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Old 18th Mar 2018, 4:30 pm   #101
Paul_RK
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Originally Posted by Dave Moll View Post
...Once transmissions started using a full implementation of the specification, these promptly failed to find them. There was a discussion here about this at the time, and what I have said above was based on what I recall of that discussion.
This one perhaps?

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...ad.php?t=70065

For something completely different, I suppose this little fellow is a piece of bygone technology, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. The world hasn't nearly gone paperless yet, a frequent requirement is to provide or renew the staples of a folded pamphlet, but the usual sort of stapler can't do it and a cumbersome long-arm variety is required. Turn the mechanism around 90 degrees, though, and you get one of these: German, dating I think from the 1930s, and if there are any modern machines of this configuration I've yet to meet one.

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Old 18th Mar 2018, 4:35 pm   #102
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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a CED player
Ah, that triggers a memory!

Those stylus-played discs were read capacitively. Quite different to their laser-toting competitors.

It was seen as a lower cost lower tech alternative.

At those densities I felt that videodisc playing ought to be a non-contact sport.

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Old 18th Mar 2018, 4:39 pm   #103
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Back when I worked in consumer electronics repair, I was gently ridiculed for having a workshop full of audio test gear, wow & flutter meters, distortion analysers etc, not much wow and flutter in the digital age. Pretty much obsolete now. Wouldn't dare measure w&f on a Dansette

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Old 18th Mar 2018, 6:45 pm   #104
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Band III to Band I convertors. Remember them?
Not only do I remember them, but I have the one that went with my single-channel Band I only television set originally bought by my grandfather in 1950 (the television, that is). The only trouble is that my only 405-line television source is a band I channel 1 Domino standards converter. If I ever get round to buying an Aurora, I will set it up to output on Band III, then I can use the III->I converter to switch between two programmes.
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 6:51 pm   #105
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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I suppose this little fellow is a piece of bygone technology, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. The world hasn't nearly gone paperless yet, a frequent requirement is to provide or renew the staples of a folded pamphlet, but the usual sort of stapler can't do it and a cumbersome long-arm variety is required. Turn the mechanism around 90 degrees, though, and you get one of these: German, dating I think from the 1930s, and if there are any modern machines of this configuration I've yet to meet one.

Paul
I reckon that stapler is a long way from counting as a useless item. What a shame they don't appear to be available any more. I've never got on well with long-arm staplers - despite using one frequently.
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 7:01 pm   #106
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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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.
It was larger than A4 and meant you could get more text on it. We would have needed more paper if using A4. We didn't get in the USA, it was supplied by the Sheffield Council Central Supplies in Attercliffe. They would supply to Community Groups at cheaper rates than commercial paper firms. Since we didn't make money from the paper.
It was an available size in the UK, but it had the name because it was popular in the USA. I doubt the American's called it that.
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 7:04 pm   #107
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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You can still get copiers that use a drum and master system I had one a few years ago.
Risograph make them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risograph

John
Yes, we have one in church. Much cheaper than a photocopier but I have never mastered the knack of using it.
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 7:21 pm   #108
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Mention of Laser Disk discs/players reminds me that, IIRC, there was also a Videodisc system (Hitachi, I think),in which the discs were played with a stylus. I've never actually seen one, but recall them being advertised.
While doing a bit of research for another thread I happened to find a system mentioned on a Neumann web page.

http://www.neumann.com/?id=about_us_...part_4&lang=en

with a little more info at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teldec
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 7:50 pm   #109
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

If you want strange, look at the German "SABAmobil" tape-cassette system from the 1960s.

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU-iSTj2cTY

It didn't catch on.
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 7:51 pm   #110
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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The same was true of my first digibox (branded as Pace). Early DTV transmissions used, I believe, a cut-down version of the DTV specification, and many early boxes only supported this version. Once transmissions started using a full implementation of the specification, these promptly failed to find them. There was a discussion here about this at the time, and what I have said above was based on what I recall of that discussion.
Humax being one of the few companies that developed and auto installed a firmware change.
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Old 18th Mar 2018, 8:33 pm   #111
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US legal photocopier paper used to be available about 15 years ago.when we got a Brother plain paper fax to replace a thermal paper roll model. It came with two trays, a 500 sheet one for A4, and a 100 sheet one that took either A4 or US legal. We used to get a lot of documents from the US on US legal which was not a problem with the thermal paper roll model, but took 2 pages of A4 per US legal sheet, so I got our office supplies to get us a box of US legal. The fax automatically detected the length of the original and selected the paper tray accordingly.

