Part 4 The Post Mortem Chapter 10 The Causes of R101's Crash A few moments before dawn, a week later, on the morning of October 11, 1930, in a cemetery a half-mile from the Royal Airship Works mooring tower, the fragrant smell of freshly turned earth filled the air. Flares illuminated the edges of a forty-by-forty-foot hole in the ground, the communal grave for R101's dead, as workers removed the last shovelfuls of dirt. As the sun rose, the grave-diggers departed, replaced by other laborers who decorated the grave with thousands of flowers and reeds. A floral aroma now displaced the odor of loam. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Royal Air Force trucks moved the coffins of R101's crew and passengers from the nearby Bedford train station to the grave near the works. They drove through the town in silence, the BBC halted all transmission from ten a.m. to five-fifteen p.m. to under the fallen. Bedford banned all traffic and ordered all stores and shops closed. Five hundred police officers lined the three-mile route from station to grave, behind them thousands of mourners most dressed in black and holding flowers. As a band played a bide with me, Paul Bearers laid the forty-eight coffins and four rows of twelve and covered each one with a union jack. Each coffin was adorned with a small label fabricated from the metal of R101's framework. Fortin of the plates bore names, including those of Captain H. Carmichael Irwin, First Officer Noel Adderston, Michael Rope, the works engineering genius, and Vincent Richmond, the ship's designer. The other thirty-four plates read, To the memory of the unknown airman who died on October 5th. The blazing inferno had charred the bodies beyond recognition. Among the unidentified remains were the ship's steward, Albert Savage, Lord Thompson, and Major George H. Scott, Britain's pioneering airship pilot. Thirty-six of the dead were killed within minutes of R101's impact. The other two, both rigors, were severely burned and died a few days after the crash. The crash happened a few minutes after 2 a.m. near the town of Pouvet, France. By then R101 had traveled two hundred and fifty miles from the work's moring tower. On every inch of that journey, wind slowed the ship's progress and rain pummeled its cover, a more sustained assault than on any airship in the history of aviation. The weather worsened as R101 approached Pouvet. The ship passed near the town because of a navigational error by the tired crew. With no watchkeepers, the ship's officers were exhausted and prone to error from sleep deprivation. The ship's flight plan charted a course ten miles west of Pouvet because the town was well known for its high winds and local turbulence, winds so strong that they once collapsed the coral vaults of the town's thirteenth-century cathedral. In the turbulent air at fifteen hundred feet above Pouvet, R101 rose and fell by two hundred feet as its nose haunted for stable air. In the fierce winds, the ship's cloth cover, battered by seven hours of flight, ripped open along the top of the ship. Rain pierced the now-exposed paper-thin gas-bags. As hydrogen escaped, R101 sank to the ground. The distress ship skidded at perhaps twenty or thirty miles per hour across a field and into a grove of trees. As the ship slid, its nose bounced. The impact was not violent, Leedsch reported a large crunch which he characterized as too mild a noise for a catastrophe, and many on board might have survived except for a string of chance events. The impact crushed the control car and sheared the aluminum pipes of the centralized ballast system, releasing tons of water into the car. The ballast ignited the water-activated navigational flares stored in the corner of the control car, the very white flame observed by Leedsch, which in turn ignited the hydrogen in the gas-bags. The fire shot through the crew and passenger quarters, trapping everyone except those in the rearward engine cars, the fireproof smoking room, and the radio room. The hydrogen-fueled fire dehydrated the bodies of those trapped inside and held their head shrank to the size of a fist. Although R101's cover was subjected to bruising winds and a pelting rain for far longer than any airship, the cover was also weaker than that of other airships. Its fragility was a consequence of Vincent Richmond's unwavering belief that R101's debut would spark demand for a fleet of airships. To prepare for this, he pioneered techniques to speed up production, starting with R101. Richmond believed that the bottlenecks in mass-producing airships occurred when construction steps required laborers to work suspended from the shed ceiling. He minimized this time-consuming overhead work with R101's novel, not-in-build framework, and by waterproofing the ship's five-and-a-half-acre cloth cover with a plastic-like coating before lacing it to the framework. Although the pre-coating saved time, the cover now stiff-cracked when stretched onto the airship's frame, and as Michael Rope noted in his June 1930 report, this decreased the cloth strength so there was no margin of safety for flight in rough atmosphere. Rope's conclusion prompted Richmond to replace the cover and waterproof it on the ship. Although Richmond told a newspaper that replacing the cover was an easy and comparatively inexpensive job, he and his staff at the works battled against time to replace the cover before R101 was scheduled to depart for India in the fall. Until it carried out in time, Richmond ordered any remaining sections of the original cover strengthened with fabric bands, three-inch wide strips spaced three feet apart and fastened with a rubber-based glue. These patches were inspected in late September by Frederick McWade, the inspector assigned to the Royal Airship Works. On his last inspection, before the newly lengthened R101 left the shed for its test flight, McWade examined the cloth cover aft of the nose and near the fins. He saw areas where the rubber glue was smeared over the original cover but no patches were applied. He knelt and touched the cloth. His fingers passed through the cover. On these sections where the cover had rotted, Richmond ordered reinforcing strips glued on. McWade reinspected the craft and concluded that the work of placing these reinforcing strips in position on all suspected weak positions was completed to the satisfaction of the RAW, the Royal Airship Works inspection section, and also the AID, the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate. When the ship left the shed for its only test flight before departure for India, these patched sections of the remaining cover were still weak. Key members on R101's partnership, R100 noticed problems with R101's cover. A day or so before R101's test flight, Neville, Norway, an engineer helping design R100 visited the works. Although R100 was built at Hauden, 140 miles north of the Royal Airship Works, its point of departure for its trip to Canada was the works mooring tower, and upon its return the ship had been housed in shed No. 2. R100's captain, Ralph Booth, R101's counterpart, wanted to show the ship's engineer something strange. Booth handed Norway a few square yards of R101's cover and asked him, what do you think of this? Norway flipped the silvery fabric over and ran his fingers along the two-inch wide patch covered by the rubber-based glue. As he flexed the cloth, it crumbled. Good God, where's this from? said Norway. Booth explained that it was from R101. Norway hoped all this stuff had been removed from the ship. They say they have, said Booth. Yet as the ship left the shed for its test flight before India, the works had replaced almost 90 percent of the original cover with cloth