it all would not allow for amplification without feedback over the entire range of the hearing aides she had, but I understand they have come a long way to overcome that problem. You can indeed play with the phase but that's only effective in certain cases. You end up canceling frequencies that the hard of hearing person might need to have amplified. They say the digital ones can be tuned to get around that problem, and some day I may have to find out. But the price of hearing aides are even more expensive than the high end computers I like to play with. Besides, I think my HyperX headset looks better than any hearing aide I ever saw.
I think you could have worked for Bose given your invention. LOL
Audio feedback is the bane of most hearing aides. A lot of that phenomena has to do with proximity of input vs output devices, and you don't have a lot of separation in hearing aides. When mom was being fitted for hers I was amazed that they would work at all, but they performed well most of the time. Mom was really hard of hearing and had to turn up the amplification which is when the feedback would kick in. The whistle was maddening and if she backed off she could not hear everything she wanted to hear. The physics of it all would not allow for amplification without feedback over the entire range of the hearing aides she had, but I understand they have come a long way to overcome that problem. You can indeed play with the phase but that's only effective in certain cases. You end up canceling frequencies that the hard of hearing person might need to have amplified. They say the digital ones can be tuned to get around that problem, and some day I may have to find out. But the price of hearing aides are even more expensive than the high end computers I like to play with. Besides, I think my HyperX headset looks better than any hearing aide I ever saw.
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I have had a hearing loss in a particular range my entire life. It was actually a benefit to me until more recently when devices began using piazo crystals to produce sound. I can't hear them at all, hi hi.
I also could not hear the young girls screaming while playing, so that was a good point.
The Bose design did put amazing sound quality in a small place, but as you said, their using low quality materials made them short lived a lot of the time. A lot of video and pinball machines I worked on used encased Bose speakers in them. Unfortunately, we had to replace them about as often as the display units.
I still had a pair of those tube speakers I made when I moved south, but the output power of modern devices was not as strong as the old transistor radios or early cell phones. Mine were connected to clock radio on my nightstand, because the built-in speaker was about as tinny sounding as an old brass cymbal.
I guess I just lucked out that when I put those speakers in the cardboard tube, it made them sound great and picked up the bass notes better too.
When I was living at my dads house, I had put two speakers in the wall of our downstairs rec room. These speakers did not have permanent magnets, they used electromagnets and I had the amplifier that drove them too. An old amp that used carbon microphones, but were great when when connected to the old stereo record player or my reel to reel tape recorder. These speakers were over 14 inches in diameter and just barely fit between the existing studs of the room. Then right above those I later added a couple of normal speakers about 6 inch in size.
At first I had a cardboard box over their backsides inside the room where the stereo equipment was. The front side faced the open area of the basement where we had parties. The vibration of those carton boxes was horrible.
I came up with an idea. Just happen to have the inner tube from an old tractor tire they replaced. I cut that thing open to make a big flat sheet of rubber. Stretched it tight over a pair of picture frames, and glued a plastic wrist band to the back of the big speakers to hold the rubber away from the sharp edges of the back.
Screwed the picture frame up over the area of the speakers. All I can say is WOW, the sound difference in the room was awesome, and also the sound out in the basement area was even better, deeper too.
After I moved out, my brother took over my little room and had tons of parties down there.
Years later when we were cleaning up for mom to move, I told her to leave the control center, amp and speakers in place, although old, they still worked great. My little room actually helped her sell the house faster. The family that bought it had teenage kids who probably blew up the speakers right away, hi hi. But she got her asking price for the house.
Just a shame she blew through all of her money living in a very expensive seniors apartment complex. Rent there was over 3 grand a month, plus some other fees. All in all I think she actually paid closer to 3,600 per month. I know she spent over 200 grand on rent and fees while there. Well, it was her money from the sale of her house.
I also could not hear the young girls screaming while playing, so that was a good point.
The Bose design did put amazing sound quality in a small place, but as you said, their using low quality materials made them short lived a lot of the time. A lot of video and pinball machines I worked on used encased Bose speakers in them. Unfortunately, we had to replace them about as often as the display units.
I still had a pair of those tube speakers I made when I moved south, but the output power of modern devices was not as strong as the old transistor radios or early cell phones. Mine were connected to clock radio on my nightstand, because the built-in speaker was about as tinny sounding as an old brass cymbal.
I guess I just lucked out that when I put those speakers in the cardboard tube, it made them sound great and picked up the bass notes better too.
When I was living at my dads house, I had put two speakers in the wall of our downstairs rec room. These speakers did not have permanent magnets, they used electromagnets and I had the amplifier that drove them too. An old amp that used carbon microphones, but were great when when connected to the old stereo record player or my reel to reel tape recorder. These speakers were over 14 inches in diameter and just barely fit between the existing studs of the room. Then right above those I later added a couple of normal speakers about 6 inch in size.
