@ncdominie Ok, I had to look this up. In case anyone else is curious: The selfie stick is a Watt Indicator, which was used to plot the pressure at each point along a piston's stroke on a piece of paper. The phone is the piece of paper, so presumably he has actually taken it out of the selfie stick already to inspect the result.
Also, that's the second thickest piece of paper I have ever seen.
Sep 28, 2026, 9:33 PM@pianosaurus @ncdominie Thank you, was just about to rabbit hole this and appreciate your efforts!
@pianosaurus @ncdominie The distance he's holding it, I think he needs either some reading glasses or some longer arms.
@timtfj @pianosaurus @ncdominie
In my experience, glasses are cheaper.
@pianosaurus And for extra Watt bonus points, the Watt indicator probably wasn't invented by Watt.
(There's a status of Archimedes in Siracusa holding his burning mirrors, which he also didn't invent. There's probably scope for a whole art-history series there...)
@ncdominie @pianosaurus Ah, Stigler's Law of Eponymy strikes again
@pianosaurus @ncdominie well now I need to know what the thickest piece of paper you've ever seen is!
@pianosaurus @ncdominie Thanks, so much! A pet peeve of mine is how people will look at something written and/or illustrated from long ago and say how it's so presceint - while simultaneously being completely incurious about what the source material was actually talking about or what technology was actually available at the time.
Thank you for being among the curious!