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Showerthought: The old radio I bought for $5 at a yard sale was used in a 1972 weather balloon launch.
I was cleaning the corrosion off the battery terminals and found a tiny, faded paper logbook taped inside the casing. It had handwritten notes from some college project tracking atmospheric pressure readings. Who else has found an object with a secret history like that?
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wyatt_chen861mo ago
That's a cool find, but the history part always makes me a bit sad. Objects like that just get lost... they outlive the people who cared about them. Trying to track down the original owners seems kind of pointless now. The project is over, the students have moved on or passed away. The radio is just a thing again, with a story nobody really owns anymore. It's neat to think about, but it's also a dead end.
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rowanellis1mo ago
A 1972 weather balloon? That's the same year my dad was born. It's wild to think this thing was floating in the sky before he even finished high school. Finding the logbook is like a direct message from a stranger fifty years ago. I'd be so tempted to try and find the people who wrote those notes. That radio has seen more science than I ever did in school.
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