Obsolete technology - some old, some almost new!

[dpson]

I recently gave my dad's slide rule to my younger son, he was quite intrigued about how it works. It is a pretty amazing tool.

[Jeff_H]

I am now 53. I have a few mechanical drafting tools I had to buy in College around 1987-88. I've never used that stuff in a professional way. I was doing some CAD mechanical drafting as a intern for a company at the same time and we were using AutoCAD on PC AT 286 and later 386 computers. The 386 had a 40MB drive! I have a slide rule, possible the same KE model in the bottom of the array in Gary's picture but don't have a clue how to use it (I did find the 100+ pg manual someplace online). It was acquired for $2 or something just as a display item. I still use my HP 28S calculator I paid $200 for in 1989. Does not get used much anymore though and I don't remember how to do 1/2 the stuff I used to use it for in college as we use other analysis tools at work so hand calculators don't see much use.

5-1/4 floppies > 3-1/2 floppies > USB flash sticks. And, the flash sticks keep getting bigger. I think I have a old one that is 256MB around someplace and others that are 32GB.

My current work issued laptop does not have a CD/DVD drive on it. Those are sort of going away now in favor of downloads from the internet if you need software, etc. I have a 1992 computer at home with the 5 & 3 drives on it that works if I need to do that for some reason, but not likely.

I do actually have cassettes, some vinyl, VHS tapes and the working gear to play them on. 8 tracks were on the way out by the time I was old enough to care. I have a DVD player someone gave me but I think I used it once. I don't watch much "TV" or movies.

A few weeks ago I grabbed a piece of equipment from the lab storage to check out something and this gear, about 10-12yrs old used a "CF" card for data storage where the newer ones are all "USB" flash. I think that gear sitting around due to that "obsolete" CF card as nobody has a reader on their laptop. I happened to have a card and reader at home I brought in so I could use that gear and get my data off it. The CF card was pulled out of a vintage HP digital camera I found in the recycling a few years ago. It works fine (the camera) for what it is but was I am sure tossed as obsolete.

[Jeff T.]

Somewhere in the grand mass that is my home library I have a book on how to use a slide rule. I bought the book for around a dollar along with a arm load of books and tech manuals at a used book shop near Lake Havasu decades ago.

[studegary]

I have all but one of the items that Gary A. mentions (the paper tape).
I also have some other items, like silicon wafers from 1 inch up to 500 mm.
I have a 33 1/3 recording of Bonneville runs in 1963/1964, among other records.
The slide rule reminds me of about 30 years ago when I was asked to speak at a high school. I forget the exact reason, but it was science related. During my talk, I pulled out my 5 inch K & E log-log duplex, decitrig slide rule and said that not only the students probably didn't know what it was, but that their parents probably didn't know how to use it (it was a talk to students and parents).
K & E used to have a factory here in Dutchess County, NY.
I have one of those dial telephone locks. For awhile, I had an office adjacent to a cafeteria at IBM. In the morning my desk and office was a mess from second and third shift workers using it to eat their lunch and talk on my phone. The phone lock got them to relocate to another office (someone else's problem). Before too long, I got to where I had an office with a lock on the door.

[Dick LeRoux]

Signed on to work road construction during the summer of 1973. Walked into the job shack & the foreman asked if I could read a slide rule.
Yessir, no problem.
-Good, you're now an engineer.
And so can my brother. I blurted out seeing as he was standing next to me.
-Alright, he's now an engineer.
Kinda fibbed on that one but I gave him a crash course that night and we spent the summer sampling soils, weighing the the content, and filling in the data in report books vs. shoveling dirt, spreading concrete, and hot blacktop on 12 hour shifts. We still worked the 12 hours but it was far less tiring than the other laborers and as engineers we got paid $1.00 more per hour.

[Son O Lark]

I wonder how many of us know how to use the Ame's Lettering Guide in post #1 without looking it up on Google.

[t walgamuth]

I still have most of my old drafting stuff around, including a drafting table with a 6' top. I must have 8 of the old triangular scales.

[57pack]

We have a pair of rotary phones still in service. They do really baffle the grandkids!
I still have my Remington portable typewriter from college days. I used it extensively back in those years. It still works well just needs a new ribbon set. And that search should prove interesting!

[Bob Andrews]

Just saw this thread, interesting. I have a few obsolete items of my own, albeit not as sophisticated as some. Off the top of my head are my Binks 7 paint gun that I used over 25 years, and some tools my dad and I used together, chief among them a Gray Mfg. air operated bumper jack. It was a big purchase when dad bought it for the Sinclair gas station in 1973. It still has the bent handle I gave it when it was almost new, lifting the back of a 1967 Imperial convertible outside the garage in the steeply sloped hill Lesson learned the hard way at 12 years old...

[studegary]

Just saw this thread, interesting. I have a few obsolete items of my own, albeit not as sophisticated as some. Off the top of my head are my Binks 7 paint gun that I used over 25 years, and some tools my dad and I used together, chief among them a Gray Mfg. air operated bumper jack. It was a big purchase when dad bought it for the Sinclair gas station in 1973. It still has the bent handle I gave it when it was almost new, lifting the back of a 1967 Imperial convertible outside the garage in the steeply sloped hill Lesson learned the hard way at 12 years old...

There were only 577 1967 Imperial convertibles built. I had a 1967 Crown Coupe, one of 3235, for nine years and we really liked the car. A friend had a 1968 convertible.

[Bob Andrews]

I still remember that car, maroon with black top and black leather, and of course that wood dash veneer. I also remember that the wood was already starting to crack and pucker.

[studegary]

I still remember that car, maroon with black top and black leather, and of course that wood dash veneer. I also remember that the wood was already starting to crack and pucker.

Mine was about 13 years old when I sold it to a dealer in Utica, NY. The wood and leather was still excellent in mine, but of course it was kept up by a car person and always garaged from new.

EDIT: The dealer was Chick Capra. I believed that he owned a couple of used car lots. Strange things that I remember after all of these decades. I also sold him my 1968 Corvette convertible. I bought a 1973 Spring Special Satellite coupe from him.

[Bob Andrews]

Car people find it easier to remember cars. I can remember hundreds of different cars we had growing up in the car business. Today I’ll see a car at a show and I will randomly remember one that dad sold that was like it. In particular, most cars have their own signature smell, and a reasonably well-kept example will still have that smell. So I go around smelling the interior of old cars :-) it really brings me back.

[Rosstude]

This thread spoke to me, as I'm in the middle of a move and clearing out room by room.
We love our rotary phones, they just sound good, and feel so good in the hand. My wife loves her pink princess phone, and I like the look of the big black Bell systems phone on the desk.
The floppy disks, old digital cameras, and VCR tapes on the other hand, have served their purpose, and have gone.

Being a true CASO, I've become a cable cutter, and no longer have a land line. This gizmo may be of some interest, I now can use my rotary phones via Bluetooth,

http://www.myxlink.com/xlink_bttn.aspx

[Noxnabaker]

I'll never give up my Leicaflex, can even take pictures when the battery is dead.
& yeah, I'm a sucker fold old stuff, not "old stuff" but old stuff! & yep; I also had a Imperial once, a red -60 Crown coupe, one of the best cars I've had & one of those I regret that I sold.
My oldest guitar is a Noso from 1950, made in Finland by a guy named Noso, there's a facebook group for them but I'm not in it. It's a big fat guitar, no case I have is big enough. Never plays it anymore, have to many other guitar & sometimes I think I ought to sell it but it never seems to happen.
Oh, almost forgot my oldest thing: the tugboat from 1902, updated 1958 from steam to MaK.
& so on...