A Unique Year for a Special Parade

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Floats and balloons and fun, oh, my!!!

I hope you enjoyed your augmented Thanksgiving yesterday with loved ones and also had a chance to see some of the parade.  As a kid, my brothers and sisters always found time to turn on the Macy’s parade and to see the balloons, bands, movie stars and of course Santa.  Mom used to say that Santa is now watching us until Christmas Day, so we have to be extra good.  My favorite of course was the giant balloons. We used to laugh at the people singing as you could tell they were just mouthing along with the words.  I was always amazed at how the folks didn’t just blow away while trying to hold onto the balloons. I had the opportunity after Jackie and I were married to march in a parade as a huge balloon “holder person” in Toledo.  I have to say there is definitely a system involved especially when there is a walkway over the street that the balloon has to get under!  My girls have grown up watching parts of the parade in between family football games and getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner.  I did some digging and found cool information about the parade and its origins.  Relax and enjoy your extended weekend. Special thanks to Wikipedia for the info.

  • The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, the world’s largest parade, is presented by the U.S. based department store chain Macy’s. The parade started on November 27, 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States with America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit (with both parades being four years younger than Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day Parade). The three-hour parade is held in Manhattan, ending outside Macy’s Herald Square, and takes place from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving Day.
  • In 1924, store employees marched to Macy’s Herald Square, the flagship store on 34th Street, dressed in vibrant costumes. There were floats, professional bands and live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. At the end of that first parade, Santa Claus was welcomed into Herald Square and was enthroned on the Macy’s balcony at the 34th Street store entrance, where he was then crowned “King of the Kiddies”. With an audience of over 250,000 people, the parade was such a success that Macy’s declared it would become an annual event, despite media reports only barely covering the first parade.
  • The Macy’s parade was enough of a success to push Ragamuffin Day, the typical children’s Thanksgiving Day activity from 1870 into the 1920s, into obscurity. Ragamuffin Day featured children going around and performing a primitive version of trick-or-treating, a practice that by the 1920s had come to annoy most adults. The public backlash against such begging in the 1930s, at a time when most Americans were themselves struggling in the midst of the Great Depression, led to promotion of alternatives, including Macy’s parade.
  • Anthony “Tony” Frederick Sarg loved to work with marionettes from an early age. After moving to London to start his own marionette business, Sarg moved to New York City to perform with his puppets on the street. Macy’s heard about Sarg’s talents and asked him to design a window display of a parade for the store.