At first I had a cardboard box over their backsides inside the room where the stereo equipment was. The front side faced the open area of the basement where we had parties. The vibration of those carton boxes was horrible.
I came up with an idea. Just happen to have the inner tube from an old tractor tire they replaced. I cut that thing open to make a big flat sheet of rubber. Stretched it tight over a pair of picture frames, and glued a plastic wrist band to the back of the big speakers to hold the rubber away from the sharp edges of the back.
Screwed the picture frame up over the area of the speakers. All I can say is WOW, the sound difference in the room was awesome, and also the sound out in the basement area was even better, deeper too.
After I moved out, my brother took over my little room and had tons of parties down there.
Years later when we were cleaning up for mom to move, I told her to leave the control center, amp and speakers in place, although old, they still worked great. My little room actually helped her sell the house faster. The family that bought it had teenage kids who probably blew up the speakers right away, hi hi. But she got her asking price for the house.
Just a shame she blew through all of her money living in a very expensive seniors apartment complex. Rent there was over 3 grand a month, plus some other fees. All in all I think she actually paid closer to 3,600 per month. I know she spent over 200 grand on rent and fees while there. Well, it was her money from the sale of her house.
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Brüel & Kjær make audio/vibration test equipment. The test station I bought from them was just a fancy oscilloscope with functions beyond the imagination of your average audio engineer. Back then it cost $25k and the gods of audio only know what it would cost to duplicate it today. I was the second person to buy one from them; the first being a Motorola engineering lab working on those new fangled cell phones. While that was an impressive machine it required a standard microphone and standard speaker in order to measure properly. I also bought those along with a portable secondary audio standard for calibration purposes. The reason I bring this up is related to the speaker.
There are specs for standards and I believe the speaker had to be 4" in diameter. It might have been 6" but I don't recall right now which it is. The speaker was enclosed inside a specially designed cylinder that resembled a miniature sized tank of propane gas. It had a ring around the opening just like the gas tanks. LOL We used it for testing microphones, of course, but the amazing thing about this speaker was its response curve. It was flat from 16 - 40,000 cycles. Well, flat to within less than half a db variation at the frequency extremes. The flat response was necessary for the work we were doing, but in the real world speakers don't work that way. The smaller the diameter the more heavily they are weighted toward the high end of the audio spectrum. Woofers and sub-woofers are huge diameter speakers. So, I was duly impressed at what this thing inside a mini propane tank could do.
My first stereo set was a Sansui. Back then CD's were just being introduced and tapes were the in things. The system also came with a turntable, which for some reason or another was always on. I could unplug the turntable from the power bar, and that was the only way to shut it off. The remarkable part of this system was the speakers cabinet. There were four speakers in each of two cabinets which came close to standing 5 feet tall. There was a square speaker for the high frequencies - an amazing device that I never did understand. Below that was the midrange speaker coming in at 6" diameter. Then below that two, count them, two 14" speakers for the low frequencies. Only one of those two woofers was active. The other had nothing connected to it and like the square speaker above it, I had no understanding of why that dummy was in there. The sound quality of this system was well above average. When it became clear that we were going to leave town permanently, I sold it all to anybody who would come and pick it up. It brought in $20. I could have got ten times that from a guy in Florida if I wanted to find a way to ship it to him. I have yet to find any stereo system that even comes close to that Sansui. Then again, I'd not buy one because I don't have the CD's or tapes full of music anymore. Heck, I don't even listen to the FM radio like I used to.
There are specs for standards and I believe the speaker had to be 4" in diameter. It might have been 6" but I don't recall right now which it is. The speaker was enclosed inside a specially designed cylinder that resembled a miniature sized tank of propane gas. It had a ring around the opening just like the gas tanks. LOL We used it for testing microphones, of course, but the amazing thing about this speaker was its response curve. It was flat from 16 - 40,000 cycles. Well, flat to within less than half a db variation at the frequency extremes. The flat response was necessary for the work we were doing, but in the real world speakers don't work that way. The smaller the diameter the more heavily they are weighted toward the high end of the audio spectrum. Woofers and sub-woofers are huge diameter speakers. So, I was duly impressed at what this thing inside a mini propane tank could do.
