BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?

Subject: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:00 AM

Just pondering various devices, inventions, trends, customs etc no longer used.

But there's some good stuff out there & I'd be interested suggestions for new uses for old things.

My shed's got allsorts, like bits of old frame tents, poles etc.

Some I've re-used as beanpoles or other garden supports.

There's an old 1960's Kodak Brownie camera takes size 127 8 exposure film - where?

A box of old LP's, 45's, 78's

Anyone else got stuff like this?

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:08 AM

Of course. If you want to get rid of the LPs, etc., just let me know. By the way, vinyl isn't anywhere near "dead."

Have you ever felt that YOU were obsolete in your lifetime?

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:21 AM

That was my response Rap.

ME !!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: John P
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:22 AM

Until recently, I had a waxer, a device for applying a thin film of wax to the back of a piece of art so you can paste it into a page design and still be able to move it around. Computers and desktop publishing software made it obsolete. I still kept it around for more than 20 years without using it.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:26 AM

'Have you ever felt that YOU were obsolete in your lifetime? '

Well not total me - but a number of skills I've acquired during the last 60+ years have been superceded by more modern knowledge of ways of doing stuff.

I don't suppose i'll ever find myself having to start a car with a handle again - using the special thumbs clear grip!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: saulgoldie
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:48 AM

I have a heavy-duty screw type press for installing cotter pins on olde cottered crank arms on a bicycle. I haven't seen a cottered crank in ten years.

Also, I don't know anyone other than my brother and I who knows how to use a slide rule for mathematical calculations.

Wristwatches? Kids don't use em much. Their phones have the time, if they even care, which many of em don't.

In the kitchen: pressure cookers. Fewer people even do their own cooking, much less know how to use one. Bundt pans. Again, how many people bake their own cakes? I don't even think they sell them anymore.

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: bubblyrat
Date: 01 May 12 - 11:40 AM

Things that have become obsolete in my lifetime ;
   Bakelite telephones

   Blue bags       Hand-operated mangles    Fly papers

             Bronco toilet paper (thank God !)

Tin baths    Telegrams Red phone -boxes

    LSD coinage   Comptometers   Gas meters Steam powered warships

    ( Excepting nuclear submarines of course )

   Radiograms & 75 rpm records          Paraffin (kerosene) 'fridges

       Hangmen      Half the pubs in Henley


I'll think of more later......

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 01 May 12 - 12:37 PM

typewriters

log tables replaced in my high school by calculators a year or so after I finished in 1969

gym tunics also replaced by skirt & blouse the year after I left!

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Bert
Date: 01 May 12 - 01:02 PM

Mr Happy,

Here's one place that sells 127 film
And another

Saul,

I still use a slide rule, much faster than a calculator.

And I use the pressure cooker. It is great for chicken, pop it in for ten minutes then take it out and finish it off in the oven, much tastier.

We also use the meat grinder too, we will buy a brisket for $2.48 a pound and grind it all up, beats paying $3.99 a pound for ground beef and it made us feel quite smug when we heard about that pink slime.

Sandra,

Yes log tables, I had a book of Smoley's Table that I haven't used in years.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 May 12 - 01:34 PM

Television has become obsolete in my house.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Musket
Date: 01 May 12 - 01:46 PM

Government based on thought out policies rather than knee-jerk soundbite populism. Remember that?

No, me neither. But I like to think it used to exist.

Sorry, long day.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 01 May 12 - 01:49 PM

I have an electric typewriter. Probably doesn't work anymore since I haven't turn it on in decades.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 12 - 02:12 PM

Other than for working on small engine stuff and the odd household or yard thingy, over $3000 worth of tools. Oh, I might be able to do some minor stuff on my truck, but ANYTHING major can only be fixed with a credit card. And the bastards charge $68 just to hook it up to their computer.

