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From: "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking
Subject: Re: rod-mill project - "mains" electric motor advice
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:12:41 -0400
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"Richard Smith"  wrote in message news:m1h62owj0d.fsf@void.com...

"Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> writes:

> At Mitre the engineers would roughly specify the project and order
> critical components before asking me to complete the design details
> and handle construction. That worked out well, they knew the theory
> and I knew the practice.

They consulted you first to find-out if your instinct aligned with their
analysis and intention to progress?

-------------------------------------
They gave me increasingly challengingly design tasks and found I could 
handle them. They were deeply but narrowly focused radar and radio 
communications engineers, I have a wide and strong background in computer 
and measurement hardware, both design and construction, so when they asked 
for a high precision data acquisition board for the Mac, atomic clock to 
computer interface and digital radio front end I was the right person. 
Additionally I had learned how to package a project to look like a 
professional product instead of the usual technicians' Bud Box chassis from 
Radio Shack. A retiree taught me and several others the amateur radio course 
to update us in that field. Digital radio takes over at the mixer output and 
replaces complex demodulation hardware.

I see Mitre just lost a project.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/04/us-govt-funding-for-mitres-cve-ends.html
There is always debate over whether Universities, Government-run labs, an 
independent non-profit research center like Mitre, or private contractors 
could solve problems better. Each has different strengths and weaknesses and 
all draw somewhat randomly from the same talent pool, and the left and right 
are both invested in defending their positions. Some tasks bounced around 
them until they reached the right person, for digital radio that was me. In 
the US the ownership and management of utilities also passes back and forth 
between public and private when one or the other stumbles.

I think a key difference is that being less secure, private industry 
attracts the more self-confident risk takers. Mitre et al. attempt to 
straddle the border, though the intrusion of politics and conflict of 
interest is unavoidable. Clinton cut off my work in order to fund Midnight 
Basketball. In his second term he realized how much power aerospace 
electronics gave him and boosted funding.

Britain did similarly with the R100 / R101 airship project. Despite 
socialist hopes and expectations the "Capitalist" version won, so the whole 
idea was cancelled in disgust and embarrassment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R100

Britain refused to grant landing rights for transatlantic commercial 
aviation in the 1930's until able to catch up to the flying boat advances of 
Pan Am. The MacRobertson Race was a telling comparison of the relative UK 
and US states of aviation, driven in your part by socialist control and then 
disinterest instead of technical competence which you certainly don't lack. 
The Merlin engine began as a privately funded venture, the PV-12.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacRobertson_Air_Race

One of the US-built DC2 airliners was flying its regular route with paying 
passengers. A DC3 is a DC2 widened for sleeping berths,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_funded_research_and_development_centers
The arose after WW2, an attempt to better organize and control the advanced 
technical work less formally done by ad-hoc groups, such as the acoustic 
homing torpedo. Managing geniuses is like herding cats.
https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1987/the-passive-acoustic-cutie

Mitre was created to understand and coordinate the integration of radar and 
computers of the 1950's DEW line after MIT proved unwilling to work closely 
enough with private defense contractors, because no private firm understood 
both. I heard the attitude that only pure theoretical research is ethical 
from some leftist college professors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line