I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.
An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.
If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.
That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.
Electromechanical stuff. Like old jukeboxes, pinball machines or anything else that required programming before the widespread use of microcontrollers.
Some people have already mentioned stuff akin to this, like the mechanical govenor, or the post abt THIS MUSEUM IS NOT OBSOLETE, but it really deserves its own thread.
Technology Connections on YouTube has made some great videos about devices like that.
Puts a smile in my face how my old tech appreciation thread sorta became a technology connections fandom thread by consequence.
It good
The internet
I dunno about you, but I have a hankering for the mid-to-late-80s aesthetic, but specifically that taken into sci-fi. I’m talking Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star etc. 80s tech but… Future!
Everything’s so chunky and functional. It looks like you could hit it with a sledgehammer and it would still work!
Basically, BUTTONS! Gimme buttons, lots of big buttons! I want things that go click so I can be sure I’ve pressed them. I don’t want a tiddly little touchpanel for my washing machine, I want a button that goes CLACK when I press it!
That’s extremely the aesthetic I love about cyberpunk. Sure the story in Blade Runner is great but look at all the neat shit!
Ooh, rotary phone switches. This YouTube channel (THIS MUSEUM IS NOT OBSOLETE) has a bunch of videos on them. I can only imagine how a massive exchange full of them must have sounded. They’re so satisfyingly mechanical.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKnS0AB2CTN_eu8k8rgaOW0PWFH2Qv9Ui
I was thinking the other day how much cooler flap displays at stations and airports were compared to modern displays.
Such a nice interface between computer control and a purely mechanical display. Watching them update, flipping through all the variables to land on the right one, and then clearing was so cool.
I miss the noise they made too. Haven’t seen one for like 20 years now.
You may like this rendition of bad apple then.
Indeed I do!
Clarke’s third law is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I have the notion that any technology becomes uninteresting and not cool once reaches the level of magic. We are tactile and inquisitive creatures, so objects that appeal to our hands and perceptions are cool. Once we can no longer grasp the parts, literally or metaphorically, they’re no longer alluring.
Phones, cars, screens, computers, anything. Why is Amiga HAM mode fascinating to many people still, even when they’re emulating it on a 32-bit-depth screen that can concurrently play high-quality video streamed over the Internet? That’s why.
At least for the Amiga it’s because its very simple to code on. Today when developing a game you need to depend onnso much shit and everything is a lot more complicated.
The internet when it wasn’t overtaken by a few major corporations.
What about taking it back?
I think it’s too late for that. It’s mainstream now and the sheeple are happy to be lead as long as they get to their mindless makeup tutorial.
I’m working on a decentralised “web”, you can have your own website of “facebook” page, 1995 style, for example, all controlled by yourself.
I used to be pretty into machine learning and AI generation circa 2018-ish. It used to be fun and surreal. Sites like artbreeder were a great novelty, and also a pretty good learning tool. Now that it’s “good” I feel that not only has a lot of the charm been lost, it’s become much easier for malicious actors to use it.
The original tv remote didn’t use batteries. It used sound. Giant clunky devices with large tactile buttons. Never runs out of batteries and still works if your kid tries to block the screen to keep you from turning it off
Those remotes used little spring-loaded mechanical chimes that emitted ultrasonic notes. As a kid I discovered my parents’ big Magnavox console stereo would change channels if I clinked a handful of coins.
How did it generate that sound without batteries? Was it literally the audio from the clicking of the buttons? Genuine questions.
edit: Thanks for the several answers. They all seem prone to interference, but it is nice that they worked without power.
The button pressed a spring-loaded thing that struck a piece of metal, almost like a wind chime, emitting an ultrasonic note. I discovered by accident that I could make my parents’ stereo change channels by clinking coins together.
lmao I vaguely remember these, wow that’s nostalgia
Oh man…I have an entire ten page paper on the go about this topic and it just keeps growing. One day I’ll publish it in a blog or something, but for now it’s just me vomiting up my thoughts about mass market manufacturing and the loss of zeitgeist.
The examples that I always use are a) Camera Lenses, b) Typewriters, and c) watches.
Mechanical things age individually, developing a sort of Kami, or personality of their own. Camera lenses wear out differently, develop lens bokehs that are unique. Their apertures breath differently as they age No two old mechanical camera lenses are quite the same. Similarly to typewriters; usage creates individual characteristics, so much so that law enforcement can pinpoint a particular typewriter used in a ransom note.
It’s something that we’ve lost in a mass produced world. And to me, that’s a loss of unimaginable proportions.
Consider a pocket watch from the civil war, passed down from generation to generation because it was special both in craftsmanship and in connotation. Who the hell is passing their Apple Watch down from generation to generation? No one…because it’s just plastic and metal junk in two years. Or buying a table from Ikea versus buying one made bespoke by your neighbour down the street who wood works in his garage. Which of those is worthy of being an heirloom?
If our things are in part what informs the future of our role in the zeitgeist, what do we have except for mounds of plastic scrap.