I remarked to a guy today that, when I wanted to change the plugs and wires on my first truck on a rainy day I could sit on a lawn chair, shut the hood and do it. With my present truck, I couldn't even slide a credit card in there. And I've heard that a basic 100,000km tuneup costs over $2000!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Bert
Date: 01 May 12 - 02:15 PM

Air raid shelters.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 May 12 - 03:02 PM

Manners

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 May 12 - 03:14 PM

Indeed, John!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: frogprince
Date: 01 May 12 - 03:14 PM

A few years ago, for some reason I've now forgotten, I tried to find ribbon for my Smith Corona Galaxy typing device. I wasn't on line then
to search that way, but I sure couldn't find any in stores.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 01 May 12 - 05:34 PM

Discipline and more importantly respect!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: number 6
Date: 01 May 12 - 05:43 PM

floppy computer disks.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: artbrooks
Date: 01 May 12 - 05:49 PM

7" open-reel tape recorders. 8-track tape players (never had one, myself). Cassette players (still use mine, once in a while). Film cameras. Field artillery graphical firing tables. Spare tires for small cars. Dial-up modems.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: CupOfTea
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:00 PM

I 've had a few ancient office gizmos that are sadly obsolete:

-- a pair of beautiful shiny bakelite-knob ended stampers. These devices held a roll of stamps, and had a felt pad that was kept wet though a water reservoir. You put the stamper on the corner of your envelope, pressed down, and it applied a licked stamp to the envelope.

--a fluid duplicator (those gloriously cool fragrant purple colored texts). This was my family business. I had all the supplies and parts to make this work for years after xerography was the norm, even red and green inked stencil sheets.

-- an Auto-typist unit. Also family business. No fools, they could see the world of Word processing coming. For several years before IBM's memory typewriter, these gizmos were STATE OF THE ART. An electric typewriter's keys were connected to the Auto Typist unit through hanger wires & bellows. It was operated by punched paper rolls that look just like Player Piano rolls. The sophisticated rolls my aunt stamped out had up to 50 different selections, and was used by hospital labs for reports, college admission offices TRW, all the large companies in the midwest for that brief time. At the end of it's time they were used by radio evangelists to do personalized "hand typed" letters and for mall con men (remember indoor shopping malls... those seem to be getting obsolete here'bouts, too!) who gussied it up with lights and fake tape reels as a "computer" to analyze yer hand writing or tell your astrological fortune.

-- Saddest to me is the clothing that is obsolete - stuff I loved that even a "vintage" geek wouldn't wear. (I know because my nieces scooped up all the primo 70s embroidered denim clothing in the 90s and left me only the prom dresses and Quiana shirts)

-- My electric typewriter. I still wish I'd kept the Selectric with all the font balls - there were a number of years in the transition to all computers allthetime when three part "self carbon: forms for art shows were a nightmare if you let folks hand write them! Also really useful for filing out forms that come to you from OUTSIDE a computer, pre printed (Imagine that!)

--First computer in the house, a TRS80. I had to work VERY HARD to give that away.

-- If I live a few more years, my sewing machine will be obsolete. I love my Singer, now covered in Mary Englebreit stickers. It was what seems to have been a very early or one model only Touchtronic that has little dimples on the bobbins. Most bobbins won't work on it, even if they fit, if they don't have that penpoint sized dimple. Research found that the only factory that made THOSE bobbins burned down, and they just didn't make them anywhere else afterwards. So, I'm down to two dozen precious fragile plastic bobbins -when they're gone the machine is unusable.

--Reference BOOKS.(just cause they call it the same thing online doesen't mean it is - you don't use them, or browse them the same!) Dictionaries. Thesaurus. Bartlett's Quotations. The Elements of Style, etc. and Library Card Catalogs!

-- photographic slides. I remember when they got rid of the huge collection of slides in the Cleveland Museum of Art's library when they had them digitized. I have a huge collection of slides I used (DUAL Projectors, even) I used in doing art lectures that I supplemented there - when they were gone, it was like losing old friends. Then I suppose *I* became obsolete as an art teacher.

There's some stuff I'm happy is obsolete
-- long tongue pull tabs for pop cans that people made into all sorts of atrocious "craft" items.
-- ash trays at every table at a restaurant
--Having to cash/deposit your paycheck every week instead of auto deposit
--asbestos pads for putting hot things on.
--Canvas Tents (heavy, soggy, mildewy)

This question reminds me of an wickedly interesting party a friend threw called an "inscrutable object party" Everyone was to bring a pot luck food item and one "Inscrutable object" that the rest of us would try to identify/figure out what it was. Most of the objects were tools for obsolete tasks. I had a porcelain rectanglar box that had a porcelain roller set into it - was to be partially filled with water and used to lick stamps or envelope flaps.

Joanne in Cleveland (only partially obsolete)

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:04 PM

Key punch machines and operators.
Oh, they already are?
Musta missed that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:06 PM

key punch

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:18 PM

There is even a song about a key punch operator, the now obsolete profession:Men at work.

obsolete topic song

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:26 PM

Punch cards... waiting in line to run your program... running to the printer and trying to retrieve your output from a printer running at 600 pages a minute.