My first stereo set was a Sansui. Back then CD's were just being introduced and tapes were the in things. The system also came with a turntable, which for some reason or another was always on. I could unplug the turntable from the power bar, and that was the only way to shut it off. The remarkable part of this system was the speakers cabinet. There were four speakers in each of two cabinets which came close to standing 5 feet tall. There was a square speaker for the high frequencies - an amazing device that I never did understand. Below that was the midrange speaker coming in at 6" diameter. Then below that two, count them, two 14" speakers for the low frequencies. Only one of those two woofers was active. The other had nothing connected to it and like the square speaker above it, I had no understanding of why that dummy was in there. The sound quality of this system was well above average. When it became clear that we were going to leave town permanently, I sold it all to anybody who would come and pick it up. It brought in $20. I could have got ten times that from a guy in Florida if I wanted to find a way to ship it to him. I have yet to find any stereo system that even comes close to that Sansui. Then again, I'd not buy one because I don't have the CD's or tapes full of music anymore. Heck, I don't even listen to the FM radio like I used to.
Last edited by yogi on 06 Jul 2020, 17:00, edited 2 times in total.
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Sounds like some mighty impressive testing equipment you had there.
Unlike where I worked where the boss bought the cheapest he could get that served the purpose, hi hi.
I have a super nice set of stereo speakers covered and stored in the closet behind me, along with the monster cable used to feed them. Yeah, I fell for all the gimmicks back then, hi hi. But they always sounded great. That's just something else I never unpacked and set up after moving down here. Also one of the few things I did not sell at auction, but probably should have, considering I'll never ever get it set up. Nobody wants the old big stuff like we had growing up anymore. I still have a very nice turntable, amplifiers, tuners, decks, etc. all packed away. The capacitors in them have probably all dried out by now too. Sad.
I'm one of those oddballs who never listen to a radio in the car. The car I have now has a super satellite radio in it which I've never used. For most of my life I had ham gear in my cars so was using them when I was out and about. 6 meters used to be the talk channel when I worked downtown, but then later it changed to 2 meters was the hot spot to be.
And with all the new repeaters up and running, you never had any dead spots anymore on 2 meters.
Unlike where I worked where the boss bought the cheapest he could get that served the purpose, hi hi.
I have a super nice set of stereo speakers covered and stored in the closet behind me, along with the monster cable used to feed them. Yeah, I fell for all the gimmicks back then, hi hi. But they always sounded great. That's just something else I never unpacked and set up after moving down here. Also one of the few things I did not sell at auction, but probably should have, considering I'll never ever get it set up. Nobody wants the old big stuff like we had growing up anymore. I still have a very nice turntable, amplifiers, tuners, decks, etc. all packed away. The capacitors in them have probably all dried out by now too. Sad.
I'm one of those oddballs who never listen to a radio in the car. The car I have now has a super satellite radio in it which I've never used. For most of my life I had ham gear in my cars so was using them when I was out and about. 6 meters used to be the talk channel when I worked downtown, but then later it changed to 2 meters was the hot spot to be.
And with all the new repeaters up and running, you never had any dead spots anymore on 2 meters.
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The audio test equipment we used was among the best in the world. Why my managers allowed me to buy it was a mystery to me. All I could think of was that it was going to be used for the manufacturing of cellular telephones; the goose that was laying the golden eggs for Motorola. There virtually was no limit to the budget for manufacturing the phones. That all changed later on when the competition came to town, but initially we owned all the cell phone technology.
An interesting thing happened after I left the company and cell phones were being manufactured on other continents. I was separated from the company along with 40,000 others because our dominance of the cell phone world had ended. Motorola was going through some difficult times back then. Not entirely out of the blue, Google bought Motorola's cell phone division. They held on to the company for a year or two and sold it to the current owners, Lenovo. However, when Google sold it they retained the rights to all the cell phone patents Motorola developed. As you know, Google now sells clever phones. I have one. I can't see what benefit 20 year old patents have for them, but apparently they thought it was worth grabbing them before the Chinese got to them.
One of those satellite radios came preinstalled with the Saturn I own. One must subscribe to it in order to benefit from it, which is something I never did. There were a few other benefits to GM's On Star program, but I never bought into any of it. I had a Garmen GPS and didn't need to talk live to a dispatcher when I was lost. The standard radio is about the easiest to use since the old push button mechanical dialers. I loved it and listed to all the popular music in Chicagoland while I was in the car for an hour traveling to and from work. That was the extent of my radio listening. I bought a small compact radio/CD player system to replace the Sansui. I set it up and made sure it was working, but never used it since. It's in the closet here still unpacked from when we moved. If I get around to it, some day I'll set it up for the background music it might provide.
An interesting thing happened after I left the company and cell phones were being manufactured on other continents. I was separated from the company along with 40,000 others because our dominance of the cell phone world had ended. Motorola was going through some difficult times back then. Not entirely out of the blue, Google bought Motorola's cell phone division. They held on to the company for a year or two and sold it to the current owners, Lenovo. However, when Google sold it they retained the rights to all the cell phone patents Motorola developed. As you know, Google now sells clever phones. I have one. I can't see what benefit 20 year old patents have for them, but apparently they thought it was worth grabbing them before the Chinese got to them.
