Saturday, April 19, 2025
the Bosch Magneto Ignition, it made the internal combustion engine feasible for powering the automobile. And due to the family tree project I'm working on, I found I'm related very distantly!
In 1897 a customer asked Bosch to customize a three-wheeler with a magneto ignition system.
Robert Bosch tasked his factory manager, Arnold Zähringer, with finding a solution, which he delivered by making a fundamental design modification.
Until then, the electrical energy had been generated through the rotation or oscillation of an armature wound in copper within a magnetic field. The technology was capable of providing ignition at 100 rpm
Zähringer set it up so that a lightweight metallic sleeve surrounding the armature would rotate or oscillate instead, enabling a large number of ignition processes, sufficient in smaller, faster vehicle motors that operated at up to 1,000 rpm.
Jenatzy drove a Mercedes to victory in the Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland in 1903 — thanks in part to the reliable Bosch ignition system, which stood up to the harshest conditions.
Bosch secretly supported the resistance against Adolf Hitler, and together with his closest associates saved victims of Nazi persecution from deportation.
He established his last will and testament in which he stipulated that the earnings of the company should be allocated to charitable causes.
His father ran a large progressive farm that included a brewery.
His nephew was future Nobel laureate.
On 24 May 1884, Bosch sailed for the United States, becoming an engineer under Thomas Edison and Sigmund Bergmann in New York. On 13 May 1885, Bosch sailed for London, where he found employment with Siemens Brothers. On 15 November 1886, he opened his own "Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering" in Stuttgart.
Bosch was greatly concerned about promoting occupational training. Prompted by his awareness of social responsibility, he was one of the first industrialists in Germany to introduce the eight-hour work day
Robert Bosch did not wish to profit from the armaments contracts awarded to his company during WWI. Instead, he donated several million German marks to charitable causes, including to the establishment of Stuttgart's Robert Bosch Hospital in 1940.
One of my ancestors, Henrik Bosch, 1493-1526 lived in Frankfurt, and Robert Bosch's ancestors were from the nearby Stuttgart area, though the efforts I've made in looking in Ancestry.com found that his ancestry haven't been thoroughy documented earlier than the late 1700s
getting a well preserved Massey Ferguson back in running order
this is such a pleasant video to watch, and I LOVE that thermostat
in a new twist to the sleeping beauty story, a bikini contest winner was woke up in a hospital, near a race track, by a race car driver, and he took her to see his shiny new ride. Or something like that
https://public.fotki.com/gwadagone/sixties-nascar--dec/68allison.html#media
here's proof that someone will always graffiti something nice so they will be known when others go to look at something famous
I like gadgets, and innovations a LOT, and there are a couple cool ones in this video I want to share, like the compaction tool that uses a truck spring!
Might even be part of the axle, and use the brake disc!
Coffee and donuts video for the day, skip the first 40 seconds
and the coolest piece of petroliana I've seen in a while, the daily rate card Hertz had to rent the GT 350H
Friday, April 18, 2025
wow, interesting that they went retro on the artwork in the ad for this whisky, and used Barney Oldfield, and the Peerless Green Dragon... I suppose it was an effort to not cast the implication that current drivers would drink and race, but rested on the notion that in the good old days of 1910 or so, it was common place, and totally fine
the Jeep Gladiator Rubicon High Top Honcho concept for the 2025 Easter Jeep Safari, and the Convoy
I like this look, and so many guys have made similar rigs, or upgraded / restified originals... so, why the hell won't Jeep make these?
This is the J6 Honcho
https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2025-easter-jeep-safari-concepts.html
ok, this is a reason to not stand too close to dragsters, when nitrous backfires.
See a much better view of this at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1785529692009038
there once was a tank named Bomb, and another named Holly Roller. Bomb only took two hits across France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and never missed a day of work from when it landed in Normandy on D-Day until Germany's surrender
In the course of the war Bomb fired over 6,000 rounds
It was one of the few Canadian tanks that fought without interruption from D-Day to VE Day.
Bomb was built at GM’s Fisher Tank Arsenal in Flint, MI with twin inline 6 cylinder 2 stroke diesel engines with a total 14L of displacement. Power was 410hp
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Bill Horton's 'wingless' HW-X26-52 took 18 months and 50k in 1952 to get airborne. It's not quite "wingless", it's got retractable wings! Thank you Steve!
In the above image, it's obvious once Steve pointed them out... but I didn't notice them when I posted this, because I was just stupid happy over finding something from history, that I hadn't seen before, and with this crazy dual prop design - but looking like it's from the original Buck Rogers comics!
It received its Airworthiness Certificate on July 22, 1954.
It even flew from SoCal to Las Vegas.
Last registered in 2003. Registration expired in 2013. Last known to be in Henderson.
