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Four thousand years ago ,
give or take a few hundred years,
and two thousand years
after the British mainland separated from Europe
A people lived in this place now called Orkney.
They were a hardy breed, and their houses and
monuments are still there today.
They knew of the power of Ideas.
They knew they were not the first to have the power of Ideas.
They knew of an Idea
which had preceded all of their history.
An Idea from before history itself.
An idea that preceded the manifestation of time and space.
In Idea that might have taken part in the creation of everything.
Far fetched?
Around three fifty BC or two thousand seven hundred years later,
Plato believed,
and many others agreed with him,
that the universe was created
"ab initio" from abstract entities
we now call ideas.
These ideas were eternal and everlasting
and existed before time and space existed.
There are countless infinities of these so called ideas.
The most primitive idea
that Plato believed had form
was a "fiery matter" constructor
called now a regular tetrahedron.
It is the first of the four platonic solids
relating to fire,
air,
earth
and water.
This is a journey through time accompanied by Plato's idea
from neolithic britain to the present time.
I have dabbled in creating substance from ideas alone.
With the help of the giants of thought,
and its manifestation in the computer programs
Open Scad and Erlang Wings 3D.
I present this video to my friends,
especially the sculptor of ideas at susancampbellimages.co.uk
in the hope that I can persuade them all that
Ideas are more powerful than Things.
The recent Olympic games opening and closing ceremonies
showed this,
I think London won all the gold medals awarded
for showing the World the power of the idea.
"vincit omnia veritas"
Truth conquers all
and
"amor vincit ommnia"
Love conquers all
These are two that I mention that continue to be important ideas
partially encompased by the Olympic movement.
and I hope are refined in Rio de janerio in Brazil with
"ordem e progresso" order and progress.
I will now ask professor sir Geagle McGeagle to tell us about neolithic sites
The monuments at the heart of Neolithic Orkney
and Skara Brae proclaim the triumphs
of the human spirit in early ages and isolated places.
They were approximately contemporary
with the mastaba of the archaic period of Egypt
in the first and second dynasties,
the brick temples of Sumaria,
and the first cities of the Harappa culture in India,
earlier than the Golden Age of China.
These sites stand as a visible symbol of the achievements
of early peoples
The Ring of Brodgar
is the finest known truly circular late Neolithic
stone ring
and a later expression of the spirit
which gave rise to Maes howe,
Stenness and Skara Brae
The first survey of the Ring of Brodgar
was in eighteen forty nine 1849
by Royal Navy Captain F.W.L. Thomas
who was
drawing up Admiralty Charts
in eighteen forty nine,
he published in eighteen fifty two 1852 That is enough of that tosh, Sir Geagle!
lets move on to what these people did in later life.
David Occam
will now give his
stream of conciousness take
on oscillations and periodic events in The Celtic Antiquities of Orkney.
Excavations by Orkney College
at the nearby Ness of Brodgar site
between the Ring and the Stones of Stenness
have uncovered several buildings,
both ritual and domestic
Pottery, bones, stone tools
and a polished stone mace head
have been discovered.
the most important find
is the remains of a large stone wall
which may have been one hundred metres (three hundred and thirty feet) long
and up to six metres (twenty feet) wide.
across the entire peninsula
the site may have been a symbolic barrier between
the Ring
and the world around it.
Invaders from Scandinavia reached Orkney
by the ninth century,
bringing a complex theology
that they imposed on the pre existing Orcadian monuments;
at least according to local legend
For example,
the Ring of Brodgar
and the Standing Stones of Stenness
known as the
Temple of the Sun and Moon
Young people supposedly made their vows
and prayed to Wodin at these "temples"
and at the so-called "Odin Stone"
that lay between the stone circles.
several of the stones at Brodgar
contain runic carvings that were left
by Nordic peoples.
archaeologists notes that the diameter
of the bank at Brodgar
is almost exactly one hundred and seventy five megalithic yards,
the same as the inner banks
of the Avebury in England
and New grange in Ireland
The so-called "megalithic yard", at 0.8297 metres (2.722 feet) per megalithic yard,
is a controversial measure originally proposed by Alexander Thom.
