Amish Counter Top Kitchen Appliances Run Off Compressed Air (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Amish Counter Top Kitchen Appliances Run Off Compressed Air (2012)

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When you're growing up in a "regular" setting in Pennsylvania, you tend to regard the Amish as a sort of old-fashioned Luddite curiosity. But once you look into their beliefs and practices regarding technology, it is actually quite rational - and the rest of society could learn a thing or two from them.

Their policy on phones is a good example. While they allow them in particular cases (such as business or keeping in touch with distant family members), they've traditionally kept the phones out the home and in a separate "outhouse" sort of building.

Phones in the home continue to be rejected today, due in part to the symbolic connection to the world but also to preserve the institution of the home. Too much phone usage, as any parents of teenagers may be able to attest to, can compromise family life and time spent with family in general.

Having the telephone shanty away from the home maintains a degree of separation but allows the technology to be used when needed. Its distance from the home also discourages unnecessary calls.

http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-telephones/

The practical difference between this ideal and our own lives is so minute that the entire idea of shunning modern technology past an arbitrary date still doesn't end up making any sense. We sometimes hold up the Amish and similar communities as "more pure" versions of ourselves, when in reality they are families just like our own - just with (IMO oppressive and patriarchal) orthodox beliefs applied.

Any digital household can attest to maintaining rules like:

"No phones at the dinner table"

"No TV until after dinner and homework"

Is it also not possible to interrupt attentive family time with books and toys, or any other non-digital distractions? Maintaining rules and family time in a household isn't unique to these communities.

> The practical difference between this ideal and our own lives is so minute that the entire idea of shunning modern technology past an arbitrary date still doesn't end up making any sense.

First off, I don't think it's minute at all. Look outside - 95% of people are staring at a screen in their hands. Cell phones in general and social media in particular have completely taken over the social sphere. Casual conversation on the street or in the checkout line has been replaced with pull out your device and scroll. Online dating is rapidly becoming the default dating method. The examples are endless.

Secondly, the Amish don't shun any technology past an arbitrary date. They decide as a community whether or not to introduce a certain technology, depending on its perceived benefits or costs. This strikes me as a rather wise and mature approach, one that the general public would do well to adopt.

And finally, statistically, the Amish have far more robust families and birth rates as compared to the general population. So it seems pretty easy to make the argument that their system results in a greater focus on family, even if adopting similar behaviors (without becoming Amish) is theoretically possible.

I edited my comment away because I didn't think it was useful. Sorry about that.

Your contention was that their lives are not fundamentally different than the average person. I gave a few examples to illustrate that it is indeed quite different. I think you just proved my point.

As to whether online dating/less social interaction in public/lower birthrates/etc. are ultimately better or worse - that's a different discussion.

I am not Amish, have no intention of becoming Amish, and indeed don't know a single person in the Amish community. Yet I applaud them for taking control of the technology in their community - even if I personally disagree with some of their views - unlike the rest of society, which by and large blindly adopts whatever is trendy, pleasurable, or pushed by monied corporate interests.

I don't think many people with direct dealings with Amish or similar communities would consider them 'more pure'. Heck, I have had a few and the best I can say is that it is very complicated.

There is a lot to admire about Amish communities. They aren't really anti-technology, they're just into a different kind of technology. That has given them strong competitive advantages in areas, for example, they still export farm equipment to third world countries where animals still do a majority of farm labour. Some of their wagons are technological works of art...they just use different technology. The Amish/similar approach to family and group is quite interesting.

I remember going on a tour of a similar group's community. Afterwards, we had some refreshments in their community dining room and we got to mingle and talk to some people. I ended up in a conversation with these two gentlemen about farm implements. Within about thirty seconds, I realized that I was among fellow nerds. They reminded me more of startup founders than I ever would have expected. They were very innovative and obviously very smart. I am not convinced they even think their views on technology make sense, but at this point, I wager it's more about holding onto a way of life than genuine belief.

I might be wrong and hope that wasn't offensive, but that's just a nerdy outsider's point of view on their technology.

There are also downsides. Personally, I find some of their views patriarchal and oppressive, but I was not raised Amish, have never practiced any of those religious and so that's a very uninformed opinion.

Honestly this was a great piece of insight and I think my own view that you replied to is probably closer to being offensive.

The patriarchy and sort of community oppression is the part of these communities that creeps me out, and I don't think those downsides are exactly advertised as part of the Amish "brand." The idea of your own nuclear family's life being so visible to the larger community isn't something that appeals to me.

But then again, neither do some of the more traditionalist family structures that have nothing to do with small religious groups. For example, I wouldn't want to live with my grandparents or parents, personally, but that's based on my own upbringing and experiences.

Isn't everyone oppressed by their culture in one way or another? An essential part of culture is to reward collaborators and punish defectors. One of the unique aspects of some Amish communities is their cultural exit option.

The Amish count on the rumspringa process to inoculate youth against the strong pull of the forbidden by dosing them with the vaccine of a little worldly experience. Their gamble is also based on the notion that there is no firmer adhesive bond to a faith and way of life than a bond freely chosen, in this case chosen after rumspringa and having sampled some of the available alternative ways of living.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=545557...

The most important effect of all their rules is of course that it creates a cohesive community. If you look at it as a group evolutionary strategy it’s incredibly successful.

And of course most rules and laws in society are “arbitrary”, but in order to be applicable on a mass scale they need to be measurable. For example, there is nothing magical about the age of 18 or 21, but there has to be some easily measurable rule to prevent young and immature people from drinking. So we choose a completely “arbitrary” number like 18 and stick to it.

Why is patriarchal used derogatorily?

I fail to see this as rational. Not least of which is if everyone has telephones in an outhouse how can two houses call each other?

