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Old 19th Feb 2021, 8:19 pm   #1
duncanlowe
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Default 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I hope this is an appropriate thread, sorry if it isn't. But something else on here reminded me of my student days in London, and then on to other similar topics.

Back in the mid eighties, IBM had an exhibition in the grounds of the Natural History Museum, I think called 'The Exhibit'. It was quite interesting but for me there was a standout where they were showing a technology that we just take for granted now. They had a system they called 'barcodes' where goods in a shop could be marked with a series of stripes, and the checkout could simply scan them using a clever laser and mirror system. I wonder what ever became of that?

This then reminded me of a couple of 'Tomorrow's World' items.

The first is a bit early for me to properly remember accurately it so apologies if I've got it a bit wrong. I believe the article was about Triacs, and how they could have low voltage / current connections to control mains voltage devices. The benefit they said was that you could bury low voltage wiring directly into the plaster of your walls. Don't think that ever happened?

On the other hand, I remember them talking about memory cards. It's long enough ago that it was well before the time of CF, MMC, and SD cards but must have been the forerunner of all of these. They were amazed how you could store an entire album of music on something the size of a postage stamp! I mean today you could store an entire music collection of hundreds of albums on a microSD that's quarter the size of a postage stamp.
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 8:22 pm   #2
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, oldschool or even vintage?

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Originally Posted by duncanlowe View Post
They had a system they called 'barcodes' where goods in a shop could be marked with a series of stripes, and the checkout could simply scan them using a clever laser and mirror system. I wonder what ever became of that?
It was then used to replace colour patches in the identification of individual sheep.
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 9:25 pm   #3
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, oldschool or even vintage?

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Originally Posted by duncanlowe View Post
Back in the mid eighties, IBM had an exhibition in the grounds of the Natural History Museum, I think called 'The Exhibit'. It was quite interesting but for me there was a standout where they were showing a technology that we just take for granted now. They had a system they called 'barcodes' where goods in a shop could be marked with a series of stripes, and the checkout could simply scan them using a clever laser and mirror system. I wonder what ever became of that?
That reminds me a head-scratcher that was brought to me by a computer programmer in the early days of barcodes. The program was supposed to print barcodes by sending a series of binary codes to a dot-matrix printer, but they were not being printed out correctly - with occasional (apparently) random dots being inserted into the binary stream and mangling the barcodes. By converting the stream into a hexidecimal print, I noticed that every time the code "0D" was output, an extraneous "0A" was inserted after it. Solution: insist to the program that this is not an ASCII character stream where carriage return must be followed by line feed.
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 9:55 pm   #4
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I remember attending a talk and demostration in the local church hall about the new wonder device, the microwave oven.

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Old 19th Feb 2021, 10:05 pm   #5
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

All technology is 'new' at some stage of course.

Long before SD cards were bubble memory cards, a technology whose time in the sun passed very quickly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 10:13 pm   #6
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Several decades ago a technically minded friend of mine came back all excited from a HiFi demo he had been to see staged by the manufacturer at some local venue like a hotel. The most amazing thing (he said) was at the beginning where the host turned up the volume on the silent lead-in to the demo track and it was exactly that - silent, no hiss, no rumble, no crackle. Everyone was then almost blasted off their feet when the tune actually started with the volume set to the same level. He raved about it for days afterwards.

The system being demonstrated? Compact Disc.
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 10:31 pm   #7
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I remember in "Elektor" magazine in the late-70s an article talking about the prospect of "Polysilicon modules" - illustrated by something about the size of an 8-track cartridge, with a PCB edge-connector, allegedly capable of digitally storing an entire album with no moving-parts!
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 10:38 pm   #8
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I can remember going to one of Prof Eric Laithwaite's lectures (maybe at the Royal Institution, I can't remember, must have been in the early 70's) where he demonstrated magnetic levitation and his linear induction motors. It seemed very futuristic then.
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Old 19th Feb 2021, 11:48 pm   #9
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I was in an pub just outside Aberdeen, very early 90's, just before closing time.

A local regular turned up, knowing he could always get a drink if the bar stayed open, which it did as long as it had customers.

He had a small suitcase sized box, and he promised if we bought him a drink he'd show us what it was.

So, duly supplied with a pint, he opened the box.

Inside was a control panel of some sort. He flicked a switch or two, and banks of bright red LED digits sprang into life.

"That's where we are !" he proclaimed.

Err, wot ?. We know where we are. We're in the pub.

Yes, but if I move this box the numbers will change to show where it's moved to.

Prove it !, we said.

OK, he said, and we followed him as he carried the box out into the snowy car park.

The numbers had changed a bit, but we didn't stay outside to see more, it was b***dy freezing !.


That was my first sight of a GPS receiver.

That was cutting edge tech back then, but I'd had a pint too many to take much notice of it.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 5:05 am   #10
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

In the early 70s a friend of a friend showed me the cordless phone he had bought in the USA. The handset had a miniture rotary dial.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 10:20 am   #11
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

One of the demonstrations on an early 'Tomorrows World' was of email between two computers. At the end of the demonstration, which worked!, we were told that in the future your e-mail address would be more important than you physical address. Almost true.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 9:58 pm   #12
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Quote:
Originally Posted by SiriusHardware View Post
Several decades ago a technically minded friend of mine came back all excited from a HiFi demo he had been to see staged by the manufacturer at some local venue like a hotel. The most amazing thing (he said) was at the beginning where the host turned up the volume on the silent lead-in to the demo track and it was exactly that - silent, no hiss, no rumble, no crackle. Everyone was then almost blasted off their feet when the tune actually started with the volume set to the same level. He raved about it for days afterwards.

