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Old 16th Mar 2018, 3:38 pm   #61
kalee20
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Some of the recent posts are obsolete technology, but not useless items.

Al Skywave's pumping engines could still be used (the Kennet and Avon Canal actually do, a few days of the year, fire up their two beam engines and keep the canal water level up, switching off the modern electric pumps which normally do the duty). And the Roneo and Gestetner machines will still work, it would be possible to make stencils even at home.

Eight-track players still work - the cartridges are reusable, obviously. And the time is not far off, surely, when it would be possible to 3D print new shells and hubs, and make new cartridges. The 1/4" tape exists in huge quantities.

Whereas Polaroid cameras really are useless without a supply of the consumable film! To make this at home you would need a particularly well-equipped laboratory.

Telex - it's well over 30 years since I sent a telex. Even a fax, it's 2 years easily, and the number of faxes in the last 10 years must be in single digits. But fax machines will still work, whereas the telex service, is it still offered?
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Old 16th Mar 2018, 4:02 pm   #62
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The NHS still use fax machines and are likely to carry on until the government gets round to supplying them with computers that actually work.
They just need a phone line at each end and a pair of them will work fine.
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Old 16th Mar 2018, 5:26 pm   #63
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the "Rabbit" pseudo-mobile-phone. An idea which was rendered instantly obsolete by proper mobile-phones becoming spectacularly cheap to buy and use.
Presumably, it is still usable as a landline 'phone. I have one as a display-only item, but really ought to power it up to check that is the case.
Having now replaced the dead and decaying rechargeable batteries in the handset and cleaned the battery terminals, I can confirm that it does operate quite happily as a cordless landline telephone.
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Old 16th Mar 2018, 9:30 pm   #64
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The place I was working at before I retired used to send anything important by post, email and fax. There are legal advantages in using fax, because the handshaking protocol means that you positively know you have a direct link to the recipient. Therefore even if something goes wrong at the receiving end, if you can produce your fax receipt, that can be legally admitted as demonstrating that what you sent was received. In my last job it was sometimes the case that documents had to be submitted by inextensible deadlines, and for last minute things, fax was absolutely essential.
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Old 16th Mar 2018, 9:42 pm   #65
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Telex services.
http://empiremessaging.com/telex-services.php

Still in use by the look of it, the company I worked at had the Telex removed around 1988.
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Old 16th Mar 2018, 10:22 pm   #66
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Well I still use a Filofax & I had an 8-track in my '79 Cadillac a few years ago. Worked well, too but I only ever had a couple of cartridges for it.....
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Old 16th Mar 2018, 11:30 pm   #67
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Until a year ago, I had a minidisk player in my '97 Skoda

I only had one disk, a compilation a friend lent me after a few years when I wondered if the player worked. It was a bit heavy on Bruce Springsteen, but track 5 was 'Purple Haze', so it wasn't all bad.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 7:52 am   #68
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Until a year ago, I had a minidisk player in my '97 Skoda
I still use a minidisc player in my car. I have a hundred or so discs for it.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 8:14 am   #69
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We used to use one for a monthly community newspaper printed on three sheets of American foolscap two thousand copies. Generally we had the lot printed in a day.
Why American foolscap? Was it a special finish paper or pre-printed with a logo? I'd have though it cheaper for those quantities to buy in Britain.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 8:28 am   #70
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I still use a minidisc player in my car. I have a hundred or so discs for it.
Do you like Bruce Springsteen?
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 8:36 am   #71
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Now and again!
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 8:39 am   #72
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Typewriters?
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 8:52 am   #73
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Why American foolscap? Was it a special finish paper or pre-printed with a logo? I'd have though it cheaper for those quantities to buy in Britain.
American Foolscap (Legal size) paper is effectively a sort of hybrid between traditional Imperial Foolscap and A4, and was readily available here for a while during the transition between sizing systems. Useful as it allowed documents prepared for Foolscap to be reproduced on near-A4 width as a stopgap, it's also quite a convenient size for single-fold leaflets etc.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 8:55 am   #74
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I still use a minidisc player in my car. I have a hundred or so discs for it.
My father has a minidisc player (might be a recorder) as part of his home setup. He's ex-BBC and probably used them at work, which would have been over 25 years ago.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 9:03 am   #75
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

How about 'Stenode reception'?

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Old 17th Mar 2018, 9:14 am   #76
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Viewdata?

The terminal I had was based on a late 1970's Ferguson 14" portable, in white. I cannot remember the model number, I do remember the power switch at the rear required a key!

I also remember incorrectly entering a phone number & a rather snooty message from a travel agent popped up about computer hacking being illegal.

The terminal was in use up to early 2005, the company I worked for changed the phone system making my Viewdata terminal redundant. I gave it to a friend around 5 years ago, it still powered up ...!

Fondly remember ordering parts from WVE, SEME, Panasonic et al ...

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Old 17th Mar 2018, 11:14 am   #77
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Originally Posted by emeritus View Post
The place I was working at before I retired used to send anything important by post, email and fax. There are legal advantages in using fax, because the handshaking protocol means that you positively know you have a direct link to the recipient. Therefore even if something goes wrong at the receiving end, if you can produce your fax receipt, that can be legally admitted as demonstrating that what you sent was received. In my last job it was sometimes the case that documents had to be submitted by inextensible deadlines, and for last minute things, fax was absolutely essential.
However with fax there's no guarantee that it was ever received *by the person you sent it to*! I remember in the 90s an office where there was a big problem with junk-faxes: sometimes 50 a day, and it was quite common for a 1- or 2-page document they *wanted* to receive to be discarded in amongst the pages and pages of junk-faxes.

Equally, faxes are not encrypted, so anyone with access to the receiving fax-machine can read what's been received, and even take it away, with no kind of audit-trail. A few years back there was brief but potentially hazardous confusion over my medical-records when it turned out that a fax relating to someone else had been received by my GP only minutes after the fax relating to me, and both had ended up in my case-notes!

I'm glad to see the back of fax.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 11:17 am   #78
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the "Rabbit" pseudo-mobile-phone. An idea which was rendered instantly obsolete by proper mobile-phones becoming spectacularly cheap to buy and use.
Presumably, it is still usable as a landline 'phone. I have one as a display-only item, but really ought to power it up to check that is the case.
Having now replaced the dead and decaying rechargeable batteries in the handset and cleaned the battery terminals, I can confirm that it does operate quite happily as a cordless landline telephone.
Fascinating! Kinda reassuring that it still works 30-odd years after the 'one-sided roaming' idea became obsolete. I can't remember what frequencies the Rabbit system worked on. Are those frequencies still assigned to mobile telephony I wonder?
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 4:58 pm   #79
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I can't remember what frequencies the Rabbit system worked on. Are those frequencies still assigned to mobile telephony I wonder?
As it operates to the CT2 standard, one would assume it to work in the 864-868 MHz range.

I must admit that I did wonder after powering it up whether I was in breach of frequency use regulations by doing so.
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Old 17th Mar 2018, 5:04 pm   #80
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Fascinating! Kinda reassuring that it still works 30-odd years after the 'one-sided roaming' idea became obsolete. I can't remember what frequencies the Rabbit system worked on. Are those frequencies still assigned to mobile telephony I wonder?
That's an interesting point, their use may technically be illegal now.
A friend of mine, Keith G3RTU worked on the approval of Rabbit, or CT2 as I think it was officially known.
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