As we at Addendum have long known, within every gear man (and women) lies the soul of a poet. To prove it, we present the following piece by David B. Dooner.
Come with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear...Ok, this is not the Cisco Kid, but we do have a little game for you. Guess the year the following advertisements and excerpt were printed - they all appeared in a dingle issue of Machinery Magazine.
It should be obvious by now that gears are more than just mechanical components. We have brought you movies with gears and Shakespeare with gears, jewelry made out of gears and so on. Now we, the humble staff at Addendum, are proud to present gears in the world of music.
Every now and then, it strikes us as wise to keep our thoughts to ourselves and let our betters speak for us. Therefore, we present to you a collection of observations on work; science and other items of interest to gear engineers.
In our never-ending quest to bring our readers information about he unusual, the unique and-dare we say it?-the bizarre, the Addendum Staff has traveled for this issue to the wilds of Darkest Tennessee and the Museum of Appalachia. This museum of Appalachian fold art, crafts and history is located in Norris, TN, about 16 miles north of Knoxville. Among the 250,000 items collected by the museum's founder, John Rice Irwin, is a "thing," a "contraption," an "objet trouve"; to wit, Asa Jackson's mysterious machine.
Over the years the Addendum Staff has brought you odd, little known and sometimes useless facts about almost every conceivable topic concerning gears. This month, as part of our never-ending campaign to upgrade the tone of the industry, we are venturing into the world of high fashion. Lose those pocket protectors, gear fans. Welcome to the land of gear haute couture. Appearing now, in select magazines, are ads that rival those of Bulgari, Cartier and Tiffany. These gear "gems" come courtesy of Winzeler Gear, Chicago, IL.
Move over, Michael Jordan. While the Addendum staff is as proud as any other Chicagoans of our unbeata-Bulls, we confess to a soft spot in our hearts for the hometown's other championship basketball team: The Chicago American Gears.
This issue of Addendum is dedicated to gears that have served their country. There have been many, but among the most significant are surely those at work during the Civil War, when their application changed the nature of naval warfare forever. It's time to recall that role, namely, powering the revolving turret of the U.S.S. Monitor, one of the first "ironclad" vessels.
When you need totally useless information about gears, you can turn with confidence to the pages of Addendum, where we scour the globe for the obscure, the unusual and the ridiculous (the latter being or forte.)
Back in the days when our great, great, great, etc., grandaddies were designing gears, one of the most common materials in use was wood. For fairly obvious reasons, we don't see too many wooden gears around anymore. But there are a few.