BA thread mnemonic

Michael (Gilligan) - Thank you. You have nailed it.

Michael has jogged my memory.

The instructor was Bert Abigail who taught Workshop Practise in Building 66 at Middle Wallop.

The mnemonic was to help us remember the range of GS fixings we could expect to find in general stores.

For some reason I emphasised BA threads - don't know why.

My Dad told me that he worked out the same thing with 'Pretty Bird, Pretty Bird, Hop, Hop' though I can't for the life of me remember how it works.

George

There's always "Senior officers have curly auburn hair 'til old age" for trig functions

- and better stay away from mnemonics for the resistor colour code - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-12584669

Niall

Never to forget that "Percy Harris Broke His Push Bike" !!! A fact that has lived with me since the third form.

Mike

My Dog Has Fleas. Nothing to do with engineering, but I thought you'd all like to know!

I suspect I was taught that same mnemonic at the BBC Engineering Training department in 1961 and I've never forgotten it. It finishes with "...but virgins go west", and I'll avoid the start to avoid the moderators' wrath.

Jim.

Given mr gilligans discovery of the "truth" . Would not all these silly words be overtaken by metrication making their use redundant. Perhaps this explains the loss of memory as to original meaning.

Can't see resistor colour codes changing due to metrication. Nor a lot of other things. Mnemonics are, as they always have been, an effective way of helping the novice or infrequent user remember the sequence of things whose order cannot be directly derived from the naming convention. So they will always be with us.

Being slightly risque can be a great help to memorability. Especially for young adults. Jim's example being a good one although when I learned it at RARDE the "w" word was different. Fundamentally its no different to the way rhyme and rhythm is exploited in poetry and song so only the right word fits, helping to defeat chinese whispers type errors.

Clive

I tried an AN 8-xxx screw in a AN-10-xxx type aviation metal lock nut, and it will grip, I didn't put the torque wrench on it to find how much load it would take as the bolt didn't have a hex head.

Ian S C

Some People Have, etc was our way of remembering Trig functions, in the same way that the activities of Bad Boys with Our Young Girls helped us to recall the colour code for Resistors.

Presumably still valid today, unless there is some EU edict to confuse oldsters?

Howarfd

Now the colours are going to have to be changed to fit "socially disadvantaged persons of non-specific gender ......"

It was used to great effect by P.D.Q. Bach in his opera The Abduction of Figaro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npv43-Vu3No

The relevant bit starts a couple of minutes in.

George