Re: FWD: Paul Tibbits, pilot of "Enola Gay", dead at 92



OM wrote:
...I have, although it's been about 25 years since I'd heard the
lecture on some of the plans the Japs had for causing sabotage and
chaos. Apparently they were of seriously good quality with regards to
the forgeries, although they suffered from the same problem that
plagues counterfeiters today - the paper. The Japs apparently did get
ahold of some of the blank stock used by the US Mint, but not enough
to produce enough bills to do more than provide about $2500.00 USD in
$20.00 bills, circa 1943, which IIRC is when they managed to finally
nab the paper.

I used to have a foreign coin and currency collection; the three most pathetic things in it were the Japanese porcelain Yen from the late war, the cardboard Yen from Manchuko (Japanese occupied Manchuria) and the tin Baht from Thailand - a little dark gray coin about the size of a nickel that was so soft that you could fold it up with your fingers, and then unfold it flat again.
Picture a "coin" made out of soft lead.
In case you missed it, I now have a 1986 vintage IBM keyboard.
The thing is so clicky that that I don't know if I'm typing on it or using a telegraph key to send out Morris code.
What the hell are the little blue labels on the sides of the keys about?
The friend who gave it to me mentioned that the whole keyboard's design was based on that of the IBM Selectric typewriter.
I've used one of those, and still haven't figured out exactly how the letter ball worked from a mechanical point of view; but it was great when you revved the damn thing up and it hummed and vibrated like it had a 1/4 horsepower electric motor from a washing machine running inside of it.
You'd think the SOB was going to jump right off the desk after tearing your fingers off. :-D
The IBM keyboard also has the most hair-trigger space bar I've ever seen; breath on it and it sticks a space in.
For use with short-sleeved shirts only.

Pat
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