waterproofed in place, and the 33,000 square feet of the original cover, an area the size of half a football field, remained. The deficiencies of these sections might have shown up in a long test flight before R101 departed for India, but the ship's only test flight before India was the one cut short by engine failure. Irwin told Booth a day or so before the refitted airship left the shed that he hoped to fly 36 or 48 hours at a reasonable cruising speed in bad weather in order to thoroughly test out the ship. After 16 hours, an engine failed and R101, its cloth untested at high speed, returned to the mooring tower. The proper action would have been to schedule a second test flight and delay the departure for India, but instead, 58 hours after its return, the ship departed for India. A delay might also have resolved the mystery of why the ship flew heavy on its test flights to the RAF display in July, causing it to suddenly dive. Irwin thought the behavior was caused by the automatic valves releasing gas from the bags. When he investigated, he discovered holes in the gas bags. These holes, of course, evoke an image of the catastrophic collapse of a bag and the crash of an airship. Indeed, a gas bag could rapidly deflate from a giant rip of one of the fifteen gas bags and R101 collapsed. The crew would feel the ship's tail drop, and then the ship itself fall by 500 feet. The elevator coxswain would force the helm down hard to check the angle of inclination, and the captain would rev the engines and discharge ballast half to bring the ship to an even keel. Although holes conjure such a vision, the reality of holes in airship gas bags was much more mundane. Only the hydrogen below a hole in a gas bag escapes, because hydrogen is lighter than air, and above will remain in the bag. So to cause a sudden deflation, the hole must be at the top of the bag, and it must be large. More often, small holes in the gas bags caused a slow leakage of gas and required the tower crew to refill the ship's bags more often. To the ship's crew, the holes were more often a nuisance to find a hole in the vast surface of a gas bag could take a week. We can never be sure that the behavior seen in the July flights played a role in the ship's demise, but that the source of this behavior was never resolved surely highlights the degree to which the ship was untested before its flight to India. Not only then was this untested flagship airship the hope of the empire flying patched up, but the chain of command for the entire enterprise was at best unclear, at worst frayed, and ultimately deadly. The air ministry was fuzzy about whether Erwin or Scott was in charge of the test flights and final flight. Even a day before the doomed flight, Erwin was unclear on his and Scott's roles. He asked Sir John Higgins, a senior air ministry official, to clarify their responsibilities. I thought, said Higgins to Erwin, that the roles were quite clear. He then elaborated with a detailed yet hazy and imprecise description. Scott, as assistant director flying, Higgins told Erwin, would discuss with the captain or the navigator and the meteorological officer the general weather conditions and as a result would decide on the course to be taken, flying height and the speed of the airship. He would also advise the amount of fuel and water ballast to be carried. The captain of the airship was entirely responsible for the preparation of the ship for the flight and that it was air worthy and well founded in all respects before the flight commenced. He was responsible for maintaining the ship and correct flying trim throughout the flight and carrying out the general orders in regard to course, engine speeds, etc., as laid down by the assistant director flying. He was entirely responsible for the flying organization of the ship and the discipline of the crew. To help Erwin understand better, Higgins continued with an analogy. Scott's role was like that of a senior officer in charge of the flight of airplanes proceeding from, say, Cairo to Cape Town. This senior officer would issue orders to all pilots of the machines as to the height at which to fly, the course to be taken, and the arrangements made for communicating with him during flight. This scenario left Scott in charge of scheduling flights and so the responsibility for departing to India without a proper test flight lies with him. Yet ultimately the greatest share of blame for the R-101 disaster rests on the shoulders of Lord Thompson. At every step in R-101's development, Thompson, the Secretary of State for Air, used the airship for PR stunts, a tee or a tour or a ride for a VIP. These requests, which often arrived via Thompson's aid Major Louis Reynolds, burdened the overworked Erwin in Atherston. I wonder, Atherston thought, if Reynolds realizes what Erwin is up against, because if he does, then he ought to be publicly shot for putting such almost impossible tasks to us. Although this meddling diverted Erwin and Atherston from testing the airship and training its crew, of graver consequence was Thompson's belief that R-101 was an all-weather craft. Throughout R-101's year of flying, Thompson never grasped the airship's limitations. In early October, when he invited the MPs for a ride, he wished for a fresh breeze of 40 to 50 miles per hour, to show them that the ship does not roll much. A few days later, after his ride on R-101's second flight, Thompson told reporters he rather regretted that the weather conditions were so fair, and that he hoped for a stronger wind as he wished to see the behavior of the airship in rough weather. Later that month, after the work's meteorological office forecast bad weather with gale-force winds, R-101 was moved from tower to shed. As predicted, a tremendous storm roared through the British Isles, sweeping from the southwest across Ireland, where the rain and hail ripped tiles and bricks from roofs. Then it hit Wales, where it flooded hundreds of homes, driving families to the rooftops. It smashed into England's south coast, and created waves that beat against Admiralty Pier, and that rose as high as the gallery of the lighthouse. Yet Thompson objected to sheltering R-101. He expressed his displeasure to Sir John Higgins, who relayed to the work's senior management that the Secretary of State was rather annoyed at the airship being put back into the shed because of the storm, and that he thought it unnecessarily cautious. Higgins defended the works, he explained rather fully to Thompson that it was culpably foolish to leave an untested R-101, and it only flew in twice, at the tower. And eight months after the MP's flight canceled because of bad weather, Thompson told delegates that the fourth Imperial Press Conference that airships could fly to Perth by passing through the roaring forties, the powerful westerly winds in the southern hemisphere, that swept 16th century ships from Europe to the East Indies. These winds, he claimed, would be no problem for British airships, because we now have some magnificent skippers training in this country who can handle their ships in the most appalling conditions. And on R-101's flight to India, he hoped to ride the storm, as he wrote to a friend. His belief in the all-weather performance of airships prompted him often to quote a zeppelin expert that an airship is the safest conveyance on land, sea, or in the air that human ingenuity has yet devised. This belief led Thompson to deviate from the original plan for developing giant airships. Higgins countered a slow and sure policy. He told Thompson that the right policy to pursue is to go steadily on with the progressive experiments, and thus to enable the full results of our extensive program to