  • The balloons were introduced in 1928, replacing live zoo animals.  Sarg’s large animal-shaped balloons were produced by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. That year there was no procedure to deflate the balloons so they were simply released. In 1928 five of the larger balloons were designed and filled with helium to rise above 2,000 feet and slowly deflate for whomever was lucky enough to capture the contestants in Macy’s “balloon race” and return them for a reward of $100 (equivalent to more than $1,500 with inflation as of 2020) – this lasted until 1932.
  • Through the 1930s, the Parade continued to grow, with crowds of over one million people lining the parade route in 1933. The first Mickey Mouse balloon entered the parade in 1934. The annual festivities were broadcast on local radio stations in New York City from 1932 to 1941, and resumed in 1945, running through 1951.
  • The parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944 as a result of World War II, because rubber and helium were needed for the war effort.  The parade resumed in 1945, and became known nationwide shortly afterward, having been prominently featured in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, which included footage of the 1946 festivities. The event was first broadcast on network television in 1948
  • The balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade have had several varieties. The oldest is the novelty balloon class, consisting of smaller balloons ranging widely in size and handled by between one and thirty people (the smallest balloons are shaped like human heads and fit on the heads of the handlers). The larger and more popular class is the character balloons, primarily consisting of licensed pop-culture characters; each of these is handled by exactly 90 people. From 2005 to 2012, a third balloon class, the “Blue Sky Gallery”, transformed the works of contemporary artists into full-size balloons; after a five-year hiatus, the Blue Sky Gallery returned in 2018.
  • In addition to the well-known balloons and floats, the Parade also features live music and other performances. College and high school marching bands from across the country participate in the parade, and the television broadcasts feature performances by established and up-and-coming singers and bands. The Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall are a classic performance as well, having performed annually since 1957, as the last pre-parade act to perform and their performance was followed by a commercial break, as are cheerleaders and dancers chosen by the National Cheerleaders Association from various high schools across the country. The parade concludes with the arrival of Santa Claus to ring in the Christmas and holiday season
  • On the NBC telecast the marching bands perform live music. Most “live” performances by musicals and individual artists lip sync to the studio, soundtrack or cast recordings of their songs.  Although rare, recent parade broadcasts have featured at least one live performance with no use of recorded vocals.  Cast members from a number of Broadway shows perform either in the parade, or immediately preceding the parade in front of Macy’s and before The Rockettes’ performance
  • For the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in 2011, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade invited family members from Tuesday’s Children, a family service organization that has made a long-term commitment to those directly impacted by the attacks and terrorism around the world, to cut the ribbon at the start of the parade.
  • More than 44 million people typically watch the parade on television on an annual basis. It was first televised locally in New York City in 1939 as an experimental broadcast on NBC’s W2XBS (forerunner of today’s WNBC).  The parade began its network television appearances on CBS in 1948, the year that major, regular television network programming began.  NBC has been the official broadcaster of the event since 1953, though CBS (which has a studio in Times Square) also carries unauthorized coverage under the title The Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS
  • Since 2003, the parade has been broadcast simultaneously in Spanish on the sister network of NBCUniversal (Telemundo) hosted by María Celeste Arrarás from 2003-2006. The parade won nine Emmy Awards for outstanding achievements in special event coverage since 1979.
  • Other American cities also have parades held on Thanksgiving, none of which are run by Macy’s. The nation’s oldest Thanksgiving parade (the Gimbels parade, which has had many sponsors over the years, and is now known as the 6abc Dunkin’ Donuts Thanksgiving Day Parade) was first held in Philadelphia in 1920. Other cities with parades on the holiday include the McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade in Chicago, Illinois and parades in Plymouth, Massachusetts; Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Fountain Hills, Arizona.
  • The 2018 parade was the coldest to date with the temperature at 19 °F.  The warmest was in 1933 at 69 °F. The 2006 parade was the wettest with 1.72″ (49 mm) of rain.
  • In August 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, Macy’s stated that it planned to change the format of the parade in accordance with New York health orders. The parade is being produced as a “television-only special presentation” over a two-day period, with 75% fewer participants and social distancing enforced. The event will not include college and high school marching bands nor any participant under 18 years of age. Balloons will be tethered to a “specially rigged anchor vehicle framework of five specialty vehicles” rather than carried by handlers, and the full parade route will not be used — with all activity limited to the Herald Square area.

 

 

 

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))  
Have fun!!

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Just in time.

 

It’s been a long week, take some time, read on.

Time. It just keeps ticking along. Over the weekend I was watching a couple of great NFL football games and was all caught up with the time clock.  Last-minute heroics seem to be just part of the game these days. Managing the clock.  Running the clock down.  Taking a knee to end the game.  It’s action-packed and keeps us on the edge of our seats.  It got me to thinking about my awesome team at KHT, and how we manage our time.  We estimate time for jobs, track delivery times and processing times, making sure your PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs! come out just right – time after time. Time is so important to how we live too – we do things at a specific time, “later on”, “suddenly”, “after a while”, or even “at the same time”.  We use a timer to cook, the alarm to wake us up, and our stopwatch to end an event or finish a run.  When a dear friend calls, we “make time” or disappoint them that we’re “out of time”.  Today marks a special anniversary of Willard Bundy, the inventor of the time clock – way back in 1888.  So, take a few minutes to “punch in”, gather up some trivia, and share with your co-workers during your next zoom chat before you (punch) log out.  Thanks to ontheclock.com, Wikipedia, and YouTube for the info and amazing music videos.  Enjoy!