One of those satellite radios came preinstalled with the Saturn I own. One must subscribe to it in order to benefit from it, which is something I never did. There were a few other benefits to GM's On Star program, but I never bought into any of it. I had a Garmen GPS and didn't need to talk live to a dispatcher when I was lost. The standard radio is about the easiest to use since the old push button mechanical dialers. I loved it and listed to all the popular music in Chicagoland while I was in the car for an hour traveling to and from work. That was the extent of my radio listening. I bought a small compact radio/CD player system to replace the Sansui. I set it up and made sure it was working, but never used it since. It's in the closet here still unpacked from when we moved. If I get around to it, some day I'll set it up for the background music it might provide.
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Motorola sure made good stuff. Don't think I ever heard of a complaint about their products from anyone.
Of course, I was only familiar with the mobile phone and of course TVs.
Seemed RCA is who had the most complaints about TV problems, and they had burn out timers in them too, hi hi.
Actually, a 20 year old patent would do them no good, they would be long expired.
My car has a satellite radio that came with it, Pandora, but I don't use it.
Dang thing is so friggin' complicated, if I get it turned on, takes forever to figure out how to turn it off again.
I know several OTR Rigs now have satellite dishes on them, which confuses the heck out of me.
How can a spinning dish on moving vehicle maintain contact with a satellite?
I don't think I want to know either, hi hi.
Picking up a signal from a satellite, like our GPS units is one thing. That part I understand, hi hi.
It's like being under a floodlamp! You are always in the spotlight, hi hi.
I think I read somewhere that that spinning disk is not an antenna but a gyroscope to keep a focal point held solid even though the vehicle is moving. Sorta like the camera's used on helicopters can remain fixed and stable no matter how much the chopper shakes, hi hi.
Of course, I was only familiar with the mobile phone and of course TVs.
Seemed RCA is who had the most complaints about TV problems, and they had burn out timers in them too, hi hi.
Actually, a 20 year old patent would do them no good, they would be long expired.
My car has a satellite radio that came with it, Pandora, but I don't use it.
Dang thing is so friggin' complicated, if I get it turned on, takes forever to figure out how to turn it off again.
I know several OTR Rigs now have satellite dishes on them, which confuses the heck out of me.
How can a spinning dish on moving vehicle maintain contact with a satellite?
I don't think I want to know either, hi hi.
Picking up a signal from a satellite, like our GPS units is one thing. That part I understand, hi hi.
It's like being under a floodlamp! You are always in the spotlight, hi hi.
I think I read somewhere that that spinning disk is not an antenna but a gyroscope to keep a focal point held solid even though the vehicle is moving. Sorta like the camera's used on helicopters can remain fixed and stable no matter how much the chopper shakes, hi hi.
Re: Silent letters
Motorola made it's name during WW II when it sold the military every communication device they owned back then. Walkie Talkies were what people thought of when the company name came up in conversations. After the war Motorola began to focus on police and other emergency service radios. There was competition, but as you pointed out, nobody had any complaints about what Motorola sold.
My mom worked in the plant that made "the works in a drawer" televisions. As it happened, she had nothing to do with television manufacturing. LOL There was a small corner of the plant where they grew. sliced, and polished piezoelectric crystals. She ran an x-ray machine to determine if the crystal lattice was in the proper orientation. I'm sure she had no idea what she was doing, but I figured it out from her descriptions. The crystals were used in Motorola products, but they also made them for other manufacturers too. Toward the end of the lab's existence they were making watch crystals and mom nearly went blind trying to see and handle them. Fortunately, Motorola got out of that business and mom retired.
These industrial and municipal products are what Motorola excelled at. Anything consumer relate turned sour; every time. That Quasar television came about because some Motorola engineer turned the original round CRT's into a square form factor. It was brilliant and sold a lot of televisions, until other companies figured it out too. The money lost by the Quasar division was dragging down the profits from other parts of the company so that (like the cell phones) a decision had to be made to sell it off or go bankrupt. They sold it to Matsushita, I believe, lock, stock and barrel. The employees never noticed the difference but for one minor change. The now Japanese owned company began making profits inside the same building with the same people who were about to go bankrupt. There are several other similar stories about Motorola's genius which all ended the same way.
The Motorola cell phones are made by Lenovo who also bought the right to use the Motorola name. The other part of the company which made those emergency communications radios still exists. When I worked for them it was on a 300 acre campus that also was home to the corporate tower. We had nearly 5000 employees. Today that campus is vacant and in need of a buyer. The 5000 workforce is now down to well under 1000. The good news is that Motorola, the original company, is alive and well making a good profit. They are not selling any consumer products that I know of, other than a few cable boxes that I'm not sure they still manufacture.