be achieved. But under Thompson, the work's mission crept from the development of experimental crafts to the construction of commercial airships ready to heft large payloads to India. Once R-101 was viewed as a commercial ship, Thompson's influence pressured the work's management, chiefly Colmore and Scott, into grave errors. The first year was to insert the additional bay before the flight to India. When the work's first proposed a refit to increase the airship's lift, they suggested a two-part plan, shave weight, fly to India, then, after that demonstration flight, split the ship in two and add an extra bay. In relation to the future operation of the ship, wrote the works in bureaucratic prose, as distinct from the first demonstration flight to India, an important improvement can be obtained by inserting an additional bay in the structure. The work's proposed this additional bay so R-101 could have enough lift to operate between Britain and India a few months out of the year. Colmore at least realized that R-101 could not fly in any weather, but could, with the extra lift from a new bay, travel on longer flights in the summer over the sea where the air was smooth. The works noted that the additional bay could not, of course, be carried out in time for the first flight is now proposed. Yet Thompson pushed for the bay to be added before the India trip. The best course he responded when asked to approve this plan would I think be, A, to make the various alterations you suggest, B, to insert the extra bay, C, to make every effort for a flight with 55 tons disposable load to India and back at the end of September 1930. The time spent installing this new bay would have been better used on a full test of the ship and the replacement of the entire cover. The ship should have traveled to India with the most minimal of crew or better, the demonstration flight should have been canceled once the works decided the ship was too heavy for regular service to India. The second error was to tie R101's departure date for India to Thompson's political needs. In December 1929, Thompson let the works know through Higgins that he would like R101 ready to go to India by the last week of September. He wanted the flight to proceed or overlap with the Imperial Conference at which he planned to pitch an ambitious extension of the airship program to delegates from across the empire. In response, Higgins cautioned Thompson that R101 might not be ready. I told the Secretary of State, Higgins reported and kept on telling him verbally all along from quite early in the year that he must not count absolutely on the airship being ready to go out to India and that unless when we tried it, it was satisfactory, he would not be able to go at that time. And the director of the works, Reginald Colmore, cautioned that the breakup of the Southwest Monsoon occurs about this time, generally about the middle of September, and squally conditions must be expected from then on to about the middle of November. It would be preferable to carry out the flight either before the break of the monsoon or say late in November as the conditions on the route are likely to be considerably more favorable. Colmore knew the weather well. He always carried in his pocket a report based on studies by the works meteorologists that showed the estimated fuel requirements for the England-India route for every month of the year and would frequently pull it out and discuss its implications with others at the works. Colmore also questioned the importance attached to the flight taking place in late September. But he learned that if the ship did not succeed in getting the Secretary of State for Air to India in time for him to arrive home for the Imperial Conference, no further money would be available for airship development and none would be asked for. And he succumbed to that fear of losing the entire program. Colmore and Scott felt pressured to set our 101's departure date no later than October 4th. Any date after that in Thompson would miss the conference. That departure date was biased, said Booth, the experienced captain of R-100, by the fact that the Imperial Conference coming off and the psychological moment in airships when they could carry the Secretary of State to India and bring him back to time. It biased their judgment agreeing to fly. If that Imperial Conference had not been coming off, I feel confident that they would have insisted upon more trials as was done in the case of R-100 before she left for Canada. Colmore yielded to the pressure to schedule the departure time to the Imperial Conference and even quietly arranged for an Imperial Airways plane to be on standby to return Thompson to England should the conditions not be ideal for R-101 to return from India in time to deliver the Secretary of State to the Imperial Conference. The pressure on Colmore and others at the works was noted by Alfred Pugsley, a young engineer at the Royal Airship Works, later knighted for his contributions to engineering. All were agreed, Pugsley recalled, the governmental and indeed popular pressure led by Lord Thompson and his enthusiasm for the journey to India had at the last stages unduly hurried and hurried designers, constructors, and crew alike. And so driven to depart by Thompson's political strategy, an untested R-101 flew into tremendous storms. And although the management failed the airship, the airship also failed its management. In 1926, Britain's director of civil aviation hailed R-101 as the greatest adventurer in construction engineering of our time and yet in charge was Vincent Richmond, R-101's chief designer, a man with no training in engineering and no experience in designing any airborne craft. Richmond studied chemistry at the Royal College of Science and his sole practical experience with airships was in creating the waterproof finish applied to the outer cloth covers of airships and small military balloons. His engineering experience was limited to a short stent before the First World War designing docks for S. Pearson and Sons, a large construction firm. Sometimes Richmond's decision shocked his engineering staff. When he ordered the gas bag netting let out to gain more lift, a works engineer noted that this violated the essential feature of Michael Rope's careful design. To make up for Richmond's sketchy technical training, his staff at the works had to balance the gaps in his engineering knowledge, as a colleague discreetly phrased it, or as another delicately said, they supplemented his technical knowledge. For example, Harold Roxby, an engineer at the works, pointed out to Richmond an error in his design for R101's framework. The cross section of the ship near the tail would not be symmetric and this would disrupt airflow over the airship. The cigar-shaped framework of all airships arose from a set of rings spaced along a central axis and linked from back to front by long girders. At least 20 of these girders, Roxby explained to Richmond, were used on all airship designs but because Richmond designed R101 with only 15 girders, the cross section of R101 as it tapered to its tail lost its symmetrical nearly circular shape. Roxby pleaded with Richmond to increase the number of girders but Richmond dismissed the suggestion. When R101's framework was assembled, the section near the tail was indeed a distorted circle. Roxby solved the problem by retrofitting and action never desired by an engineer. He had the girders twisted as they neared the tail to keep the cross section circular. After R101's crash, the young Roxby thrived as an aeronautical engineer and his development of the gas-powered turbine for jets earned him a knighthood. Criticism of Richmond's R101 design