We got quite a kick out an engineer who came over from UK on assignment to work with us on a project.

We were working on a machine in the lab and he asked if we had a torch... Kind of stared at each other then said, well there's been times on this project when I'd like to torch one of the machines under test... Then he educated us that he was looking for what we call a flash light... Hmmm. does your flash light flash when you turn it on?? Where'd the flash part come from??

Best one of all.. He was at a local pub talking to some of the young ladies, and when he asked one of them if he could knock her up sometime, she had a rather surpised look on her face <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/butwiggle.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/butwiggle.gif" alt="" /> (surpised started out as a mispillin' but actually now think ummmm. surpissed is a combination of surprised and pissed at the same time) Probably appropriate reaction at the time.

He then explained that to the Brits, to knock her up meant he'd like to call upon her at her place of residence and take her out..

Don't think she bought it though...

Love the Brits literal words for some things, roundabouts, bonnets, boots, etc.

Flashlight? The first use of battery powered lights was on shipboard, where they flashed signals to other ships, thus, "flash light". The early batteries were so poor that they were not much use for extended lighting, anyway... or so I read a long time ago.

I'll show my age. Any of you ever own a crystal radio, without any power source whatsoever? Had to ground it to a solid earthed ground, and it only had an earpiece, and damned little range. It depended on the power of the transmitter to work it's guts.

Then there was the "compact" 9" GE black and white TV I got for Christmas when I was about 10. Tube TV, with "Compactron" tubes with an average life of about 100 hours, then it was off to the drugstore and the tube tester to see which one was bad. And the only TV station in range was the local UHF station. To get anything else, you had to have a 150' steerable antenna to pick up the Birmingham stations 100 miles away. The local station had about 15 cartoons, half of them the el cheapos where the only thing really animated was the mouths, which were real human mouths superimposed on the cutout characters. Clutch Cargo and Space Angel, and some VERY weird full animation thing from the 30's in black and white about some arctic kingdom with little monk guys who worshiped the sun and some bad guys in stovepipe hats who fought with them and animated some ice monster who was melted at the last minute by the little monk guys and some esoteric machine which focused the finally rising sun on him until he did a Wicked Witch of the West meltdown in the finale. Warped me for life.

My wife lived across an abandoned cotton field from the TV station, and when they didn't have enough kids for the every afternoon Captain Jack local kids cartoon show, they'd call the neighborhood kids to come over and fill in, dirty and sweaty from playing in the dirt field. Captain Jack was about as sleazy a human as I've ever seen. His "costume" for the show was an old WW2 Army Air Corps hat with two foil wrapped pieces of coat hanger stuck to the brim and front of the crown as antennas. Jack was a serial philanderer and child molester, and traded out ads on the air for cash under the table to him.

Funny thing... I did own a crystal radio.

I do recall a 9" TV, but it was in a cabinet over 3 feet high and a couple feet wide...

when my parents got their first TV, there was only one station in receiving distance.

A friend is Brit. It took awhile to understand some of her words...

Another friend is Aussie. Now there is a language barrier... Where else can you get pissed and be drunk??

Remember when all the color tv screens were round with a mask on the top and bottom? We never owned a color tv while I lived at home, thru 1973. Too expensive. Cost $500+ for a 21" screen. At that same time, I bought my first new car, a 71 Opel Manta, for $2562.50. You could buy a new vw bug for around two grand, or a little less. The equivalent new color tv price today would be around $7000.

wrong Ray the Drive ups are at a different angle they are a different but similar model from a wal.
kup

My presumption based on my experience in manufacturing is that manufacturers reduce costs by having one set of keys & bezels if possible.

More accurately I should have said that they imply install the same components like the keyboard on all machines regardless if it's a walkup or drive up unit. This way they can reduce inventory needs (1 keyboard type in inventory instead of 2) and help to reduce costs. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />