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Entry	Pageviews
Art - Madrid, Picasso's Acrobat on a Ball (1905) Oct 9, 2011	1011
Looking Back: the Mollen Commission on Police Corr... Mar 20, 2012	601
"All Shooters Were Democrats" Mar 18, 2013, 2 comments	438
Movies - Midnight in Paris Location ID Challenge Jun 21, 2011	428
Washington's Coat of Arms and the Stars and Stripe... Jun 2, 2013, 1 comment	387
Bridgehampton, NY - Ocean View Farm Oct 3, 2011	291
The Upscale Black Enclaves of Sag Harbor, NY Aug 5, 2013, 2 comments	253
Elizabeth Bishop Homes Neglected in Key West, Braz... Jan 18, 2013	227
May 2-3 - Baldwin's 125th Anniversary Celebration May 22, 2014	220
Ireland's War of Independence, 1917 Jun 10, 2012	193

WINDMILLS | Models and Monuments, East Hampton

Model of the Hook Mill - All photos
by JT Marlin, August 2014.

The original Hook Mill, the
symbol of East Hampton,
which operates three mills.
The most in the USA.

Last month I visited both the real Hook Mill in East Hampton (see photo at right) and a model of the Hook Mill (photo at left), which is in a private home in East Hampton.

Exterior

The exterior of the Hook Mill model is quite faithful to the original.

The coloring in the model is more vivid, but that could simply reflect the weathering of the Hook Mill over time.

The wings seem to be faithful to the original, with two-thirds of the wing frame on the trailing edge.

The mill model is open on the window side,
so that miniature furniture can be added. This
mill is a toy, meant to be played with.

The rotating cap on top is also faithful to the Hook Mill cap, complete with the window on the non-wing side, which could provide an escape in the event of a fire below. The possibility of a fire is real, since there would be a kitchen in the living space below if inhabited, and the structure is made of wood.

Note the placement of the five visible windows on the model is exactly the same as on the original.  (The cap rotates on a smock mill, so the position of the cap and wings is arbitrary.)

Making Your Own Model Windmill

The cap rotates so the wings or blades
can be moved to the other side.

Three step-by-step guides to making a model windmill or dollhouse are available free:

1. One takes about an hour to make, plus the time to buy a dynamo for it.
2. Another might take a couple of days.
3. You can even make a windmill out of a milk carton, using a straw for the axel of the wings, and sand in the bottom of the carton for stability. You will also need a cork and some thread.

The Hook Mill in East Hampton sells cutout-cardboard model windmills. They are much smaller than the model shown here. I am thinking that the Hook Mill model could be enlarged on a copier and a larger model could be made from it.

Miniature Music
Stand.

Interior - A Doll's House

Music Stand Comes Out of Storage.

The interior of the windmill is accessed from the back of the mill.

The mill from the inside is a standard doll house. This is of course unrealistic, because any windmill that performs a job has many cogs and wheels inside. But we don't want to make a doll's house too complex, do we?

Harp Table with Fish Tank. 

Stove with Potholder.

Where families lived in a real mill, there would be a central area with the workings of the mill and the living space would be around it.

The Hook Mill model has a variety of furniture and other items in storage - a miniature music stand, a fish tank with a wooden harp stand, a cast-iron stove with potholder, a bed and sofa.

Sofa, Bed Frame.

If you have a child who looks like a possible budding architect, then a windmill would be an instructive thing to buy or make.

The owner of the model mill won it in raffle. Probably LVIS, which has a terrific silent auction and raffles.

The mill was played with intensely but then the young lady who loved it so much got older...

So that's why it was in a box. Waiting for the next child to come along and enjoy it. Toy Story. Little Old Bear.

Honeymooners Check Out Stonehenge

Selfie at Stonehenge by Just-Married Caroline Tepper-Marlin and Francis
Peabody.

How cool is this!" said President Obama as he strolled for 20 minutes around Stonehenge last week on his way back from a NATO summit. "Knocked it off the bucket [list]!

This week, Caroline Tepper-Marlin and Francis Peabody celebrated their honeymoon by checking out the same rocks.

People have speculated for centuries why the big 4,500-year-old stones were erected here.

The many theories are not necessarily mutually contradictory. Lourdes today, for example, is both a place of healing and a shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes. The place could have been used for one purpose in 2500 BC and then another in, say, 1000 BC.

Hypotheses include:

• Stonehenge was an astronomical calendar.
• It was a place of healing.
• It was a marker for supposedly magical energy lines in the ground, perhaps built by the Druids.
• It was Celtic... or Roman... or Arthurian. 

Scientists have recently been using modern techniques to do a "virtual excavation" - the largest of this kind in the world. They have been rewarded by finding evidence of a mile-long "superhenge" at Durrington Walls nearby, with 17 ritual monuments, and a massive "house of the dead," hundreds of burial mounds, and a possible processional route around Stonehenge.

The Stonehenge Project at the University of Birmingham is a four-year effort to create a high-resolution, 3D underground map of the landscape surrounding Stonehenge. It has the cooperation of Austria's Ludwig Boltzmann Institute. The map goes down ten feet using ground-penetrating radar and high-resolution magnetometers. The project has covered nearly 3,000 acres already.

