16 Dec
2025
16 Dec
'25
4:33 p.m.
On Dec 16, 2025, at 4:59 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have a $10 set of 100 screwdriver bits, including some quite odd ones like
"triwing".
> It is a sad comment on our society that there
could be a need to tell
> people.
> Are there really people who were not taught that the first time that they
> encountered a threaded fastener?
On Tue, 16 Dec 2025, Carey Schug wrote:
i guess it is such a sad comment. at 76 years
old I was never taught that,
including in shop class in high school.
It is interesting, and a little horrifying, that it wasn't taught.
Surely it wasn't that the shop teacher didn't know to do it?
Or, maybe it was so deeply ingrained that it didn't occur to mention it?
My mother (farm raised) told me.
Even my father (city boy from NYC, "call the super"), who didn't even know
that there is more than one size of Phillips screwdrivers, told me. But, for half a century, I have been saying that the
demise of erector sets (or equivalent in other countries) after they changed from a motor
with a whole bunch of gears to a plastic battery motor, means that mechanical competence
is going, going, gone
Yup. I fondly remember my childhood Meccano set, green strips of metal and little screws
with square nuts. The motor was a spring powered mechanism.
(Likewise, modern kids don't all know what
"CLOCKWISE" means! (reasonably mentioned about Jake in "Two And A Half
Men".))
("When you are standing on your head, and seeing with a mirror, to know which way to
turn the drainplug, imagine a watch face on it.")
Eek. But do you know why clockwise is the direction it is? My father referred to it when
he used as a synonym "with the sun" (in Europe, that is).
paul