I got a chance to see and touch a piece of history today, one of the
original 13 sets of gage blocks made by CE Johansson!
I went to the online local paper to check yard sales and see if there
was any I ought to go look at. On the front page, just before
clickiing the Classifieds link, I saw a headline "Yardsale Eureka".
Checked out the link to find a local woman had purchased the set years
ago for $20, and would have them on display at the local Ford dealer
today.
I took my copy of Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy and let her copy
the section on Johansson, and took a couple pictures of the set.
She has documentation certifying it as Johansson's personal set, and
she's going to get me a copy of that.
Here's the link to the article in today's local paper:
http://tu.us.publicus.com/article/20050528/NEWS/105280094

If I'd seen these at a museum, they'd have been behind glass. It was
neat to be able to actually touch them. No, didn't handle the blocks
themselves and I made sure to tell her not to handle them.

Sure wish this had been my yard sale score...

Jon

"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
I got a chance to see and touch a piece of history today, one of the
original 13 sets of gage blocks made by CE Johansson!
I went to the online local paper to check yard sales and see if there
was any I ought to go look at. On the front page, just before
clickiing the Classifieds link, I saw a headline "Yardsale Eureka".
Checked out the link to find a local woman had purchased the set years
ago for $20, and would have them on display at the local Ford dealer
today.
I took my copy of Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy and let her copy
the section on Johansson, and took a couple pictures of the set.
She has documentation certifying it as Johansson's personal set, and
she's going to get me a copy of that.
Here's the link to the article in today's local paper:
http://tu.us.publicus.com/article/20050528/NEWS/105280094

If I'd seen these at a museum, they'd have been behind glass. It was
neat to be able to actually touch them. No, didn't handle the blocks
themselves and I made sure to tell her not to handle them.

Sure wish this had been my yard sale score...

Jon

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I hadn't heard of CE Johansson before.
I would think that some museum somewhere would buy those from her. I wonder
how she came up with $55,000?

Lane

In article , Jon Anderson says...

I got a chance to see and touch a piece of history today, one of the
original 13 sets of gage blocks made by CE Johansson!

The article said they were the set with the serial
number of "ONE!"

Was there an aura about them?

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
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On Sun, 29 May 2005 00:39:39 GMT, Thomas Nulla
wrote:

If everyone thought like we did, historically significant machines like
this would be kept in glass-encased, atmosphere-controlled rooms with armed
guards and reverently visited by millions. grin

You may enjoy some of these
http://tinyurl.com/dgqcl or these http://tinyurl.com/bdghv

Some could very well be near you & you don't know it ....
--
Cliff

On 28 May 2005 21:04:55 -0700, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Jon Anderson says...

I got a chance to see and touch a piece of history today, one of the
original 13 sets of gage blocks made by CE Johansson!

The article said they were the set with the serial
number of "ONE!"

Was there an aura about them?

Bah...they probably haven't been certified in years, cost more to
re-cert 'em than they're worth. I'll give you 50 bucks for 'em...


Dave "Give a man an inch..." Hinz