[HN Gopher] Museum of Obsolete Objects
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Museum of Obsolete Objects
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 14 points
Date : 2024-01-19 19:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| gumby wrote:
| I'm not going to watch a video but the idea from the title is
| great.
|
| We casually discard obsolete devices and practices, but learning
| about them isn't just a fun glance into the past but is a kind of
| Chesterton's fence too.
| ghaff wrote:
| I like the idea but I watched the morse code one and the speech
| was almost certainly computer-generated but it hardly had any
| content anyway.
| Aloha wrote:
| Many of these are not even close to obsolete:
|
| * The Computer Mouse is an essential part of every day life.
|
| * Radio Receivers are both common and still in daily use by a
| huge percentage of the planet.
|
| * Electric Lightbulbs still have many specialty applications that
| cannot be replaced by other forms of technology (same with the
| neon lamp).
|
| * Morse Code is still used in the radio and aviation world to
| identify radio transmitters
|
| * Pocket Calculators are still fairly common, particularly in
| specialized fields, and are still developed and sold new.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| My kid is three years old, and has never seen an incandescent
| light bulb.
|
| We don't own a calculator either. One of the only reasons
| they're still around is their simplicity, which is desirable in
| an educational setting. If it wasn't for that, nobody[1] would
| use them any more. Excel and computer algebra systems are
| superior for all practical purposes.
|
| [1] For some values of "nobody". There's always the elderly,
| purists, luddites, or just those slow to adopt.
| Aloha wrote:
| The light in your oven is almost certainly incandescent,
| possibly your fridge too. You can't really use a non-
| incandescent bulb in high heat applications.
|
| There are other applications too, where the resistance of the
| bulb itself, and how it changes with the amount of current
| going thru the device is also important.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Fair point about the oven. Older cars still have
| incandescent headlamps, so technically he has seen them.
|
| In a sense, the exception makes the rule: the fact that
| only niche applications remain reinforces the point that
| these are legacy technologies.
| stevebmark wrote:
| Faxing is alive and well in medicine, since it's still the
| "secure" way to transfer documents. There are encrypted email
| solutions now, secure file transfer, and digital faxing, but
| I'm sure plenty of doctor's offices still use fax machines.
| Aloha wrote:
| Yeah, but I left it off, because its clearly an application
| with no real future, its dying as the networks required for
| it to work well also die (faxing over VoIP is a special form
| of hell to support).
| ghaff wrote:
| Though FINALLY phasing out in a lot of places. My major
| hospital system (through consolidation) now seems to be on a
| largely electronic heath data system. But, yeah, manually
| faxing lab work requests to the hospital lab was still a
| thing just a few years ago.
| Animats wrote:
| The video is so clickbait-oriented. Long intro (skip the first 25
| seconds), long outro, crappy text to speech voice over.
|
| Here's a good video of an obsolete technology - a punched card
| reader.[1] No voice over. No intro. No outro. No clickbait. Just
| a beautifully clear demonstration of what it is and how it works.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu55b0GpgE8
| Aloha wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Wanna know what another obsolete object is, a real one, no
| longer made and with no functional use anymore?
|
| An lubricant oil can spout.
|
| We stopped selling lubricating oil in cans like at least 35
| years ago.
|
| I have vague memories from my childhood of seeing cans of oil
| stacked in a store, but I can't tell if its a hallucination or
| memory, or something I actually saw, it would have been when I
| was very young based on the perspective I can recall them at.
|
| (edited to add the word lubricant)
| cannonpr wrote:
| I might be confused, but cooking oil is still quite commonly
| sold in cans in many countries ? I bet there must be some in
| the US too if you are there ?
|
| https://www.odysea.com/product/odysea-greek-extra-vrigin-
| oli...
| Aloha wrote:
| Motor Oil in this case.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/134826590749
|
| Here is an example of what one looks like.
|
| Some additional context -
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1985-02-10-fi-3748-s...
| kjfarm wrote:
| One question, how do I join? which exhibit will I be after?
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