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When I was a lad the definitive source for news was the UK Times of London. Then a common vulgarian took it over and editorial comment was misrepresented as news.

That same vulgarian acquired the Wall Street Journal a few years ago and my many reporter friends there wrote me in despair that the same would happen again. I begged them to give it a chance. I was wrong. Scum is scum and the paper went in the toilet. My 30 year subscription was cancelled.

Now that we have a like vulgarian mismanaging the United States, we keep hearing how the US Newspaper of Record is “fake news”. Given the paranoiac grifter in the Oval Office can always be guaranteed to say the exact opposite of the truth, this only strengthens the argument for subscribing to the New York Times. If you value quality journalism then the New York Times deserves your money, as does the cause of democracy in our great republic.

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One and the same.

As a mechanical engineering graduate I have long believed electricity to be magic and hence have trusted it not one bit. This translates into a sense of fear and foreboding when doing electrical work. Indeed, it’s a matter of not inconsiderable satisfaction that my old motorbike has not one electronic component. The closest it gets is four relays (horn, headlight, starter, blinkers) and those are very simple electromagnetic devices. Even I can understand how they function and on one occasion I even opened one up to clean out the contact corrosion and restore proper function. The idea of having a low current switch a big one is supreme in its elegance.

But, today was electricity day. The Cox Cable senior tech finally showed up to meet their contractual commitment of 150mbs internet speed, of which 120mbs, or 80%, is ‘guaranteed’. As I believe the cable companies have the morality of a whore, I always hold their feet to the fire on this. After all, I’m paying for the privilege. Turns out the tech was absolutely top notch, we really struck it off, he gave me a newer modem at no charge and refused a tip! A thoroughly good egg. After three hours of careful, analytical labor we (errr …. he) came up with this:

Now that is blitzkrieg fast. A happy side result is that I learned that the home is wired for optical fiber at the street ‘pedestal’, so to get 1,000mbs (which I do not need) it’s a matter of running the ‘last 20 yards’ of fiber, replacing the stock copper. Nice to know. Doubtless when my son drops by and wants to game while simultaneously 3D printing, I will have to upgrade. He has this nasty habit of checking internet speed every place he visits …. the apple does not fall far from the tree.

But the truly heroic work, with due obeisance paid to maybe the greatest physicist ever (Einstein had his picture on the wall) James Clark Maxwell, was mine. When Maxwell was not taking the world’s first color picture, he was ruminating on the origin of electromagnetism and like Einstein with his gravitational waves, never saw his theories put into practice during his lifetime. He conceptualized all of this on paper, much as Einstein did and if one is not breathless at the sheer genius of this conception then he is not a well formed human being. This is Pure Thinking at its very finest.

The object of my tinkering was two pairs of 3-way switches (either works the lights), one pair at the ends of a long, dark corridor, the other at the ends of an even darker laundry room, the latter approached through that corridor or from the garage. Each has the traveler groping for the light switch and neither installation discloses one iota of ergonomic thinking. For each pair, I noted that one switch is in line-of-sight of the other. Change one of the two to a motion sensor switch and disable the now useless other and you have the right solution. The wiring of three way switches is an elegant construct, and it was a matter of moments to disable the “three-way” feature, replacing one switch with a Lutron motion sensor, the other with a blanking plate. The Lutron can be set up as either an occupancy switch (goes on with motion, off without, after a selectable time delay) or as a daylight sensitive device which turns lights off when it senses light. All of this for $20. Maxwell would be proud.

After figuring out the breaker box and powering off (unlabelled breaker boxes drive me up the wall almost as much as crude felt tip pen scrawls inside them – another project), thus avoiding beating the world high jump record from a stationary position, the hour of research was rewarded by a 5 minute intallation time per switch. Now as you approach the corridor or laundry room from either direction the very sensitive sensor in each turns the lights on, leaving them on for a minute (or whatever you elect), powering down if no motion is detected. Of course your $20 gets you user adjustable sensitivity into the bargain.

The number of technologies involved in this – yes – magic is mind numbing to contemplate, and the result is deeply satisfying for one always obsessed with ergonomics (a major at college a while back!). My occupational psychology prof (we call it ‘ergonomics’ today), Professor Alec Rodger, once had himself locked up in Brixton Prison for 6 months to study the interaction of the incarcerated with their environment. Alec was very much the Real Thing. In WW2 he worked on the design of tank mechanisms, focusing on the best design in highly stressful environments. I loved that man. The doyen of occupational psychology. We five students would gather in his beautiful Georgian mansion across from the UCL School of Engineering, seated happily on his rug while he served tea and scones of his own making. I don’t recall ever being happier at school. Admitting to graduation at the top of my class is not boastful. With such a mentor it was inevitable. The subject has fascinated me ever since and no day passes when I do not remark on a good (or bad – mostly bad) piece of machine design.

The ne plus ultra of ergonomic design, the Leica M2 is the very acme of what I am writing about. Can you wonder I loved it so? It remains the most perfect machine I have used.

Enough rambling. Bottom line? You walk down the corridor and the lights come on, and you cannot forget to turn them off! Thank you, Mr. Maxwell.

T.