wasn't limited to the work staff. Two of the greatest airship engineers of Richmond's era thought R101's framework deficient. Ludwig Dier, the chief architect for the Zeppelin Company, praised R101 in public. I regard R101 as one of the best airships ever designed in construction, he told Richmond a month before the ship's crash. But in private, he expressed reservations about the design. Dier worried that the ship's unbrazed rings, in contrast to the wire spokes of the Zeppelin frame, could never be made light enough. Their weight, he thought, reduced payload and fuel, which hampered R101's potential as a commercial vehicle because its range would be far too short. And even more severe was the opinion of Britain's most experienced airship designer. Barnes Wallace designed four of R101's predecessors, number nine in 1916, number 23 in 1917, number 26 in 1918, and R80 in 1920. From 1924 to 1928, he designed R100 contemporaneous with Richmond's design of R101. Although the designs of both R100 and R101 were state secrets, Richmond sent uninvited drawings of R101 to Wallace. It is the crudest piece of design which I've ever seen, Wallace thought, when he reviewed the work. He dismissed Richmond as a mere works manager and not a technologist in any sense of the word. As he bundled the drawings to return to Richmond, Wallace concluded that R101 was a mass of mistakes and unfit to fly. He tacked an icy note to the returned papers and tell it has been shown unsatisfactory. I prefer the arrangements we have worked out for R100. Two factors propelled Richmond to the top ranks of British airship designers. First, although he had no practical experience designing airships, he hand for a British citizen a singular store of theoretical knowledge of Zeppelin designs because of the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty mandated that dirigibles able to take the air, being manufactured, repaired or assembled must be delivered to the governments of the principal allied and associated powers. To accomplish this, the victors formed an inter-allied commission. As Britain's representative, Richmond toured Germany free to inspect every Zeppelin ship, visit every airship factory and view blueprints of the most advanced designs of the Zeppelin engineers. Richmond showed such interest on his tours that the German officer in charge of the Choutalon's works and now forgotten rival of the Zeppelin company reported to his superiors, I got the impression that Mr. Richmond will probably take up airship matters in the future. He continued, Mr. Richmond seems to be interested in an airship undertaking in England or India. Yet theoretical knowledge, however detailed, was not enough alone to catapult him to the top ranks because Britain had experienced airship designers, Barnes Wallace, of course, but also CIR Campbell. Campbell was chief designer of airships and superintendent of the Royal Airship Works. He was undoubtedly, claim flight, a British aviation magazine, our foremost airship designer. Campbell designed, in 1921, the British Airship R-38 at the time the largest airship in the world, although small enough to fly through the central ring of R-101 with 20 feet to spare on each side. To create this airship, Campbell drew, in contrast to Richmond, on years of engineering training and experience. After graduating with the highest honors in engineering from the Royal Naval College, Campbell designed and built seagoing ships for the Navy. Until in 1915, they put him in charge of old airship design in the Admiralty where he honed his skills. The outcome of that training was R-38, the first ship of purely British design reported flight and not a copy of previous German ships. In the early morning of August 24th, 1921, R-38 took to the sky for a day of flight. Campbell rode on the ship as an observer as did his design team, the cream of the airship services at flight. In the late afternoon, R-38 sped through the air, piercing a bank of white clouds to emerge into the sunlight as the crew and high spirits tested the ship's controls at high speed. Over an estuary of the North Sea near Hall, the ship's captain ordered the fin controls to be moved rapidly to show the airworthiness of R-38 to cross the Atlantic. The crew heard a violent crack, then a few sharp explosions followed by two loud explosions that shattered windows and hundreds of shops and rattled houses two miles away. The ship's backbone, its metal framework snapped in two, landing golfed in flames, R-38 plunged into the Humber River. 45 of the 51 on board died among the dead were Campbell and his team. The disaster robbed Britain of its most capable airship experts, leaving few in the government's employ with knowledge of airship design. When Britain decided in 1924 to revive its airship program, they turned to one of the few who had worked on British airships, Vincent Richmond. This accidental engineer was charged with designing R-101, a task described by R.V. Suthwall nighted years later for his technical achievements, as hard as can be set before an engineering designer. Although Richmond intended to design a novel and radical airship to a British standard that surpassed the time-tested Zeppelin designs, he instead created an overweight airship. To avoid a structural failure like R-38s, Richmond decided upon a framework with thick, heavy rings, lack the engineering finesse, to design a strong yet lightweight structure. This heavy framework required a last-minute refit to gain 14 tons of lift. The time spent on this refit would have been better used for more test flights, which perhaps might have detected problems with the ship's cover long before its flight to India. In some then, this overweight airship also carried a burden created by the political structures surrounding it. Lord Thompson and Major Scott created an environment where they and their underlings overrode the safety recommendations of inspectors, violated safety regulations by approving flights to serve public relations needs, and overworked R-101's officers by requiring them to double as watchkeepers. The result was a confluence of four interlinked factors that destroyed R-101, navigational errors by an overworked and sleep-deprived crew, abnormally stormy weather, the weakness of the ship's outer cloth cover, and the storage of water-activated flares in the control car. These events resulted in R-101's dive into a grove of trees and its subsequent explosion as it skidded across the ground.


This is our very simple, simple basic go-over of what tech ecosystems are. So, Apple, Google, Microsoft, tech ecosystems, this is our class for today. So, what is an ecosystem? So, if we go back to the days of, if we go back to the days of when we were in middle school or middle school, probably middle school, what is an ecosystem? It was first used in the field of ecology to describe a community of living organisms, factors, and elements, such as plant, animal, soil, climate, etc., and how these are elements are always linked together. So, if you remember, if you can hark back the image in your unconsciousness of an ecosystem of how water is a cycle going from rain falling down to the earth and then going into the ocean and then evaporating back up into the clouds, that is what ecosystem in the traditional sense is based off of just water, what water is.  