{"id":81,"date":"2008-04-01T15:51:19","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T23:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=81"},"modified":"2023-05-09T06:37:34","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:37:34","slug":"an-economic-fluke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":"An Economic Fluke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To-day's mail brings a catalogue from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.matelectronics.com\/\">MAT Electronics<\/a>.  I always enjoy going through their catalogues (though I fear that one day they will break my heart by offering the very <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motorola.com\/\">Motorola<\/a> chip that went-out in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mitsubishi-tv.com\/\">Mitsubishi<\/a> television set years ago, which I was unable to replace through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motorola.com\/\">Motorola<\/a>, through on-line parts dealers, or through Mission Hills Radio &amp; Television).<\/p> <p>Catalogue #117 presents one of the Mysteries of Capitalism.  On page 101, they are selling two <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fluke.com\/\">Fluke<\/a> multimeters, the Model 10 and the Model 12.  The description for the Model 12 declares<\/p> <blockquote>The Fluke Model 12 is everything the fluke model 10 is and much more!<\/blockquote> <p>What makes this claim interesting is that the Model 10 is priced at US$149.<em>50<\/em>, and the Model 12 at US$149.<em>95<\/em>.  So apparently the marginal cost of <em>much more!<\/em> is 45&#162;.<\/p> <p>In fact, the <em>explicitly described<\/em> additional functionality of the Model 12 is that one can hook it to the circuit and walk away, and the device will there&auml;fter record maxima and minima, noting the time of each.  That could indeed be a very valuable feature.  In any event, it's a feature worth <em>considerably<\/em> more than 45&#162; to a technician of almost any sort who would have been willing to pop for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fluke.com\/\">Fluke<\/a> meter in the first place.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To-day's mail brings a catalogue from MAT Electronics. I always enjoy going through their catalogues (though I fear that one day they will break my heart by offering the very Motorola chip that went-out in my Mitsubishi television set years ago, which I was unable to replace through Motorola, through on-line parts dealers, or through [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,66,4],"tags":[123,124,125],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-electronics","category-public","tag-fluke","tag-mat-electronics","tag-oddity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12130,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/12130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}