If you “have time”, here are some fun songs to play while reading our post – and it’s ok to sing out loud – cause they are awesome!
The Doors – Love Me Two Times
Pink Floyd – Time
The Zombies – Time of the Season
Cindy Lauper – Time After Time
Chicago – Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?
Jim Croche – Time In A Bottle

  • The sundial represents the first relatively accurate method of tracking the time of day.  The earliest sundials can be traced back to 1500 BC from ancient Babylonian and Egyptian astronomy.  Before humans could track time, workers were most likely paid by the day.
  • In Roman times, soldiers were paid a “salarium” or payment to buy salt, which was used as currency and was considered essential for living in the time. Along with the word salary (so that’s where it came from), many experts believe these roman origins are where the phrase “worth his salt,” comes from. (now you know!)
  • From Ancient Rome through the Second Industrial Revolution in 1930, the term salary referred to payment for services. In this case, a salary could mean a flat fee for work or hourly compensation. It wasn’t until the 1800s that employers started differentiating between flat pay and an hourly rate for work.
  • In the late 1800’s, while unions were protesting and lawmakers were debating working conditions, one man in New York was tinkering away in his jewelry shop. Willard Legrand Bundy, born and raised in Cayuga County, New York, opened a jewelry store and used his trade to develop multiple inventions, many of which are still used today. Bundy holds patents for multiple cash registers and calculating machines, but he is known for inventing the employee time clock. The patent for his time recorder was approved on November 20, 1888 and Bundy started a business manufacturing machines that would record when employees would clock in and clock out of work.  A year later his brother, Harlow Bundy, organized the Bundy Manufacturing Company, and began mass-producing time clocks. (I love when families work together!!)
  • In 1889, the Bundy Manufacturing Recording Company opened in Binghamton with eight employees and $150,000 in capital. By 1898, the company expanded to 140 skilled workers and had sold more than 9,000 Bundy Time Recorders. These machines were sold as a solution for “vexatious questions of recording employee time.”
  • In the following years, as the time clock became commonplace in the American workplace, the Bundy Manufacturing Company merged with various other companies. It eventually became the International Time Recorder Company (ITR). In 1911, this business was incorporated in New York State as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which was the forerunner of IBM (International Business Machines Corporation)… (now you know!)
  • As manual punch clocks grew more common in the American workplace and across the world, not much changed throughout the mid-1900s. However, a few circles started to buzz about special calculating machines called computers and how they could revolutionize our society.
  • When computers started showing up in every home and business, the market expanded from a few select companies to millions of people across America. The software industry changed dramatically to the creation of tools sold for small amounts to large audiences, a model most SaaS companies still follow today.  As the market for software evolved, developers created time clock tools that companies could buy and install on their computers, moving employee time tracking out of history and into its digital form.
  • One man, in particular, created an invention which many small businesses use today to balance their books and employee time sheets. Richard Mattessich is credited as the pioneer of the electronic spreadsheet, which allowed other develops to create some of the first mainstream accounting tools.
  • In 1978, Harvard Business School students Daniel Bricklin and Bob Frankston developed an interactive visible calculator called VisiCalc that could be used on personal computers. This way, anyone who had this computer and this program about track data and manipulate it for their accounting and analytical needs.  While paper spreadsheets have been around for centuries, the digital option made it easy for accountants to enter data and have it calculated automatically.
  • In 1991, computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee debuted the World Wide Web. This “web of information,” was meant to do more than send files. It was supposed to provide information to people and connect data from all over the world.
  • Over the next decade, the Internet would continue to grow. Dial-up modems became the background noise of homes, more companies would start using computer technology, and people started to share information by a communication tool called “e-mail.”  With these changes in technology, employee time tracking evolved, too. Microchips and employee identification cards meant team members could swipe in instead of physically placing a punch card into a machine. In some companies, employees could even clock in via computer.
  • The invention of the internet meant that employees could clock in online from their own devices instead of downloading software or using hardware in the employee break room. As long as team members had access to the web, they could clock in or out.  This is all so convenient today with our current “at home” workforces.
  • This opened the door for remote workers to check in wherever they are — whether they are working from home or calling in from a villa in Aspen. In 2018 about 70 percent of workers reported working remotely at least one day per week – (today that’s likely about 99%).
  • Modern technology continues to change how we work, but a few things remain the same – such as employee time tracking as long as people get paid by the hour. Employee time tracking is certainly transitioning, especially as more employers embrace BYOD (bring your own device) culture and mobile time management, but the core of the employee time clock will remain the same.
  • With the mass market proliferation of mobile devices (smart phones, handheld devices), new types of self-calculating time tracking systems have been invented which allow a mobile workforce – such as painting companies, truckers and construction companies – to track employees ‘on’ and ‘off’ hours. This is generally accomplished through either a mobile application, or an IVR based phone call in system. Using a mobile device allows enterprises to better validate that their employees or suppliers are physically ‘clocking in’ at a specific location using the GPS functionality of a mobile phone for extra validation.
  • Biometric time clocks are a feature of more advanced time and attendance systems. Rather than using a key, code or chip to identify the user, they rely on a unique attribute of the user, such as a handprint, fingerprint, finger vein, palm vein, facial recognition, iris or retina. The user will have their attribute scanned into the system. Biometric readers are often used in conjunction with an access control system, granting the user access to a building, and at the same time clocking them in recording the time and date. These systems also attempt to cut down on “buddy clocking” or ghost employees’, where additional identities are added to payroll but don’t exist.
  • Wonder what the future holds … I guess time will tell. (sorry, I had too…)

 

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.