So, it can encompass a larger part of things and it can be a family of devices, so hardware devices such as phones, such as tablets, whether it's an iPad or whether it's a, try to think of another tablet now, iPads or it can be an e-increaser like a Kindle, so those are devices or a laptop or a notebook, and then from that we also have applications, whether that's something that's on the device itself, whether that's the Gmail app or the YouTube app or your messaging or iMessage app, so the hardware, like I said, phones and the software. So, within this there's usually two types of, there's two mainstream thoughts, whether it's a closed system or an open system, closed systems we have is what a very famous one, I'm sure the majority of you do know is Apple, they are very good at what they do because it's a closed system, so basically so an iPhone, Apple Music, iPad, FaceTime, they have applications and devices, so hardware and software and they work seamlessly on their devices, so for example you can't use, so FaceTime is a software or an application and I cannot use it on an Android phone because the Android phone is not part of their system or their ecosystem, they integrate it themselves so that they control every aspect of it and that makes it great for the user, while, so I'm going to go to the other side, the flip side, like an open system, like Android is, you can use different types of application, so for example, do you guys remember when the first Mac computer came out a long time ago, and at the same time Microsoft was coming out, it's kind of like a parallel of software companies coming out and what Microsoft did was that they instead licensed their software, so whoever decided, whoever wanted to pay to use their software, they're able to do so, so that's why we have Dell, we have Lenovo, we have HP, they purchase licensing from Microsoft so that they can use Microsoft's products on their computers, while Apple itself, they don't license out their products, so what people do is that it's, excuse me, it's exclusive to Macbooks, iMacs, I'm trying to think of older names for Mac devices but I can't remember them right now, so it's a parallel, so you see that like the applications of the software for Apple products will be closed and they control every single aspect of it and which is great because they know how everything clicks and how everything looks exactly on a user's phone, on a user's MacBook, while on an open system it's different because there might be different manufacturing, the layout might be different, so each has its own pros and cons, for example, here on the open system, you can have an iPad and you can use a YouTube app and you can use Microsoft Office 365 and you can be listening to music with your Pixel Buds, while if you're using a Pixel, if you're using an Android phone, it's harder to, it's not harder, it's impossible to use some of Apple's products, so you can't use iMessaging, you can't use FaceTime on an Android phone, but some of the stuff Apple is slowly reluctant to be letting people cross over, like Apple Music, you could use Apple Music on your Android phone, you could use, I'm trying to think, you could also use the part, part I believe of the Apple suite, so let's go on to the next slide, so major players like I said, Apple, Google and Microsoft, there are other players here that I want to acknowledge, Samsung and Amazon, so but Apple itself is a good closed system, they make hardware, they make software, Google itself, they mainly make software, but they're slowly getting into the hardware business, I'm teaching this class on a Chromebook, and that is hardware made by Google, and it's software made by Google, and Microsoft, they make hardware and software, and I'm able to access all my Microsoft items, my software on this Chromebook, because we use Office 365 here at the city, so I'm going to show you some pictures, let's go over some quick pictures, let's see, perfect, let's see, Apple, Google and Windows, so this is my Windows Vista desktop screen, I couldn't find a good Microsoft logo, but these are the three major players, so with Apple you probably see that the majority in San Francisco area, the majority of people use Apple devices or Apple iPhones, I will not be surprised if the majority of you are watching this on iPad or watching this from a MacBook, and Google itself, they make Pixel phones and Chromebooks, but they are also available on Apple devices, so you might have this, if you look at this, you might have this Google search function or this Google assistant app on your Apple device, Microsoft did make phones, I think that's my necessary slide before I forget, yes, okay, so here you'll see that this is an iPhone, looks very familiar, iPhones have a very distinct look across the board, no matter what version you're using, whether it's from, I think the last one that's still working is, let's see, iPhone 6, you guys should still be on the same operating system, but you'll see it's very, very uniform, so you'll see that everybody has the same kind of like, you know, display of the time on their phone, if you see here in the middle, this is an Android phone, this is not made by, this phone is not made by Google, but each maker that makes their own version of an Android phone changes things to their own aspects, so this is an Android phone or part of the Google ecosystem, and this here is a Nokia phone that runs off of Windows, which doesn't exist anymore, so Windows actually got out of that game, they decided that it's not a viable method for them, but if you look at this, they were trying to mimic the, I guess their design language, so of design language of their, what was this, Windows 10, Windows 10, where everything was, no, Windows 8, was it 8 or 10, I can't remember, but there was, remember one window operating system where it was all just, you would open the start menu and then you just see tiles, and you click on the tiles, but you'll see companies come and go with different devices, it was kind of like, if we hark back to the days of when we had Black Berries, and then Black Berries went away, and they're kind of coming back, but nobody wants them, so companies will decide what they want to do with their devices, for example here in the middle this is an Android phone, it's just like the major player for Android phone is what, we have Samsung that makes Android phones, and we know recently LG, which is another Korean company, announced that they are pulling out of the mobile phone market, so they're not going to make mobile phones, or Android phones anymore, or phones in general, so you know, and leave Samsung and other companies such as Huawei, which doesn't exist in America, and you know, Google Pixel may buy Google that's off, let's see, I'm going to exit my full screen really quick, I want to see if there's any chat questions popping up, because I can't see it on my full screen, let's see, I see Doug, will you address juggling devices from different platforms, Mac, laptop, Android phone, yes we'll talk about it in a bit, okay let's see, let's talk about it in a bit, let me finish that, okay let's go back, okay okay, so here you'll see that this is, I kind of did screen grabs, so you can see, I've realized that even within talking myself, that a lot of times we might use things interchangeably, and that what happens is that then people start getting a bit confused, which is fine, because I get confused too about it, so don't worry, so here I kind of kept this in the order of what the first slide was, so everything here on the left will always be an Apple product, everything in the middle will always be a Google product, and everything on the right will be an Office or Microsoft product, so here you see that if you have an Apple device, you see that this is what you usually have on your device when you buy it, it's like, sorry on your MacBook, you probably don't have this on iPhone, you'll see pages, you'll see numbers, you'll see keynotes, so this is kind of what the Apple looks like, depending on what