The older pages on this site are written to conform to the W3C HTML 3.2 standard, to insure compatability with most modern and not-so-modern browsers. As few people are still really using stone-age browsers, I've updated my coding standard to the more flexible W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional standard, although I don't usually set document encoding, as that used to be defined in the HTML standard. You may notice that most pages are independently verified for standards compliance using the W3C HTML Validation Service. I think people writing web pages should write for standards compliance, not for particular browsers. Of course, that means that my pages will work in any browser, but will look best in standards compliant browsers such as Opera, Mozilla, and Safari. Everything should work in Internet Explorer, but IE is not standards compliant, so I can't guarantee how things will look.
The
Roller Coaster Almanac was maintained using a suite of custom Applesoft
BASIC programs especially designed for the purpose. One of these programs generated
the text file that you can download from this site; another generated the data
file used by the World of Coasters. CoasterBuzz. Unfortunately,
the computers used to maintain the Almanac suffered catastrophic disk crashes,
and while the Almanac data is still intact, the database itself is pretty badly
damaged, and has not been updated in some time.
The little head shot of me that you click on to get to my main page was taken by an automatic camera on the Magnum XL-200 roller coaster at Cedar Point. Follow this link to see the original photo. The patent drawings are scans of photocopies of microfilm of the actual United States patent documents. Other than that, all of the photographs on this site were taken by and copyright by Dave Althoff, Jr., unless noted otherwise.
All text on this site is copyright 2000-2008, Dave Althoff, Jr., except as noted, and except for the patent documents which are, of course, owned by the United States Patent Office and by the patent holders and not subject to copyright.
All logos and trademarks are understood to be the exclusive property of the respective trademark holders.
While I do present some engineering details on this site, the information is presented to facilitate understanding. I am not a certified professional engineer, and it is very possible that I've missed something important. So if you are designing a critical system, please do not rely on this site for critical design data! Particularly since I will not assume any liability if you do!
While this site is hosted by Capital University, it is a personal web site. While there is some information here which applies specifically to Capital University, all of the material on this site was produced by Dave Althoff, Jr., who is solely responsible for its content. Opinions expressed are those of Dave Althoff, Jr., and are not necessarily (in fact are probably not!) those of Capital University.
I want to go back now...