NO Autopilots In Columbia

* See also Technology_In_Columbias_Era
* See also Columbia_Era_Machines (Real)
* See also Finks_experiments (Humorous)
* See also Historic_Tech_Timeline
* See also Fink_The_Technological_Caveman
* See also Faux-Whatever
==Or Other Gamemaker Tech Ignorance==
Faux-Engineering/Faux-Technology ...
NOTE - EVEN IN RAPTURE -- THERE ARE NO EQUIVALENT 'AUTOPILOT' TO WHAT Infinite BS SHOWS ( A Similar impossible/unworkable thing would be 'Automatic' Bathyspheres, which did not (supposedly) simply ride down Rails/Cables )
THE MMORPG CAN FIX THAT
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Fink Stealing Technology to Use - Such Ignorant Presuming Writers ... :
The problem is : The further into the future, the harder it is to have all the required pieces ( materials/tools/techniques ) even when you know the design ( or think you do ) -- as ALL the involved underlying concepts may not even be understood at some primitive level. 
DON'T Just Do : Wave of the wand and then get on with having all the creepy doods for the Players to shoot. AND PLEASE Skip your faux-technical 'Splainin', which you cannot really do anyway.
Even if Fink STOLE the actual stuff through Tears, his operating of them is hard enough to do ( and certainly even harder would be the repairing/maintaining all the things ).
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BTW - With all his Tear Machine Usage : The more exposure Fink got ... Why didn't he Age too ? Also, with more and more interactive use, it became 'all the more likely' someone on the Other Side of the Tears is gonna grab HIM. ( Superior Plot : Nazis Steal the Tear Machine and Win WW2 Nazis Steal the Tear Machine and Win WW2 : See Alternate Alternates ... - Hey, Good Work Luteces - Destroying the World ... THAT could have been the Shock part of the game story. )
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( Fountain Pens existed already 1636 - described in a magazine )
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Far too Advanced Tech - a glitzy looking effect for a game that was little more.
A static Slide is one thing ...
A giant puppet mechanism maybe ?
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Compute-U-Lators in Columbia ?? Yeah ..... NO. :
Automatic Auto Pilot ready to fly you to Paris ... Uh No.
TV Screens in Columbia's/Finks control room ... Uh No.
Live Projection of the Big Brother Comstock face ?? ... Sorry, NO.
A Retro Com-pu-ter (?) 'screen' for Infinite BS time/technology would look like typed paper output held in a frame or a large projector 'slide', if not a telegraph ticker tape. Too many SteamPunk-crafter Computer "mods" use a LCD screen, which is way too much of an anachronism. Yes they WANT them to function for a "Steam Punk" picture/presentation, but a more Retro mechanical overlay could be done to cleverly approximate period technology use - OR some weird metaphysical ghost writing, or somesuch. 
Printing Telegraphy typewheel tape printers were developed around 1910, and the keyboard Teletype about 10 years later. So, unless we are to believe these things were developed in Columbia ( along with 20000+ other needed anachronistic things - which BTW is virtually impossible for more than a tiny fraction of those, outside of Bad Fantasy ) any such mechanism would be stolen from a Tear ( which is fantasy enough, thank you very much ... ). Of course an operator listening to telephone messages working a special Stencil typewriter to 'cut' the page/image-slide - Which would then go to a projector ( or maybe for big banners - printed on a diesel-powered super-typewriter ) might be done at a few key installations. It is unlikely to be any simple 'personal' system with such primitive technology.
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Rapture might've used a teletype mechanism for bottom-of-the-screen moving TV text, and certainly for printing 'News Boards' a TV camera would be pointed at. So Rapture (using TV) could replicate text output and being accessible by every home/bar/workplace/office. "Scroll Boards" with repeated News Updates for those generic/public 'informative' TV channels would be logical.
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Awful Retro Technology - 'Cuz' It Is For The "Story" :
This HERE Explanation serves to Thwack the Idea of 'automatic' anything in Columbia ( Let alone a Faux-Blimp Autopilot ) :
An electronic computer you think ?? Yeah ..... NO !!!. Fink couldn't steal it, OR him or any other person there Understand It ( If ever they did steal such things ). It is Like Caveman Fink being handed a Smartphone - completely mysterious, and he can't even read it to start to use the near-idiot-proof interface - He MIGHT just 'shove it up his butt'. 