The system being demonstrated? Compact Disc.
As I read through your post, I thought you were going to write 'noise gate'

Around about 90/91, the Hitachi rep came into the place I worked at and showed us a colour plasma screen, built into a small flight-case.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 10:18 pm   #13
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

In the early 1950's one if my uncles, who lived in the flat downstairs, came back full of enthusiasm from an exhibition where they had demonstrated this new device called the transistor that was a fraction of the size of a valve, didn't need hundreds of volts or heaters to work, and was so easy to make. There had been a demonstration of their manufacture (presumably just putting the transistor chip in its package), and it was going to revolutionise electronics! We all said yea, yea .....

Last edited by emeritus; 20th Feb 2021 at 10:23 pm. Reason: Typos
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 10:52 pm   #14
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I think this was in the early-80's...

A colleague of mine was one of those people who liked to acquire the latest gadgets and show them off to us.

One day he turned up with a thing the size and weight of a couple of bricks, with a handset - and proceeded to make a phone call on it.

We took the p*** out of him a bit over it, and he said "you may well laugh, but one day these will be small enough to fit in your pocket and everyone will have one". Which just made us all laugh even more...
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 11:11 pm   #15
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Circa 1975 I met up with some friends in "The Bell" pub outside Plessey Ilford's entrance. One of my former colleagues who had left to join Multitone a year or so earlier, produced his pager, gave me a 5p piece and a slip of paper with a telephone number on it, and told me to ring it from the payphone at the end of the bar. As I returned, a message magically appeared on a small screen on the pager. It was their latest state-of-the-art model which allowed the user to programme up to ten messages, any of which could be displayed by ringing its associated telephone number so you could know who was paging you. It seemed marvellous at the time.

Last edited by emeritus; 20th Feb 2021 at 11:16 pm. Reason: Typos
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 11:32 pm   #16
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

In the dark days of DOS I hadn't really taken much notice of computer games they were silly crude things at the time wern't they. that you had to load with a cassette for ages in some cases.

Anyway, this colleague brought in one or two floppy discs and loaded them up on the PC and suddenly there was a room on the screen...and have to say I was blown away by the detail (obviously very crude today) and even more amazed that I could move about via mouse in the room and then totally gobsmacked that when I opened the door a Nazi soldier started firing at me ....the game was Wolfenstein and I realised then this was a new world on the way..
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Old 21st Feb 2021, 1:32 am   #17
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Quote:
Originally Posted by SiriusHardware View Post
Several decades ago a technically minded friend of mine came back all excited from a HiFi demo he had been to see staged by the manufacturer at some local venue like a hotel. The most amazing thing (he said) was at the beginning where the host turned up the volume on the silent lead-in to the demo track and it was exactly that - silent, no hiss, no rumble, no crackle. Everyone was then almost blasted off their feet when the tune actually started with the volume set to the same level. He raved about it for days afterwards.

The system being demonstrated? Compact Disc.
Indeed. But there is a downside to that. When recordings were being re-mastered for CD release, the editors would mute the audio right up until the first note the orchestra played so the sound would appear starkly against a silent background. Although this led to the dramatic beginning you describe, it left out the 'sharp intake of breath' just before the music burst forth, and it sounded a bit unnatural to those of us who had grown up listening to classical recordings.
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Old 21st Feb 2021, 1:33 am   #18
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

I still have my first two company mobile phones.

Click image for larger version

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I think the NEC on the left was my first, a few of my relatives and friends already had mobiles, but most of them were quite unaware of a feature that, in those days, was buried in the menu labyrinth.

This was the Short Message Service SMS AKA text messaging.

My party trick was to send someone a message and see their reaction to the strange bleep that emendated from their device.

After a brief interest, the consensus of opinion was on the lines of, "Nice gimmick, but no obvious use for them".

The irony is that these days, they are the very people who can't keep their thumbs of their fondle-slabs, and I am the one wondering why they don't just phone up and talk to each other.
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Old 21st Feb 2021, 1:34 am   #19
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerfulcharlie View Post
In the dark days of DOS I hadn't really taken much notice of computer games they were silly crude things at the time wern't they. that you had to load with a cassette for ages in some cases.

Anyway, this colleague brought in one or two floppy discs and loaded them up on the PC and suddenly there was a room on the screen...and have to say I was blown away by the detail (obviously very crude today) and even more amazed that I could move about via mouse in the room and then totally gobsmacked that when I opened the door a Nazi soldier started firing at me ....the game was Wolfenstein and I realised then this was a new world on the way..
And quickly followed by DOOM, another classic from ID.
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Old 21st Feb 2021, 8:24 am   #20
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Default Re: 'New' technology of the day, that is now mainstream, old school or even vintage?

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Originally Posted by m0cemdave View Post
I think this was in the early-80's...

A colleague of mine was one of those people who liked to acquire the latest gadgets and show them off to us.

One day he turned up with a thing the size and weight of a couple of bricks, with a handset - and proceeded to make a phone call on it.

We took the p*** out of him a bit over it, and he said "you may well laugh, but one day these will be small enough to fit in your pocket and everyone will have one". Which just made us all laugh even more...
And for one, brief, bright shining moment, they were, then the iPhone was born, & the "bloat" began!

Last edited by Cobaltblue; 21st Feb 2021 at 10:52 am. Reason: Fixed quote
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