Lost area-measuring tool

[@donaldboscoe150]

ORIGINAL packaging never gets old!

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@creamwobbly psh- what does that guy know about being a successful youtuber?

[@lucasconner621]

i mean technically it does...

[@yetanotherjohn]

In the pre-computer age, page layout in all graphics printing was a HUGE part of the advertising-printing and related industries, they had lots of tools to transform and rescale proportions for magazines, posters and billboards, all very different size jobs!

[@Mural]

Great visualisation of how it works with the highlighter!

[@ChrisStaecker]

Thanks! Took me forever to make those few seconds.

[@Rhynome]

@@ChrisStaecker absolutely worth it.

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@Rhynome As soon as I realized how it worked I knew exactly how I wanted the video to look.

[@NikolajLepka]

you're basically approximating an integral; it's really clever

[@tissuepaper9962]

This can measure the area of non-convex shapes too, you just need to allow the dial to rotate while crossing over areas that aren't inside the shape.

[@Gunbudder]

7:48 my great grandpa worked on this! unfortunately i don't have a ton of information because most of it was never declassified. all i know is that he was contacted by the US government during WWII because he was a film developing expert in hollywood. they had him develop and examine photos taken by the U2 and other aerial photography systems. he mentioned using a special viewing device (this stereoscope thingy) and being one of the few people the military had trained to examine the photos. the only actual document i have now is a letter from his company thanking him for his war contributions and a newspaper article about him when he retired.

[@MattMcIrvin]

My dad worked on some kind of digital methods to interpret aerial and satellite reconnaissance photographs in the late 1960s. I don't know a lot about what he was doing, but I do know that it was mostly software and that this was one of the first areas that digital image processing was ever applied to (even though the photographs themselves were taken on film--the satellites in those days dropped them into the atmosphere in reentry capsules that were snagged by a plane in midair). That probably meant that analog photo-interpretation techniques were already becoming obsolete by the Vietnam War era, at least for the military.

[@joshmyer9]

Only vaguely on-topic: there's a surprising amount of money in weird little advertising logistics companies, or at least there used to be. About 20 years ago, one of the clients we worked for "made" all the aisle endcaps for a few major brands because they had a patent on rolly feet on the units (or something similarly inane). The owner drove a very, very nice car, the admin/accountant did not, and there were two super low-pay guys who forklifted the product from the trucks of the companies that actually make stuff into the warehouse, then out of the warehouse into the trucks destined for your town's supermarket. That's the whole company, and yet they made money hand over fist. I imagine that's all been vertically integrated by now. You learn a lot doing field support for incredibly obsolete accounting software. One of the main takeaways for me was that you mostly "earn" very, very nice cars via exploitation of the system and other people, not by working hard or smart. Happily, I only like kinda nice cars, so having ethics and decency hasn't really hurt me much.

[@Maazin5]

This is instantly one of my favorite instruments on your channel. Super unique design and it's useful

[@Beldraen]

I very much enjoy these videos because I am amazed at the ingenuity people had to solve complex mathematical problems with basic, physical tools. Your dry wit is the icing on the cake. I hope you're doing well.

[@sfg902]

I have one of these in VERY good condition even with the denim case and instructions. I had no idea what I had until I watched your video (even with the instructions - I hate math). Thanks for showing me what I have.

[@OldManBOMBIN]

As a fellow Kentucky boy, I feel obliged to take a guess at the subdivisions between 15 and 25 - You don't want tiny lines running all up and down the thing, cause that'll make it too busy lookin'. But you do need em. So you put em out there in the middle. And then if you gotta measure somethin' small, you just use 15 as 0, and do your measuring from there. That way, the object isn't covered by your hands when you're trying to measure, and you can be nice and precise. This video is old enough that I'm sure this has already been proposed in the comments, but I've got more of these weird devices to learn about.

[@someonespadre]

My Dad was a Civil Engineer. One of his business lines was aerial photogrammetry. He had the stereomagnifier glasses thing (lower right of the photo interpretometer) you show in the video, it has fold out legs on the sides, it was set on the desk with photos underneath. He would set up a stereo pair on the desk (2 - 9x9 photos with overlap, the overlap area is called a model) then let us look at them, you could see the 3D relief. Pretty cool for a kid in the 1960s. The other day I was looking through the drawer of unloved old tools in the office and it had one of those in there. Also found 2 K+E slide rules.

[@someonespadre]

He also had a homemade stereo pair viewer made out of a cardboard box. Don’t remember all the details.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Nice! I’d love to get one of those things. The interpretometer is pretty expensive on eBay- get that cash!

