The Only Publication Devoted to “The Voices of the Industrial Revolution”
and Related Technologies.
Publisher/webmaster:
Eric C. Larson
2 Abell Ave.
Ipswich, MA 01938
[email protected]
Editor-in-Chief:
Harry D. Barry
[email protected]
Horn Editor
Ken Kanne
16437 Camellia Dr.
Silverhill, AL 36576
Whistle Editor
Fred Berry
200 Yoakum Parkway
ste. 1300
Alexandria, VA 22304
Horn & Whistle is the quarterly journal of the Horn and Whistle Enthusiasts' Group (HWEG), founded by Jack Hardman in 1982. HWEG is dedicated to the preservation, increase and dissemination of knowledge regarding horns, whistles, sirens, bells and other acoustic devices that are used in signaling, alerting and warning applications in all types of industrial, municipal, maritime and railroad environments and related technologies.
Latest News and Events
Keep up with the latest aspects of Horn & WhistleMagazine on this page, which is updated frequently. (This page was last updated on 6 29 2013.)
For Subscribers receiving paper issues:
We have just completed mailing out # 128, the current issue. Also, #129, the late summer or early fall issue is now in progress. It should be ready in early to mid September. #128 is the current issue, so that gets us caught up with paper copies. #129 on-line issue will be ready for on-line subscribers on 9 1 13
You will also notice that we have considerably redesigned the H&W website with a much more unified page layout that is also more contemporary in its appearance. This should make navigating the H&W website easier than previously, and the use of CSS layout should help with search engine ranking.
THE St. CLAIR WHISTLE BLOW
One hundred steam whistles from bygone lake freighters and passenger ships will be on display St. Clair, Michigan, on Saturday, Sept. 28 as part of the fifth annual “Whistles on the River.” Many of the antique whistles will be attached to a huge steam boiler and blown on site.
“When you’re close to them, they’re too loud to hear,” said Al Johnson, who owns Johnson Hydraulics in St Clair. “You don’t get the true sound unless you stand back 200 feet.”
Free ear plugs will be available to all visitors.
Two aspects of the St. Clair event make the exhibition unique. First, collectors may bring their whistles to the event and have them blown. “A lot of guys collect whistles, but they don’t have the capacity to blow them,” said Johnson.
Second, organizers will use their steam whistles to hail passing freighters, such as the Ojibway and the Paul R. Tregurtha, the captains of which will return their salutes. In the old days of steamers, “every captain would tune his whistle so it had a unique sound and you’d know his ship when he saluted,” said Johnson.
Past events have featured whistles from the old Bob-lo boats and the North American and South American, passenger steamers that made stops in Algonac, Marine City and St. Clair.
“I remember seeing them when I was a kid,” said Johnson, 61.
Johnson has assembled perhaps the largest portable steam boiler in the world, specifically designed to blow whistles. Johnson mounted a diesel-powered, 175 horsepower engine and a huge Johnston fire-tube boiler capable of generating 250 pounds of steam pressure per square inch on a 24-foot trailer. The rig stands 13.5 feet high. He fitted the boiler with a movable manifold with 20 ports for mounting 20 whistles. The boiler is state-inspected and certified.
Whistles on the Water will be held on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., in Palmer Park in downtown St. Clair. The event is sponsored by the St. Clair DDA. Simultaneously, the St. Clair Art Association will hold its fourth annual “Chalk the Walk” event, a drawing contest on the city’s downtown sidewalks. Call (810) 329-9576 for guidelines.
If you have a steam whistle and want to have it blown during the event, call Johnson at (810) 841-6375. For details, visit www.Stclairontheriver.org
New Whistle Picture Book. Many of you have asked about this and when will it be ready. Here's the latest, as of 6 29 2013. We're getting close now. In the next issue, #129, we will have purchase details.
Also, some of you have inquired about back issues. I have CDs with back issues beginning with #101. I am also soon going to have the previous twenty issues available; this probably before the Whistle Picture Book is ready. Really old issues will be later on. As with some of the whistle pictures, some of these back issues are copies of copies of copies, and some of them require nearly a full day just to fix up one page. Where text is barely legible, it all has to be retyped. Pictures also need to be fixed as well as possible. I wonder how the founders of Horn & Whistle managed in the early eighties before computers were in widespread usage. It seems hard to imagine producing a publication like this without resorting to a computer, and yet they did it. We all owe Jack Hardman, our first publisher, a real debt of gratitude for starting up this publication and getting it from being just somebody's vision to a real viable and now once again, growing publication.
And as you can see, if you have visited us previously on the web, the H&W website has undergone a major change. The entire site is now essentially a CSS-based site; gone is the older "tables" layout. You'll notice a basic consistency in the pages, and they should also load faster, although if you have the newest and latest fiber-optic Internet service, the speed is so fast anyhow that you probably won't see the difference. CSS however has meant that the amount of HTML code for the site is down to about half of what was necessary before. For the major search engines such as Google, this means it is much easier for them to access the pages, because the behind-the-scenes html is so much simpler. The only section that is still tables-based is the links pages section, and that is likewise scheduled for a major reworking very soon.
Progress just for the sake of progress is not always good. But when a new way of doing things becomes available and then proves its superiority, I see no reason to continue with the old, and as I studied the evidence and listened to people who have far greater knowledge of web design than I do, I realized that this progress can only be a good thing for us. And for people who are visually impaired and rely on screen readers to derive their information from web pages, these new pages are a decided help, because screen readers do not rely on CSS, and in that case, CSS degrades very nicely and leaves the salient content extremely well laid out and logically accessible. And I really do think the site looks a lot nicer now too!
PICTURES.
The pictures that we include in each issue can only be as detailed as the originals. Obviously when we get pictures sent as E-mail attachments that have been taken with a good digital camera, the magazine pictures will likewise be good. However, when we get old pages mailed in, or old newspaper clippings or copies of copies of copies that were downloaded from the web and printed at home, these can be pretty terrible, and no amount of Photoshop tweaking will really get them looking good again. So, for those of you who intend to have us publish your material in H&W, think about your pictures and try to send them as JPEG attachments to your E-mail. If you're sending in photographs, we can usually get pretty good reproductions from these as long as the photographs are good. However, when you send copies of old newspaper clippings and other similar material, all bets are off as to how well a picture will look in the magazine. Likewise, when a picture is taken in a dark location with insufficient lighting, there may not be enough detail for photoshop tweaking to help. It is a little like cats' seeing in the dark. Cats can't see anything in total darkness. If there is subdued lighting, then they can see more detail than people can, but there has to be a certain amount of light to begin with. Thus it is with pictures. If lighting is too subdued, then there will not be enough background information in the picture for the computer to work with, and enhancement is not possible. If it appears that a picture is too far gone to repair suitably, we will not include it unless it has a significant historical interest associated with it, and then we will print a disclaimer regarding such a picture's lack of quality. But we can obtain surprisingly good results from standard paper photographs regardless of whether they are matte finish or glossy. As long as the picture is good, it will work, and then in some cases we can actually tweak the result to look even better than the original.
Regarding returning pictures or articles that you have sent in. It is worth repeating yet again that if you send us pictures and/or articles and want them back, you need to include a note with your material stating that fact and also include a self-addressed, postage-paid envelope. Without that, we will not save either pictures or articles once we have processed them for inclusion in the magazine. The amount of material that sometimes comes here can be quite formidable, and storage of pictures and papers is really neither practical or possible. I am sorry to say but if you send in material without either a request to save them or the postage-paid envelope and then later on change your mind, it will probably be too late, so please keep this information in mind when you send in items that you want returned to you.