And, of course, filling a garbage can with water and punchies and leaning it against someone's dorm door.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:27 PM

Stuff I used to use, that has gone obsolete in my lifetime:

Typewriters,
typewriter erasers,
typewriter ribbons,
correction fluid (OK, correction fluid, "Wite-Out, is still sometimes used for hand-drawn diagrams, charts, and signs, but it's seen much less often nowadays),
carbon paper.

(I once made somebody very happy by giving her a supply of carbon paper. She made her own needlework designs by sketching them on paper, and then when she wanted to transfer the design to cloth, she was in the habit of using carbon paper, but she couldn't find it anymore at the stationery stores, even the "big-box" stores like Staples. Luckily, I had a supply stashed away, although I hadn't used it in years.)

Continuous-form paper for computer printers, with sprocket holes
Dot-matrix printers and their ribbons
Impact printers
Punch cards (except in Florida elections, apparently)
Keypunch machines
Floppy disks

Brown wrapping paper
String – used for tying packages
Brown paper tape with water-soluble adhesive
Fountain pens (yes, a few aficionados use them, but they're obsolete for most of us)
Inkwells
Pens chained to the desk in banks and post offices
Phone books (They keep delivering them, but I don't use them. I look up everything online.)
Printed zip-code directories (and lots of other reference works – some information can only be found online nowadays)
Stamps and stickers that you have to lick (or moisten somehow)

Mechanical watches and clocks. They have turned into expensive jewelry. You can see ads for them in The New York Times and The New Yorker, but they are very impractical.

Clocks that you had to plug in to an electrical outlet.

Paperweights. People still buy some fancy kinds as "collectibles," but they used to be practical. Before air-conditioning, you had to open a window or turn on a fan to get a breeze, and you needed paperweights to keep your papers from getting blown off your desk.

(Did you guess that I spent most of my working life in an office?)

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Janie
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:28 PM

I'm ready to go back to film. We have pictures of my son's 1st 9 years, taken with film, and with the negatives stored. The next 6 years are lost on crashed hard-drives and to the now obsolete .mix format of Microsoft Picture It! Lost nearly all of the quite good photographs of my amazing Hillsborough garden because they were digital. The result of our ignorance about matters technological. We came late to computers and to digital technology.

Saul - I still use my pressure cooker quite often, though I confess it has been a few years since I had time to use my bundt pans. They are still widely available, however, and in wonderful patterns.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: frogprince
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:56 PM

Bathing suits. (well, I guess their not obsolete for everybody , though)

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: frogprince
Date: 01 May 12 - 06:56 PM

...they're...

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 12 - 07:04 PM

I'm thinkin short term memory... I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 01 May 12 - 07:04 PM

If you have a LORAN navigational receiver on your boat, it hasn't been receiving a signal for two years. No wonder you couldn't find your way back home from last weekend's fishing trip!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: gnu
Date: 01 May 12 - 07:24 PM

I thought it was the beer.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Janie
Date: 01 May 12 - 07:36 PM

Garter belts? (thank goodness!)

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: kendall
Date: 01 May 12 - 07:40 PM

7 inch reel to reel recorder.
An 8 mm movie projector
a slide projector
a black powder revolver

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: frogprince
Date: 01 May 12 - 08:13 PM

"a black powder revolver" in your lifetime? When was the last original production black powder revolver made?

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Ed T
Date: 01 May 12 - 09:00 PM

Tape recorders. (I still say I am going to "tape" that program).

I have a couple of 3/4 inch Beta video tapes, and a Charlie Pride 8-track tape ("Snakes Crawl at Night, that's what they say") 8 track tape in my garage if anyone is in urgent need of them.

Oh, and I forgot (from the past) - memory typewriters, AES and MICOM word processors?

Two of my three cars (maybe I have two too many) have casette tape players in the radio sets (kinda hard to find new ones to play)-does that make me am obsolete item hoarder?

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: michaelr
Date: 01 May 12 - 09:12 PM

Walkman! I still use mine at work.

What in the world is LSD coinage??

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Bobert
Date: 01 May 12 - 09:16 PM

The hula-hoop and the bob-a-link...

Oh, thats right... They are already history...

