Redundant technology

[Replies From View]

There was a television series in the late 80s / early 90s called The Secret Life of Machines.  Every episode was dedicated to focusing upon and tearing apart one item of then-commonplace technology.  Fascinating series then as now - you should check it out if it doesn't sound familiar.

Anyway, almost every item of technology discussed has since become obsolete or changed beyond recognition.  Some episodes include:  the television, the car, the quartz watch, the telephone, the radio set, the video recorder, the word processor, the electric light, the fax machine.

Which actually means that half the episodes (9 out of a total of 18) contain largely unchanged technologies, in turns out.  Nevertheless.

[buzby]

There was a television series in the late 80s / early 90s called The Secret Life of Machines.  Every episode was dedicated to focusing upon and tearing apart one item of then-commonplace technology.  Fascinating series then as now - you should check it out if it doesn't sound familiar.

Anyway, almost every item of technology discussed has since become obsolete or changed beyond recognition.  Some episodes include:  the television, the car, the quartz watch, the telephone, the radio set, the video recorder, the word processor, the electric light, the fax machine.

Which actually means that half the episodes (9 out of a total of 18) contain largely unchanged technologies, in turns out.  Nevertheless.

Tim Hunkin is still going - he started doing youtube videos about components in a similar vein to the TV series last year:
https://www.timhunkin.com/a241_component-videos.htm

[gilbertharding]

There's a really good (I think, anyway) podcast called Tomorrow's World Audit Time which... well, you can imagine what it does. Suffice to say, it's an unaffiliated but unacknowledged part of the Extended Chart Music Podcast Universe.

[Blumf]

It wasn't taken over by BT, it was when the GPO and Post Office Telecommunications..

Oh, whilst you're here in a GPO/POT mood, can you identify this thing?


(crappy grab from Google Street View)

The tag at the top says Royal Mail, so I presume this goes back to pre-BT days and is some telecoms type jobby, but looks in surprisingly good nick if it is that old. It's next to a Virgin Media cable box, if that's relevant.

[Replies From View]

Not redundant as they're still in use but I'm often struck by how archaic it feels to press the foil cap down on a bottle of milk. I've not checked but I guess Innovations-style catalogues will have a less fiddly lid/ spout you can buy.

The funniest aspect for me is thinking of the way we'd balance the little foil lid back on the bottle between uses.  Little foil circle:  there we go lad just pop that on there; milk is now securely air-tightened.

[buzby]

Oh, whilst you're here in a GPO/POT mood, can you identify this thing?


(crappy grab from Google Street View)

The tag at the top says Royal Mail, so I presume this goes back to pre-BT days and is some telecoms type jobby, but looks in surprisingly good nick if it is that old. It's next to a Virgin Media cable box, if that's relevant.

No, it's a modern Pouch Box/Bag Drop Box (Royal Mail being the post-privatisation delivery arm of the GPO, after the Consignia farrago, anyway). It's used by the postie to store part of their load at the start of their round, so they don't have to carry it all with them. The van drivers can also drop off additional letters and parcels in them while they are still out on their round, saving them a trip back to the sorting office.

They started appearing after the move to a single daily delivery happened in 2003. Originally they were attached to the side of postboxes and painted red to match. Nowadays, they are usually separate free-standing boxes sited near to a postbox (or other convenient location in the middle of the round) and generally painted grey, although some red stand-alone boxes do exist.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think they've given up using the one near me as it's been swallowed by hedging and has a posties bag handle dangling out the bottom.

[Replies From View]

A modern drop box, heh I remember when a drop box was a kind of old fashioned google drive.  It's hard to explain and I doubt you'd understand anyway.  It's all physical media now isn't it, i bet you've never even heard of clouds

You kids

[gilbertharding]

I think they've given up using the one near me as it's been swallowed by hedging and has a posties bag handle dangling out the bottom.

Obviously my knowledge of the postal system is limited to 'things I've noticed' but I'm pretty sure that round my way, since they stopped the posties riding bikes, they all drive vans to their rounds, park them somewhere full of mail which they then load a street's worth into a trolley/satchel and walk... so no need for those boxes, or a separate person in a van. I guess it depends on the neighbourhood.

[Blumf]

No, it's a modern Drop Box (Royal Mail being the post-privatisation delivery arm of the GPO, after the Consignia farrago, anyway). It's used by the postie to store part of their load at the start of their round, so they don't have to carry it all with them.

Ah, makes sense as it's at the top of a long steep road. Thanks.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Obviously my knowledge of the postal system is limited to 'things I've noticed' but I'm pretty sure that round my way, since they stopped the posties riding bikes, they all drive vans to their rounds, park them somewhere full of mail which they then load a street's worth into a trolley/satchel and walk... so no need for those boxes, or a separate person in a van. I guess it depends on the neighbourhood.

Yeah I think mine have someone on foot and someone else zipping round in a van doing parcels and drops to the foot person. I'm also fairly certain they run alternate routes as it's quite common to not get post daily.

[gilbertharding]

Yeah I think mine have someone on foot and someone else zipping round in a van doing parcels and drops to the foot person. I'm also fairly certain they run alternate routes as it's quite common to not get post daily.

I remember when the drop box first appeared near my parent's house in the early 90s. No-one knew what it was (and it was red). It's still there (it's been painted grey) and has been joined by a red pillar box - but one of the square ones on a pole. It looks properly shonky.

On the subject of pillar boxes, in a new village near me they've installed on which LOOKS like the old cast iron one, but it's made of steel tube with all the ornament stamped out of sheet steel and welded on. Awful

[buzby]

Ah, makes sense as it's at the top of a long steep road. Thanks.