If they're just looking to be in contact with each other, then I imagine they'd just walk over to their neighbour's house in person. I imagine the phones are more for situations where they might see the need to call a hospital, etc. (though I have no direct experience with the Amish on that part—only SW Ontario Mennonites)

Some solve that with an answering machine - leave a message and set up a time for a call. Pretty much the same method we used back in the old days to call a friend "Hi Mrs Johnson, is billy there? No, he's out. Ok tell him I'll call back at 7pm"

Telephones don't need to be real-time.

Have visited Amish stores where they have pneumatic belts for the cash registers. The registers were about the only electric thing in sight and were powered by batteries and solar or generators. Lighting was all gas powered from propane tanks. They had some off the shelf lamps and things that had been re-rigged to run off LEDs and batteries (literally a car battery on the floor next to the lamp powering it). It was all very cool. Ceiling fans were also pneumatic. Building also had tons of skylights so during the day everything inside was lit with sunlight.

Some people think the Amish are against technology which isn’t really accurate. It’s more that they’re intent on being self-sufficient and against unnecessary uses of technology.

Hope is a propane tank self sufficient? Or LEDs?

All of this, except perhaps a lead acid battery, requires at least late 20th century technology, and a huge engineering effort to exist to get to the point of making it.

“Some people think the Amish are against technology which isn’t really accurate. It’s more that they’re intent on being self-sufficient and against unnecessary uses of technology.”

That’s not really accurate. They do have great respect for self sufficiency, but that’s not why they eschew technology.

They do it for religious reasons. They, much like the Jewish Hassids, have chosen a heyday from their past that they believe god wants them to adhere to the restrictions and customs of.

If they thought god was cool with iPhones, they’d get one tomorrow, self-sufficient or not.

As a Jew who goes to a Hassidic minyan, I can assure you that none of us are stuck in a "heyday from the past."

I've been shopping at B&H Photo for years. I recognize that not all Hasidim are Luddites... but many, many are. And the entire culture is most certainly derivative of 18th century Eastern Europe.

Powering air kitchen appliances from a diesel compressor seems no more self-sufficient than using electricity. A paddock windmill driving the compressor on the other hand...

Still have a hard time separating it from electrical powered by a paddock windmill or rooftop solar panels.

It's often about the opposite of self-sufficiency - community mutualism, and community visibility.

This compares to having a phone in a publicly visible booth away from houses. It wouldn't be hard to run the phone cable right to the house, but then people would be tempted to make personal, idle use of it.

Not necessarily a negative considering the human need for community.

My brother, who lives in rural Michigan and is surrounded by Amish, took me to one of their wood shops.

These Amish were allowed to run diesel engines, provided they started them with a fly-wheel and clutch system.

In this case, the diesel engine was in a shed at the side of the building, and was connected to a drive shaft that, through a series of transfer cases, belt and pulleys, secondary drive shafts, etc., powered everything you can imagine in a professional wood shop: planers, table saws, routers, etc., and a large population of battery-powered hand tools that had been converted to direct drive and were attached to flexible speedometer-like cables.

It was extraordinary.

This is exactly how such shops were powered in the late 1800-early 1900s, before electricity was everywhere. The belt systems (sometimes in large factories there were thousands of machines running) were driven by water power, steam engines, and eventually electric motors.

You can still pretty easily buy antique tools with belt inputs, including heavy machine tools like lathes and milling machines.

I just recently saw a steam and gas engine show where they had a ton of still working washing machines and other household amenities that worked off a belt system and mini 1.5-2.5 hp steam engine.

They had larger lumber mill type saws and other industrial sized stuff that still worked too.

Was pretty crazy seeing vehicles still driving around the fairgrounds that were made so long ago.

It was very neat to realize how much our society is more of a throwaway society in terms of the honor in being able to repair/fix your own stuff and make it last for generations. I thought to myself, "There is no way in 100 years a Tesla would still be in working condition like these old steam engine vehicles."

For a few years after the introduction of electric motors they were still designing shops around line shafts with belt drives to every machine, because the electric motors were large and expensive enough that it didn't yet make sense to give each tool its own motor.

For instance the USS Olympia (C-6), commissioned in 1895 and now a museum ship in Philadelphia, was electrified but had a (very compact) line shaft machine shop on board.

Richard Scarry documented this in his work "What Do People Do All Day":

https://books.google.com/books?id=tuqKDQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newb...

IMO, the Amish/Mennonite or similar groups' systems never made a lot of sense, like many extreme religious orthodoxies.

Powering these appliances with compressed air doesn't change the fact that their engineering drawings were done on a computer, assembled in a factory rife with robotics, and delivered on a UPS truck. And that the most convenient method of producing compressed air involves internal combustion or electricity.

Nothing in the Bible supports electricity or any other 20th century technology being anything sinful. It's just another extremist group making their own bonkers interpretations of a religious book.

I think the Amish are glorified based on their work ethic and nice furniture, but I think the reality of living in that community has all the negatives of an extreme religious cult.

The point of their approach to technology is to cherry pick that which supports, and does not diminish, their contemplative and social way of life. I don't think they're against computers either, to give an example. They're just against letting them be a temptation to idleness.

Obviously they live embedded in a world that doesn't work according to their rules. Everyone who wants to change society does that.

> I don't think they're against computers either

They aren't. There are in fact computers specifically designed and marketed for Amish business work. They're more like a classic Word Processor than what we call a computer.

That’s what I find admirable, when you put hard work into something you learn to value things and the work of others.

From my understanding they do not reject electricity because it's inherently sinful. Their rejection of it comes from desires to maintain a degree of separation from the rest of the world and to continue a tradition of hard work, which are biblically motivated.

I think any religious beliefs, from anywhere on the conservative to progressive spectrum, will have aspects that seem illogical to an outsider. On the scale of things, the reasoning for these restrictions doesn't seem too irrational.