As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

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Nostalgia or the Future

I admit, I’ll eat anything. And these babies are no exception. Never met a frozen dinner I didn’t like.

Growing up my Mom was simply amazing.  18 kids (yep that’s right) all needed to be fed, bathed, clothed, schooled, nurtured and loved. Never complaining – just a constant outpouring of “Mom love.”  I was reading an article the other day, and it sent me back to one of my favorite Mom treats as a kid …TV dinners.  Those amazing inventions of meat, gravy, veggies and dessert, all organized into a foil plate.  Every once in a while, as a treat, we got to use our folding TV tables, (remember those great inventions) and watch our favorite shows while eating dinner!  I can remember later on having those thin rectangular boxes stacked up in the freezer with the name displayed (having to turn my head sideways to read which one of them I wanted next!) And I have to admit it – to this day, I still love the taste of them – the standard pre-packed Swanson specials, like turkey and stuffing, along with the multitude of frozen goodies we can find at the grocery store.  With the advances in freezers, packaging and processing, there are so many things we can find in the frozen food aisle – including international foods.  Special thanks to Smithsonian and Wikipedia for the info and YouTube for the video.  Enjoy the trip down memory lane for those of you who can relate – and shoot me a message as to your personal favorite.  YUM!!

  • In 1925, the Brooklyn-born entrepreneur Clarence Birdseye invented a machine for freezing packaged fish that would revolutionize the storage and preparation of food. Maxson Food Systems of Long Island used Birdseye’s technology, the double-belt freezer, to sell the first complete frozen dinners to airlines in 1945.
  • Plans to offer those meals in supermarkets were canceled after the death of the company’s founder, William L. Maxson. Ultimately, it was the Swanson company that transformed how Americans ate dinner – and it all came about, the story goes, because of Thanksgiving turkey.
  • According to the most widely accepted account, a Swanson salesman named Gerry Thomas conceived the company’s frozen dinners in late 1953 when he saw that the company had 260 tons of frozen turkey left over after Thanksgiving, sitting in ten refrigerated railroad cars. (The train’s refrigeration worked only when the cars were moving, so Swanson had the trains travel back and forth between its Nebraska headquarters and the East Coast “until panicked executives could figure out what to do”). Thomas had the idea to add other holiday staples such as cornbread stuffing and sweet potatoes, and to serve them alongside the bird in frozen, partitioned aluminum trays designed to be heated in the oven.
  • Betty Cronin, Swanson’s bacteriologist, helped the meals succeed with her research into how to heat the meat and vegetables at the same time while killing any food-borne germs.  Her history is a bit different – saying that Gilbert and Clarke Swanson, sons of company founder Carl Swanson, came up with the idea for the frozen-meal-on-a-tray. Whoever provided the spark, this new American convenience was a commercial triumph.
  • In 1954, the first full year of production, Swanson sold ten million trays. Banquet Foods and Morton Frozen Foods soon brought out their own offerings, winning over more and more middle-class households across the country.  Initially called “Strato-Plates,” America was introduced to its “TV dinner” at a time when the concept was guaranteed to be lucrative: As millions of women entered the workforce in the early 1950s, Mom was no longer always at home to cook elaborate meals—but now the question of what to eat for dinner had a prepared answer.
  • Frustrated, some men wrote angry letters to the Swanson company complaining about the loss of home-cooked meals. But for most, TV dinners were just the ticket. Pop them in the oven, and 25 minutes later, you could have a full supper while enjoying the new national pastime: television.  The top shows in ’55 were The $64,000 Question, I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show… (can you remember the name of the mouse puppet on the show?)
  • In 1950, only 9 percent of U.S. households had television sets—but by 1955, the number had risen to more than 64 percent, and by 1960, to more than 87 percent. Swanson took full advantage of this trend, with TV advertisements that depicted elegant, modern women serving these novel meals to their families, or enjoying one themselves. “The best fried chicken I know comes with a TV dinner,” Barbra Streisand told the New Yorker in 1962.
