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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc.

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Old 23rd Apr 2018, 8:38 pm   #1
Cobaltblue
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Default Vintage technology terminology

Recently I have come into contact with several (mostly young) people interested for one reason or another in vintage equipment who don't have the vocabulary to express the parts in question.

We have all heard of dials for knobs and bulbs for valves however some are more inventive.

I am not having a go here, rather I am expressing admiration when confronted with this situation how very often they come up with a term I understand even though its far off the mark.

The most recent was when describing a Radios Chassis as opposed to the entire item described it as "the motherboard" I had no trouble knowing what was meant so I would mark that as a success

I don't want this to degrade to those in the know and those not but I am more interested when confronted by the lack of vocabulary how the message was got accross.

Maybe being able to attach more familiar name would help more into our hobby, well thats my hope

Cheers

Mike T
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Old 23rd Apr 2018, 8:54 pm   #2
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

It's an intriguing issue.

For example, I still hear older people talking about going to the cinema to see a "film": truth is that for the last couple of decades they're seeing something entirely digital and there's no old-fashioned celluloid-film involved at all in the production process.

So I talk about "going to see a Movie" which is nicely platform-non-committal.

Similarly, on BBC Radio3 there's recently been a series of what they call "mixtapes" - but nobody this-millennium has ever made a mix-tape [that's a thing from the 1970s/1980s and nasty high-hiss cassettes].
By the mid-1990s we were all 'burning' our 'ripped' music-selection to writeable-CDs and this millennium we got used to sharing our "Playlists" and "Streams" on Spotify or Napster.

Same goes for music/video/TV[1]: these days I refer to it as "Content", accepting that most people-under-50 will be receiving it as a digital download of some form.

[1] I eschew the old name of "Programme" - it seems so authoritatian/scheduled-by-someone-who-thinks-they-know-what-you-should-be-watching, and obsolete in these days of free-form on-demand viewing.
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Old 23rd Apr 2018, 10:56 pm   #3
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

I don't think that's correct about no celluloid being involved. AFAIK,films were almost all still being shot on 35mm film up to the mid Noughties and there are still plenty shot on film to this day, including the latest Star Wars series. I know the negative is quickly scanned to digital for post-production, but what I don't know is how the movie is distributed these days - still on reels of film or just enormous video files downloaded and projected from a video device?
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Old 23rd Apr 2018, 11:20 pm   #4
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

I understand from an old thread that, to ensure future-proofed archiving, some digitally-produced films now have individual RGB negatives made on conventional black and white film, exactly like the original three-strip Technicolor process.
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Old 23rd Apr 2018, 11:25 pm   #5
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

I once heard a story about a cinema getting the digital file but the film distributor had forgotten to email the key file to them so that there was a frenzy of phone calls going on while all the punters were turning up.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 12:18 am   #6
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

The local drive in cinema here gets the ( horrible jittery digital ) "movies" ( as I call them)
on hard drives. We dont have a movie theater as such anymore.

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Old 24th Apr 2018, 2:24 am   #7
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Same here (no cinema or drive in), but occasionally we will have a movie in the local community hall shown by the "travelling picture man".

That comes on hard drive too, although I think there may have been one or two of DVD.

[Occasionally means once a year at best]

As to the terminology, out here, nothing is broken down to fundamental parts of an item, so it is generically TV, Satellite box, Radio etc, as in "it doesn't work".

There is one, possibly two people besides me in the whole town who knows what a capacitor, resistor etc is and a couple of farmers I know of that know all about "capacitators".
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 2:30 am   #8
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

We sometimes go to filmed (i.e. videoed - sometimes live, sometimes recorded) performances of theatre productions or operas at the Chelmsford civic theatre. While the picture is of very high resolution, for recordings, this is only good for relatively still images. As soon as there is rapid movement, fine detail becomes severely degraded.

The jittery video is I think a consequence of the use of too short a shutter speed. I remember reading in a cine magazine about how, by the 1930's, film sensitivity had improved such that shorter exposures were possible, but that this had been found to give unpleasant visual effects, so the relatively long exposure time (about half the pull-down time) was retained. I always used the 1/50 sec exposure (selectable by using the manual settings) with my camcorders to avoid what I considered to be objectionable judder. Manual shutter settings seem to be rare these days.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 6:52 am   #9
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Our local cinema appears to receive media via a form of live streaming. A couple of years ago the a showing was delayed when a message briefly appeared on the screen along the lines of 'Unable to connect to remote server'
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 7:50 am   #10
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

My children always seem to insist on referring to the 45 rpm singles I let them play as CDs
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 9:07 am   #11
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Last month I went to a screening of 'Some Like it Hot' at my local Theatre. This was evidently a DVD, judging by what appeared on the screen at one point. The Theatre also shows screenings from time to time, which are relayed from places like the RSC & the National Theatre. Some are billed as 'Recorded, Captured Live', others as 'Broadcast Live' I've not been to any of these, but assume they are sent over the internet.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 9:07 am   #12
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Quote:
Originally Posted by emeritus View Post
I understand from an old thread that, to ensure future-proofed archiving, some digitally-produced films now have individual RGB negatives made on conventional black and white film, exactly like the original three-strip Technicolor process.
Interesting - I wonder if they will suffer from the same problems as the old 3-strip films? Apparently restoration of some of these old films has been extremely difficult and expensive as the three filmstrips have warped and shrunk in different ways and registration has been a long-winded process.
Sorry, this is OT.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 9:39 am   #13
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Pictures, Cinema, Movies.... PAH! ... It's the "Flicks" for me.

The use of "Tape", especially in American movies, when it's a DVD.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 9:57 am   #14
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

True, people still "tape" TV programmes on their PVRs.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 10:01 am   #15
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Programme guides in newspapers ("news"-papers?) often list the "ordinary" channels and then call the ones outside the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 range "Digital". Like 2012 never happened!
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 10:20 am   #16
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

One of the terms my grandchildren use is “rip” which I think means “record” or “copy”, I don’t like the term but I’m used to it now.
Cheers
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 11:25 am   #17
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

The BBC still refer to 'footage' even though the video is doubtless stored as 0's and 1's somewhere.
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 1:25 pm   #18
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

Quote:
Originally Posted by John10b View Post
One of the terms my grandchildren use is “rip” which I think means “record” or “copy”, I don’t like the term but I’m used to it now.
I don't like that term either. I think it derives from the Americanism,
ripped off - meaning stolen - as in the music piracy days.

Cheers

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Old 24th Apr 2018, 1:49 pm   #19
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

The BBC, who famously don't do product endorsements seem to have no problem putting a "i" prefix before the name of its flagship R4 news programme, and calling its downloadable content "Podcasts", or are they arguing those are not a nods to Apple Inc?
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Old 24th Apr 2018, 1:57 pm   #20
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Default Re: Vintage technology terminology

I love delving into old books and finding the shift in language,

Eg: Otherwise used to mean 'in other words' but now means 'or else'

One of the more famous electrical equipment manufacturers advertises luminaries on it's website. I have ordered a Fred Dibnah and a Marie Curie.
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