Old camera lenses are awesome. I’ve got some steel and glass rokkors that are beautiful. They render in such a wonderful way too, so painterly. They have thorium in the glass! Not enough to be sketchy to use but something that obviously isn’t done anymore. Bonus points that they can be fixed with a hammer.
Old camera stuff in general is subjectively cooler. The leaf shutters in my 4x5 lenses are incredible little machines. Film in general is cooler than whatever sensor the latest and greatest has. Actual bits of silver suspended in emulsion, with colour filters and dye couplers that react in development. There’s a great three part video on YouTube breaking down Kodak’s manufacturing process. It’s mind boggling that stuff even works. Ohhhh and actually darkroom optical prints! Don’t get me started there!
I’m going to develop some rolls I think. Got me in the mood.
I have a couple of 80s Rokkors that I use with a speedbooster on my lumix g9, a 50mm and a 35mm. Despite having to do some math in terms of converting things like focal length, etc… because of the adaptor, It’s WELL worth it.
Rokkors here as well! I still shoot them mostly with film, but I’m tempted to get an adapter for my Fuji. Don’t love the conversions though, stuck in my ways with focal lengths and it’s just weird when a 28 becomes a 42!
Just wanted to say thank you for writing this. Very cool take, that was so well written to get us on board for how and why “that old junk” has personality that is being lost.
Also
Damn.
Awww shucks. Thanks. I appreciate the compliment.
Damn.
Not much to say other than – “Damn.”
You’re right, though.
Toasters. Specifically the Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster, with the tag line “Automatic Beyond Belief!”. There is a fan site (https://automaticbeyondbelief.org/, excellent url). Like, what other appliance line has a fan site? Surely no modern day toaster!
But of course I first heard about it from Technology Connections video.
I think a lot of old school products worked better than modern equivalents. Take toasters - when I was a kid our toaster consistently made toast with the same degree of doneness. I’ve had modern ones that said “microprocessor controlled” on them that couldn’t make consecutive pieces the same. Also flashlights. Simple metal flashlights just worked. My new sophisticated one cycles through multiple levels of brightness and then strobing (so I can what, have my own rave?) but sudden motions make it spontaneously turn off. I mean how hard is an ON/OFF switch?
And what’s the deal with airline food? I’m thinkin’ hey!
My grandmother used to have one. I never realized how it worked before that video, but I was always fascinated by the fact that the bread would lower itself
I’d love a good toaster, do they stil exist or do you have to build your own?
They aren’t being made any longer but you can buy used ones. The channel in question (or his second channel maybe) goes over a process to make them a little safer for modern use (like using a polarized plug).
I guess, in a very liberal definition of the term, “cloud gaming”. Specifically the old LodgeNet systems in hotels where you could rent Nintendo games by the hour to be streamed to your room from a physical console somewhere behind the front desk. Every room had a special controller with oodles of extra buttons on it hardwired to the television that also functioned as television remotes.
The service was objectively awful, of course, when factoring in how much the hotel charged compared to what little you got for it. But I’ve always found it fascinating.
I MISS CLEAR COMPUTERS >:(
I mean LOOK AT IT it’s so much cooler than just a box!
The SteamDeck community has been cooking with some clear cases which I would buy if I didn’t have to risk breaking my beloved $500 indie machine.
The Switch Pro Controller is a little bit transparent which is cool.
I miss plastic electronics. Oddly enough glass and metal feel more fragile.
HTC knew what was up with the HTC One series. Their polycarbonate bodies felt Nintendo 64 controller levels of durable.
I’ve got a drawer that has a stack of my old phones and devices in it. Among them is the CD MP3 player I’ve had since high school. It’s 24 years old, made entirely of plastic, it followed me all the way through high school and part of the way through college, and it’s in perfect working condition and bears only light scuffs. It might be my midlife crisis coming on but I’m tempted to start using the thing again instead of my smart phone. My PC tower has a 5 1/4" bay, I’m tempted to install an optical drive in it.
I still move a 5.25" Blu Ray writer drive between machines. Just in case I want to rip or watch an old bluray.
Without it, we have to sit.and wait for the dusty Xbox One to update just so it let’s us play a bluray.
The Xbox One is so fantastically bad, the only reason it’s not in the garbage is because it’s not mine and the SO wants to save it
YEYEYEYEYEYEYE
One of my dream projects would be to get a dead iMac G3 and make a modern-day sleeper build inside it. It was honestly the COOLEST a computer has EVER looked.
I’ve still got original Mac from 1984 and have been mighty tempted to see what I could do with a raspberry pi
I bought the translucent nitro purple back plate. Very easy to install.
YOOOOO that purple one! I wonder how hard it would be to do this to mine… time to add this to the Christmas list lol
best of luck! the one in the photo is from the company JSAUX but I don’t know much about it, just thought it looked pretty
I like the look of vacuum-fluorescent displays (VFDs) – a high-contrast display with a black background, solid color areas. Enough brightness to cause some haloing spilling over into the blackness if you were looking at it. Led to a particular design style adapted to the technology, was very “high-tech” in maybe the 1980s.
