Last night I was wondering what things I can leave for my kid when she grows up!
My house is probably the only physical thing I can think of!
All my photos are digital (perhaps I should print some every year)!
My electronic gadgets won't last a generation.
My car might last that long but its electronics would not and it would be non-runner even if I keep it that long.
I have some books (timeless classics and philosophical) which will last 50 years or so with proper care.
I have a mechanical watch which I guess might last a long time (+ 2 from my dad which are 45 years old and still functional)
I have some Legos. The bricks should last 40-50 years.
What you are going to leave for your family?
PS: I am talking about physical objects and not money, knowledge/faith etc.
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We've always handed down masses of "stuff" from one generation to the next - far too much in the view of the females who have to marry it.
My grandfather was a painter, so hundreds of oils and watercolours for a start, dating back to the 1880s.
Empire-era bric a brac from around the world - Burmese carved panelling and brassware - elephants etc.
Boxes of letters and cards, official correspondence, receipts, deeds, old metals, etc.
Some of it I've only just got round to unpacking from the crates. He died in 1954, but my father never touched any of it. Lots of collapsing worm-eaten furniture was burned.
My parents added little of worth to the collection. They specialised in part-rolls of old lino and carpet and original packing for old projectors and hoovers long since thrown out. My mother spent her life complaining about interesting old family things, but herself tended to stockpile out of date tinned fruit and tubes of Harpic.
We don't really have a problem picking things to keep, more of deciding whether anything can ever be thrown out.
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I only worked for three companies in my working life and am chuffed to have a book written about each of them.
I shall also leave a photograph of OSO-D (orbiting space observatory number "D") taken in the Leicester Space Museum. It is only a model but I never saw a complete version of the real thing. I designed and built a small part of the electronics for one of the experiments. It flew in 1967.
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That's pretty funky, Aretas. What was the experiment?
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The experiment was for particle detection, run by Leicester University. My bit was simply receiving high voltage pulses and counting them! No integrated circuits around when it was designed in 1964. There were three OSO-Ds built, which was typical for the time - the "real" one, a spare and one for ground investigations in case of trouble with the one in the air. The spare came in useful because the Delta rocket failed first time round. The second launch was successful and 7 of the 8 experiments (including "mine"!) worked just fine.
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Best thing you can leave behind is knowing the difference between right & wrong. A strong work ethic helps.
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>> Best thing you can leave behind is knowing the difference between right & wrong. A
>> strong work ethic helps.
>>
The question asked ended:
"PS: I am talking about physical objects and not money, knowledge/faith etc."
I think we all agree there are much more important intangible things than mere physical objects.
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Sorry. My reply was not about physical objects. I was taken unexpectedly in my local. These things happen.
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Interesting, thanks for that, Aretas. Is the data long lost, or is it in one of those archives that people still explore from time to time and find something new, do you know? I saw yesterday they are now casting some more new light on the Higgs particle from old Fermi data, of all things.
We like the Leicester Space Museum very much and its about time we went again, so maybe later this summer I shall pay my dues at the altar, before popping into the pumping station over the road for a gander at the tiling.
I've been following this NASA project since forever - particle detection too, really.
www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/maven-completes-1000-orbits-around-mars/
Sorry, this was a thread hijack. As you were.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 9 Apr 15 at 07:54
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For Crankcase:
Spacecraft Manual: tinyurl.com/k6mvrjh
More on OSO-D (re-named OSO-4 after launch): tinyurl.com/kz8ykoj
I had no involvement with the experimenters or the physics. Just a humble electronics engineer. In fact I had left Pye (The contractor for part of the build) by the time it flew.
At Leicester the full sized model is a bit hidden, being hung in a dark part of the ceiling. But there is a plaque with a photo and explains Leicester's involvement.
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Many thanks indeed - what a great manual. It almost feels like other than the launching, you could still build that from bits out of Maplin. There's a real immediacy with those older analogue systems that makes them understandable.
Enjoyed that.
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The main frame for one part was machined from an aluminium billet. It took about a week for one person in the machine shop to complete it. The first time the poor guy made one he confused third angle and first angle projection on the drawing, and made it the wrong way round.
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Things you can leave behind for next generation? - Cliff Pope