I don't know much about satellite radio, but given enough satellites general coverage would not be a problem. The trick, of course, is launching all the required satellites and still remain profitable. Apparently somebody has done exactly that because it is possible to still get satellite radios. Now and days with the Internet being so pervasive and everywhere, I don't see why anybody would want a satellite radio. My guess it's only the Howard Stern fans who own them.
My mom worked in the plant that made "the works in a drawer" televisions. As it happened, she had nothing to do with television manufacturing. LOL There was a small corner of the plant where they grew. sliced, and polished piezoelectric crystals. She ran an x-ray machine to determine if the crystal lattice was in the proper orientation. I'm sure she had no idea what she was doing, but I figured it out from her descriptions. The crystals were used in Motorola products, but they also made them for other manufacturers too. Toward the end of the lab's existence they were making watch crystals and mom nearly went blind trying to see and handle them. Fortunately, Motorola got out of that business and mom retired.
These industrial and municipal products are what Motorola excelled at. Anything consumer relate turned sour; every time. That Quasar television came about because some Motorola engineer turned the original round CRT's into a square form factor. It was brilliant and sold a lot of televisions, until other companies figured it out too. The money lost by the Quasar division was dragging down the profits from other parts of the company so that (like the cell phones) a decision had to be made to sell it off or go bankrupt. They sold it to Matsushita, I believe, lock, stock and barrel. The employees never noticed the difference but for one minor change. The now Japanese owned company began making profits inside the same building with the same people who were about to go bankrupt. There are several other similar stories about Motorola's genius which all ended the same way.
The Motorola cell phones are made by Lenovo who also bought the right to use the Motorola name. The other part of the company which made those emergency communications radios still exists. When I worked for them it was on a 300 acre campus that also was home to the corporate tower. We had nearly 5000 employees. Today that campus is vacant and in need of a buyer. The 5000 workforce is now down to well under 1000. The good news is that Motorola, the original company, is alive and well making a good profit. They are not selling any consumer products that I know of, other than a few cable boxes that I'm not sure they still manufacture.
I don't know much about satellite radio, but given enough satellites general coverage would not be a problem. The trick, of course, is launching all the required satellites and still remain profitable. Apparently somebody has done exactly that because it is possible to still get satellite radios. Now and days with the Internet being so pervasive and everywhere, I don't see why anybody would want a satellite radio. My guess it's only the Howard Stern fans who own them.
Re: Silent letters
Talking about Motorola almost sounds like the way the Pinball industry went.
Most of the companies who built pinball machines had been around for decades.
Each one making a fair profit over the years.
Then the hay day hit with the gaming type entertainment pinball machines.
This caused sales for all of them to skyrocket, and each company trying to outdo the other.
The once simple machines became more and more complex with more and more parts, and most of the later machines all had to pay royalties to the movie industry for using movie characters and themes. But they didn't care, sales were booming.
Modern electronics gave them the boost, and an amazing high cost though. So naturally the prices of the machines skyrocketed. As far as the vendors buying them, with the higher maintenance cost, plus the original cost of the machines, and every location constantly wanted the latest machines out. Hundreds if not thousands of vendors started going belly up. They could not make enough from a machine to pay for it, before a whole new raft of machines came out.
It was like the manufacturers were purposely killing their own businesses by releasing them so fast.
Sure enough a few manufacturers went belly up, and a few merged together.
It was when Williams merged with Bally, who made the casino gaming machines, that I got involved with working on more gaming machines than pinball's.
One of the largest parts suppliers to the pinball service industry was WICO.
If it was a part for a pinball, from nearly any era, including the gambling pinball's, WICO had it.
They in turn grew with the pinball and video game industry, eventually putting nearly every other supplier out of business.
They had both hi-quality and low-quality parts to meet every vendors needs.
They too started carrying parts for casino games, but rather than downsizing their inventory for pinball's as the craze tapered down, they tried one last hurrah by taking over several parts companies for the tavern games, coin-op machines, and they basically took on too much in areas they were not familiar with.
Then overnight, they just shut down. They never even tried to sell off their inventory to the vendors first.
Everyone assumed they would have an auction or something to empty their buildings, but it never happened.
Or at least not that any vendors ever heard about.
I do know that right after WICO closed down, a few parts places that were shut down reopened.
And heck, today there are hundreds of them across the states, but none that carry everything like WICO did.
From what I understand about satellite radio, they were really only a leased band on a couple of the TV satellites.
I don't know that for sure though.
Most of the companies who built pinball machines had been around for decades.
Each one making a fair profit over the years.
Then the hay day hit with the gaming type entertainment pinball machines.