IMO, it does seem unnecessarily inflammatory to refer to a pacifist group as extreme when that term is usually applied to groups engaged in terrorism, etc. I also find the label of cult too strong, unless you're using it in the formal sense. Look into the tradition of rumspringa [0]--unless you're being cynical it doesn't seem like a cultish practice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa

An Amish-owned grocery store I frequent has ceiling fans that run off compressed air. They sound really cool in operation, each one emitting a subtle, "Pop, chk chk chk chk.. Pop, chk chk chk chk.."

As a home owner this intrigues me.

If your house were a barn, there's nothing much to go wrong. Add some fire for heat, and now your house can burn down. Add some water for indoor plumbing and now your house can rot, flood, or simply be more attractive to termites (who need water plus wood). Add electricity for lighting and whatnot, and you now have a second way your house can burn down, or kill you in other ways.

Pneumatics are interesting because their failure modes don't involve destroying the structure they inhabit.

On the one hand, you're right, pneumatics won't burn the house down. On the other hand, their failure mode is to explode like a bomb and send shrapnel flying through human beings. But at least the house is safe?

Eh, while there is a certain potential, the primary failure mode for pneumatics is just a simple rupture, where a pipe splits and all the air runs out.

Even that is easy enough to avoid by adding a few relief valves here and there that spring at the working pressure of the system, but that's not really a failure, and other house systems have comparable safety features, so not really a distinguishing feature of pneumatics vs electrics.

the primary failure mode for pneumatics is just a simple rupture, where a pipe splits and all the air runs out

...rapidly releasing all that stored energy in the process, i.e. an explosion.

> Pneumatics are interesting because their failure modes don't involve destroying the structure they inhabit.

That depends on where they store the compressed air and how high the pressure goes. Sudden decompression can produce a very destructive shockwave.

That's just it -- you can store and compress the air outside the house and pump it in at low pressures.

We do the same thing for electricity, but the "low pressures" we pump it into our houses at can still burn them down or kill us outright.

That is really cool! Like other people have said there are many different types of Amish, with varying levels of acceptance of technology. In general they value hard work and being self-sufficient, so sometimes they do use generators or power tools if they need to. I recently had an Amish crew put new siding on my house but they only used hand tools.

The Amish realllly liked pop though, we would buy a big case of Coke, root beer, etc, and they would go through it very fast!

Not new technology, but I guess that's the point; pneumatic tools have been around for a long time and are very common in workshops where an ample supply of compressed air is available. I wonder how loud these are, that's one of the biggest drawbacks of air motors --- the shrill hissing and whining noises of a workshop are one of the more fatiguing sounds to hear.

Relatedly, the Paris compressed-air power network was discussed here several months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782760

the shrill hissing and whining noises of a workshop are one of the more fatiguing sounds to hear.

Can confirm.

In the early 2000's, I built a web site for a small factory that ran almost entirely on compressed air. Part of the project involved spending six months on the production floor photographing items as they were built. (15,000 different SKUs!)

I wonder if you could get the website itself to run on compressed air…

Do you really wonder?

The answer would be "Of course!" and "Of course not!".

You don't need electricity to run a "computer". But as soon as you're trying to hook up this computer to the Internet, serving responses on an electrical network... I can't imagine how to do this without electricity.

Of course you're not looking for answers using a turbine, are you?

Well, fiber optic cable uses light to transmit data... a vibrating mirror could modulate the output. How to receive, well, that seems a bit harder! Also probably some small issues with precise timing and bitrate are to be expected.

how small these "small issues" will be is of course a question of definition. Details, right? :)

Communication systems have methods to compensate for timing errors. And it's probably feasible to build all those circuits at the server side.

But bitrate would be low.

For TCP/IP, you can use acoustic modem. It's hard, but not impossible to make mechanical computer and mechanical acoustic modem or vibrational modem (vibrations are easier to parse using mechanics).

You still have to transfer it over the phone line using electricity.

RFC 1149 disagrees.

Here they talk about a miniatirized pneumatic microprocessor using microfluidics:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917228/

But: it takes a full 10cm wafer to make 50 D flip-flops(a basic component equivalent to a memory bit), and it works at frequency of 0.5hz .

So it's a challenge.

But maybe it's possible to build a very dumb terminal with this(say keyboard + screen

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0018-1

) , if you offload everything to the cloud - and use a really basic communications protocol.

But will the Amish accept a computer/network ? What will it look like ?

Fluidics can work much faster upto 10 KHz[0], maybe even up to 30 KHz or higher if one uses light gases like hydrogen or helium. Although fluidic elements tend to be pretty and have a foot print on the order about a square centimeter. They are also difficult to scale down because it's difficult to maintain the same reynolds number.

Mechanical logic is an interesting option as some newly developed MEMS logic gates might be able to operate at MHz frequencies[1].

[0]https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a084924.pdf [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08678-0

In theory yes, I mean you can make computers using hydraulics - iirc older automatic transmissions use a hydraulic computer.

This one is fascinating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_integrator

Amazing! I remember reading about a fictional water-powered computer in Terry Pratchett's "Making Money", and assumed it was just used as a fantasy equivalent of electricity; I never realized there were actual computers that worked like this!

it's kinda crazy, but it's fun thinking about how it would affect how you might compute values.

Some things seems like they could become very easy - e.g. addition is just pouring the water from one location into another. Overflow becomes literal overflow...

Subtraction becomes a problem of opening a valve until you've removed the right amount of water... Maybe you could use a weight mechanism that'll close once the removed amount equals the amount you're subtracting?

A precise one and/or a fast one certainly would be very hard to make, and I'm sure the real ones were a lot more complicated, but many simple operations seems like they'd be quite easy to figure out.

Can't imagine it'd be remotely practical at any kind of scale, though... It's amazing they were used as much as they were.

I read an article in a woodworking magazine showing how an amish shop runs its traditionally electric machines on diesel power.