Thom's thesis,
based on a statistical analysis
of Neolithic monuments in the United Kingdom,
is that the builders of these sites
employed a common unit of measurement,
implying a transfer of information
that may not have existed, even if it were possible:
Euan MacKie suggested that the nearby village
of Skara Brae
might be the home of a privileged theocratic class
of wise men who engaged in astronomical
and magical ceremonies at sites
like Brodgar and Stenness
A a Neolithic "low road"
connects Skara Brae with the chambered tomb of Maeshowe,
passing near Brodgar and Stenness.
Low roads connect Neolithic ceremonial sites throughout Britain.
We used the power of ideas to revolutionise
the other thing
that the neolithic man needed,
communications.
I was reminded of the extremely
rapid development
of the building blocks of this on my visit to the
Radio Museum
In Kirkwall.
Here this neolithic man was returned to a child
A child of the change of the physical to the metaphysical
The Physical represented the Industro
chemical military horror
of the early part of the 20th century.
The ethereal and metaphysical is the new domain of ideas.
For the first time I see again
my Michael Mouse Gas-mask
that I wore as a two year old under the stair-well
when the sirens wailed in Aberdeen.
It was returned to the government in nineteen forty five for possible re-use!
The best re-use is showing it here.
The crystal sets, powered from the invisible energy around us.
We prospected on the micro mountains
of galena (lead sulphide) crystals with a cats whisker
looking for a good spot.
We had each discovered a semi-conductor junction diode.
We loved the progress of the ones that did not stop working when
someone moved your set or even bumped it.
they were encased in glass and
made of a different crystal
germanium.
I built a computer of these to play noughts and crosses
or tic-tac-toe in America
but I became bored when I realised
that it was just an enumeration
of all the possible games
and it had no future.
We longed for valves (tubes)
even one valve (tube)
but the leclanche cells
that laboriously heated
the electron emitting cathodes soon ran out.
The physical size of the valves
The inductance and capacitance of the
associated circuits
which we twiddled on with the crystal sets
limited the maximum speed that the valve could operate at.
Wavelengths of three metres
were considered short in nineteen thirty nine
or one hundred megacycles per second
or one tenth of a gigahertz in today's computer parlance
it is appropriate to talk of computers,
because they are themselves in essence
communications devices
both internally and externally.
By nineteen forty two,
By combining the capacitance and inductance of
the surrounding resonating circuits
into the immediate environment of the valve itself
wavelengths of ten centimeters or three gigahertz.
this allowed the so called centimetric radar.
The breakthrough by Harry Brook and John Randall
in Birmingham in ninteen forty
of the cavity magnetron
shown here I was said to be the most important cargo
ever brought to the shores of the United States
It could produce ten Kilo watts of pulsed power
at ten centimetres wavelengths
centimetric radar was born
by the end of the war in nineteen forty five
these magnetrons could produce
two megawatts of power
at eight point seven millimetre wavelength
for the then top secret millimetric radars
that are still used today
after the war magnetrons were used
in civilian radar
and microwave ovens
and it is estimated that ninety percent
of American households own a microwave oven.
They all descended from the eleven eighty nine model number twelve shown here
the transistor
which superseded valves
in all but a few specialist applications
was a development of the technology of the lead sulphide
galena diode of the crystal sets.
we were all semiconductor pioneers then.
the germanium diode which was an important devices in its own right
for the important task of signal rectification
It could not amplify.
Enter the transistor,
It was like two germanium point contact diodes ganged (joined) together.
My first was the Mullard OC71
it was a glass encased point contact Positive Negative Positive (PNP) germanium transistor.
We scraped the paint of the case and made it a photo electric effect detector
This was a PNP device, the complementary NPN devices
were available in the US but never appeared anywhere else
The US based Practical Electronics was always giving great designs including NPN
for push-pull amplifiers but we could not get the parts.
The development of this essentially low power device into today's
silicon chips
The first silicon transistor needed the
arcane skills of crystal growing
to be developed.
This skill was one of the pet areas of interest of my Physics Professor
at Aberdeen University,
The Great Man Himself,
Professor R.V. Jones
and in ninteen sixty
the first modern transistor was built.
The computer then really took off!
They may have used this mechanical computer
or advanced slide rule to calculate the tides or do some difficult
calculations
but I am going to use a fast desktop computer
with six processors and
sixteen Gigabytes of memory
to show you the power of Plato
and his idea of four triangles
making up a primitive solid.