This caused sales for all of them to skyrocket, and each company trying to outdo the other.
The once simple machines became more and more complex with more and more parts, and most of the later machines all had to pay royalties to the movie industry for using movie characters and themes. But they didn't care, sales were booming.
Modern electronics gave them the boost, and an amazing high cost though. So naturally the prices of the machines skyrocketed. As far as the vendors buying them, with the higher maintenance cost, plus the original cost of the machines, and every location constantly wanted the latest machines out. Hundreds if not thousands of vendors started going belly up. They could not make enough from a machine to pay for it, before a whole new raft of machines came out.
It was like the manufacturers were purposely killing their own businesses by releasing them so fast.
Sure enough a few manufacturers went belly up, and a few merged together.
It was when Williams merged with Bally, who made the casino gaming machines, that I got involved with working on more gaming machines than pinball's.
One of the largest parts suppliers to the pinball service industry was WICO.
If it was a part for a pinball, from nearly any era, including the gambling pinball's, WICO had it.
They in turn grew with the pinball and video game industry, eventually putting nearly every other supplier out of business.
They had both hi-quality and low-quality parts to meet every vendors needs.
They too started carrying parts for casino games, but rather than downsizing their inventory for pinball's as the craze tapered down, they tried one last hurrah by taking over several parts companies for the tavern games, coin-op machines, and they basically took on too much in areas they were not familiar with.
Then overnight, they just shut down. They never even tried to sell off their inventory to the vendors first.
Everyone assumed they would have an auction or something to empty their buildings, but it never happened.
Or at least not that any vendors ever heard about.
I do know that right after WICO closed down, a few parts places that were shut down reopened.
And heck, today there are hundreds of them across the states, but none that carry everything like WICO did.
From what I understand about satellite radio, they were really only a leased band on a couple of the TV satellites.
I don't know that for sure though.
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The pinball/gaming industry obviously has a more colorful history than Motorola. It makes sense because the end products are vastly different. I only know part of what happened at Motorola and I'm sure there was a lot more palace intrigue than I was privy to know about. I understand it was a family owned business that suffered from the weight of it's own success. It took Motorola a little longer than those gaming folks, but they are essentially back to doing business as they were the day they hired me. Most people today think of cell phones when the name Motorola comes up, but the original people who invented that technology no longer have anything to do with it. Motorola the company split in two but retained the same name for both companies. Odd, isn't it?
The problem with satellite radio is identical to the problem with satellite mobile phones - something else Motorola failed at spectacularly. The cost of setting up the infrastructure is horrendous. They launched a few satellites to cover the globe, but that wasn't enough. Nobody wanted to invest any more so the satellite phones went belly up. Satellite radio had the identical problem, but you probably are correct to say they are leasing bandwidth from some per-existing network. In any case they are minor players in the game. It's hard to believe they are still broadcasting, but they are.
The problem with satellite radio is identical to the problem with satellite mobile phones - something else Motorola failed at spectacularly. The cost of setting up the infrastructure is horrendous. They launched a few satellites to cover the globe, but that wasn't enough. Nobody wanted to invest any more so the satellite phones went belly up. Satellite radio had the identical problem, but you probably are correct to say they are leasing bandwidth from some per-existing network. In any case they are minor players in the game. It's hard to believe they are still broadcasting, but they are.
Re: Silent letters
As a Ham Radio Operator, and I'm not alone in this way of thinking at all.
Due to the frequency for cell phones, we never dreamed it would ever take off, simply because the 800 mHz band is directly line of site and limited to about 10 miles if that, 5 miles was the early norm for an 800 mHz signal.
The way we looked at it, in order for cell phones to become viable, there would have to be a radio tower at least every 5 to 8 miles apart, on a grid to cover an area.
Now buying and/or leasing land, paying for towers and the repeating equipment, to build a cellular infrastructure would be a daunting task with many pitfalls and problems.
But they didn't do it all alone as many might think.
Back in the days of Bag Phones, many of the repeaters were installed on existing TV and Radio Towers, and on many privately owned towers for business communications as well as fire towers. And many of these were not tower to tower cell phone services, they were phone to tower to MaBell's wires, then to a tower to a cell phone if they were calling another cell phone.
Enter Cable Internet and the number of cell phone calls going from tower to tower diminished greatly, as the towers began connecting to Cable Internet. As Cable moved on to Fiber Optics, most cell phone calls are actually done on Fiber Optics.
In addition, now that there are so many towers out there, you are often no more than 3 miles from a tower, which will allow them to use even higher frequencies, and some already are.
MaBell has been eliminating copper landlines by the boatload. Homes are still connected by copper, the twisted pair, but between relay stations is now all mostly fiber optics. Although or phones are still analog for the most part, the signals between the two parties talking to each other is often digital over fiber optics.