  • By the 1970s, competition among the frozen food giants spurred some menu innovation, including such questionable options as Swanson’s take on a “Polynesian Style Dinner,” which doesn’t resemble any meal you will see in Polynesia. Tastemakers, of course, sniffed, like the New York Times food critic who observed that TV dinner consumers had no taste, but later found another niche audience in dieters, who were glad for the built-in portion control.
  • With the help of Pittsburg Steelers “Mean Joe Green”, Hungry Man dinners were introduced – for those with larger appetites – (made me smile J)
  • The next big breakthrough came in 1986, with the Campbell Soup Company’s invention of microwave-safe trays, which cut meal preparation to mere minutes. Convenience food was now too convenient for some diners, as one columnist lamented: “Progress is wonderful, but I will still miss those steaming, crinkly aluminum TV trays.”
  • The production process of TV dinners is highly automated and undergoes three major steps – food preparation, tray loading, and freezing. During food preparation, vegetables and fruits are usually placed on a movable belt and washed, then are placed into a container to be steamed or boiled for 1–3 minutes. This process is referred to as blanching and is used as a method to destroy enzymes in the food that can cause chemical changes negatively affecting overall flavor and color of the fruit and vegetables. As for meats, prior to cooking, they are trimmed of fat and cut into proper sizes. Fish is usually cleaned and cut into fillets, and poultry is usually washed thoroughly and dressed.
  • Meats are then seasoned, placed on trays, and are cooked in an oven for a predetermined amount of time. After all the food is ready to be packaged, it is sent to the filling lines. The food is placed in its compartments as the trays pass under numerous filling machines; to ensure that every packaged dinner gets an equal amount of food, the filling devices are strictly regulated.
  • The food undergoes a process of cryogenic freezing with liquid nitrogen. After the food is placed on the conveyor belt, it is sprayed with liquid nitrogen that boils on contact with the freezing food. This method of flash-freezing fresh foods is used to retain natural quality of the food. When the food is chilled through cryogenic freezing, small ice crystals are formed throughout the food that, in theory, can preserve the food indefinitely if stored safely.
  • Cryogenic freezing is widely used as it is a method for rapid freezing, requires almost no dehydration, excludes oxygen thus decreasing oxidative spoilage, and causes less damage to individual freezing pieces. Due to the fact that the cost of operating cryogenic freezing is high, it is commonly used for high-value food products such as TV dinners, which is a $4.5 billion industry a year that is continuing to grow with the constant introduction of new technology.
  • Following this, the dinners are either covered with aluminum foil or paper, and the product is tightly packed with a partial vacuum created to ensure no evaporation takes place that can cause the food to dry out. Then the packaged dinners are placed in a refrigerated storage facility, transported by refrigerated truck, and stored in the grocer’s freezer. TV dinners prepared with the aforementioned steps—that is, frozen and packaged properly—can remain in near-perfect condition for a long time, so long as they are stored at -18 °C during shipping and storage.
  • This past year, approximately 130 million Americans consumed a TV dinner.
  • With restaurants closed during Covid-19, Americans are again snapping up frozen meals, spending nearly 50 percent more on them in April 2020 over April 2019, says the American Frozen Food Institute. Specialty stores like Williams Sonoma now stock gourmet TV dinners. Ipsa Provisions, a high-end frozen-food company launched this past February in New York, specializes in “artisanal frozen dishes for a civilized meal any night of the week”—a slogan right out of the 1950s. Restaurants from Detroit to Colorado Springs to Los Angeles are offering frozen versions of their dishes for carryout, a practice that some experts predict will continue beyond the pandemic.

VIDEO: Make your own TV dinner! 
Swanson 1958 commercial. Wow!

