Re: Bandwidth According to Seabrook

[nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson)]

   Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 09:54:32 -0800
   From: lefty@apple.com (Lefty)

   >>Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 00:04:10 -0700 (PDT)
   >>From: Brian Beker <beker@netcom.com>
   >>
   >>The New Yorker's John Seabrook on the Charlie Rose show tonight:
   >>
   >>       "...bandwidth, which is basically the width of the wire
   >>       coming into your home..."
   >>
   >
   >Finally an explanation I can understand.

   I was very happy to read this.

   I plan to spend my lunch hour increasing the bandwidth of my network
   connection by wrapping the cable in electrical tape.

Um, ah, er, I don't think you understand. It's the size of the *wire*,
not the size of the insulation, according to the elephant theory of
electronics.  You see, copper wires are not really solid.  They
actually have little tiny elephants running around in them.  Now, the
elephants go through straight lines pretty well.  But when they get to
a resistor, they have to slow down to get through the zig-zags.  And
they have to wait to jump across the two parallel lines of a
capacitor.  And when elephants on one side of a coil see the
elephants on the other side sliding down and having all the fun, they
want to join in and so slide down their side.

Electronics is really very simple.

-russ <nelson@crynwr.com>
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