When I tried to get some last year in connection with my bookbinding hobby (a sheet of US legal was just right for making replacement end papers for some books I am re-binding) I couldn't find any UK suppliers. I have therefore had to guillotine A3 sheets to size : wasteful, but a more economical option than importing some from the US! Getting US letter paper is no problem as that is the size of tractor feed computer listing paper.

What are now considered to be US paper sizes were at one time widely used in many mainland European countries until the 1960's (other than Germany, where I believe the "A" to "D" series of rationalised 1 : √2 proportioned sizes were first used). I did once have to search for some technical information in the old SRIS Foreign Patents Library in Holborn in the days when the only alternative to paper was microfilm and microfiche, and noticed that until the 1960's the official French and Belgian patent gazettes were printed on US letter size paper, as were some of the older reference manuals issued by the UK Patent Office.
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Old 19th Mar 2018, 1:17 am   #112
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Does anyone remember the BBC Doomsday Project that involved schoolchildren, an Acorn BBC Master computer and a Philips Laservision disk?
Granada Microcare who I worked for had the maintenance contract for the hardware. There was a "real" helium-neon laser in the machine as I remember.
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Old 19th Mar 2018, 3:02 am   #113
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

US "legal A4" paper sizes are widely available in the Philippines, more so than A4 !
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Old 19th Mar 2018, 5:34 pm   #114
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

I remember at college having trouble printing a onto simple sheet of A4 as the settings had been left on the default of USA & would only offer American paper sides, messing up the margins.

I couldn't change anything as I didn't have the permission on my logon!

I heard early CED discs suffered from pressing problems, often whole batches were unplayable due to slight glitches while being made, or being stored in the wrong condition.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:16 am   #115
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Did anyone here ever come across the CueCat?

It was a sort-of handheld barcode-reader you hooked to your PC and by swiping it across barcodes printed in magazines, catalogs, on products etc. it took you to the relevant website.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

A bit like the ubiquitous QR-codes do on phones these days.

As an idea it never caught on and the people behind it filed for bankruptchy after a couple of years.
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:20 am   #116
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

Another bit of now-useless stuff: the "pluscodes" that used to be printed in listings-magazines so you could set your video-recorder to record a particular program by typing in a string of digits rather than the start/finish times and channel-number.

Totally useless since the demise of analog TV. Also had the major disadvantage of assuming a particular assignment-order of TV stations to tuner-presets: not everyone had BBC1 on preset-1, BBC2 on preset-2 etc (most people I knew had BBC1 on preset 1, ITV on preset-2, a second ITV channel on preset-3, channel-4 on 4, channel 5 on 5...)
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 10:55 am   #117
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Originally Posted by rambo1152 View Post
Does anyone remember the BBC Doomsday Project that involved schoolchildren, an Acorn BBC Master computer and a Philips Laservision disk?
Granada Microcare who I worked for had the maintenance contract for the hardware. There was a "real" helium-neon laser in the machine as I remember.
Yes, we had one at school. It's an interesting example of the challenges of technology preservation. There's a wealth of data on the discs which we don't want to lose, but the technology required to make sense of them is dying. There's a lot of effort going in to transferring everything to the web, but it's not straightforward. You can see the "Domesday Reloaded" project results here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday
There are still working original systems in a few places: I think the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge has one.

Chris
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 1:07 pm   #118
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Did anyone here ever come across the CueCat?

It was a sort-of handheld barcode-reader you hooked to your PC and by swiping it across barcodes printed in magazines, catalogs, on products etc. it took you to the relevant website.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

A bit like the ubiquitous QR-codes do on phones these days.

As an idea it never caught on and the people behind it filed for bankruptchy after a couple of years.
You've reminded me of the Siemens Pocket Reader.

I bought one for next-to-nothing from an ad in a magazine when they'd been discontinued, thinking it would be useful and fun. It turned out to be neither

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/d...Pocket-Reader/

Nick
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 1:18 pm   #119
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

While I like the idea of that pocket reader, I doubt I'd ever have a steady-enough hand to keep it centred on a single line of text across a whole page!

Thinking of document/data-capture, another 'thing' which never caught on was the Microwriter: a 'chorded' keyboard where you pressed different groups of keys at the same time to represent the different letters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwriter
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Old 23rd Mar 2018, 1:53 pm   #120
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Default Re: Bygone Technology and Useless Items.

I shan't miss the thermal printers used for receipt etc. After a month or so they've faded to the point where they are no longer readable, fat lot of good that is if it happens to be the "guarantee"....... Filament lamps have made quite a big come back as "vintage bulbs for decorative lighting", bit of a loophole in the EU ruling there methinks?
I was glad to see the back of golfball/daisy wheel & line printers, all a mechanical catastrophe just waiting for an excuse to dismantle themselves with malice aforethought!
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