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))  
Have fun!!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
 

And a One, And a Two…

There is nothing we do that doesn’t require counting somehow. You can count on that. And you can count on me to brighten your Friday afternoons. Relax, and count your blessings.  :))

What a week.  With all the effort, time and money that went into the election, we find ourselves relying on a basic human skill – something that goes back thousands and thousands of years … counting.  It’s something that is so natural, we seldom think about its origins or how we learned to count in the first place.  As a youngster, I was privileged to watch Sesame Street, and enjoy one of my favorite characters, The Count.  Putting numbers to music was brilliant, and I still enjoy the songs and the number of the day especially with my granddaughter.  There are expressions we use here at KHT all the time, when it comes to solving your PIA (pain in the @%$) Jobs! – like “you can count on me”, “you can count on it”.  Many of us say “count me in/out” and “down for the count”. We “count our calories”, “lose count” and know “it’s the thought that counts”.  I’m often “counting my blessings” when I think of my wife, children, grandkids, friends, vendors and amazing customers and the gang here at KHT.  I’m also blessed to have married a counting savant.  Jackie’s natural abilities astound me, as she can organize numbers and things WAY better than I can even imagine – (if you could see my sock drawer I might have a chance!).  Here’s some history and trivia – and a song from The Count – enjoy!  Special thanks to Wikipedia and transom.org for the info.

  • Counting is the process of determining the number of elements of a finite set of objects. The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (mental or spoken) counter by a unit for every element of the set, in some order, while marking (or displacing) those elements to avoid visiting the same element more than once, until no unmarked elements are left; if the counter was set to one after the first object, the value after visiting the final object gives the desired number of elements. The related term enumeration refers to uniquely identifying the elements of a finite (combinatorial) set or infinite set by assigning a number to each element. (how’s that for an explanation!)
  • Counting sometimes involves numbers other than one; for example, when counting money, counting out change, “counting by twos” (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, …), or “counting by fives” (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, …).
  • There is archaeological evidence suggesting that humans have been counting for at least 50,000 years.  Counting was primarily used by ancient cultures to keep track of social and economic data such as the number of group members, prey animals, property, or debts (that is, accountancy). Notched bones have been found in the Border Caves in South Africa that may suggest that the concept of counting was known to humans as far back as 44,000 BCE. The development of counting led to the development of mathematical notation, numeral systems, and writing.
  • Counting can also be in the form of tally marks, making a mark for each number and then counting all of the marks when done tallying. This is useful when counting objects over time, such as the number of times something occurs during the course of a day.
  • Tallying is base 1 counting; normal counting is done in base 10. Computers use base 2 counting (0s and 1s).
  • Counting can also be in the form of finger counting, especially when counting small numbers. This is often used by children to facilitate counting and simple mathematical operations. Finger-counting uses unary notation (one finger = one unit) and is thus limited to counting 10 (unless you start in with your toes). Older finger counting used the four fingers and the three bones in each finger (phalanges) to count to the number twelve.  Other hand-gesture systems are also in use, for example the Chinese system by which one can count to 10 using only gestures of one hand. By using finger binary (base 2 counting), it is possible to keep a finger count up to 1023 = 210 − 1. This explanation makes me tired!
  • Various devices can also be used to facilitate counting, such as hand tally counters and abacuses.  Computers at about 205 million per second. If the last value in the for loop is changed to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (the largest value that a 64 bit ulong can hold), this loop would take about 89,984,117,433 seconds which is about 1,041,483 days or 2,853 years! (would someone please call Jackie!)
  • Inclusive counting is usually encountered when dealing with time in the Romance languages.  In exclusive counting languages such as English, when counting “8” days from Sunday, Monday will be day 1, Tuesday day 2, and the following Monday will be the eighth day. When counting “inclusively,” the Sunday (the start day) will be day 1 and therefore the following Sunday will be the eighth day. For example, the French phrase for “fortnight” is quinzaine (15 [days]), and similar words are present in Greek (δεκαπενθήμερο, dekapenthímero), Spanish (quincena) and Portuguese (quinzena). In contrast, the English word “fortnight” itself derives from “a fourteen-night”, as the archaic “sennight” does from “a seven-night”.
  • Names based on inclusive counting appear in other calendars as well: in the Roman calendar the nones (meaning “nine”) is 8 days before the ides; and in the Christian calendar Quinquagesima (meaning 50) is 49 days before Easter Sunday.
  • Musical terminology also uses inclusive counting of intervals between notes of the standard scale: going up one note is a second interval, going up two notes is a third interval, etc., and going up seven notes is an octave.
  • Learning to count is an important educational/developmental milestone in most cultures of the world, but some cultures in Amazonia and the Australian Outback do not count, and their languages do not have number words. (I think this is where the expression came:  “be home before the street lights come on”)
  • Many children at just 2 years of age have some skill in reciting the count list (that is, saying “one, two, three, …”). They can also answer questions of ordinality for small numbers, for example, “What comes after three?”. They can even be skilled at pointing to each object in a set and reciting the words one after another. This leads many parents and educators to the conclusion that the child knows how to use counting to determine the size of a set.  Research suggests that it takes about a year after learning these skills for a child to understand what they mean and why the procedures are performed
  • Counting takes longer than you think.  To count to a trillion, a computer can get to one billion (9 zeros) rather fast – 15 seconds. But to get to one trillion (12 zeros) – the difference is amazing – 4 hours and 10 minutes.
  • If you love numbers, here’s some great trivia