Many of the 17 newly discovered monuments appear to be shrine-like structures. The small circular constructions, built during Stonehenge's busiest period, are placed around the main stone ring and form a sort of Neolithic analogue to the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, which is venerated as the path Jesus walked to Mt. Golgotha and crucifixion. For centuries, the stone circle, on England's Salisbury Plain, has awed visitors. When John Aubrey and Inigo Jones came here in the 17th century, they started perhaps the world's first archaeological excavation.

In the Orkney islands in northern Scotland, a virtual excavation revealed a vast unknown Neolithic temple complex that was erected more than a half-century before Stonehenge, i.e., about 5,000 years ago or about 3000 BC, and may have influenced it.

WED | Caroline Tepper-Marlin and Francis Peabody (Comment)

(L to R) Judge Crotty, Alice Tepper Marlin, Francis D. Peabody,
Caroline Tepper-Marlin and John Tepper Marlin.

New York City, September 8, 2014 - Exclusive to the Time Travel blog - Caroline Tepper-Marlin was married to Francis Damien Peabody today on the evening of the Harvest Moon.

Federal Judge Paul Crotty officiated in his Chambers at 500 Pearl Street. Caroline's parents, John and Alice Tepper Marlin, served as witnesses.

After they exchanged vows in the Judge's Office, the bride and groom joined Caroline's parents for dinner at Bouley nearby on 163 Duane Street.

Mr. Peabody and Ms. Tepper-Marlin will leave for a honeymoon that will focus on European restaurants and vineyards, spending a month in England, France and Italy. They will then return to their home in Brooklyn and their Australian shepherd Rondo.

"We decided to get married," quipped Tepper-Marlin, "so that Rondo would no longer be a bastard."

Francis and Caroline at Bouley.

The  Bride and Groom

Mr. Peabody has recently served as executive chef and other roles in several Brooklyn and Manhattan restaurants. He grew up in Los Angeles, Calif. and Louisville, Kentucky. He is a fan of the Boston Celtics, which was the source of the name for Rondo.

Ms. Tepper-Marlin, a graduate of Trinity School in New York and of the University of Rochester, majoring in political science, is a wine professional/sommelier, consulting in hospitality management and wine selection for restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

She previously worked as a senior design development manager for Ralph Lauren, and had similar titles at Coach and Calvin Klein.

When asked by her parents why she wanted to go into the wine business, she asked them: "What business do you think Ralph Lauren is in?"

"The clothing business?",  said one of them.

"No," Caroline replied. "He is selling lifestyle. That is what high-end restaurants sell. They have the same challenges as the fashion industry, to create a mood, and provide a pleasure-giving product for a target market."

The bride and groom next Bouley,
under the Harvest Moon.

Wedded Under A Harvest Moon

The evening ended under the Harvest Moon, which is at its brightest in North America tonight. The Harvest Moon, the full moon closest to the autumn equinox (September 22), was especially important for farmers - they knew that around the date of that moon they would have enough moonlight to harvest crops after sundown.

During the evenings before and after the Harvest Moon, the moon rises earlier than usual. The Harvest Moon seems bigger and brighter because it is close to the horizon at sunset.

This year, the Harvest Moon really is bigger than usual because it's a "supermoon" - the moon turns full less than one day after reaching the moon’s closest point to Earth for the month.

Some think the supermoon is super-hype. But in the words (by Yip Harburg and Billy Rose) of Harold Arlen's song, "It wouldn't be make believe, If you believed in me."

All in all, a memorable backdrop for the marriage of Caroline and Francis. They are leaving now for London - appropriately sampling this year's harvest at vineyards and restaurants in Europe.

Comment

I was walking Caroline's dog Rondo, our grand puppy, and our neighbor Ira Hawkins asked about him. I explained he was on loan from my honeymooning daughter, the sommelier married to a chef. He said: "Good pairing."

TECH | The Osborne (1981-1986)–The World's First Portable Computer

Japan, 1986 - Precious companions: Caroline and
(over the shoulder) the Osborne 3 in backpack.

The death of Andrew Kay three days ago got me thinking about my Osborne 3 computer, which I just retrieved from storage.

Like Kay with the Kaypro, Adam Osborne was an inventor who might have been a big winner in the personal computer sweepstakes.

Osborne Computing was, following its introduction of the Osborne 1 computer in April 1981, the most rapidly growing company in Silicon Valley. The Osborne 1 weighed 24 pounds and didn't have a battery, but for people who then assumed that computers were too big to carry, it was a break-through.

It was also one of the first computers to come with a good word-processing program and communications software, which were my main uses, and was much cheaper than the competition at under $1,800.

Japan, 1986 - on an excursion
with my Osborne 3.

The official history of IBM cites the August 1981 debut of the IBM PC and compares it with the needs of the IBM 360 and other mainframes. It cites the earliest mainframes as costing $9 million, requiring an air-conditioned quarter-acre of space and 60 people to run and keep it loaded with instructions, and goes on:

The IBM PC changed all that. It was a very small machine that could not only process information faster than those ponderous mainframes of the 1960s but also hook up to the home TV set, process text and store more words than a huge cookbook - all for a price tag of less than $1,600.