version of the operating system for an iPhone or a MacBook you're running, it may or might look a little bit different, and then this here, if you have used Gmail, or if you have any of a Google account, you'll see these icons, and they might be very similar to you, Mail, you can see the M here, but this is an older logo calendar, this is also older logo, but this is their calendar, Google Drive, Contacts, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, or just called Docs, Sheets and Slides, so this correlates, oh let's go over one more, so and then this is something that might be more familiar to people who are working, have worked in a traditional like office setting, because you'll see like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, or which PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, OneNote publisher access, so when we're talking, we like to drop things also off, so instead of saying Microsoft Word, you just say Word, and then, but then Google Docs is also just Docs or Documents or Docs, which is also then just pages in Apple, I personally have not that seen that many people use pages, which is Apple's word processing application, I believe I was having a conversation with Michael, Michael says that people do use it, and he's seen people use it, which is wonderful too, but these three things are basically the same, have the same outcome, they help you put your words onto a document, or onto a sheet of paper, you can see Word, Doc, and Pages, and then here this next one for Apple will be Numbers, you'll see these bar charts or bar graphs, bar charts, Numbers, which is the same thing as sheets, and which is the same thing as Excel, so we call Excel, Excel, and then we also might call a spreadsheet, but then sometimes people get confused because it's also simplified as sheets as the Google app, but in the Apple world it's called Numbers, and then here for the last one, Keynote, so a keynote, this is like what Apple has every year when they announce fancy new devices, the keynote, this is the same thing as Microsoft PowerPoint, which is the same thing as Google Slides, so you would access these things differently, so remember how I said Apple is a closed system, so if you usually don't have an Apple device or an Apple ID, these things, actually no, if you don't have an Apple device, these things are actually closed off to you, while you could still use any of these Google items here, totally for free, there's no charge to use these, but there are more functions to Microsoft, the Microsoft suite of items and the Apple suite of items, so yeah, so like I said before, going back to Keynote, so PowerPoint itself, like I'm presenting this actually right now on Canva, which is not a power Microsoft, Google or Apple product, it's just a standalone web-based product, so I'm teaching this all off of the internet, so it's not tied down to one device or one ecosystem, let's go next, okay, so this is an example of each one, it may or may not look familiar, so this here on the left you'll see that this is very Apple-less, because it is Apple, you'll see the familiar red, yellow, and green, this is what an pages document would look like, this here is what Google Doc or Google document looks like, and this saves all to your cloud automatically, because it's web-based, this here on the right is with the blue, Microsoft's very good at color coding their items just like Google, and it's funny how they all kind of copy each other's color scheme, so blue is always word processing, so Microsoft Word, you could either save, if you're having it on a desktop, you could save it on a laptop or a computer desktop, you could save it locally, so it's only on that device, or you can also save it to the cloud, which Microsoft calls their cloud one drive, I believe you can also save it to another cloud, you can also save it to Google's cloud, which is called Google Drive, and this is where I have to start speaking very, be very mindful of my speech so I don't mix up their chosen vocabularies, so I'm going to go again here, so this here is what is this called numbers, this is called numbers on Apple, you might see this there might be familiar to you, here in the middle, this is called the Google spreadsheet or just sheets, it's also green, you can see this is green, so green, and this here on the right is Microsoft's Excel, which is something that we probably are more familiar with as this has been around for a very long time, which is I think probably why a lot of the other, why Google probably emulates Microsoft by using the same color scheme, but like I said before, these things you could save to your Google suite items are usually saved to the cloud automatically, Excel you could save locally if you want to, let's go to the next, perfect, this I had to squeeze this way, so please pardon that, okay, this here is Keynote on the bottom, this here in the middle is our Google slides, this here is our Microsoft PowerPoint, you'll see that Google slides is yellow, Microsoft PowerPoint is orange, I don't believe Keynote has a color scheme yet, so you'll see that this is the same thing, and it's basically it's the same products in each one, mix their own products, for example it would be, if you want to use a very modern day comparison, it'll be saying that one company makes Coca-Cola and one company makes Pepsi, and they're both the same yummy, soda-y, sugary beverage, or it'll be saying that one company makes, one Starbucks makes dark roast, and Pete's Coffee makes another type of dark roast, but they're both dark roasts, so let's see what else do I have after this, oh, so here, here is where things get interesting and confusing for a lot of people, which I always get confused to, so here on this side, the left hand side is the iCloud logo, so iCloud is Google's cloud where you would save your files, where on Apple devices you save your contacts, your iMessaging, everything that is linked to your Apple ID, you could save to this magical cloud, or you don't have to save it to them, and you get to keep everything on your iPhone, and here in the middle is the triangle of Google Drive, so Google, does that call their cloud, a cloud, they call it Google Drive, so everything goes in there, and here on the right is the OneDrive, OneDrive, yes, OneDrive, Microsoft OneDrive, and this is where all the Microsoft, if you ever want to save things to cloud, this is where it is, so before I can, let me back up and what is a cloud, so things in the tech, with technology, you, before, before we were so connected to the internet, everything could be saved onto your computer, that's very traditional, like you can save, file, save, save on your desktop, and it lives there on your desktop, right, and or you have, and if something happens to that computer or that desktop, one day you spill a coffee on it, you cannot get that, and your computer doesn't turn on anymore, then that's kind of the end of it, because whatever you saved was saved onto that desktop, and it's stuck there, unless you're able to fix it, then you'll be able to retrieve that document or that file of whatever it is, but with cloud, with clouds or with cloud storage, you're able to save it onto a magical server far away from here, and we just use the euphemism of calling it a cloud, and those things get saved where then you can access anywhere, for example, if I put a Word document, Microsoft Word document on OneDrive, and I decide to work from home today, I could be at home, I could log into my OneDrive, and I could be able to either work on it online, or download it, and then work on it on my desktop at work, same thing for Google Drive, I believe for iCloud, yes, depending