A long trench runs part the length of the shop with a shaft supported by bearing blocks. It terminates in an adjacent room housing a diesel engine. A belt system couples the engine to the shaft and air compressor.

Along the trench are all the standard machines you'd find in a shop: drill press, planer, sanders, table saw, joiner, etc. Each one had its electric motor removed and retrofitted with an elaborate system of shafts, belts and sheaves which connected to the main shaft in the trench.

They turned them on and off using a simple yet clever lever operated belt tensioner. By default the belt had enough slack to allow it to slip on the drive sheave preventing the machine from running. When the lever was pulled, it forced the belt between two tensioning sheaves tightening it which then started the machine. Very simple and clever and all made from wood.

Power tools were all air operated and one clever hack they made was a pneumatic wood glue dispenser. It was a 1-2 foot length of 3 or 4 inch PVC pipe, capped at both ends, one end being a threaded port. Plumbed to the top of the tube was an air pressure regulator to lower the pressure to just a few PSI. At the bottom, a hose which ran to a blow gun. You shut the air, opened the cap, filled it with glue, closed it and turned the air on. press the blow gun and now you have a glue gun! Really neat and my father built one for his wood shop.

One bonus of using air tools is they are lighter and more rugged than equivalent electric power tools. I've heard claims of 3-4x lifetime so long as they are fed clean, lubricated air. Nowhere near as efficient though as a lot of power is lost as heat in air compression.

There is a good article about the benefits of compressed air technology on low tech magazine https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the-batteries-...

As a common user of compressed air tools, there are countless drawbacks that likely negate the benefits:

1. Leakage. It is hard to avoid having connectors leak, requiring very frequent recompression of tanks even without use.

2. Efficiency. Compressed air tanks are very efficient for energy storage, but compressors and especially handheld tools are not. Also, if you are using a compressor powered by another easy-to-use source of energy such as electricity, you are just pointlessly throwing energy out the window.

3. Noise. You cannot get around the fact that the tools need to expel pressurized air, commonly powering either turbines (whirring noises) or pistons (adds banging/clicking noises). Compressors are also horribly noisy, with the best ones being a deep, powerful humm.

The reason pneumatic tools are popular with mechanics and the likes is related to the built-in cooling effect allowing for dense high-powered tools, and that high-torque impact tools are also quite easy to make this way. The environment they're used in is already noisy, so that aspect doesn't matter.

> Where air power equipment may become the real alternative power source is when it is combined with a wind turbine air compressor, which the Amish are beginning to use. During a good steady windy season many Amish may not need to run a regular air compressor for days at a time.

I have not heard about an wind/air turbine used to refill an air compressor (without electricity). Not sure how that would work, but I'm very interested in learning if anyone has background here.

Have heard of that done here in NZ. A remote workshop had wind turbines turning pumps that filled great big air tanks. Those tanks ran the workshop.

They were not shunning technology it was just a cheaper option than running power out there or batteries.

What do they do about lights and everything else that requires electricity? I’m assuming the air only powers air powered tools or things like the article mentioned that take special air power?

You can buy a lot of tools that run on just pneumatic power. As for lights, some solar panels, some car batteries, and efficient DC-powered LED lights. You could just get by with battery powered headlamps as well. Depending on the weather and where the shop is, skylights and outdoor workbenches would provide you a lot of light for whatever you're doing.

> I have not heard about an wind/air turbine used to refill an air compressor (without electricity). Not sure how that would work

A wind turbine turns rotation into electricity.

A motor turns electricity into rotation.

A compressor uses rotation to compress gas.

You can remove the electricity between stages 1 and 2.

I think the part that isn't intuitive to everyone is how to "accumulate" potential energy if you don't have batteries/capacitors. Like how I can't fill my car tire with my bike pump. There's... there's magic missing. Something that takes a small amount of pressure and overcomes the huge pressure the other way. Check valves or whatnot.

It's easier to perceive when you think about a massive turbine that can grind out a ton of electricity and power a compressor that by default produces a lot of air pressure.

These tools are really neat to me. I love the idea of things like a hand crank radio, pulleys, and long levers.

Presumably you could fill the tire of a transport truck with the bulb from a blood pressure cuff and a lot of time, but it's not intuitive to me what the mechanics are in between those two things.

> Like how I can't fill my car tire with my bike pump.

Um. Yes, you can. It just might take a little while. You can fill 100 psi road bike tires with a hand pump. A 30-40 psi car tire is not a problem.

Have done this, can confirm, it does take a while :) like tricept workout kind of while, but it does work... (for expediency I used a floor pump serfas or something like that)....

yeah the pressure isn't a problem, the volume can wear you out though :)

I had to do this once myself. I was surprised by how hot the bike pump was by the end. It was on the threshold between warm and hot. It wouldn't burn you on contact, but you wouldn't want to grip it hard for more than a couple of seconds either.

Was that more due to gas thermodynamics or mechanical friction?

I use bike pumps a lot, but only on bikes, so I've never experienced this.

I assume it was mostly due to ideal gas law reasons. Pumping up a highish pressure truck tire (~65 psi IIRC) did take quite a long time and I was pretty exhausted by the end.

Compress a gas, it warms up. I imagine that's the large part of it. Go grab the cooling fins on a large electrically-driven compressor after it's been running a while. No, wait, don't do that if you like your fingerprints. The cooling fins aren't to cool the motor, they're to cool the compressor housing where the piston goes up and down to compress air.

> how to "accumulate" potential energy if you don't have batteries/capacitors

That's what the compressed gas is - it's potential energy. It's like a battery.

> Like how I can't fill my car tire with my bike pump.

Why not? Because you can't pump hard enough and it's not strong enough to hold the pressure needed? You can build a stronger pump, and you can use a lever or gears (same thing really) to compensate for your strength if you can't pump any more.