[@someonespadre]

The camera in the airplane takes one photo at a time but they are taken at intervals determined such that they overlap. I’ve only seen the glasses thing, not the rest of the stuff. I believe that was used to find the flight crosses (big white crosses painted on the ground) and other common objects in the photos. The actual plotting was done on a big Kelsh plotter which projected the two images onto paper on a flat table. Then the photogrammetrist would use a special instrument to draw contours and plot the roads, buildings, etc., they called it compiling. It sounds painful to me, bent over a table all day peering through a scope thingy. Like slide rules most of the math was done mechanically. They can’t even give those big plotters away anymore. Now I get the photos with a drone and feed them into the software which uses reflectivity to match pixels.

[@williamdavis3658]

@@ChrisStaecker These things are still sometimes used in geology departments, especially as teaching tools. I used something similar as a student ~5 years ago. It might be worth reaching out to a geology department to see if they could lend you one!

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@williamdavis3658 any idea what they call it?

[@jamiehardt3061]

I really appreciate the simplicity of this thing. Planimeters are cool but you need like two pages of integral calculus to explain how they work :D

[@jmi967]

Too bad they didn’t put that in the manual like they did with schematics

[@HiwasseeRiver]

Neat - A long time ago I used a polar planimeter to measure areas of oil bearing strata from geologic formation contour maps. I measured the area of each five foot slice of oil reservoir. Area time thickness gave the volume. I then added all the volume slices to tell the boss the volume of the oil bearing rocks. Some more ciphering would them how much oil was in the ground.

[@randyhelzerman]

You are living the life man.

[@nickmoniker]

ADvertising DISplays COmpany. I get it. I really enjoy your videos of these cool little gadgets, Chris.

[@bluerizlagirl]

Now I know the principle behind this device, I am definitely going to have a go at making an updated version, using normal units. In PostScript. Calculating everything as it goes. Because it can do that. If I make the full scale round the white disc 20cm², I just need to position the marks on the scale along the arm exactly the right distance apart so the area of the ring formed between them as the arm moves one full turn around the disc is equal to that. Then as you move the arm anticlockwise while holding the disc still, you add the actual area swept out between the marks; as you bring the scale back down, you hold the arm firmly against the disc so the reading does not change; then you sweep out the next sector of a ring and add its area to the running total; and you wind up with the area of all the bits of rings added together, and the closer that is to what you traced out, the better. I will let you know how it goes!

[@ChrisStaecker]

Sounds good- feel free to use my tikz file if it helps

[@mglenadel]

Right after WWII, when pizza became a household thing in the US. Someone takes a look at that Area Measurer and thinks: "I think I have an idea for a product we can sell, if we make it out of metal…"

[@Gunbudder]

if you start at 15 and use the subdivision, the error should be smaller because the bands are smaller. i would consider this to be like going a trapezoidal integration with smaller delta's (or more steps over the same window). it reminds me of a real world problem i ran into where i was given 1Hz acceleration data and i had to back out live velocity and position. i found that 10 trapezoids per second was good enough for trapezoidal integration. its been a while since i thought about that code lol

[@brendtkieffer7095]

Glad to see you are still making new videos. Keep it up, man.

[@plopgoot5458]

this together with the steinhaus longimeter, are my favorite tools you have shown so far

[@alienmoonstalker]

Steinhaus longimeter?

[@plopgoot5458]

@@alienmoonstalker yes, i misremembered the name

[@CarlSchwent]

I have one of those! I collect slide rules (and adding machines and some drafting equipment) so when I saw it, I had to get it. Have been wondering ever since how it worked. My best guess was that it measured column inches for ad space, but still couldn't figure out how. Thanks.

[@alextroche9453]

great visuals on this one

[@andrewcarey2635]

Thanks!

[@ChrisStaecker]

Thanks a lot!

[@Pillowcase]

Wow! Thats a really clever mechanism.

[@YZoxK52m]

You are amazing. Thanks for sharing your interests!

[@BillRicker]

Lovely! A similar adding of angles in repeated turnings is done with dual motion surveyors' transit, either for averaging for precision , or summing for closure.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Thanks! Do you know anywhere I can read more about this?

[@BillRicker]

@@ChrisStaecker are you asking for "more" on Area Meters or summing/averaging angles in a dual motion transit ? (i'll assume BOTH) Will send email(s) to your school address, as if i paste too many links into a reply I'll probably get SPAM filtered.

[@retrogiftsuk4812]

Such a clever gizmo. I love it when the complex maths is hidden beneath the surface so the user doesn't have to know it.

[@DavidvanDeijk]

great episode and yes the polar planometer feels like magic to me too

[@cmdrredhawk]

Not today Satan! Thanks Satan! Warehouse full of denim.

[@petervanderwaart1138]

I would have liked one of those around 1970-72 when I thought about learning boat design, and couldn't afford a real planimeter

[@hughobyrne2588]

2:39 "Just the face part, obviously, I mean, c'mon now." This really really hit my funny bone.

