Last October (2003) I started what turned out to be a very lively thread asking for thoughts on researching the history of machine tools.
Sadly, in August the hard drive on my computer died and that thread, which I had not completely backed up, was lost.
I have found some of it by Google searching but I wonder or anyone might have saved the message texts?
If so I sure would appreciate getting a copy of the full thread.
Too late I have discovered how easy it is to save message text in Agent, the newsreader I use, so perhaps if someone has the thread still on their machine and uses Agent they would be kind enough to save it as a .txt or.doc and send it to me.
Regards,
Errol Groff
Instructor, Machine Tool Department H.H. Ellis Regional Technical School Danielson, CT 06239
which are the compressed files. Add 1900 to each number to get the year which it represents. (Obviously, the second half of 2004 is not out there, yet.)
The earlier ".zip" files should be handled nicely by the standard unzip programs for Windows. The later ones (.gz suffix) are produced by the GNU unix "gzip" program, and may or may not be handled by Windows compression programs.
Be warned that one of those files has several copies of a virus which was being posted to the newsgroups in it, so be careful with a Windows system.
And each file has all of the articles in chronological order just run head to tail. I don't know whether agent can wade through those or not.
But I'll bet that some of the attachments which I have known about only because someone replied to them are in there. Somewhere upstream, someone in the news feed chain is dropping binaries to discussion newsgroups.
And I consider this dropping of attachments to be a *good* thing. The latest warning from CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) is that there are .jpg files out there (in the "adult newsgroups) which exercise yet another security hole in Outlook Express (and other Windows programs which use the same library to display .jpg (JPEG) files).
Good Luck, DoN.
P.S. This probably did not go to the second newsgroup which you cross-posted it to, as the spelling is wrong:
alt.machihes.cnc
I've corrected it in the headers, so they should see most of your request through my quoting.
I have the entire thread. There were 262 follow-up messages. Not sure if I can copy the whole thing as one file or if I'll have to copy each individual message as a separate file.
What are you using for a newsreader? I use Agent. If you have Agent, I can probably copy the whole thread into a single folder and send you a copy of that folder.
All I have is the two messages I posted in my "sent" box plus any threads I would have kept in the reply. If this is worthwhile to you I could either post it to the newsgroup or send by email. Let me know.
There was another thread in august that might have interested you as well. The title was:
Machine Tools - History Channel's Modern Marvels *Thursday*
All I have is my post let me know if you want it.
If you email to me directly please remove the middle part (should be obvious) of the address which was added to help reduce SPAM.
The MIT prof, Robert Woodbury, wrote texts compiled as such (history of grinding, milling, lathe to 1850). I'm not sure of their availability, currently. If there's something on the subject from MIT since Woodbury, I'd also like to know. Frank Morrison (Woodbury is very good, but his premise is that machine tool advances trickle down from genius, rather than head up from shop brew.)
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