
Motors Big and Small (1971) [video] - bane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWiYsRi2Dss
======
djaychela
Well, that's delayed me by 20 minutes! I'm not sure whether it's the content
(I knew some but not all of that), the presentation style (I've always liked
the use of analogy in teaching), or mere nostalgia that made it so engaging,
but I found it impossible to stop watching that, and now I want to know more -
particularly to see if those developments were applied to the passenger
carrying vehicles of today.

I wonder if a video made today would be as straightforward in presentation,
and also how it would look to a 45 year old in 2062? (coincidentally this was
made in the year of my birth)

------
csours
> "A good engineer knows when to use an analogy, and where it breaks down"

If you learn nothing else, learn this.

I listened to a conversation where a senior person was explaining something
with an analogy. The junior person kept having problems with the edges of the
analogy, where it breaks down, and the senior person just kept trying to
explain the analogy.

Analogies, parables, shortcuts all have breakdown points, you have to know
them, or they will bite you.

~~~
virtuabhi
Probably, in Computer Science, the exemplar of unnecessary analogies is the
first Paxos paper - [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/publication/part-ti...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/publication/part-time-parliament/)

------
TeMPOraL
Holy hell, that's one good piece of video. Full of content and no fluff. I
love the presentation style.

Anyone know of more videos like this one?

~~~
Nition
I rather like this one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI)

~~~
yhager
This is a favourite of mine. I watch it every once in a while.

------
delibes
Huh. His obituary says he retired from IC in 1986, but I _distinctly_ recall
him giving an electric motors course in my first year in 1994! I'm doubting my
own memory now, but have vivid recollections of a classmate talking about the
patents he had, and his ideas for launching to space using a maglev track up
the side of a mountain.

~~~
londons_explore
I think his son still teaches there?

------
xiphmont
"Of course... you can have a lot of fun with this..."

:-D