AT&T is installing one heck of a lot of fiber optic cable for TV, Internet, Phone, and other services, and could possibly dominate the market once again like they have for so many decades.
I do know Cable Companies have been adding a continually increasing number of WiFi hot spots.
And with grants from the government, they are beginning to install hot spots on utility poles in populated city areas.
Comcast already has several, and if you are a subscriber to their home cable service, you can use their WiFi hot spots anywhere you find them.
I do wish they would break up the monopoly of cable companies created by the cities through bribes and payola.
Depending on where you live in the city, you can only get ONE cable company, all the others are locked out.
They need to do like they did with Ma Bell and allow you to pick which cable company you want your service through.
On the back end, it would be like the way the phone companies did it. Whoever owns the lines in an area charges the other phone companies a base rate to lease time on the lines.
Since living down south here, I've had landline telephone service through Eastern Ma Bell, Southeastern Bell, AT&T, and Knox Bell, then back to AT&T, until I decided to go with VOIP services. Love my Ooma system!
Due to the frequency for cell phones, we never dreamed it would ever take off, simply because the 800 mHz band is directly line of site and limited to about 10 miles if that, 5 miles was the early norm for an 800 mHz signal.
The way we looked at it, in order for cell phones to become viable, there would have to be a radio tower at least every 5 to 8 miles apart, on a grid to cover an area.
Now buying and/or leasing land, paying for towers and the repeating equipment, to build a cellular infrastructure would be a daunting task with many pitfalls and problems.
But they didn't do it all alone as many might think.
Back in the days of Bag Phones, many of the repeaters were installed on existing TV and Radio Towers, and on many privately owned towers for business communications as well as fire towers. And many of these were not tower to tower cell phone services, they were phone to tower to MaBell's wires, then to a tower to a cell phone if they were calling another cell phone.
Enter Cable Internet and the number of cell phone calls going from tower to tower diminished greatly, as the towers began connecting to Cable Internet. As Cable moved on to Fiber Optics, most cell phone calls are actually done on Fiber Optics.
In addition, now that there are so many towers out there, you are often no more than 3 miles from a tower, which will allow them to use even higher frequencies, and some already are.
MaBell has been eliminating copper landlines by the boatload. Homes are still connected by copper, the twisted pair, but between relay stations is now all mostly fiber optics. Although or phones are still analog for the most part, the signals between the two parties talking to each other is often digital over fiber optics.
AT&T is installing one heck of a lot of fiber optic cable for TV, Internet, Phone, and other services, and could possibly dominate the market once again like they have for so many decades.
I do know Cable Companies have been adding a continually increasing number of WiFi hot spots.
And with grants from the government, they are beginning to install hot spots on utility poles in populated city areas.
Comcast already has several, and if you are a subscriber to their home cable service, you can use their WiFi hot spots anywhere you find them.
I do wish they would break up the monopoly of cable companies created by the cities through bribes and payola.
Depending on where you live in the city, you can only get ONE cable company, all the others are locked out.
They need to do like they did with Ma Bell and allow you to pick which cable company you want your service through.
On the back end, it would be like the way the phone companies did it. Whoever owns the lines in an area charges the other phone companies a base rate to lease time on the lines.
Since living down south here, I've had landline telephone service through Eastern Ma Bell, Southeastern Bell, AT&T, and Knox Bell, then back to AT&T, until I decided to go with VOIP services. Love my Ooma system!
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Technically, part of the time I worked for the base station sector of the cell phone manufacturing. I was only a tech and not in an engineering lab at that, but it was my understanding that they planned base station range to be in the area of 20-25 miles; not sure now if that was radius or diameter, but the 25 miles range has a slot in my memory banks. Of course that was theoretical and may not have been practical in all cases due to that line-of-sight phenomena you mention. I think the cell network did indeed develop the way you describe it. It was concentrated in the cities and the connecting routes. That's why satellite phones were invented; to fill in the rural gaps. It's not quite to the point where everybody has access to everybody else's network, but it's getting there. When that becomes a reality then there is no likelihood of a monopoly. There may be restricted access to certain companies, all of which has to do with how the FCC defines common carrier. At the moment it's advantageous to keep the little guys down in the clutter gutter. That could change in the future.
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It could be 25 miles since the very first analog cellular phones were on the 400 mHz band, and transmitted a fairly high power signal measured in watts instead of milliwatts. And this was also before 3 stage trunking systems on the 800 mHz band were developed. You couldn't move from tower to tower with the big heavy bag phones like you can with the handhelds that came out right after. All the handhelds in the US were in the 800 mHz band and now they have 1900 mHz too. For a very short time, one cell phone company was in the 1200 mHz band, but it caused many problems with other services in that band, so they recalled the phones and replaced them with 800 mHz band phones.