> Presumably you could fill the tire of a transport truck with the bulb from a blood pressure cuff and a lot of time, but it's not intuitive to me what the mechanics are in between those two things.

Again that's just a 'lever' problem - you can't squeeze the bulb hard enough, so add a lever (and you may need to make the bulb stronger.)

I personally understand these things. I'm trying (and failing) to communicate that mechanics can be less intuitive than electricity. I regret this post. :)

Interesting question though. I wonder if the answer is more trivial than "mechanics is harder than electricity", perhaps the people you're explaining to don't understand electricity either. If someone is trying to understand "how does air move in only one direction in a compressor", perhaps they also don't understand "how does the electricity move in only one direction in the generator"? Could they explain why the pressure coming from the compressed air canister doesn't cause the electricity generator to run backwards?

You might be alluding to this, but I wonder if people are more prepared to mentally conceptualize electricity as a magic atomic constant: "it just works that way... so given that, of course a huge generator can produce enough power to run a large pump."

Pressure differential is analogous to voltage and mass flow to current, I think we are all on the same page about that.

The sorely missing bit is the equivalent of those amazing DC/DC step-up/down voltage regulators that have revolutionized the application of electricity in recent decades (all the way from tiny electronics to massive HVDC networks), and/or an equivalent of the AC transformers that fulfilled a similar role before. Actually AC is missing in its entirety, there's just no practical way of transmitting power via soundwaves.

The closest pneumatic equivalent to DC-DC converters are coupled turbines, e.g. turbochargers or high bypass turbojets. But those are not just far beyond households appliance scale, they are also limited to the high mass-flow/low pressure differential, but practical applications of pneumatic storage are the opposite.

> DC/DC step-up/down voltage regulators

Interestingly, there is actually a hydraulic mechanism that's the equivalent of a boost converter with inductor, diode, and switching element:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram

It translates a low-pressure fluid with continuous flow into periodic high-pressure impulses. The inertia of the fluid is the hydraulic equivalent of the inductor, and a switching element (valve) closing suddenly causes a spike in pressure as the water decelerates suddenly, equivalent to a voltage spike as an inductor "wants to keep the current flowing".

But it usually operates with water, which has much higher density (hence inertia) than air, so it might not be very efficient (or might require much higher flow rate) in a pneumatic version.

You add a gear to your compressor. There is no need for an air pressure converter (which is effectively just an compressed air powered compressor with a higher maximum pressure).

Substituting pressure with more volume is highly impractical when storage is involved.

> I think the part that isn't intuitive to everyone is how to "accumulate" potential energy if you don't have batteries/capacitors. Like how I can't fill my car tire with my bike pump. There's... there's magic missing.

As others have pointed out, you can! If you're rather patient. They've even got compatible valves!

And you can think of a pneumatic tire as a kind of battery -- potential energy is roughly the volume times the pressure differential.

You can also lift a car or truck with your hands... and a jack.

Energy is force times distance. If you can only exert a tiny force, you can compensate with enough distance, providing the losses in the system aren't too great.

Flywheels are acceptable replacements for batteries. I'm not sure if the Amish use them for energy storage, but the rest of us do.

Wind turbine rotation turns the compressor. (With the right gearing)

Edit: I must have skipped over your last sentence. I thought you wanted all those electrical steps for some reason!

Slightly related - I was wondering the other day if it would be practical to have mechanical fridge for a can of a beer where you'd keep pumping out the air, creating lower pressure, cooling down the beer. I was wondering if it would be practical, ie. you could pump the beer to nice chilled temperature without too much sweat?

The vacuum will serve as an excellent insulator and therefore be unable to cool the beer down. If you're near a cold mountain stream then I suggest placing the can in the stream for a bit until it cools down :)

There's a problem with this proposal: As cooling down the entire fridge via this method is not feasible, you'd have to thermally insulate the can from the outside case of the fridge. As in a normal household fridge, the can would have to give off its heat to the surrounding air inside the cooled chamber. The more of that air you pump out, the more that process slows down.

Instead, you could just take an ordinary mini fridge and replace the electric motor with a hand crank. Or maybe an exercise bike.

It could measure how much work you have put in and show you an estimate of how much longer you need to pedal/crank until you have expended as many calories as the beer contains.

Isn't that how refrigerators already work? I mean the stuff that is compressed / evaporated lives in its own subsystem but I don't think there's any reason why that wouldn't work if powered manually.

If you don't want to use electricity, why not just use a gas fridge? No electricity, not moving mechanical parts (except possibly a gas valve, if you want to get all fancy and have it thermostatically controlled) - just a bunch of fluids flowing around a series of interlinked pipes.

The best explanation I've ever read about how they work: https://web.archive.org/web/20051128061124/http://www.cam.ne...

Not air pressure-driven, the pot-in-pot fridge works on evaporation.

You could take advantage of the fact that stretching rubber bands heats them up, and relaxing them cools them down to build a mechanical refrigerator. Check it out.

A refrigerator that works by stretching rubber bands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfmrvxB154w

Exhalation, Ted Chiang http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te... (full text)

I'm not sure I really see the difference between using compressed air powered tools and appliances and electrical ones. All of the hand tools at my work are air powered because the wet environment makes electrical ones dangerous. The air powered tools are also typically more powerful and run at higher rpms and have more horsepower than electrical ones. I'm not sure why the air powered appliances have less torque but air powered grinders and polishers definitely have more power than electic ones, I've used both.

In general, I don't think air powered tools have less torque. Rather, they have less torque at low rpms.

Ah fair enough that makes more sense. The description made it a not quite as clear. I think it's too bad home air compressors tend to be more of a niche/hobbyist thing or situations like the Amish. I honestly never really appreciated the power and versatility of a compressed air system until working in a place that works off of and relies on it.

Home air compressors produce so little compressed air that they generally can’t even keep up with the needs of a small tool at 100% duty cycle.