Fixing/repairing or duplicating it ?? Forget that. Integrating it to the rest of the Blimp ??? No Fricken Way !!! ( Parts/tools/knowhow/the-rest-of-the-neede-shit ?? Just don't exist ... )
SO then some mechanical solution ?? This was the time adding machines were being developed. But adding machines aren't computers. So maybe some other likely mechanism from history :
Babbage's Analytical Engine pix?, even if built smaller still, would still weigh MANY MANY tons ( Yeah !! Put it in a 'Zeppelin' ... RIIIIIIGHT ) AND fill much of the interior with pretty whirling machinery (easy animations). In any case, it would NOT be very fast -- at all - good thing navigation Calculations don't need to be particularly fast. 
(( Oh Quantumz can lift anything, then why the hell design these sad benighted 'Zeppelin' craft the way they are seen ??? ))
fix as ref
BTW - A major problem with Babbage's (real) Analytic Engine design was : Its "Programming" having to be organized within 3 different sets of 'Card Stack' readers ( Babbage's design employed a "Jacquard Loom" type card mechanism to control the machines operations ). This design made it quite clumsy to build/create programs. OK, that can be corrected with a little knowhow. The design also doesn't have a Cardpunch which might feed back into the ( now redesigned as single ) program Card Reader ( or a second one designed to contain Data "Memory" ). That's a feature which would vastly increase the machine's data holding - Well past the designs already (VERY) cumbersome mechanical temporary-value registers. Other shortcomings make for many other limitations of this type of mechanical machine ( which would at least be WITHIN the technical horizon of Fink & his minions' abilities, if not skill/genius ).
A more specifically built Mechanical ( calculation but NOT control ) system would likewise be humongous. Perhaps ONE at best something to guide ALL OF COLUMBIA ( located in "Columbia Central Control" ), and it still requiring operators - *NOT* anything automatic. But then WHO ( what experts onboard this floating cult compound ) would Develop/Design/Build this complex monstrous thing, AND integrate it to operate the steam-era technology of the rest of Columbia ??? I doubt the game's Quantumz Bullshit could turn people into mechanical geniuses (( OR that anyone that brilliant would fall for Comstock's BS Creepy Cult Religion or Radical Social ideas, or allow themselves to be cutoff from the rest of the World )). BUT This would be Levine Absurd-o-Fantasy storytelling, so no problem really ...
This of course is STILL disregarding the issues of gyroscope mechanisms or celestial (optical) readings REQUIRED for actual navigation tasks to be done ( A whole 'nuther sets of modern technology for the Caveman to scratch his butt in confusion and in consternation about ).
(( Above is a key aspect which makes so much of the Infinite BS game utter FANTASY - and POOR Fantasy at that. It is beyond fantasy because they, over and over, simplistically link parts of the game to horribly complex things in the Real World --- to the point of it being ludicrous and illogical AND SO FEEBLE -- EVEN FOR FANTASY. Simply put : 'its crap' ))
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Miniaturization ( massive machinery to something you can fit in a breadbox ? ) ?? Angels 'dancing on head of a pin' stuff ? Lets not go there. (( ADAM-enhanced genius squirrels with abacus, adding machine and lil chalkboard ? Tho funny, and more logical than the game, it would still be too stupid (for us). ))
See [|Clockwork Fantasy]
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Heavy Metal :
Analytical Engine ( Babbage's never-built mechanical computer monster ) needs to be something less than 4 tonnes for it to work in a practical way, as for that improbable autopilot on that The Lady's Floater ( or ANY of the other Zeppies ) ... (( You may have heard a machine of Babbage's was built, but that was the "Difference Engine", which is usable only for a very narrow/limited type of Calculation, and was NOT any kind of General Purpose Computer. He did have plans for a Generalized Computer, but THAT would be truly HUGE )))
A simple Vacuum Tube computer wouldn't be that much less cumbersome ( except that it might work ). Though for some 'Autopilot', with which you might "dial-in" a destination Longitude+Latitude, it is something only from military tech of the 1960s or even the 1970s. ( Likewise for the needed mechanisms that automatically track/determines your CURRENT position required for such 'Autopilot' function ). Far too advanced.
They never mention Tear-Stealing of such things from the far future. ( Maintaining such things makes Stealing any such thing an unworkable solution. )
SO did Jeremiah Fink kidnap Dr Daystrom from the Duotronic Institute of Cygni Alpha 3 ( Star Trek Universe ... ) to learn how to make such a device ? Or is that 'Autopilot' just a fake (con job) mechanism used to dupe/impress inhabitants who are not allowed to leave Columbia anyway ??? Nothing says that all these things actually worked - Just had to SEEM to work for Fink to be paid and to get the Accolades he so desired (( He's kinda like the Sander Cohen of Columbia, isn't he ? ))
Could have been one of the 'Handyman' type things -- with some creepy midget/cripple trapped in a machine who knows how to use a sextant and has some maps 'handy' ( as Bugs Bunny used to say "Eh, Its a Living ..." ).
