[Leica] IMG: From Long Ago

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

Hi Bill,

The name doesn't sound familiar to me.  There were a large number of 
wind tunnels and test cells in operation when we were doing tests for 
NASA, and I was primarily involved in one area.  We added our plant to 
the engine test cell plant to achieve some conditions required for NASA 
rocket testing, but I was not in the area of the test cell or control 
room for those operations.  My responsibility was to see that we did not 
blow up our exhauster plant while handling combustible rocket exhaust 
products in configurations never dreamed of by the plant designers.

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA

On 12/18/2013 10:51 AM, Bill Grimwood wrote:
> Jim did you ever know Bob Pitcock from Huntsville who used to come up and
> run tests at Tullahoma for NASA?
>
> Bill Grimwood
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+bill=grimwood.net at leica-users.org
> [mailto:lug-bounces+bill=grimwood.net at leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Jim
> Nichols
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2013 4:19 PM
> To: LUG at Leica-Users.org
> Cc: Olympus Camera Discussion
> Subject: [Leica] IMG: From Long Ago
>
> As a young engineer, my first assignment was to calculate the nozzle plate
> shapes for a flexible plate nozzle for the AEDC 16-Ft Transonic Wind 
> Tunnel,
> then under construction.  The shapes had to vary from a simple contraction
> to a Mach 1.6 contour, and the process had to be done by 16 pairs of jacks,
> without over stressing the steel plates.  And, other than the basic
> supersonic shapes calculated by folks at Cal-Tech, it was all done on 
> Friden
> and Marchant desk calculators.
>
> To move the jacks from contour to contour, a series of steps were chosen
> that stayed within stress limits, as determined from curvature 
> calculations.
> These steps were then stored in L-shaped pegs on a mechanical memory drum,
> with the shapes transferred to cam-driven readers and fed to vacuum-tube
> amplifiers which supplied the driving signals to the ball-bearing screw
> jacks.
>
> Bear in mind that this was all done in the early 1950s.
>
> This photo, taken from my technical report, shows the mechanical memory 
> drum
> and the console which contained the drum drive system, the transfer plate,
> and the individual jack amplifiers.  The console and system were designed 
> to
> our specs and provided by an engineering company whose name does not come 
> to
> mind after 60 years.
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/OldNick/Mechanical+Memory+Drum.jpg.html
>
> Memory has come a long way since then. :-)
>
> --
> Jim Nichols
> Tullahoma, TN USA
>
>
>
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