> Most of the Amish fill large air storage tanks using a gasoline or diesel powered engine.

Isn't that cheating? The electricity is not fine, but gasoline and diesel powered engine, that itself is extracted and refined using electricity is.

They should have compressed air using horse power.

Human-cranked flywheel would be even better as it excludes the use of horse-technology, at least for that particular purpose.

Their issue with electricity is with depending on the grid, not with electricity per se. They want to minimize critical dependencies on outside sources, especially single outside sources.

Gasoline is a commodity available from many sources, so doesn't cause the kind of dependency the grid would. Many Amish do use non-grid electricity, from solar cells, batteries, windmill driven generators, or gas powered generators.

So, do Amish consider solar power acceptable?

Any question like that is hard to answer as Amish groups are pretty diverse. Some do. It depends on how that particular group views that technology's impact on the community.

Can solar panels be made in ways they make their current appliances and tools? I'm guessing not. I'm guessing a huge reason solar panels are made in China is because their production pollutes a lot[1]. I'm guessing the Amish are against anything that pollutes.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23...

But gasoline & diesel are okay despite polluting? That doesn't make sense, nor does it follow that petroleum based fuels are permitted despite be extracted and refined using tools and appliances well beyond what most Amish communities currently permit.

The Amish don't use solar because it's green, they use it because it enables them to stay off the grid.

the argument was made that they don't use solar because it is not green enough. of course we are not going to get the answer here by mere speculation.

This criticism of solar power is mostly propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.

There are 5+ types of solar panels. Cadmium-Telluride solar cells, the ones criticized for toxic components, only make up about 5% of all solar panels produced.

Most conventional solar panels are made from Silicon. Silicon is produced by refining sand. It's not toxic and makes up objects that we use every day (i.e. windows or cups).

My understanding is that many Amish are enthusiastic solar adopters, precisely because it's off the grid.

Solar power as in stove with parabolic mirror - probably yes, solar power as in photovoltaic panel - probably not. The reason is that you can build one yourself and you can't the other.

No dependency during usage is less bad but you're still depending on manufacturer - and you want to avoid dependency.

Can they refine diesel and build an air compressor themselves? And I mean in practice, not theoretically.

In practice they most likely can't build a hammer or nails from scratch, because refining iron ore and making steel is quite complicated.

Can't diesel engines burn oil?

I wonder... would the same community be ok with building their own grid, with a small power generation plant? They could run it off hydro/wind/solar and end up LESS dependent on the outside world than they are currently (where they need a steady source of gasoline, the production of which relies on the very same electric grid they want no part of joining).

This feels like a very strange place to draw the line, thought I realize like all such social/religious things, a line has to bee drawn and can be redrawn in the future. Kind of like Shabbat elevators in NYC.[1] Both seem, to me as an outsider, to be somewhere between ingenious life-hack and outright cheating. But, it's not my life and they aren't asking my opinion.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator

One wonders about how solar panels fit into that. Seems of all people that Amish would be okay with only having minimal amounts of electricity at night.

Amish are not anti-technology, they are technology-skeptic and will only adopt a technology if they see that the benefit outweighs the cost, and they are very conservative about their decisions.

http://amishamerica.com/technology/

Just looking at the result, it seems to have worked out well for them. They're a community that has maintained a focus on family and community, and are in a good position to withstand collapse scenarios, since they are much less dependent on the global economic system.

There are also several different "strains" of Amishism, with substantial differences in their technology adoption stances.

Driving through the midwest the most surprising thing I saw was a big Amish family birthday party... at a Texas Roadhouse.

The are even some 1-2 dozen church districts of New Order Amish that use grid electricity.

It's a lot of local councils making judgements individually on an case by case basis. The rules can vary quite a lot depending on the individuals involved.

It's also important to remember that most Amish didn't choose that lifestyle, they were born into it. And while it is possible to leave at any time, it is pretty difficult to adjust to a radically different lifestyle with little support on the outside. So instead you see stuff like air powered blenders where people work loopholes so they can lead a more comfortable life while not having to go to extremes.

This is the major difference between the Amish and for example Monks. In the latter case they chose that lifestyle and find it fulfilling in itself. They weren't forced into it.

>only adopt a technology if they see that the benefit outweighs the cost

I remember reading this explanation a while ago and it seemed completely logical. I feel like I've been swept away with a lot of things without ever stopping to consider its necessity.

A big part of it is the cult of individualism. Do you really think that you, by willpower alone, are going to be able to resist all the temptations of multinational corporations who collectively spend billions researching how to manipulate your lizard brain?

The Amish do it through community, accountability, and literally physically separating themselves from the vast majority of this influence.

>> Do you really think that you, by willpower alone, are going to be able to resist all the temptations of multinational corporations who collectively spend billions researching how to manipulate your lizard brain?

Well, it is difficult, but not impossible to develop oneself to withstand this onslaught. They create these entrapments, mostly through the use of technology :).

However, you are right, that in itself may not be enough if you are still embedded in it. But wouldn't it be great, if we can figure out how to do that. Yes, it needs some resources, in terms of community, wealth . I feel this is the next chapter in our philosophical evolution - to create a philosophy which makes you anti fragile to these things. Those before us did not face this problem at this scale.

And The problem is, people mistake a way of life for life itself. And it becomes difficult for them to change that for a better life.

I am not talking about the Amish here, but the general populace so dependent on modern technology. A simple suggestion to get rid of their smartphones gives people anxiety attack and make them go all defensive.

I don't doubt that you can do it, personally, but you only have to look at American obesity rates to see that a lack of self-control is a system-level problem, not just an individual making a bad decision.

If we "figure out how to do it" on an individual level, there's no doubt that corporations will do whatever they can to subvert whatever it is that is causing you to indulge in less of their products.

