Wayne and Layne

Westinghouse Sign

The Westinghouse Sign was a large, animated, electric sign advertising the Westinghouse Electric company and located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. The sign was best known for the huge number of combinations in which its individual elements could be illuminated. The sign was removed in 1998 when the building on which it was mounted was demolished to make way for the construction of PNC Park.

The various corporations which have carried the Westinghouse name have erected countless signs and other promotional devices during the past 140 years, including many in the corporate hometown of Pittsburgh. A cubic Westinghouse sign stood in downtown Pittsburgh for approximately thirty five years and was so familiar that it was allowed to remain in place until 2002, even after the building it marked the Westinghouse Tower was no longer owned or occupied by Westinghouse.

via Westinghouse Sign – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, commonly referred to as Palo Verde Power Plant, is a nuclear power plant located in Tonopah, Arizona, about 50 miles (80 km) west of central Phoenix, and is currently the largest nuclear generation facility in the United States, averaging over 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of electrical power production in 2003 to serve approximately 4 million people. Arizona Public Service (APS) owns the largest portion (29.1%) of the station and operates the facility. Other owners include Salt River Project (17.5%), El Paso Electric Co. (15.8%), Southern California Edison (15.8%), PNM Resources (10.2%), Southern California Public Power Authority (5.9%), and the Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power (5.7%).

Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of above-ground water. Instead, it evaporates water from the treated sewage of several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling needs. The water consumed by the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station represents about 25% of the annual overdraft of the Arizona Department of Water Resources Phoenix Active Management Area.

via Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Grand Coulee Dam

The Grand Coulee Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. In the United States, it is the largest electric power-producing facility and the largest concrete structure. It is the seventh largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world, as of the year 2008.

The reservoir is called Franklin Delano Roosevelt Lake, named after the United States President who presided over the completion of the dam. The foundation was built by the MWAK Company, a joint effort of several contractors united for this purpose. Consolidated Builders Incorporated, including industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, completed the dam. The United States Bureau of Reclamation supervised the contractors and operates the dam. Folk singer Woody Guthrie was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs about the Columbia Basin Project; the songs Roll On Columbia and Grand Coulee Dam are part of that series.

The Grand Coulee Dam is almost a mile long at 5223 feet (1586 m). The spillway is 1,650 feet (503 m) wide. At 550 feet (168 m), it is taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza; all the pyramids at Giza could fit within its base. Its hydraulic height of 380 feet (115 m) is more than twice that of Niagara Falls. There is enough concrete to build a four-foot wide, four-inch deep sidewalk twice around the equator.

via Grand Coulee Dam – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Fish Ladder

A fish ladder, also known as a fishway, fish pass or fish steps, is a structure on or around artificial barriers such as dams and locks to facilitate diadromous fishes' natural migration. Most fishways enable fish to pass around the barriers by swimming and leaping up a series of relatively low steps hence the term ladder into the waters on the other side. The velocity of water falling over the steps has to be great enough to attract the fish to the ladder, but it cannot be so great that it washes fish back downstream or exhausts them to the point of inability to continue their journey upriver.

via Fish ladder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Peshtigo Fire

The October 8, 1871 Peshtigo Fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, is the conflagration that caused the most deaths by fire in United States history. Having occurred on the same day as the more infamous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire is mostly forgotten. On the same day as the Peshtigo and Chicago fires, the cities of Holland, and Manistee, Michigan, across Lake Michigan, also burned, and the same fate befell Port Huron at the southern end of Lake Huron.

via Peshtigo Fire – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Two Generals’ Problem

In computing, the Two Generals’ Problem is a thought experiment meant to illustrate the pitfalls and design challenges of attempting to coordinate an action by communicating over an unreliable link. It is related to the more general Byzantine Generals’ Problem (though published long before that later generalization) and appears often in introductory classes about computer networking (particularly with regards to the Transmission Control Protocol), though it can also apply to other types of communication. Some authors also refer to this as the Two Army Problem or the Coordinated Attack Problem.

via Two Generals’ Problem – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Extispicy

Extispicy (from Latin extispicium) is the practice of using anomalies in animal entrails to predict or divine future events. Organs inspected can include the liver, intestines, lungs, or other major organs. The animal used for extispicy must often be ritually pure and slaughtered in a special ceremony.