The Republican Party will be gone in the rsst-of-my-life time...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 01 May 12 - 09:36 PM

For nearly a month now , like Giok , ME !!

For its three score and ten Years and then

I'm into extra time !

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: number 6
Date: 01 May 12 - 09:48 PM

FORTRAN IV with WATFIV

I have to than gnu for that one .... his post @ 01 May 12 - 06:26 PM popped this out from way way back in my memory bank

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: number 6
Date: 01 May 12 - 09:56 PM

... and I'll add SNOBOL to the list.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 May 12 - 10:05 PM

KDF9 Algol - but OK I haven't got any in my house. I have got 2 paraffin heaters and a paraffin lamp, a Suffolk Super Punch lawnmower and lots of vinyl records (including some 78s), vinyl turntables and 7 inch reel-to-reel tapes and tape decks (including one Ferrograph). I also have a pair of Axiom 301 loudspeakers. Oh, and some tin megaphone-shaped outside PA speakers. What use is a 30 watt PA speaker nowadays?   

If anyone is giving away vinyl records or 7 inch tapes or tape decks (or one or two inch 8-track tape or equipment) please let me know.

I do need to junk several obsolete TVs and computers and CRT monitors though. And quite a lot of car parts.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 May 12 - 11:09 PM

"KDF9 Algol"

I gotta say that if that was in yer nuts it would hurt.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 01 May 12 - 11:32 PM

MichaelR - LSD coinage is the old "pounds, shillings and pence" currency in Britain.
From the Latin: Libri - pounds; Solidi - Shillings; Denarii - pence.

I'm glad farthings, groats, crowns and sovereigns were gone before that!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Bert
Date: 02 May 12 - 12:18 AM

"Inscrutable object" I love it. A few years back I picked up a saw set at a flea market. It was on the $1 table 'cos the guy didn't know what it was. More recently I picked up a saw sharpening vise at a yard sale. So if anyone wants to have a saw sharpened...

I can't remember that last time that I saw a Mundy Hammer (That is a 28 pound sledge hammer) One devil of a job to swing.

Then there were those mechanical Munroe calculators, who remembers how to do square roots on them?

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 02 May 12 - 12:30 AM

How about the merchants and shops that have disappeared? I haven't seen a butcher shop in years, or a Five and Dime, there are shoe stores, but not the sort that have real shoe salesmen. My father and grandfather had all their suits made by a tailor (he was actually an in-law) but he was the last in our town, and retired while I was still in school, and I bought my first suit ready made, from a Men's Store, which are now vanishing as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: Fossil
Date: 02 May 12 - 01:06 AM

Janie... Garter belts obsolete? Say it ain't so!

Damn!

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 May 12 - 06:24 AM

I haven't seen a cottered crank in ten years.

Not on a bicycle, but as of less than 1- years ago, and I assume still now, at least one British Airplane Manufacturer still specified that every nut must be cross-drilled at the time of installation and a cotter pin installed.

Like Bert, I also have an antique saw vise, and eagerly await sufficient use for one of my hand saws to justify trying it out. (I've had it for about 12(?) years.

Not too long ago I scrapped out the Power Supply for one of the first "Wang Word Processors" (an early '50s era desk sized machine that performed almost all the functions of a decent typewriter, but a little slower). I contacted most of the nearby museums without finding any interest. The transformer alone was about 22 pounds, but had surprisingly little copper wire in it - it mostly ran as a saturable core transformer for constant voltage output - (anybody remember those?) and had a lot of iron in it for a 300W xfmr.

I'm beginning to wonder about my "young trophy bride" - (only my second, but she did replace a slightly older model) - but I guess she's still "usable" even if not very "useful" so I think I'll hang onto her for a while. <probably a very long while!>

John

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: banjoman
Date: 02 May 12 - 06:24 AM

Polaroid Land Camera, Device for getting stones out of horses hooves (relic of scouting days) Ancient Lava lamp (still working)Loads of 78rpm records (we collect them) Wind up gramaphone , Cars that I can do more than just check the oil on, freshbaked bread (in our area at least.
I thought that the Sodastream was obsolete until my son turned up last week with a brand new one he had found in an online shop.

Subject: RE: BS: Obsolete in your lifetime?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 May 12 - 06:36 AM

"Tape recorders. (I still say I am going to "tape" that program)."
.,,.
Some people still talk of "dialling" a telephone #; but dial telephones need to go on the list.

~M~