Vintage technology

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i like older smartphones and older game sytems. i love the ps1 and n64.

Electromechanical telephone exchanges are one of my favourite antique technologies. It's strange to think that only 30 years ago they provided the backbone of telecommunications networks in most developed countries and were still commonly encountered in smaller towns 20 years ago.

When you're my age, it's all vintage technology. Rotary phones with four-prong plugs. Typewriters. Carbon paper. Bubble forms. How things have changed!

The change in technology from the time I was a kid to the present has been dazzling and head spinning. I remember when my Dad (peace upon him) got a Freiden Calculator for his office (he was a C.P.A.) It was a cranking grinding electromechanical beast that must have weighed fifty pounds I could do arithmetic on number with 8 (count'em) digits. Which for accounting was quite adequate. It also cost over $250.00 dollars (1946 dollars!) which comes out to around three thousand dollars, current money.

He was so damned pleased to have it. He just loved his calculator. Now I carry around a fifteen dollar TI twelve digit hand computer would come out to under one 1946 dollar.

I have had the privilege of living during the most progressive 65 years in the history of technology. I love living in interesting times.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 15 Jan 2013, 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

assuming we don't all kill ourselves off somehow, we ain't seen nothin' yet!

A few vintage technologies from my primary school days.

1. Thermal copiers. They contained fewer parts than a photocopier and transferred the image using infra red. The original had to be in black ink and one sided. My school also had a stencil duplicator at the back of a closet but never used it during my time.

2. Dot matrix printers along with ribbons and the parallel port interface.

3. Video cameras with vidicon tubes before CCD replaced them. They were really heavy and connected to a video recorder using a circular multipole connector on the front panel.

4. Really old handheld games consoles like the Nintendo Game Boy and the Sega Game Gear.

5. A tool with a spike to punch holes in milk bottle tops that couldn't be used to stab kids with. Ingenious design but no idea what it is called.

6. Hi-Fi systems built into chipboard cabinets with glass doors.

7. Cars with carburettors and choke knobs that have difficulty starting at low temperatures.

i had a lot of those things not too long ago. i still have my game boy [tetris], but no real time to waste playing it, as i never could score above about 40,000. i used to have one of those old console [all-wood] stereos the size of refrigerators [turn on their sides]. some of them could really put out the bump which is amazing in that the engineering to prevent acoustic feedback must've been pretty solid.

Is anybody here able to use mathematical tables like square roots and trig functions? Lots of universities provided mathematical tables to undergrads in exams as recently as 10 years ago despite the face that only a handful of students knew how to use them and most came from underdeveloped countries.

A table is just a way of representing a function. I should think read a log table or a table for the trig functions should be obvious.

One can also use linear interpolation for values that fall between the tabulated values.

ruveyn

I am in to old and unique laptops like a Pentium 1 Hitachi with a Built in Dial-up Modem / 10Mbps Ethernet socket

another thing I am into lately are these
LaserDiscs
[img][800:450]http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-qAQeXS0Vi2c/UPuy6Z6NSKI/AAAAAAAAAeE/jw8biTArzj0/s1440/IMAG0037.JPG[/img]
One in Image is StarTrek The Undiscovered Country
I also have on laserdisc are Lethal Weapon 2 and Jurassic Park the Lost World.

laser discs are pretty.

there are a few I am looking for and may have to breakdown and get from ebay that is Tron Classic, Star Wars Collection THX Certified, Hackers, Die Hard, and maybe a few others

I have a collection of vintage and obsolete media including some oddities like 3 inch floppy disks; magneto-optical disks used to store images on medical equipment; U-Matic video cassettes; and various machine specific ROM and data cartridges.

i have an old-fashioned surgical hand drill machined out of titanium. a jewel of a gem of a tool.

Oh Lordy! Your description produced (momentarily) an adolescent stiffening in the groin. I used to collect catalogs of high grade top dollar tools and instruments that only highly funded scientific enterprises could afford. Like the Edmonds catalogue. It was like teenagers looking at centerfold pictures of naked women. I just loved looking at the stuff and I felt a little sad that I could not afford to buy any of them. Even if I could afford it, I was not a research scientist and could not put them to proper use.

I wish someone would open up something like a lending library which would enable an admirer of high quality instruments to take a sample home and look at it for two weeks.

ruveyn

^ If that was available, I'd have a Curta out on permanent loan.
Never seen one and worse, never handled one - but after your posts and a spot of research I would really like one...
What a beautiful machine.
They're still available but alas, too expensive for me.