The Amish have found one way to fix the problem on a system-wide level. It's not the only way, but I don't think we're going to find a way to do it without having a base in reality, family, community, purpose, and changing social norms.

Obesity is not specifically caused by "lack of self-control". American diets and food ingredients have changed dramatically over the last few decades and that has a major impact.

Naturally if you're making an effort to eat using organic/locally-grown ingredients (if not stuff you grew yourself), you're not going to be impacted by that.

as an individual i see no problem with resisting the manipulation of large corporations.

in fact, it's individualism that allows me to make that choice, because as an individual i have the freedom to make different choices than you.

it's peer pressure that i can't entirely escape. at least when it comes to tools that we need to choose to collaborate.

groups can be used to help resist temptations. but that means i am voluntarily using peer pressure to help me. which is fine, as long as it is done selectively. someone may join the AA to help them change their drinking habits.

but amish culture seems more of an all or nothing approach. there seems to be little freedom to adopt certain aspects of the culture, while rejecting others, unless you are an outsider.

Peer pressure is stronger, that’s why it’s important. Sure, it’s evolutionarily adapted to benefit the group, which may sometimes go against your individual interests. Overall, however, you just have to look at the results to see whether a deracinated society of people acting individually ends up better off than a community of people looking out for each other.

Look at my reply above. Maybe you are succeeding at resisting corporate and mass media programming, but the vast majority of people are failing miserably, and it’s lead to a society of people who are childless, more obese, more depressed, and have fewer friends they can confide in.

I’d personally sacrifice a bit of my individual autonomy to live in a more functional society.

> I’d personally sacrifice a bit of my individual autonomy to live in a more functional society.

Well, you can easily sacrifice a bit of your own autonomy.

Did you mean that you also want to sacrifice other people's autonomy?

My take (and preference) is that it would be preferable if we could find some mutually agreeable way where we could each sacrifice a bit of autonomy for some collective benefit.

> as an individual i see no problem with resisting the manipulation of large corporations.

> it's peer pressure that i can't entirely escape

You are contradicting yourself.

Peer pressure and society are simply stronger.

> amish culture seems more of an all or nothing approach

Perhaps to them our unquestioning acceptance of corporate technology used to create addictive behaviors (games, smartphones and gadgets, web stuff...) is equally extreme.

E.g. You can't refuse to use [facebook | twitter | javascript | closed source software | smartphones] without people asking for justification on daily basis.

that's what i meant by peer pressure. it is not corporate manipulation that drives me to use facebook, but the need to stay in touch with friends and family. or at least it's not direct corporate manipulation. for comparison, i can easily avoid google, because apart from google+ and hangouts nothing on google is used to talk to other people (and gmail still uses an open protocol)

so googles manipulation leaves me cold, while facebook manages to reach me through my peers.

and it's not just pressure in the form of: if you don't have that you are not cool, but if you don't have it we will not be able to stay in touch.

only as a group we can resist that and switch to alternative ways to communicate. i have actually managed to resist facebook and twitter (but i use others that i'd rather avoid if i could). the only long term friend i am still in touch with is one who runs his own private weblog. i am pretty sure i could find others on facebook if i decided to look.

I would recommend "Influence" by Robert Cialdini.

The idea any of us can resist - not even large corporations, but friends, neighbours, random people on the street - is just not supported by reality.

We're all incredibly prone to pretty basic psychological manipulation; and we're prone to it even when we're aware it's happening. Our society is built on the functioning of simple psychological manipulation to the point where it's often impossible to draw a line between what is manipulative vs. just following social norms.

Often you can see flat out people recognizing it - e.g. people not wanting to accept a gift, because they realize it will make them feel obligated to do something back for someone and find it easier to avoid the would-be gift-giver than to not let it influence them.

I agree with you the Amish response is over the top, though, and it's full of the same issues.

On the other hand, IIRC not many folks are willing to be come Amish when they had a "modern" upbringing.

And their children aren't choosing to stay with a modern bag of tools either: Their children stop being educated after around 8th grade. If I remember, this has something to do with pride. Someone that doesn't go along and stay Amish has a very real disadvantage to make it in the modern world.

They do things, in part, with pressuring a young and not fully educated person with no real experience of other things. Sure, once you are there you hav some community and stuff as long as you follow the ways.

You don't need to become Amish to learn from this approach though.

All you need to do to benefit from it without the downsides is to use the opportunity when you decide on a goal, whatever it is, to think through which things makes it hard to stick to, and find ways of creating barriers that makes it harder to deviate from your desired behavior than sticking to it.

E.g. there's the old trick to managing your credit card debts of freezing it in a block of ice in the freezer - lets you keep the card for emergencies, but forces you to wait and gives you plenty of opportunities to change your opinion before you actually use it.

Or smaller things, like being aware and picking routes of your commute that avoids temptations when you're on a diet.

Just acknowledging that relying on willpower alone is error prone, and plan accordingly, really.

Compressed air systems do have some additional safety problems that more "modern" technologies don't have.

On my thermodynamics course at college the instructor commented that If the lab block's main storage tank for compressed air let go it would flatten the entire building.

This was a full service building , one with air water and electricity plumbed in

Thanks for the link! My initial reaction was quite similar to GP's. However, I still think that, if they use compressed air from a gasoline-based compressor to drive an appliance, that's as good as using a gasoline generator to drive the same appliance (with the option to use a wind-based generator instead).

Think of it less as having an issue with a gasoline generator and more about wanting it to be sufficiently more effort to use it that it takes more thought to decide to do something.

It's a nice life hack in general to create barriers that makes it easier to behave how you want to behave than to take shortcuts.

The thing to remember is they aren't asking you to adjudicate what they are doing.

We can still question and criticise. They don't need to listen or act.

I can't help to think that it's entirely so the Amish elites/aristocrats keep themselves in power by limiting access to Media.