OLEDs have high contrast, and I suppose you could probably replicate the look, but I doubt that the style will come back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_fluorescent_display
EDIT: A few more car dashboards using similar style:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/skillshare/uploads/session/tmp/50c99738
https://www.pinterest.com/hudsandguis/retro-car-dashboards/
And some concept cars with similar dash:
https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2022/retro-digital-dashboards
Some other devices using VFDs:
My kid’s car is like this. I’ve been calling it retro-futuristic, which I think is a pretty apt description.
Oh what kind of car? I’d love for this style to come back for a bit.
Suzuki Aerio SX. I can’t find a picture that shows the whole dash, but here’s part of it:
Many receivers and amplifiers still have VFDs to this day. I still wonder why, LCD has to be significantly cheaper.
They look cool as hell though, so I appreciate that they go the extra step.
As someone who also likes VFDs, I’ve fully expected that they’d be extinct in new products by now thanks to cheap LCDs and OLED. But I find it awesome that they’re still hanging in there.
Newer, but I quite like the gentle amber LCD (not LED) displays of my car. At night it’s bright enough and sharp enough without being visually loud. I wish more of these displays were still being made, I’d love to use them in car-centric Arduino projects and data displays that would be consulted at night or that sort of thing.
I always ask my friends “How the fuck do you live like this?” when I hop into a car and the music UI is a garish color searing itself into my retinas permanently.
Thankfully, advertising companies have identified this marginal comfort I find in the warm interior lighting of my car and have proceeded to mount insultingly blinding screens all over the city.
The city being the midrise urban sprawl north of Beirut. What do you mean regulations on brightness habibi? You think you live in Paris? Imagine this: half the street is unlit because the power is out, but the advertising company’s invasive bullshit budget™ has enough foreign cash to burn to keep generators running all night for these shitty ads. Gotta beam an extra few kilowatts of photons straight into this sleepy driver’s eyeballs while they operate a motor vehicle, on a highway that a lot of people cross by foot. There’s a special on fish at the fancy supermarket, how will I live without that knowledge?
Thankfully, the “state” of Israel has identified that the civilian structures of Lebanon mildly inconvenienced me, and has proceeded toNewer, but I quite like the gentle amber LCD (not LED) displays of my car. At night it’s bright enough and sharp enough without being visually loud. I wish more of these displays were still being made, I’d love to use them in car-centric Arduino projects and data displays that would be consulted at night or that sort of thing.
Not sure if you mean VFDs or amber LCDs, but Matrix Orbital sells both sorts in small quantities that you’d use in a project and can interface to a microcontroller – I was interested in them myself when looking for small VFDs, years back. They’re going to be segmented alphanumeric or grid displays, though, not things with physical custom display elements like those car dash things, but that’s kinda part and parcel of small-run stuff.
https://www.matrixorbital.com/
https://www.matrixorbital.com/blc2021
Just choose the “amber” option if it’s an amber LCD you want.
Can also get their displays via Mouser or Digikey.
That’s exactly the kind of display I’m talking about. Nice to see they’re still around.
The ones I have are all just grids, higher resolution than these but still comfortingly blocky. I’ve actually replaced the dash display recently since the original one got deep fried under the sun and lost all contrast when the weather was above 20°C.
Ah, good to hear it. They do (or did, and I assume still do) also have higher res displays.
Going back to an earlier bit in the conversation, where you were concerned about light sources in the car, I think that auto-dimming might also help (not just with VFDs, but the brightness of any in-car display). My car dash has the option to automatically set brightness based on ambient light levels (something that I wish my desktop computer monitor could do…part of “dark mode”'s benefit is a mitigation for devices that don’t do this). I don’t know if that was a thing back in the 1980s or so, when these display designs were popular.
I also kind of wonder if eye-tracking, which has come a long way, could be made reliable-enough and responsive-enough to toggle off displays if the car can detect that a user is looking somewhere away from them. Maybe be conservative, not with some critical displays, but stuff like the radio or clock or something. Eye tracking systems normally use the near-infrared, as I understand it, not visible light, so I’d think that you could theoretically do it in a darkened car without problems.
All of the car’s interior lighting (all in amber) does dim automatically when I drive under a bridge or into a tunnel, and automatically dims when I turn on the headlights. So some rudimentary dimming was implemented in 2000 when it was made. No clue where the sensor is though.
Before transistors there were vacuum tubes which did the same thing but using very different principles (and were also way bigger, even than traditional transistors and billions of times more than the transistors in the most modern ICs)
Before electric milling or even steam milling, flour used to be milled using watermills and windmills which, IMHO, are way cooler.
I love seeing old workshops where all of the machines are powered off of a single source of rotational energy. Just so whimsical and kinetic when everything is moving
My mill grinds
pepper and spice
Your mill grinds
rats and mice
Are you singing at your cat?
Well, cats as a bit more on the slicey and dicey than on the grindey side of breaking up things.
(One shudders to think on what cats would do if they could actually use knifes)
Steam millers sound way cooler than windmills
