history « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

history

baseball / history / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
29
Sep 16

Well that happened in a hurry

I say this at least once a year, but maples are quitters:

And this is way too early for the first leaf to have turned and let go of the branch to find its way to the ground. I found it on the sidewalk outside of our building on campus this morning. I’m noting the date and time, should anything come of it.

Found this repop poster on the wall at lunch today. While I find it too early for the leaf turn, this is right on time.

Even if the poster is wrong — Game One was at Yankee Stadium — it is eerily right on time. Game One of the 1932 World Series was on September 28th. This happened 84 years and one day ago.

The Yankees won. Some 41,000 fans saw the Yankees take the lead with a Lou Gehrig, and then they really poured it on in the final three frames. Red Ruffing pitched a complete game, striking out 10 Cubs.

So that’s timing, for you.

On the 29th, in Game Two, the Yankees won 5-2 and Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez got the second win of the Series. That game took one hour and 46 minutes to complete, and is not the shortest on record. (That’d be an 85 minute contest in 1908.) Babe Ruth saw his last Yankee Stadium World Series game. Ruth’s supposed called shot took place in the third game, in Chicago.

Through all of this, the Cubs wouldn’t hold a lead for more than a half-inning until Game Four, but even that couldn’t stand up. They got swept. But look at the Cubbies now, right?

cycling / history / maps / photo / weekend — Comments Off
4
Sep 16

Where the people are moving

As ever, this barn was at or near the top of a hill on today’s bike ride. It was but a 22-mile ride, and another piece of mounting evidence, impossible to ignore, that I don’t know how to ride on hills. But a nice little piece of farmland, somewhere, I think, around a place called Unionville.

Or maybe it was around New Unionville. Hard to tell at this point. They are both unincorporated areas — One has a recycling center, the other has a post office — and appear to be perfectly lovely and sleepy places to pass through.

Wikipedia tells me that Unionville was the center of the U.S. population in 1911. According to the 2010 Census the center is in a place called Plato, Missouri. As the crow flies that’s a 337 mile shift to the southwest in a century. That’s just migratory patterns. (And air conditioning.)

Furthermore, Wikipedia tells me “The 20.7-mile shift projected for the 2010–2020 period would be the shortest centroid movement since the Great Depression intercensal period of 1930–1940.”

Historically … If you looked at the mean center in 1810, the spot was in Loudon County, Virginia, 470 miles east of here. Short of a trend, let’s split the difference. I’m guessing, if you give it another 100 years, the mean center might be somewhere near Woodward, Oklahoma, which is 400 miles from Plato. Someone print this out and keep it for your great-great-grandchildren to verify.

But, anyway, hills or no, I averaged 20 miles per hour or more over the course of four different miles today. So there’s that. A quick glance at a map of Woodward suggests it might be flat. Maybe I should ride there.

history / IU / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Aug 16

Hanging out with Ernie Pyle

You can never read enough Ernie Pyle. And now I get to see him anytime.

I see his desk every day. It is only strange if he starts talking back, right?

Read Pyle’s wartime work here.

adventures / cycling / history / Indiana / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
2
Aug 16

Revolutionary canvas and defying physics

On the loading dock today was this large canvas roller. These things intrigue me to no end, even as I know I will likely never have a real use for them myself. But that’s the way of it. Great logo, too:

Dandux is a product of C.R. Daniels, Inc. That company started out in New York City, but was purchased by the Trumpbour brothers soon after, in 1920. They moved to New Jersey, and now also have two custom facilities in Tennessee and Maryland, where this particular roller was produced. The second generation Trumpbour men at Daniels have passed away in recent years and you can find their obits online. They both had military service, which continues a long tradition in their family. Apparently eight of their Trumpbour ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.

Favorite tidbit, Edward Trumpbour Jr. did not suffer mediocrity, “or as he would say ‘Meatballs.'”

Let’s find out about those 18th century Trumpbours … seems they were of Dutch descent. And at least some of them were enlisted in New York’s Ulster regiments as Tories. Two of the men from that era died in Canada in the 1800s, which is where a lot of Loyalists found themselves during and after the Revolution. Maybe we’re too far removed, in the sense of family history, to talk about the brother-against-brother aspect of that war, but here, it seems, we might have an example of it.

Anyway, their great-great-great-and-so-on grandchildren are still here.

We rode our bikes, where I thought nothing of Trumpbours or ducks or canvas or any other thing. If you chase fast people like The Yankee you don’t have time to think:

I took a bunch of pictures of her on this stretch of the bike ride, one of the few places I could pull alongside. But she kept outrunning my focus, which was weird. She wasn’t approaching the speed of light, but she was somehow defeating it nevertheless.

I did improve on a half-mile climb by four seconds. The cycling app says I presently have the third-fastest time up that climb for the year, which can only mean that most people don’t ride all the way down to the boat ramp and then back up. There’s no way my pitifully slow time should be on a leaderboard.

Friday / history / IU / photo — Comments Off
15
Jul 16

Found in the Radio-Television Center

I was in the RTV building today and wandered by some great built-in display cases. The history of the program and fair amount of the gear that makes up the business was there. Like this Hitachi FP-3030, from 1976, for example.

It was a smaller camera for its day, but it also did some genius stuff on the inside. I won’t bore you with the details, but it created a more efficient signal which, among other things, allowed black and white televisions to receive color broadcasts and formed normal black and white pictures. It would also allow a color TV to take a black and white broadcast as well as a color picture during color transmission. Remember, this is the 1970s and color TV had just reached 50 percent household penetration, so this would have been important for a lot of homes. Also, this camera cost just under $20,000 in today’s money.

A magnetic tape recorder/dictation machine from Webster-Chicago:

I don’t know anything about this device, but the company dates back to 1914 and they started selling ancestors of this recorder in the early 1940s. At a time when high tech was still very expensive, and not even a term, Webster-Chicago sold more than 40,000 “electronic memory” units in 1947 and 1948 alone. There is an Electronic Memory unit on display, too, but glare on the display glass ruined the pictures. Webster-Chicago started declining in the 1950s with new magnetic tape technology prevailing over the old wire recorders, and when foreign recorders entered the American marketplace, that was pretty much it for the old company.

Friends, please meet the most handsome figure on the lot, the RCA-77:

The 77 was released in 1945, but it just oozed 1930s style and incredible sound quality. Ribbon microphones, like this one, are always popular, and this RCA product creates some great tones. It was the standard through the 1950s and you’ll still see them in use in studios today.

If you see one for less than a couple grand, buy it, because the seller doesn’t understand the marketplace.