 

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me
a quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))  
Have fun!!

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VOTE TODAY

Please remember to vote today.  

Here’s a little trivia to share with friends.  Thanks to constitutioncenter.org for the trivia.

1. Elections took place way before the Constitution was ratified – The English in particular conducted voting soon after they landed in Virginia in the 17th Century. But not everyone could vote and not every office was up for election. But many colonies allowed male adults who owned land to vote for legislators who served in lower assemblies.

2. George Washington and Election Day consumption – In 1758, a young candidate in Virginia for the House of Burgesses footed a huge liquor bill to woo voters on Election Day. George Washington spent his entire campaign budget, 50 pounds, on 160 gallons of liquor served to 391 voters. Buying votes with booze was already a custom in England. Washington also was following a Virginia tradition where barrels of liquor were rolled to courthouse lawns and polling places on Election Day.

3. We wouldn’t recognize an Election Day about 200 years ago – Not only were eating, drinking and parading common, votes could be conducted by a public voice vote. Political parties would also hand out pre-printed ballots for voters to cast, to ensure that people voted for a party ticket. It wasn’t until the 1890s that the Australian ballot, also known as the Secret Ballot, became commonly used in America.

4. The Constitution didn’t spell out when Election Day was – The administration of elections was left up to the individual states in the Constitution, with the exception of some basic requirements for presidential and congressional candidates. States were left to pick their own election days, including when elections for federal offices were held. But any federal election involving the Electoral College needed to be resolved by mid-December.

5. The weather and farming dictated when elections were held – In the 1800s, the agrarian economy was an important factor, and farmers weren’t able to travel easily until the harvest was over. Also, the onset of winter conditions in areas that had winter conditions made travel a problem, so elections typically happened in the late fall.

6. Election Day wasn’t on a fixed day until the mid-19th century – Congress finally stepped in to set a uniform day for presidential elections in 1845 as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This was a scheme borrowed from New York state and it allowed people to observe the Sabbath, travel to vote, and return home for Wednesday, which was observed as Market Day. This was just for presidential elections every four years, but it started a trend.

7. Election voting machines are a 20th Century innovation – The mechanical lever voting machine was patented in 1889 but it took decades for the machines to become commonplace. Jacob H. Myers built the first lever machine used in an election, back in 1892. Meyers said the devices were needed to prevent “rascaldom.”

8. The mechanical voting machine is extinct – The classic mechanical lever voting machine (the one with the moveable curtain our parents used) was phased out by 2010 in the United States. Most votes are now conducted using electronic digital voting machines or by using paper ballots that are sometimes optically scanned.

9. The chance of a “hanging chad” is almost extinct, too – By 2012, punch card voting machines only accounted for 0.02% of machines in use. Back in 2000, it was a problem with the chads (the rectangular pieces of a card punched to indicate a vote), that caused problems with the presidential vote in Florida.

10. Not all states vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November – In years when federal elections aren’t held, not all states feel the need to have an election on a traditional Election Day. In 2015, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana held elections later in the month.

BONUS TRIVIA – A one-of-a-kind election that was literally “no contest” when George Washington ran unopposed in our country’s first election. Organized political parties had yet to form, so Washington’s victory is the only one in our nation’s history to feature 100 percent of the Electoral College vote.  (The real question in 1788 was who would become vice president. At the time, this office was awarded to the runner-up in the electoral vote (each elector cast two votes to ensure there would be a runner-up.) Eleven candidates made a play for the vice-presidency, but John Adams came out on top.