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I saw one of the modern-built (real) Difference Engines ( an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions - used to generate encyclopedia sized 30+ digit mathematical tables ) actually working a few years ago at a Museum. That mechanism, of course, employs a SINGLE dedicated algorithm, and not a 'general Purpose' calculating machine like Babbage's proposed MUCH larger/complex Analytical Engine design would have been. It also literally weighed TONS. It was also horribly slow ( but still 3 magnitudes faster than a man manually doing the same calculating, and done WITHOUT mistakes ). Note - that particular machine WAS NOT capable of doing the required Navigational Calculations, but something of that type might have been made similar for that task ( would probably then weigh about 25 tonnes ). Later Analog-type computing mechanisms existed, but were more like calculators and far from being 'automatic' -- Where you merely 'dial-in' destination coordinates. (( But what do a bunch of hack fantasy game writers care about realities of such things when they can simply use their magic 'Quantumz' as a crutch to justify anything ?? )).
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Even in Rapture's Time such mechanisms were mostly Analog based technology.
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Is this the autopilot ( some simpler one -- NOT one requiring 'celestial navigation' nor complex 'gyroscopes' with a computer calculator ) for that systems which takes latitude and longitude in the 'zeppelin' - Which they imply in Infinite BS ? Sorry, NO See "Clueless game makers and their careless artists" .
Did we ever see Columbia's (the whole city's) "bridge" and Captain's Chair ??  It would need something to guide it as it moved about the World, no ? At least seeing the multi-ton mechanical calculator required to do the required calculations and all of its control circuitry ? ( Might even fit it into a game sub-plot ?? )  Something like it might be able to just fit in those 'Zeppelins' too. ( Oh, that's right, also the sections of Columbia fly around individually - So ADD also to each of them all the crap needed to make THAT Process/Function work too ).
Of Course a similar Columbia/Fink-Era type mechanism ( whatever THIS would be ) would have wires, relays and contacts a huge 5 times larger, making it all at least twice (or more) as big in all dimensions. (( Is this the guts of one of those "Duke and Dimwit" machines ?? Expensive, No ? )) Stealing Devices Thru Tears : See how much stealing bits and pieces through Tears would have gone so far to explain all these things they show in the game - Things with no logical explanation given - You know, even just Vague hints at explanations which indicate that the writers actually understood ANYTHING about how Real Things NEED to work, and not just shove them off with some lame 'cuz' explanation .............. Such Fantasy shit doesn't help when they are trying to link Columbia to some intended 'social relevancy' with America around 1900. Such Hack Writing is Such a Shame. 
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Hmm, relays, switches, gears, belt driveshafts ... (no electronics), perhaps a Do-It-Yourself  Mini-game thing for the MMORPG. ( More something just to get a Bathyspheres to steer straight, rather than to 'guide it' auto-magically ).
OR is this the control unit for Ryan's Animatronic Dummy version of himself which Jack 'killed' ? ( Seems alot of work )
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The display is OK.
BUT Notice that those levers and knobs control sequence DON'T correspond to a proper Latitude/Longitude setting mechanism ( THOSE Knobs Should be H xx H xxx values - The artist didn't care to even be consistent ). : THE LEVER CONTROL is obviously WRONG : N/S, digit, E/W, digit, digit, digit, digit ( that doesn't match the indicator above it )
So even the 'artist' HAS NOT A CLUE about the organization of that type of input for a control ( This seems PAR for so much in the sub-par game ... ) -- (( IT IS JUST MORE INATTENTION TO DETAIL OR ANY ACTUAL CARE FOR DETAIL ))
 "These 'Artists' - Even when they have their "AutoPilot" - THEY F^CK IT UP" - Neil deGrasse Tyson 
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With Tech like this LONG AFTER 1912 - This is how massive things were controlled.
Wave Of the Hand Fantasy is OK, unless you are trying to link it to the REAL Historic World in some way to have some relevancy for the Players.
When You Do Nostalgia - It helps to 'Do Your Research' and not just 'Wing It' - OR IT JUST TURNS INTO A BUNCH OF LAZY-ARSED SHIT
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Yes, Whatever the hell this is. Some kind of power thing ... Electro (Shock Jockey ) ? Freeze Crystals ? Quantum Aquarium with Genetically altered electric eel ?? ( This thing we assume powers the "Automated Stallion". ) Note that ADAM was later Post-Game MADE the explanation for the magic-potion Vigors.
"It just looks good" is a poor reason to have things like this in a place pretending to be based on 'science'.
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Apparently, Columbia's Zeppelins are Electric Drive
Unfortunately bad things happen when you try to cut a live wire with a metal hand tool ( Charred Carbonized Booker .... )
Exposed wires are not a good idea either.
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