The practice was first common in ancient Mesopotamian, Hittite and Canaanite temples. Later, soothsayers from Ancient Roman times used the entrails of a bull to determine the advisability of a particular endeavor and Etruscans used patterns seen in the livers of sheep to assess their future. There exists substantial evidence to indicate that this was the main form of divination within classical cultures.

Organ models and extispicy manuals in cuneiform script are widely found in archaeological excavations in the regions, showing the prevalence and significance of extispicy. Commonly, (in antiquity) the majority of the divination was wrought from viewing the intestines and the liver.

Although extispicy would commonly be viewed with skepticism by the modern mind, some 20th century scholars suggested that this technique was also a valuable and legitimate form of, essentially, autopsy, which might indicate internal disease tied to poor environmental factors, information that would be important to nomadic peoples.

via Extispicy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jane’s Information Group

Jane’s Information Group is a publishing company specializing in transportation and military topics, which was founded by Fred T. Jane in 1898. Jane began by sketching ships as an enthusiast, and this gradually developed into an encyclopedic knowledge, culminating in the publishing of “All the World’s Fighting Ships”. The company Jane founded gradually branched out into other arenas of military expertise. The books and trade magazines published by Jane’s are often considered the de-facto public source of information on warfare and transportation systems. Major competitors include Defense News, Flight International and Aviation Week. Jane’s continues to provide open source intelligence in the defense, security, transport and law enforcement sectors.

via Jane’s Information Group – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Proportional navigation

Proportional navigation is a guidance law used in some form or another by most homing air target missiles. It is based on the fact that two vehicles are on a collision course when their direct Line-of-Sight does not change direction. PN dictates that the missile velocity vector should rotate at a rate proportional to the rotation rate of the line of sight and in the same direction.

An = N' * L' * V

Where An is the acceleration perpendicular to missile velocity vector, N’ is the proportionality constant (dimensionless), L’ is the line of sight rate, and V is the velocity.

For example, if the line of sight rotates slowly from north to east, the missile should turn to the right by a certain factor faster than the LOS-rate. This factor is called the Navigation Constant K_nav.

via Proportional navigation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Green Room

A green room is a room in a theater, studio, or other public venue for the accommodation of performers or speakers when not required on the stage. Its function is as a break/touch-up lounge so that performers do not have to go back to wardrobe/dressing rooms and are still easily accessible for their call. The first recorded use of the term was in 1701 but the origin of the term is unknown and is the source of many folk etymologies such as:

• The room was originally painted green to “relieve the eyes from the glare of the stage.” On the other hand, early stage lighting was by candlelight, so the “glare” might be apocryphal, a modern reference to electric stage lighting.
• It is sometimes said that the term green room was a response to limelight, though the name is merely a coincidence — “limelight” refers to calcium oxide, not to the fruit or color. Furthermore limelight was invented in 1820 and the term was used many years prior to that.
• Many actors experience nervous anxiety before a performance and one of the symptoms of nervousness is nausea. As a person who feels neauseous is often said to look “green”, so the “Green Room” is the place where the nervous actors wait.
• Some studies state that the green room was originally called the retaining room. The ensemble of a production would wait there for their appearance onstage, listening to the performance of the principal actors and critiquing their acting. When made aware of this practice, the leads began to call the retaining room the green room, mocking the (green) envy of these actors.
• In Restoration theatres, the main, seasoned actors waited for their entrances in the wings – or sometimes even at the sides of the stage – while the minor players, usually young, less experienced “green” actors, were banished behind the scenes. Hence, the backstage room was for the “green” players and came to be called the green-room.
• According to one theory, long before modern makeup was invented the actors had to apply makeup before a show and allow it to set up or cure before performing. Until the makeup was cured, it was green and people were advised to sit quietly in the green room until such time as the makeup was stable enough for performing. Uncured makeup is gone, but the green room lives on.
• In Shakespearean theatre actors would prepare for their performances in a room filled with plants and shrubs. It was believed that the moisture in the topiary was beneficial to the actors’ voices. Thus the green room may refer to the green plants in this stage preparation area.

via Green room – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.