[@warnerschler9255]

I have 2 of these And one case like new. Thanks.

[@ChrisStaecker]

WHAT? How? Where did you get them?

[@warnerschler9255]

@@ChrisStaecker I purchased a lot of survey equipment from the university of Kansas , Got the two ADISCO, three alidades, one fantastic transit several microscope. And Several other items. I have a small collection of survey instrument from quite Vintage to current. I have a weakness form the classical survey instruments Warner Schler

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@warnerschler9255 Sounds like a great haul! (I don't like posting my email on youtube, but it's easy to find if you google my name)

[@AlRoderick]

Advertising display company might have been a cutting edge imaging and photographic reproduction technology house that started out planning to market its tools to the marketing industry (thus the company name) but then found out that the tools it was making were more valuable to the military intelligence community when the war broke out.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Sounds plausible to me. But any complete theory must explain the denim!

[@totally_not_a_bot]

​@@ChrisStaeckerDenim is older than Dacron, and serves a similar purpose while costing far less. Clean denim doesn't scratch things (unlike Dacron which needs a lining), and cotton is more sustainable than polyester. It used to be common for soft cases, although usually died black rather than blue. Denim is also much cheaper than leather. It's still common for recycled fabric book covers and such. Seeing that the company operated around WWII, denim is a natural choice.

[@AngrocSound]

Great find! Great vid!

[@williammorris1763]

I just made something similar with annuli of equal area so i gather thats why this is in my feed

[@MordecaiV]

I love it!

[@Vzome]

The fine gradations feel like they might have to live there due to some logarithmic relationship, like the way a circular slide rule gets continually finer as you go completely around. Not sure of the mechanism, but I'm pretty confident that they are for *refining* a coarser measurement... maybe you move your center back without changing the ray to the first tangent point.

[@Muck-qy2oo]

Now is this a digital or an analog computer? I would say it is analog but with the Riemann-Sum type of integration method it seem quite mixed up to me.

[@PyschoPomp-fn4zt]

how did you print the arm without the ink smudging, I kinda want to DIY it but it keeps smudging

[@ChrisStaecker]

I used a fancy laser printer at work- worked just great. Inkjet may have issues, I’m not sure

[@shoofle]

I was trying to think of what an advertising company might have a use for this kind of thing... the only thing i can think of is maybe if you're painting a large mural advertisement, you would want to be able to measure how much paint you'll need, and therefore need the areas of the segments?

[@ChrisStaecker]

Yes I agree- though I've never seen any evidence that they really were an "advertising company", at least in any way I can identify.

[@jaapsch2]

@@ChrisStaecker It seems that they made small "Tru-Tu-Life" window and lobby displays, depicting scenes with miniature figures. At first this was a service for banks, who could get a different scene installed every two weeks. See the ad here: archive.org/details/sim_bankers-monthly_1929-05_46_5/page/44/mode/2up They diversified into 3d photography when they bought Stereo-Tach in 1939. I've not yet found where the Adisco comes in.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Very interesting- I missed that one!

[@TXDude]

The finer gradations starting at 15 were intended for very narrow/long shapes. Their position at 15 is meaningless w.r.t. 15. You just consider the 15 to be 1 and work through the process with greater precision, given by finer gradations and a more uniform area of arc. Think of crescent moons shapes or fishing rods bent under the weight of a fish on the line. In my very early teens, I apprenticed at a woodshop. Basic +-x/ calculators were just out, incredibly expensive and only seen on TV; nobody you knew actually had one (they were also panned as being useful only to "idiots and politicians," which is redundant IMHO). We used slide rules for our complicated geometry. We also had one of these platometers for determining price to charge the customer for inlay work. The shop owner/master charged inlay based on species cost x edge-count x area. We had only 1 of these, it was definitely more commerical and not advertising or cheaply made. I wasn't allowed to touch it but was fascinated by it. One of our common customer requests was to inlay mother-of-pearl into fretboards. Most often, this involves a winding vine down the length of the fretboard, plus leaves or flowers. That's an example of where the fine gradations come into play. Smaller and further away from the pivot point gives better results.

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@TXDude so you used a similar instrument but it was made by someone else? Do you know who made it?