on the device that you're opening it with, so it's kind of thinking of saving things locally versus saving things on the cloud, both have its good and bad points, there's always an issue of storage for both, and then paid storage is another question, okay, let's see, so this is a good picture I found of what the equal system was a while ago, and it pulls into different things, for example, with here, you'll see Apple, you see that it's not just about their devices and software, so Apple, they have Siri, iTunes, which doesn't exist anymore, it's Apple Music, Apple TV, HomeKit is the products of things that you can use online, sorry, that attach server-exploit, like when they have smart plugs, or devices that turn on based off of your location, Apple Watch, iPhones, Macs, MacBooks, Apple Health, Apple Pay, so this is all their product of things that they have, that people know, and then if we go to the next circle, the green circle, this is Google, so you see that this, every ecosystem has their own version of an item, excuse me, and depending on who you're using, some of them will talk nicely to each other and play nicely with each other, for example, like if you're on iPhone, you can access Google Drive, you could download a Google, or GPay or Google Wallet, you can use YouTube Music, and if you're on Apple, you could also use, you could use, oh Microsoft Wallets doesn't exist, you could use these products on an Apple device, this is an older, I took this from a blog, but if you're on a Microsoft or Google device, that's kind of harder this way, so open, open, close system, and now let's go to the questions, I think I'm going to take questions from Michael, who's been monitoring the chat first. So Alan, there was a question on one of the slides, there was two numbers in the Apple OS window, what were the two numbers? The Apple OS window, let me go look at that really quick, let's go, let me share screen and we'll look at it together, let's see, the two numbers, the OS screen, the two numbers, this one, okay, so sorry, do you see this, yeah this is covered too, basically it's just, this is a fancier logo, or an older logo, where there was a 3D logo, and then this is their logo as it is, most likely if you see it on an iPhone, I'll show you this right now, let me show you this, let me show you this on the website, so this is Apple's website, their suite is called iWork, so here, this is their logo numbers, it's the same thing, it's just that with, if you've realized that the design aesthetic, the design aesthetics of the world has become simpler, if you really think about the US, think about the newspaper USA Today, how it used to be an actual globe, and now it's just a blue circle, so it's kind of the same thing with that, how we went from, we went from, we went from this, or it's here where it has like bar graphs coming out of the numbers page, or the numbers to this green thing, so it's the same thing, that's why there's two numbers, you'll see that it's just numbers twice, it's just the same app, just an older app design of that, hopefully that's kind of okay, let's go with the next question, Michael, hopefully. So there's a question on like the monthly purchase of iCloud, does it go to my MacBook or my iPhone? Okay, let me try to find you guys, okay here you go, so your iCloud is attached to your Apple ID, so I'm going to open this really quick, you guys see my desktop, right? Perfect, okay, so I'm going to type in iCloud, so as long as your Apple ID is on your iPhone and on your MacBook, that will go towards the same thing, you share it across all your Apple devices, so like yeah, so here you'll see the picture of the three devices that Apple is showing, as long as you are logged into the same Apple ID, you'll have it available on your iPad, your iPhone, iPad iPhone here, same thing, MacBook, iPad iPhone, so as long as you're logged in with the same Apple ID, they will know it and they will make sure you get that paid space. Perfect, is there another question, Michael? So do you have any comments on LibreOffice, like writer, calculator, and press, like on the Linux platform? Oh I don't, I actually don't use any Linux Office Suite items, I also do know that I'll tell you this, for people who there's a whole set of free Office Suite items, that's not Google, like LibreOffice, you could use that too, it's totally free, but I personally don't have an experience on Linux, so I cannot answer that, I'm sorry. Perfect, is there another, I'm trying to go back and see where you left off, Michael. So why would someone only save to the cloud? Why would somebody only save to the cloud, that's a very good question, I will answer this personally, for example I use a Google Chromebook, there is no local space on this Chromebook, so I have to save everything on my, actually no I don't have to, the majority of my files are saved on the cloud and I can access them on my work PC, my work Microsoft item, it's really up to you, I don't want to open Pandora's box, but I'm going to open it right now, there's always a security issue of saving things to the cloud, just like saving things onto your desktop is always security issues also, but for me it's an accessibility issue, if I forget my, if you have it saved locally on a laptop and you forget your laptop and you forget to bring it to work, you might not have access to that file you're looking for, well if I save it to my one cloud, if I save it to Google Drive, if I save it to OneDrive and I forget my laptop, whether it's a MacBook or a regular PC, I can still access that, whether on a computer at work, whether I'm on my phone, I will be able to access that file because it's saved onto the cloud, so that's, that's, that's, that's my look on that, so should a person do both? A person can do both if you would like to do so, you could save a file locally and save one on your cloud, I would be very wary of this too, but because what happens is that you can't remember which one you're working on and you update one and you forget to update the other and then you have to present this or you have to turn it into your boss and then you're like, oh I sent in the wrong one, so be mindful of that, it is a, it is a good item, it is a good thing to back things up and put, you know, have another one, but be mindful, be very wary of which one you're working on, so when you do click save you remember, oh I updated my iCloud version one or update my Google version one, let me save one copy on my computer, that is the updated one, I will also say that it's also like some people want to keep different versions of it, like hey, maybe I worked on this until today, I'm going to save this version on my computer and then work on it next week, maybe I'm going like, oh I didn't like what I did this whole week, I want to go back to last week's version and then you have a copy of it on your computer, so yeah, that's that. So there's a question, like juggling devices from different platforms like Macs, laptop and Android phone, amongst for example. So this is a good question, so Bookmark itself, so what you can do, so like I said before Apple is a closed system and you can't get Safari on a PC, but what you can do is you could use an open system application on a closed system device, so you could use Google Chrome, the browser on your Apple device, so that those bookmarks will be saved to Google Chrome, so when you're using Google Chrome on your iPhone, those bookmarks are saved there and when you open Google Chrome on your PC or your MacBook at home, it'll still be there, some people don't like using Google devices, which is perfectly fine, you could then use, choose a different one, Firefox, Firefox also