Don:

That's a great analogy--from central power source is to mainframe computers
as electric motors are to PCs.

Think of all the "armstrong" hand tools that homeowners no longer use.
They've got to have their electric screwdriver (not to knock those that use
them at work--I know they are great for production work...) to do anything
around the house these days.

One interesting thing I've seen is that the drive sheaves (as on a tractor
with a belt PTO) are often slightly convex in shape, not flat or concave as
I would expect.  Apparently that shape actually helps to keep the belt
centered on the sheave?

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Donald B. White [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 4:58 PM

device independently powered. Much the same thing happened with computers,
which were once so large and expensive that the idea was to have one
computer doing a lot of jobs, maybe even for a lot of locations at once. My

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