Faith PC Monthly Men's Breakfast.
Our speaker was Orv. The presentation was about his past career. He passed out a single sheet of paper to begin his presentation. See the picture.
On the left of the sheet was a picture of the 12AX7 Triode (vacuum) Tube. He said the ENIAC computer completed in 1945 occupied 1,000 square feet of floor space, weighed approximately 30 tons with more than 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches and 18,000 vacuum tubes. It required 150KW of power enough to light a small town. Its major problem was tube reliability. Ninety percent downtime was attributed to locating and replacing bad tubes.
His company tested for leaking in different products like tubes, air conditioners, transmissions, and other parts on your car. Also, testing included airplanes, medical equipment and home items. He presented a historic account of testing. He contrasted the today's computer has shrink the floor space needed. Also, it eliminated the use of the vacuum tube.
After the question and answer period, I held up my hands. I made the comment about the role of Congo's minerals like coltan had played in this transformation. Only a few people had heard of coltan. He stated that I need to speak about coltan to the group.
Congo has the largest reserve of coltan. Other African countries neighboring Congo has much smaller quantity.
When I got home and checked my email via my notebook computer. He had written me. He thanked me for broadening his education. He stated that he now remembered tantalum vacuum tubes. I Google'd tantalum and read the scientific explanation. Tantalum occurs principally in the mineral tantalite. Tantalite is largely found mixed with columbite in an ore called coltan.
So I wrote him back and thanked him for broadening my education.
By the way, I am writing "My Daily Log" on my HTC P3600, a Pocket PC with smartphone. It has email, MMS, and SMS messaging, MS Office (Outlook, Internet Explorer, Excel, Word, PowerPoint), two cameras (took that picture of his sheet of paper), video, WI-fi, expandable memory, touch screen, blue tooth (using a blue tooth keyboard), tethered modem, advanced unlocked phone with video calling and voice dialing, and 3G speed. Also, I have loaded 3rd party software applications like Skype, Pocket Bible, Pocket French Dictionary, Expense Tracker, Adobe Reader, Mobile Newsreader, and the Mobile version of my blogging software TypePad.
I owe Congo a lots! Probably their columbite tantalite aka tantalum aka coltan was used it my laptop and this smartphone/pocketpc.
Because of the fighting over coltan, millions of people have died in the Congo. You can not say that Congo is "dirt poor". Congo is mineral rich but it people live in poverty. Coltan, the black gold, is allowing us to have our toys.
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