The first mobile phones made my Motorola were not cell phones, and used the radio operator to make calls. Like my in-car phone, but they also made a few portables that worked the same way. I think they were around 4 grand to buy too.
From what I've heard, there are a couple of companies placing low orbit satellite cell towers for cellular phones. They don't intend to replace ground based cell towers, just close the gaps in areas where cell towers do not yet exist.
Most midwestern states still do not have cell phone coverage. Only one city in Utah is covered and a couple in New Mexico, for example. Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and parts of Oregon are also not covered.
The first mobile phones made my Motorola were not cell phones, and used the radio operator to make calls. Like my in-car phone, but they also made a few portables that worked the same way. I think they were around 4 grand to buy too.
From what I've heard, there are a couple of companies placing low orbit satellite cell towers for cellular phones. They don't intend to replace ground based cell towers, just close the gaps in areas where cell towers do not yet exist.
Most midwestern states still do not have cell phone coverage. Only one city in Utah is covered and a couple in New Mexico, for example. Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and parts of Oregon are also not covered.
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We are not at the full coverage level when it comes to cell phones. There are dead spots along I-55 when we make the trip between St Louis and Chicago. It could just be our network provider, but there is such a thing as roaming. No dead spots should be present along such a highly traveled route.
If I recall correctly the cell phone band was confined to 900 MHz or thereabouts when I left the building permanently. That's nearly twenty years ago and if things didn't change by now, I want my money back. LOL I'm pretty much out of touch with the technology now that I don't have to deal with it to earn a living. I do know my clever phone has access to the cell network frequencies, WiFi frequencies, Bluetooth frequencies, and near field frequencies. There may be a few I missed but that is quite an extensive part of the entire spectrum.
If I recall correctly the cell phone band was confined to 900 MHz or thereabouts when I left the building permanently. That's nearly twenty years ago and if things didn't change by now, I want my money back. LOL I'm pretty much out of touch with the technology now that I don't have to deal with it to earn a living. I do know my clever phone has access to the cell network frequencies, WiFi frequencies, Bluetooth frequencies, and near field frequencies. There may be a few I missed but that is quite an extensive part of the entire spectrum.
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I do know for most of the trip from Knoxville to Nashville, TN there is no cell service.
Also, driving from Nashville up to St. Louis is almost all dead.
Cell Phones are great within heavily populated areas, but as soon as you get away from them, it's no show!
To get around some of this, some cable companies are installing Cellular Access WiFi Convergence boxes.
It is basically a box that received either Cellular or WiFi signals, uses the Cable Network to send the signal to a Cellular System. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but my wife's son lived just outside of Murphysburough where they had no cell service and he had a few friends there. About a year ago, they started calling him again on their cell phones, but told him they were using a WiFi to Cellular Convergence link set up by the local grocery store. In the beginning, they could call him, but he could not call them. Then the store added some more equipment so it can link to cellular phones. Now he can call them, but only if they have an access account at the grocery store. Something like 60 bucks a year I think he said.
I know my VOIP service sells a mobile phone that works like a cell phone but uses WiFi and works at most hot spots too.
And I thought I read somebody like Cisco makes a home box to use a cellular phone through your VOIP, and it is only something like 60 to 90 dollars. Have not seen it anywhere. But it is designed for folks who don't live near a cell service but still need to have a cell phone. It is also supposed to work if you don't have a cell phone service contract with a cell phone company, because it connects only to your own VOIP.
Also, driving from Nashville up to St. Louis is almost all dead.
Cell Phones are great within heavily populated areas, but as soon as you get away from them, it's no show!
To get around some of this, some cable companies are installing Cellular Access WiFi Convergence boxes.
It is basically a box that received either Cellular or WiFi signals, uses the Cable Network to send the signal to a Cellular System. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but my wife's son lived just outside of Murphysburough where they had no cell service and he had a few friends there. About a year ago, they started calling him again on their cell phones, but told him they were using a WiFi to Cellular Convergence link set up by the local grocery store. In the beginning, they could call him, but he could not call them. Then the store added some more equipment so it can link to cellular phones. Now he can call them, but only if they have an access account at the grocery store. Something like 60 bucks a year I think he said.
I know my VOIP service sells a mobile phone that works like a cell phone but uses WiFi and works at most hot spots too.
And I thought I read somebody like Cisco makes a home box to use a cellular phone through your VOIP, and it is only something like 60 to 90 dollars. Have not seen it anywhere. But it is designed for folks who don't live near a cell service but still need to have a cell phone. It is also supposed to work if you don't have a cell phone service contract with a cell phone company, because it connects only to your own VOIP.