Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

I know someone who can't tell left from right without touching herself.

Interesting that you felt a need to say both. If one way is on, you should already know what the other way is.

Stylus was the new word, starting in the 1960's iirc. The original word was needle, and they looked like needles, steel pins with a point, about an inch long. Held in place with a finger screw. . I still have my mother's 78 rpm record player, probably from the 20's, and a couple boxes labeled "needles" "Guaranteed to play 10 records". I think it also says "genuine steel".

I couldn't really see the difference between a used needle and a new one, and I hope I didn't damage any of the records.

Her record player doesn't have speakers, not even one, or any controls except on/off. For sound you have to turn on a nearby AM radio and tune to the right frequency. I meant to check if that means I can listen all over the house, which would be really nice, but until just now, I'd forgotten about

Didn't find her brand but this is similar:

Ah, of course :-)

One of the things I had as a kid was a physics set made by Kosmos. Or an electricity one, I forget which had this experiment. Well, one of the experiments was to build an electric bell, running off a 4.5 battery. And then, a second experiment was to hold both electrodes in my hands.

Shock.

They said they made electric fences for cattle that way, but that it was safe. It wasn't a massive shock, just a shock :-)

I had forgotten that experiment. Never got that shock with a motor, though. Maybe my motors were smaller :-?

Sure does. It is also a massive coil, designed for that.

:-D

I actually have seen those. I have an electric gramophone somewhere. Or did I give it to someone?

:-D

They do, new or not. Lots of weight in the arm.

No, that's not how they worked.

Radios of that era had a setting named "phone". And a socket. You connected the output of the "electric gramophone" pickup to the phone input of the radio, which was actually the audio amplifier section.

The radio could have a switch to disable the radio section or not, in which case you would have to "tune out" the stations.

... my panel turned vertical ! .... imagine that. John T.

Interesting that you say you're left-handed and pretty ambidextrous except for writing, because my impression is that left-handed people seem to be more strongly polarised (less ambidextrous) than right-handed people.

I'm right-handed (I can barely make a mark on the paper, let alone write legibly with my left hand). But for most other tasks I'm fairly ambidextrous: I can hammer or tighten a screw with either hand, and often alternate to give one hand a rest. I tend to pour with my left hand, mainly so I can stir/mix with my right hand as a pour in with my left.

I worked with a woman who was so strongly left-handed that she could not open a door with her right hand if the handle happened to be on the right as she approached it: she would always turn sideways so her left hand was next to the handle. I remember her ranting that some of the doors were "right handed" and this discriminated against people like her. She was a bit flummoxed when I pointed out that every door which had the handle on the right when you approached from one direction had it on the left when you approached from the other direction (and vice versa).

For me, it is only precision tasks like writing that I can only do with my right hand. Everything else ("non-precision tasks" such as pushing and pulling) I use whichever hand is closer - and maybe, less tired!

My mum is left-handed but is of the generation when children were encouraged to do as much as possible right-handed, so as "not to be different". So she uses a knife and fork in the conventional hands (fork in left, knife in right). She started out using a mouse left-handed but eventually got so fed up with the rest of us leaving her mouse on the right hand side when we'd been helping her, that she got used to using it right handed. I offered to swap the mouse buttons over but she said that this was more trouble than it was worth: just because she held her mouse in her left hand, she didn't see why she should want to left-click with her right (index) finger and right-click with her left (middle) finger. This is just as well: I find that I can use a mouse almost as well with my left hand as my right, but what really stops me dead in my tracks is if the buttons are swapped.

The one thing I've noticed with a lot of left-handed people is the really awkward and painful-looking way they hold a pen when they are writing. I realise that with a fountain pen, where the ink takes a little time to dry, there is the added problem for a left-handed person than they have to take care not to smudge the ink with their little finger as it *trails* their writing hand that they are resting on the little finger, whereas a right-handed person has their little finger

That's far from unusual. A typical service entrance will have a main breaker where up==connected and down==disconnected. It will then have two columns of horizontally mounted breakers with each column oriented opposite the other. That's three directions.

I built my own isolation transformer for working on that kind of stuff back then from 2 heavy fillament transformers back to back (double isolation) recently built anew one from 2 microwave transformers (dissassembled cores and installed 2 primaries on one core then welded the core together). I've still got my old "buck/boost" transformer that either boosts or bucks voltage by 6 or 12 volts - and a couple Variacs - one with switchable rectified output to give variable DC. - plug it into the isolator to get isolated variable output.

Self induction - collapsing current in the motor induces a higher voltage (counter emf)

That's for sure. In fact it's lifting the arm off of its support that turns the steel turntable on. Arm weighs maybe 1/2 to 3/4 pound? Just guessing, but it's steel too.

Not like you to think you know more about my phonograph than I do.

Mine has no output jacks or cords. Just a small nice wooden cabinet with no holes, no jacks, maybe one 12" wire as a transmitting antenna (I have to go look again. Not sure if there's a wire.)

Maybe 14 or 16" square and 5" high.

It might be from the 30's after my mother got married in 1929.

I have been lucky enough that there was no strong station at the frequency. I left a note inside so I or the next owner doesn't have to hunt for it.

Why bother with the cap? Just connect all neutrals and the stage together and to ground. In my house neutral and ground are identical anyway, there's only a two core cable supplying the house. Earths and neutrals from all sockets go to the 0V wire, all lives go the 240V wire. Simple.

I doubt that's ever happened. Something falls precisely against it and it happens to be off?

Then why do I remember seeing a blue light?

Why do you misuse the word code? A code is some kind of encryption. You mean regulation. If Americans are to integrate with society, they need to learn to speak English correctly.

And not stalled. Essentially a stalled motor is a damn great inductor.

One of these...

I'm not one of those. I just drag my hand across the text. That's probably one of the reasons I favor fine-point ballpoint pens: less ink to smear. It does take a little more effort to push the hand across the paper than pull it. It's a little academic these days; I haven't done much handwriting in several decades.

I am, however, inclined to use spiral-bound notebooks from back to front to keep my hand away from the spiral.

I've never used a fountain pen.

Some of it probably depends on what the teacher demanded of them. By the time I went to school, they had pretty much stopped trying to turn lefties into righties.

Ok, that's way more sophisticated, and more modern. I've never seen one like that.

The transmitter should be tunable.

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