Actually, the Osborne 1 "changed all that" a few months before. But Osborne Computing is not around to argue with IBM's story.

Five years after the introduction of the Osborne 1, I got a good deal on the Osborne 3, which was much improved and looked a lot like the MacBook Pro I am typing on now except for a major difference - the LCD screen on the Osborne 3 is smaller and much harder to read.

With the Osborne 3 today. It turned
on after recharging. My serial number
is 1-00134 - looks like it was #134 in
production.

The Osborne 3 LCD screen displays only 16 lines - actually, adequate for word-processing and email, which were my main uses. The lower 9 lines of the 25-line MS-DOS screen are made visible by toggling. When it was conceived, the Osborne 3 had a 25-line LCD screen, but the size was reduced to save production costs and the bottom part of the screen was covered over.

Armed with the Osborne 3, I went on a summer-long trip to Japan in 1986 with my wife Alice and two children, who were then 9 and 12 years old.

The Osborne 3, side view with the
15-volt DC transformer and battery
charger. I have two. The first one
didn't work. The second one did.

The computer served me well, but Osborne Computing went out of business that year. What happened?

Back in 1981, the Osborne 1 computer was the world's first portable computer. It had a great future. In 2011, on the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the first Osborne, Harry McCracken at Technologizer wrote an article that explains what went wrong. There were some technical bad calls, but the company-killing mistake that Adam Osborne made has now been given a name, the "Osborne Effect."

View from the disk-drive side. The
Osbornes had two disk drives. The
front drive had the disk with what
we would call today the "app", in
this case the MS-DOS 2.1 software.

The "Osborne Effect" was the consequence of Adam Osborne's announcing a new product, the Osborne 2, before it was ready to sell. That made the company's existing product obsolete. That stopped sales of the existing product, starving the company of the money it needed to get the Osborne 2 finished and into production. The rollout took longer than the sales-challenged company could last. In the language of the dot-com boom, the burn rate overtook the fume date and the Osborne disappeared into think air. To paraphrase Genesis 3:19,  "Smoke thou art and to smoke shalt thou return."

This killing of sales of the existing Osborne 1 by promising an Osborne 2 that isn't ready to sell is a classic business mistake. It is the second way, after being the first to bring out a portable computer, that Osborne's name has become immortal. IBM did something like this with its main-frame business (the IBM 360 and the PC were both delayed) but IBM was so big it careened on. Osborne, however, had pumped-up competitors who ate its lunch and then its dinner.

Adam Osborne. Photo
by Stephen Osborne.

Adam Osborne failed most on the marketing end. He was a poor spokesman for his own product. His parents were British and Polish-American, and he was born in Thailand, but he spent most of his childhood in India, where his parents were devotees of transcendental meditation.

Maybe it was his parents' spiritual journey that taught him to see things clearly and put a premium on honesty. That's what made him a consumer's friend when he wrote his curmudgeonly computer column, "From the Fountainhead", before he started his company.

The four icons on the Osborne 3.

However, I speculate that his track record having been based on picking apart every new computer product may have made the transition to promoter-in-chief a difficult one.

Instead of selling his product by focusing on the Incredible Good News of computer portability, he was honest about explaining where own computer fell short. He famously told InfoWorld that his product was slow and "merely adequate" relative to his  competition, which was at first mainly the Kaypro.

This miner's head lamp is what I used in
1986 to read the Osborne 3 LCD screen.

The Osborne's LCD screen, for example, was not very readable. I took care of that with a miner's head flashlight, strapped around my head. By shifting my head one way or another I could read the screen anywhere except in the sun.

The Book of World
City Rankings, 1986

In fact the Osborne 3 that I owned was a great machine. It stills works, 30 years later.

I would bring it to the library of the International House in Tokyo and worked on it at a table there. During the summer of 1986 I wrote about a trip to revisit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which had been very helpful on an earlier visit in 1981 that produced data for The Book of World City Rankings. 

I remember writing articles using the Osborne 3 that summer, about visiting the shrine at Ise, about the usefulness of backpacks and a need to invent one with more style and brand it, the Recruit campaign-stock scandal, and a proposal for a monument to Commodore Perry at Shimoda.

This is what the boot-up screen of my Osborne 3 looks
like. The initial screen shows the month of October 1984.

A forum at a museum of old computers fills in the history of the Osborne 3. It was developed by Vadem Inc., of Santa Clara, California, which offered the design to Osborne Computer Corp for production.

The Osborne 3 

and prior versions (Encore and Amstread) were based on MS-DOS with a built-in modem and a world clock on the boot-up screen. The keyboard has four "icon" keys which called up small programs located in ROM - the "phone" key called up the communication software, the "clock" key called a calendar, the "disk" key booted the system and the "calculator" key called a small electronic calculator. 



Vadem's engineers made the Osborne 3, issued in 1985, much more compatible with IBM. The Osborne 3 that I carried around Japan in 1986 was the last Osborne computer sold in USA. Osborne Corp. was operating under bankruptcy conditions starting in 1983 and finally shut down in 1986.