offers logins, so you can have a Firefox, Firefox is itself, it's not part of an ecosystem, you could use Firefox browser account on your Apple device and then on your PC at home and then that will be able to cross over to both platforms, the closed and open system without having to be part of Google or Apple, it's totally up to you, but when you work in Apple and it's a closed system, it's also a wonderful experience I believe, I've experienced it before too, so I know with Safari, if you're looking at Safari, which is Apple's web browser, for example you are on the bus, you're browsing the internet on Safari and then you get home, you open your iPad and you open Safari on your iPad, you'll see on the bottom, this is your Safari page you're on on your iPhone and you click on that and then it brings to exactly the same page you're looking at on your iPhone, this is also the same for Google Chrome I believe, a lot of the systems are kind of mimicking each other, so they're all trying to have this seamless experience, so yeah, that's kind of my answer, use a software or part of an ecosystem that lets you cross over different platforms. Yes, I'm looking at other questions, Michael, do you have any more? That's as much as I see so far, so right now it should be a good time for you to unmute if I didn't get to your question or if you have any questions. I hear somebody, you're kind of light though. Yes, can you go a little closer to the microphone? I did. Okay, my question is how about the neighbor office which is a Linux platform, they also have writer, calculation, interest, what's your comments on this? So I don't have any comments actually because I haven't used the Linux Office Suite, I stay within Office 365, Office 365 is what we use for our work, so I'm in this suite, I also use Google Suite here, but I have not personally have any experience with the Linux Suite of Libre Office, I know it's also free, but I personally don't, I can't make any comments on it because I haven't used it. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Okay, may I ask my second question? Yes, please. Yeah, this question about the security, so expansion a little bit in your presentation, and how after we upload the files to the cloud servers, iCloud or Google, how secure is the cloud server? And after you upload, you are not ownership of your files anyway, right? So with all these tech devices, I mean with a lot of these companies, it's kind of security, everybody will, security is part of a main part of their business model because if you think about it, why would Apple or Google or Microsoft provide a cloud or provide a service where it's not safe? So if I'm going to be uploading my documents and somebody's going to steal it, then I would not use their product anymore. So security is always a concern when anything is dealt with online, whether it's online banking, it's kind of like, how do you know your online bank is secure? Because they want you to trust them with your money. So it's the same thing with an Apple product, they want you to trust them with your files. So they're going to make sure that their device or their iCloud is secure. There is debate about things that when you put it on the cloud, whether it's actually yours or not. For example, I know with Google, it's kind of like a learning process. The more with all artificial intelligence, the more you put into it, the more it learns about you. So your pictures, they might be scanning them and looking at them, which I personally don't find a problem with, but some people do find a problem with. It makes a great personalized experience because they help me group my pictures together. It's kind of like Facebook. When you upload things to Facebook, they'll be like, hey, I'm going to tag this person as Michael for you because you took a picture and I think it's Michael. Do you want to tag this person as Michael? So yeah, it's security itself is a large, large question, but I will say that if they don't make it secure, then they don't have a business model. Just hear the follow-up, then I'm off. So encryption, so basically encryption, what it is, is that when you put your own, it's kind of putting your own, layman's term, putting your own lock on a file. Only you can unlock this file. So I'm going to put a locked file into the cloud. So if somebody does hack into your cloud, even if they have it, they won't be able to open it. Then it depends on how safe your encryption is or how hard it is to break your encryption. So it's an extra layer of security, if you wanted to say that. Oh, Alan, does the library have anything that could help our users kind of stay up to date on the technology devices or the softwares? Yeah, I see. Oh, I see your hair from Robert. Hi, Robert. Thank you. So I would continue. We usually have various different types of programming we have, whether you'll see me and you'll see Michael. We teach various topics, whether it's sort of Google Photos.  I would use, I was going to say Linda, LinkedIn Learning. There's a lot of resources that are free with their library card, whether it's scale courses, whether it's Udemy, whether it's LinkedIn Learning. They will go into depth about these items, whether it's an encryption. There's classes on encryption. What is encryption? So those will go into a much deeper depth because it's a multi-hour course and they will go over with that with you. And how do you stay up to date? How do I stay up to date? Personally, it's part of, for me, Google News, reading the news, and it's also part of being interested, I guess. For me, I will keep up more with Android devices. I personally use Android. My family uses Apple devices, so I kind of have to be updated on that too because my parents will ask me, like, how do you fix this? And I'm like, I don't know. Let me read about it. So having a sense of, I guess, having it around you, I read the news. There's a lot of different tech blogs, whether they'll focus just on iOS software or they'll talk about Apple hardware. That's how I keep up to date. I see something that just popped up. Let's see. Numbers tutorial in the library. I'm going to, let's look at the screen. Are you guys looking at my screen? Michael, nod your head, yes? Yes. Let's look at, I'm going to look at SFPL.org. I'm going to see if we actually do have a numbers tutorial because that's the first question I've actually heard of that. Let's go to our website. Perfect. Okay. Let's look on this together. Let's look for a numbers tutorial. E-learning. And then let's go to LinkedIn learning. Get started. I'm going to see what is my library card number. And I don't know that off the top of my head. Let's do another one then. Let me just do this. LinkedIn learning. Number, Apple numbers. A lot of time, the funny thing with ecosystems is that they like to put their name in front of it so people don't get confused at what it is. Let's see. Oh, there is. So LinkedIn learning does have a numbers essential class. So you can ignore this. It's free with your library card. So go to the SFPL website, log in, and you should find this numbers essential class free with your library card. Let's see. Learn everything you need to know and analyze and present data with numbers, the powerful spreadsheet application built into Mac OS. So if you choose to use numbers, they do have courses available. I strongly recommend LinkedIn learning. It's free with your library card. How long is this course? It doesn't say how long this course is. It should be near the middle. You might not be seeing it because you're not logged in. Yeah, I'm not logged in. That's probably why. But this is a class that teaches you numbers. I would... Yeah, that's that.