2020 New Random Pics

[Steve Carlton]

"Oh, come on! Seriously???"

[GH85Carrera]

In 1990, Windows 3.0 was released

[masraum]

707 mid barrel roll in the 70s.

[GH85Carrera]

That is a 100% cake. No BBQ or meat, just tasty cake.

[GH85Carrera]

This was a 250 MB hard drive in 1979:




In 1995, Intel released the Pentium Pro processor, a turning point in micro-architecture, especially for business servers and high-end workstations.
Built using a P6 micro architecture, it introduced out-of-order execution, speculative branching, and advanced pipelining... concepts that now underpin modern CPUs. It even used separate L2 cache on a daughter die bonded inside the same package (early multi-chip module style).
Sure, it ran a bit hot, but it made Windows NT feel like it could finally get its act together.

[GH85Carrera]

[Bill Douglas]

[Bill Douglas]

[kach22i]

https://skycraftpropellers.com/warbird

[GH85Carrera]

No thanks!


Tha is $21,987.39 in 2025 dollars.






Working at his laboratory in Malibu, in 1960 Theodore Maiman successfully fired the world’s first laser. At a press conference seven weeks later, Maiman and his employer Hughes Aircraft Company announced the discovery to the world.
In 1917 Einstein had proposed the possibility that electrons could be stimulated to emit light of a particular wavelength (“stimulated emission,” he called it), the process that would make lasers possible. Research on stimulated emission had been ongoing at Columbia University for years when graduate student Gordon Gould jotted down his calculations and design for “a LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” Whether Gould invented the laser would be a subject of patent lawsuits that would drag on for decades. But there is no doubt that he invented the acronym by which the technology would be known. Still, the technology Gould described was conceptual only. Nearly three years later, no one had been able to build a working laser.
On May 16, 1960 that changed. The devise Maiman created flashed white light into a cylinder of synthetic ruby, energizing the electrons in the ruby and causing it to emit a short burst of high-powered light—a laser. While certainly not as powerful as those that would follow, it was a working laser nonetheless. It was a revolutionary development.
These days lasers (which produce an intense, very narrow beam of light in a single wavelength) are ubiquitous, with immensely important applications in medical science, electronics, data transmission and much more, making the technology among the most transformative of the past hundred years.
In commemoration of Maiman’s success, May 16 was designated by UNESCO as the International Day of Light, and it will be celebrated today with numerous laser-themed events around the world.
The photo is of Maiman and his laser.

(when I was in grade school, Mr. Science had a show at our school. He talked of the new laser, and said, it has no use at all now) Glen

[Racerbvd]

[GH85Carrera]

[Racerbvd]

[GH85Carrera]

“In the 1980s, the cost of sending a telegram was almost the same as a pound of pork,” recalls Wang Xiuhua, a retired telegraph operator from Taizhou, a city 270 kilometers southeast of Hangzhou. “Only people with real emergencies would choose it.”
Messages like: “Father is ill, come back immediately,” or “Arrive on the 8th, pick me up at the station.”
Back then, every character had to be encoded by hand. Each Chinese character was represented by a string of four numbers, drawn from a thick manual known as the Standard Telegraph Code Book. Wang spent three months memorizing the codes for 2,000 to 3,000 of the most commonly used words. Once mastered, she could type 80 characters a minute.
“I still remember — 1562 means gong (work), and 0086 means ren (person),” she explains. “Together, they mean ‘working people.’ That’s us.” Her eyes lit up, the numbers still at her fingertips after all these years.
In her prime, Wang would send hundreds of telegrams a day, “from the moment I picked up my pen at work until the end of the day.”
That process continued for decades, until just months before the Hangzhou station shut. After its last telegraph machine broke down, staff began typing messages on a computer: a temporary fix to meet rising demand. They were then printed, stamped, and sealed for express delivery.

[Racerbvd]

[Racerbvd]

[A930Rocket]

An alligator spotted, with no tail. Probably bitten off by another alligator?

[GH85Carrera]

[Steve Carlton]

[GH85Carrera]

In April of 1944, Pfc. Sam & Pfc. Joe Maduna of the the 93rd Infantry Division, man a .50 caliber machine gun on Bougainville’s Hill 250 in the Solomon Islands