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| OFF-Topic / Misc. A place to go to discuss things totally unrelated to this site |
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06-04-2008, 09:57 PM
| #1 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Orange County, CA
Posts: 10,794
| Technology and Inventions ... The Strongest Handshake in the World The Strongest Handshake in the World A lone inventor and a lone crusader gave the world a safe device to hold railroad cars together by John H. White, Jr. The crude and deadly link-and-pin system for connecting cars. The crude and deadly link-and-pin system for connecting cars. (Chesapeake and Ohio Railway) Every day thousands of long trains lumber across North America. They come and go unnoticed by most of us, but even more unnoticed is what holds them together. It is a clawlike device, a huge steel hand. Two hands, or couplers, grip each other to connect the cars, and they join and unjoin quickly so that cars can easily be picked up or dropped off. They are technical marvels whose basic design was introduced more than 130 years ago by a dry goods clerk who had no training in engineering or mechanics. He was a true amateur inventor. And they entered general use—preventing thousands of disabling injuries a year—because of long, tireless effort by one other devoted man. To read the rest of the story: AmericanHeritage.com / The Strongest Handshake in the World
__________________ "Pilot to copilot..... what are those mountain goats doing up here in the clouds?" |
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06-05-2008, 08:20 AM
| #2 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Queensland
Posts: 4,761
| Interesting Sys. The only problem I have is when you can't line the ba*tards up! 
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06-05-2008, 06:30 PM
| #3 |
| aka Dickcheese   Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Washington State
Posts: 13,995
| Met an old black man as a kid in Birmingham Alabama in about 1972. He had no legs. He was lost them in the "handshake". Never have forgotten.
__________________  "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the [U.S.] Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan Master of Duplicate Posts |
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06-06-2008, 12:08 AM
| #4 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Canvey Island, Essex
Posts: 4,030
| The Buckeye coupling (as it is called in the UK) is a brilliant invention not just for ease of connection but it prevents rotation in the horizontal plain along the trains axis, this has kept many a carriage upright in a derailment situation and I am sure saved many lives. |
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06-06-2008, 08:28 AM
| #5 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Orange County, CA
Posts: 10,794
| Heres an overview of the various types of couplers in use. Coupling (railway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
__________________ "Pilot to copilot..... what are those mountain goats doing up here in the clouds?" |
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