Everything that you see in modern computer graphics
is built from such primitives .
I did not mean to make this video.
I just thought that I would interest
my friends in the use of the more
up to date techniques that are being used today.
I am not an expert,
I did not know how to use the Wings3D program,
It was the first time I used it.
The meshes provided gave me
a beautiful accurate model of a wartime spitfire.
I did not want to spoil it so
I tried to use the PRIMITIVES provided.
I chose a TETRAHEDRON in the centre.
Then I chose a SPIRAL around the centre
Then I chose a MESH provided that looked like a BALL.
THIS IMMEDIATELY REMINDED ME OF GRAPHICS OF THE *** AIDS VIRUS.
I MATCHED THEM VISUALLY.
I NOW PLAYED WITH THE SCULPTING MAGNETS
both attracting and repelling, of variable strength,
Michaelangelo didn't have these!
THAT ALLOWED ME TO DISTORT THE PARTS OF THE MESH AS YOU CAN SEE.
You can see Plato
In the clear regular equilateral triangle
centred on the micrograph of the *** virus
does it go in to the centre
in the form of an equilateral tetrahedron?
platonic shapes form the basis
of myriads of organisms
too small for us to even imagine
I THEN ENTER THE AIDS LIKE BALL
AND LOOK FOR MY TETRAHEDRON.
BUT IT HAS BECOME SO SMALL THAT I
CANNOT SEE IT.
BUT I HAVE NEAR INFINITE POWERS OF MAGNIFICATION
AND I FIND IT AND ENLARGE IT UNTIL IT LIVES AGAIN
The process of manipulation of the facets
of the graphical models is now the work directly or indirectly of millions of people who do
not care about the nature of what ideas make their work possible, and why should they?
you ask.
well its like this,
If you do not know what IS,
And by that I mean what exists,
and is the natural philosophers current way
of doing things (as implemented by us
at this time ),
then you will fall into a new dark age
of ignorance, controlled
by a few ruthless governments and corporations
intent on exploiting for themselves our joint knowledge,
wired in since before Neolithic times
The power of Ideas.
O. K. Sir Geagle That is enough of that,
Now Jimmy Botham will talk about
chambered cairns in the black Isle and Orkney.
By far the majority
of the surviving chambered cairns
in the Black Isle
lie near the summit of the Millbuie,
the rounded sandstone ridge which
forms the backbone of the peninsula.
Situated approximately at its centre
point is Mount Eagle (838 feet.)
and the ridge falls away gradually towards
each end.
The bulk of the cairns lying at heights
of 400 feet to 600 feet above the sea.
Excepting at Kilcoy,
chambered cairns of the
Clava group
are not found in the same region
as cairns of the Orkney - Cromarty group.
What is the reason for the exception here?
Secondly, no other horned or kidney-shaped cairn
is known in the Black Isle
or for that matter nearer to it than
the Hebrides,
Caithness
or Northern Sutherland.
The Bipartite Chamber.
The cairns of the Orkney-Cromarty
group are characterised by a
more or less rectangular chamber
divided into compartments by pairs
of oppositely placed transverse slabs.
The number of compartments
range from one as at Achaidh,
and Boath, up to as many as
twenty-eight at the Knowe of Ramsay.
In general the round cairns of
simple construction with two compartments
occur on the Scottish mainland,
and we may instance Torboll
and Achany in Sutherland
which are both
enclosed like Carn Glas
in a round cairn.
To these may well be added the
ruined or incompletely exposed chambers
at Contin Mains,
Ballachnecore,
Lower Lechanich,
Balnaguie ,
Muir of Conan ,
Balvaird,
Mid Brae ,
and
Woodhead ,
all in Easter Ross.
The short-horned cairn of
Garrywhin in Caithness
has a bipartite chamber
as does Kenny's Cairn
although the
latter possesses
a lateral cell in addition.
In Caithness the predominating chamber form
is tripartite
but even here if we are to judge
by the surviving
roofed example at Camster,
the outermost compartment was lintelled and
became in effect
merely an extension of the passage.
The corbelled roof
covered the two innermost compartments only,
giving the effect of a bipartite chamber
Sir John Randall's chamber was octo-partite