Why aren't AA batteries square?

When I were young some torches could be illuminated briefly by pressing a button as well as having a slider switch. I assumed this was so you could signal your mates by Morse code rather than to conserve battery energy.

The article in Wikipedia shows an early "electric device" which appears to have only a momentary on type switch.

The first "dust buster" type battery vacuum cleaner I bought had a similar type switch, as did the first cassette recorders. It appears that eventually the convenience of a proper switch is seen as more important than conserving energy.

Before that - camera flashes and lighthouses:

But that has a "spinny thing" [1] inside.

After the first jump, she said I was the only person she'd ever known to not look scared in any way, but just to leap out. Hey, you've got a chute and a safety chute, what could possibly go wrong?

When I were young (36 years ago), my first torch was a rubber (waterproofish) Duracell (?) torch, taking two D cells. It had two buttons (which I suspect just pressed on the two ends of a rocker switch underneath). You could hold the off one down and tap the on one to make morse code. I got through a lot of batteries until they invented rechargeables, just by forgetting to turn the bloody thing off, as it would stand on the light end on a table and you couldn't tell it was on. I eventually lost it in a farmer's barn somewhere when me and a friend were playing in a huge pile of hay bales.

A cassette recorder?! Surely you don't hold it on for half an hour while you listen to a full album?

What irritates me are hedge trimmers with two switches, some sort of safety nonsense. All it means to me is you need both hands, which is useless when you're reaching high up. So I always tape one of them permanently on.

I'm reminded of one of my quotations: "The computer is never wrogn."

I've seen that for the record button. A little red thing in the middle of "play". It locks when you press both.

With the ones I've seen, you can release one of the buttons once it's started.

That would defeat the whole purpose (of making you have two hands on the handles so one can't get cut off).

Pah. People worry too much.

On Sun, 24 Sep 2017 03:02:09 +0100, Uncle Monster w= rote:

te:

ot on and off and on and off.

h" mode which is useful for disorienting an intruder or attacker when th= e intense flashing light is aimed at their face. I even had one that wou= ld automatically flash "SOS" when that mode was selected. I actually own= some "Flashlights". =E3=83=BD(=E3=83=85)=E3=83=8E

Why not just turn it on and aim it in their eyes, then they can't see a = damn thing. Pretty much like what morons do with daytime running light= s on cars. They're brighter than normal dipped beam, and completely unn= ecessarily used during broad daylight.

-- =

My memory foam pillow has got Alzheimer's! -- Steve Pounder circa 2014

If collecting for hurricane victims would not it be better targeting the donations towards the poor countries rather than to one of the richest countries in the world?

It was intended to be sort of a joke. : )

First you must ask yourself why is the country poor.

Is the country's "poorness" the fault of working republican taxpayers in the US?

On Mon 25 Sep 2017 01:12:39a, Deep Thinker told us...

I belive in taking care of our own before forking over money to countries that most likely don't give a damn about us. We have enough problems in this country before we begin worrying about other parts of the world.

Sorry, I meant for FF & rewind. The first Philips cassette recorder (£25 in 1965) had a joystick for play, FF & rewind, and the latter two functions you had to hold the stick in position.

I remember a reel to reel taperecorder which didn't require you to hold = things, but you did have to tell it precisely what to do. For example e= ngaging rewind while it was playing would result in the tape spooling ra= pidly off the reels all over the floor. You had to engage "stop" before= another action. A bit like my old Range Rover automatic, which would a= llow you to select drive while reversing with your foot fully on the acc= elerator. With a 3.5 litre V8 engine, it did manage, by spinning all fo= ur wheels quite dramatically.

-- =

FART stands for FAst Repetitive Ticks, and herrings use them to communic= ate.

It still makes it harder to get the thing started, and apparently that's what they want.

I remember one cassette machine where both FF & rewind had 2 functions. Push the button all the way in for the normal function. Push it part way (momentary) causes the tape to play at high speed.

IIRC (some?) Sony beta VCR's could do that too.