But interesting take, they would survive in things like Solar storms/electrical grid collapsed.

It should be noted that "the Amish" is painting with a very broad brush. It's like saying "All Californians are surfer dudes."

There are many different groups of Amish, each with special rules.

For example, In some communities, tractors of prohibited. But in others, tractors are fine. And in still others, tractors are only OK as long as they don't have rubber tires.

As with any group of humans, generalization is often inaccurate.

Curious, why no rubber tires?

(Or was that just an example to make point)

it is in their faq [1]

>> Tractors are often equipped with steel wheels rather than rubber air tires to discourage its use as a vehicle on the road.

[1] http://amishamerica.com/technology/#tractors

Gasoline engines use electricity to ignite compressed fuel-air charges. Spark plugs work by arcing electricity over a measured air gap.

This is getting to the absurd, how does the air get compressed ? Steam engine ?

This reminded me of an article I saw some time ago (https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/09/power-from-the-tap-w...) about appliances (including but not limited to kitchen ones) powered by water from the tap.

I was wondering what the advantages of compressed air are over water. Given water is an incompressible fluid, I would have thought it was a much more efficient means of driving turbines and other moving equipment.

But the fact that it is incompressible makes it more difficult to use it as a store of energy to be used on demand.

One of the advantages of compressed air is you can let a little out of the tank to power one thing for a bit, then a little more to power a different thing, and only need to run the generator when the tank is out of air.

An air leak usually doesn't cause damage.

I remembered about this compressed air car. That's an interesting tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car

An interesting challenge would be making a compressed air powered computer or tv for them.

Heard of generators? You can do that.

Well I meant with no electricity at all. Here are some people who attempted it: https://www.niklasroy.com/workshop/184/PneumaticComputing

Have you seen this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics which seems pretty cool. There seem to be computers which use liquid and formations of pipes to create different logic elements.

Univac built a 4 bit computer that ran off of compressed air using fluidics[0]. Making a TV would be much more difficult though. It is very difficult to make mechanical systems that can interact with electromagnetic radiation or work at similar frequencies. However we can get pretty far. The Scophony television is almost entirely mechanical. We feed the TV signal into a piezoelectric crystal which creates an ultrasonic wave that propagates through a clear fluid filled cell. We can shine light through this and the propagating wave will cause changes in light intensity due to the density variations. We can then scan this line of changing intensities through a some rotating mirrors to make a picture. Perhaps with an intense enough signal we could drive the piezoelectric directly, or perhaps we can make a MEMS based mechanical amplifier to amplify the tiny vibrations produced by a piezoelectric element directly driven by RF.

[0]https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1464112 [1]http://www.bluehaze.com.au/modlight/UltrasoundMod.htm

Combined with a wind turbine air compressor as described in the article, that's some serious solarpunk stuff right there.

AirPunk

what are the limits of compressed air as a replacement for electricity?

The big one is efficiency. Air has much bigger losses any time you "do anything" with it. Converting it to mechanical energy is particularly expensive.

Someone should tell them, that their bodies are running on electricity...

This is not accurate (well, it depends on how strict you want to be about ion channels). Electrical synapses are almost vestigial in our nervous systems, we could live without and lose not much more than part of our sense of smell.

I doubt the amish have anything against electricity per se. I bet they are against TV, radio and internet.

At some point, this kind of thing gets silly. If you're trying to take an end-run around your religious restrictions, what is really the point of sticking to them?

I'm reminded of appliances that have sabbath modes, where they work based on proximity sensors or other mechanisms that respect the letter, if not the intent, of Abrahamic law.

Those are not divine mandates, they are social conventions more than religious restrictions.

As they are all

It’s amusing and curious that while they shun modern tech they acquiesce to compressed air, which is fine, but it leaks. Can they not make some sort of semi-universal mechanical driveshaft powered via pedal power? Either use a kind of bike mechanism or like antique sewing machines and have a flexible driveshaft (like a plumbers flexible snake/auger that has a coupling that’d fit into lots of applications and devices.

Sure it’s rubegoldbergian, but I mean they’re working with compressed air already.

Saying they shun modern tech is a bit of an overstatement. More accurate would be that they approach it cautiously, making sure that it won't harm their community before adopting it.

Here is a good article about this: https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

> while they shun modern tech

This is a common foible of "educated public," and a lot of people misunderstand the Amish: they don't shun modern tech. The have cars and phones, computers and websites, and such. It's not about the tech but what the tech brings about. They consider the social implications of technology: Who does this technology replace? Who does this empower with good habits or bad habits? If I use this and then I am done, what do I do with it? Does this make me dependent on something out side of my control?

While they have technology, they limit who has/owns the technology. Complex tech is often communally used. But, personal technology is usually chosen with durability, simplicity, and reliability in mind. Check out their buggies[1]. These things aren't necessarily simple or cheap. Good ones are designed to last and be handed down, not like your old beater car you hand to your kid because it's frame is rusting out. They understand building technology quite well. We just don't think of it that way because of the materials used.

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a24666/...

Point taken. I didn't mean to gloss over the nuance.

We could learn about buying things for the long run in mind when buying things. As well as taking social implications of deploying new technologies (the extremes like gamification, engagement, conflict, surveillance, mass consumption, etc.)

When you put it that way, why aren't we all Amish? It sounds great.

We aren't because it's inconvenient and it goes against the grain of our society. If you eschew a large screen TV and the latest smartphone and all manner of social media accounts and you're not apologetic about it, people ask "are turning Amish or something?" The right answer is probably, "You say that like it's a bad thing."

I think the main thing that would grate against modern western sensibilities is that the decisions are made communally; there's not a lot of economic freedom of choice .

The town votes whether air conditioning is OK -- you don't get to decide. If the decision is that nobody in town has Snapchat, then you don't get to install it.

Just like an HOA!

Yes, both are terrible.

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