[@TXDude]

@@ChrisStaecker Ha-ha-ha! I'm almost 70 now, that was back when I was 11-14 trying to learn the wood crafting trade. Really, the only product names I remember are Stanley, Craftsman and Delta. The platometer my shop master owned looked similar to the one in your video, but glass and bronze. The outer edges of the glass were maybe 3/16 thick and thinned to perhaps 1/32 where any mark would be placed against the drawn object. Looking back on those days, I think that was to eliminate/reduce parallax . Being glass, though, most of it was fairly thick to survive bumps. There was a Plexiglas cursor gizmo inside a bronze triangle frame that connected the two main parts. The frame's apex was mounted at the pivot, the other two angles were connected to the longer glass piece, keeping both pieces firmly together. The 'window' inside this brass frame was filled with Plexiglas/Perspex and had a red hairline running through it like a slide rule. That was used to measure the accumulated areas. Now that you force me to think back on this, it seems I do recall a two-headed eagle, very small, next to some text. That was probably the maker's name. If my recollection is correct, then I'd guess it must have been Austrian, Hungarian or someplace in that part of the world. Sorry I can't be of more help. As a young lad, I was far more impressed by what it did how it did it. Now I'm old and those days are but shadows in my memory. Just thought of something... Each apprentice was issued our personal slide rule for our woodworking. The shop master gave each one a Nestler slide rule. I still have mine, not in the best condition. Nestler was a German maker. And though I've forgotten my master's given name, his surname was Braun (Yes, Mr. Braun, right away! Coming, Mr. Braun!). So that pretty much ties it together; that platometer probably was indeed Austrian or nearby. Despite all this activity having occurred in Houston.

[@markvanhorne3276]

I'd really like to make one of these, but the links in the description don't work. Can you make the PDF files available?

[@ChrisStaecker]

Sorry about that- I had to move my webserver recently and I still haven't quite updated all the links. Should be working now!

[@markvanhorne3276]

@@ChrisStaecker Link in the description still doesn't work.

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@markvanhorne3276 Sorry- try it now! It's here: faculty.fairfield.edu/cstaecker/machines/adisco.html

[@markvanhorne3276]

@@ChrisStaecker Thank you. I want to make a Gerber Equameter too. Can you fix that link? BTW, I bought the Gerber book that you mentioned. Very interesting.

[@Rhynome]

I can't think of a good reason why, if the finer ticks are intended for fine measurement that they wouldn't start at the origin where you'd have the most control with your hand and the most accurate reading due to the wider spaces between ticks. Fine measurement seems like the most reasonable use for them, but why are they where they are?!

[@ChrisStaecker]

I agree 💯!

[@Rhynome]

On second thought, maybe the wider spacing nearer the origin would result in you missing details and the middle of the scale gives a nice trade-off between manual control and ability to pick up details.

[@the8ctagon]

I wonder if the reason for the 15-25mm fine range is that, at the time the CIA were doing their work, and given the magnification they were using for e.g. a certain type of missile manufacturing facility, the scale of those facilities always fell within those bounds.

[@MordecaiV]

For a small object, measuring out from 15-25 means that your segments are much more of a rectangle instead of an arc, and you're working right between your hands, so I believe it will be easier to work there and see what you're doing with reasonable arc length (and hand motion). Since each arc is equal area, it doesn't matter where you actually start the shape.

[@MordecaiV]

@@the8ctagon That's not how the device works.

[@PendragonDaGreat]

Alternate theory on the very small subdivisions in the middle: This device is made by "Advertising Display Company" I wonder if something in that range might be right near a cutoff for two different rates for something, so by subdividing you made sure you didn't go over whatever that limit was. That's more of a random theory, I personally think it's likely for measuring very small things accurately.

[@ChrisStaecker]

Even if you make it all the way to the 15, this still doesn't really say anything about how big your shape is. You could have a very small shape (by area) that makes it to 15, or a very big shape that never makes it to 15. So none of the marks on the scale can represent a "cutoff" in terms of areas.

[@Jimorian]

@@ChrisStaecker I think you'd probably "Zero" it at the 15 and then use the smaller markings for each sweep (so you'd also get straighter sweeps). Would need to divide the final answer by 5?

[@ChrisStaecker]

@@Jimorian Yes that's right- divide by 5 when you're done.

[@yorgle]

Neat!

[@mcrsit]

For the algorithm!

[@glarynth]

Looks more like a disco pizza cutter

[@warnerschler9255]

Tried to respond need your email have info for you

[@kuripangui]

An area meter that does not measure in meters... : (

[@ChrisStaecker]

unfortunately most of our meters don't measure in meters

[@fl8281]

Pizza cutter ruler

[@PabloSanchez-qu6ib]

Click bait! I was expecting some funky 80s music and mirrored balls!

[@greeneaglz2573]

If only there was one in metric...

[@theastuteangler]

Not today Satan! Thanks Satan!!

[@LoganDark4357]

Your voice is so quiet I can't hear it over the music, unwatchable :(

[@puffinjuice]

Thanks Satan! 😂

[@bksl09]

Thanks satan!

[@wompastompa3692]

A few of the slide rules I got didn't come with their ｏｒｉｇｉｎａｌ cases, so I cut up some old jeans and got my mom to whip up a few.

[@johnsrabe]

AdIsCo. CIA. I mean, cmon, it couldn’t be any clearer.