Long, Long Ago in the Land of pi Tapes

Ok, this post is way off topic, but reminiscing about working at the wire and cable company reminded me of a TV episode I saw last week.  This is about pi tapes (lower case and equals 3.14159…), not about PI tapes (upper case letters – PROFIBUS and PROFINET International).

The best show on TV has to be How It’s Made.  At 4:09 into this video on wire and cable manufacturing, the operator checks the cable diameter and I startle my wife by exclaiming “It’s a pi tape!”

My pi tape had conventional inch measurements on one side, but inches times pi on the other so diameter could be measured.  (Circumference equals pi times diameter.)  You can find more about pi tapes at http://www.pitape.com/aboutus.htm.  (Don’t you love the Internet?)

I knew I still had my pi tape.  It was in my book case beside the old TI-30 calculator (still works), a couple old slide rules (they still work, too), some old meters, a box of vacuum tubes, and other items from my past.

pi_tape

Now I’ll head for the airport and on to the Denver PROFINET one-day training class.  Where we still have a few seats left, incidentally.  And I promise not to tweet through the whole thing because with four PROFINET classes in four weeks that would get to be a bit much.

–Carl Henning