On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 07:33:21 -0000 (UTC), News 2021
wrote:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2021 20:44:45 -0700, Jeff Liebermann scribed:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2021 22:56:12 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:00:08 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

I think each one of those allowed riding significantly farther,
faster,
more comfortably or safer compared to the technology it replaced.

And everything else I can think of caused much smaller and merely
incremental improvements.

That's the rule for everything. Lacing skins together to get a better
fit wasn't as big an improvment as wearing clothes. The eyed needle
wasn't as big an improvment over lacing as lacing was over just using
the fabric the way you found or made it . . .

and improvements after the invention of the zig-zag sewing machine are
barely detectable.

For most sewing machines, I would agree that progress has been
incremental and not revolutionary. However, in industrial sewing
machines, the introduction of CNC (computerized numerical control)
machines has been revolutionary in terms of what can be done with such a
machine. For example, quilting and embroidery has become heavily
computerized:

Err, no, they are just mechanised. Instead of someone having to manually
move the sewing head(actually the spread fabric), they can just feed
commands into the X & Y motors and the thread quilting pattern can be
made very decorative.

In the 1960's and 70's, my fathers lingerie factory in Smog Angeles
was near a factory that did "computerized" embroidery. The Swiss
computer was in 7ft tall, 19" relay rack. Programming and storage was
on rather large punched cards, very similar to the original 1800's
Jacquard loom except that it used needles:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=jacquard+punched+cards
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
Basically, it was an automated version of the needle embroidery paper
template.
"Punching a 12 stitch repeat card on a 24 stitch repeat punch card"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnwaKaMXSJA
In other words, for 200 years, the improvements in mechanized
embroidery were small evolutionary improvements and refinements of
existing technology.

During the 1980's, computers arrived and changed everything. While
the older mechanical computerized machines operated at the speed of a
mechanical ratchet, the computerized servo and stepper motor driven
machine could go much faster. Suddenly, there was a reason to improve
the underlying mechanical technology. For example, the switch from
one needle, to over a hundred needles. (The most I've seen were was
about 100 at a trade show about 20 years ago). For example, 15
needles and 2 heads:
https://www.toolots.com/double-head-15-needles-embroidery-machine-with-pattern-design-system.html
Notice that the above machine is controlled by a small tablet
computah. Controlling such a machine with punched cards would have
been impossible.

It's much like the transition from steel frames, to aluminum frames,
and now to carbon fiber. The requirements of each material
established the limits of what could be done. For example, when
aluminum tubing arrived, frame makers were building frames almost
exactly the way steel frames had been previously built. With water,
sand, or hydraulic fluid filled tubing benders, they could produce
weird looking frames that resembled a pretzel. Add some shocks and
these became the current standard for mountain bicycles. The odd
geometry is not particularly revolutionary. The method of efficiently
bending tubing is.





--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558