The other clue as to it not being telecoms-related is the colour - BT and Virgin street furniture usually green. Grey is used for traffic controls. That drop box on a pole does remind me of the old Plessey electromechanical traffic light/pelican crossing controller cabinets, which were a cube on top of a short pole.

[Blumf]

The other clue as to it not being telecoms-related is the colour - BT and Virgin street furniture usually green. Grey is used for traffic controls.

Well that's what got me, it does look like something that'd have wires in it, rather than the postie's packed lunch.

Most the 5G masts, and their related boxes, I've seen popping up have been a mix of light-grey/beige and black. Surprised they haven't gone for the dark green look.

[Ferris]

I have never sent a telegram, and occasionally feel moved to correct this... but you don't live in the UK, do you? I'm sure you can't still send telegrams here. Tell me I'm wrong. +++STOP+++

It may not have been the real McCoy and cost about 20 quid to send a glorified text message across the ocean.

I was just amazed the infrastructure was still there (do they just sit around all day ready to pounce the second a weirdo like me uses their services?) so I went for it anyway.

[The Ombudsman]

Tim Hunkin is still going - he started doing youtube videos about components in a similar vein to the TV series last year:
https://www.timhunkin.com/a241_component-videos.htm

Tim Hunkin is my hero. Has been since I was about 8 watching secret life of machines.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Love the butterfield ass website for telegrams

https://www.britishtelegram.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw-daUBhCIARIsALbkjSYOo_dXqAfthkIAM-tAQlMFYviHCZT2QpqpHIlDK7C5O8blj9R1w0waAnxCEALw_wcB

[PlanktonSideburns]

I like all the telegrams me ....

https://www.britishtelegram.com/categories/list/plain%20telegram

[Replies From View]

Tim Hunkin is my hero. Has been since I was about 8 watching secret life of machines.

We're going to have to share him, I'm afraid.

[The Ombudsman]

We're going to have to share him, I'm afraid.

Alternate weekends? You ever been to Novelty Automation? I've not been to the London one but have been down the pier. Saw the Dr Machine my mum took me to Covent Garden to see in the late 80's.

Magic. I was quite tearful to see his recent series is dedicated to Rex Garrod (as well as someone else).

[Replies From View]

Alternate weekends? You ever been to Novelty Automation? I've not been to the London one but have been down the pier. Saw the Dr Machine my mum took me to Covent Garden to see in the late 80's.

Magic. I was quite tearful to see his recent series is dedicated to Rex Garrod (as well as someone else).

I haven't been yo Novelty Automation and it is now on my to-do list.  Thank you.

That dedication is very touching.  I never really knew of Rex outside his contributions to the series, but his presence was fantastic - so sincere and unaffected.  Which applies to Tim too, of course.

"This was recorded on sticky tape and rust.  This was recorded on sticky tape and rust."  I like to imagine that strip of sticky tape and rust somehow survived to this day and now sits in a museum somewhere.

[The Ombudsman]

"This was recorded on sticky tape and rust.  This was recorded on sticky tape and rust."  I like to imagine that strip of sticky tape and rust somehow survived to this day and now sits in a museum somewhere.

Yes! He was great. I remember his Polo mint he made for the advert, Brum of course, Robot Wars, the remote controlled suitcase. As well as stunt driving!

Perhaps there should be a CAB meet an Novelty Automation. Could be fun (for us two at least!). I'm so pleased to hear of someone else so affected by Tim, Rex and their little tv series in the 80's.

[Sonny_Jim]

Put me down as a fan of Tim, although I only discovered his stuff last year when he started uploading them to his channel.

A previous job had me working in air traffic control centres.  These places have millions of dollars in equipment to make sure planes get to where they need to be safely, but one of the things they use is a wooden block that they attach a piece of paper with the flight details onto, which is physically passed around each controller as a plane enters and leaves their areas.  The thought process behind it is that if everything goes titsup, network goes down or whatever, each controller has a physical and up to date record of which plane is in their airspace.

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

According to wikipedia they've been phased out now and replaced with digital equivalents. Register article about them being phased out

Also on the topic of old stuff that airplanes use, the last place I heard a dot matrix printer was at the departure gates at the airport.  I have a sneaky feeling most of them are still using decades old software for the passenger loading that's only compatible with a certain type of printer, but I have nothing to back this up with.  This post reckons it's due to impact printers being able to make carbon copies

[Blumf]

Also on the topic of old stuff that airplanes use, the last place I heard a dot matrix printer was at the departure gates at the airport.  I have a sneaky feeling most of them are still using decades old software for the passenger loading that's only compatible with a certain type of printer,

It may be the need for a printer that presses the text onto the page (think carbon copies). Until recently our accounts dept. used dot matrix for the pay slips. They printed through the sealed slip onto the internal paper, keeping them private from anyone snooping about. Moved to on-line PDFs now.

[buzby]

The ability to use mutipart carbon copy paper is part of the reason for the continued existence of dot matrix printers at airports. However, it also comes down to cost too - dot matrix printers are cheap and will work for years with no or minimal maintenance. The cost and lifespan of the ribbons puts inkjet and laser toner cartridges to shame. Also, for long multipage printouts, tractor-fed roll or fan-fold paper is far handier than having multiple loose sheets that can get in the wrong order or go missing. They are also available with interfaces that are compatible with legacy systems (mostly I expect RS232, as a lot of the old airline dispatch systems were based on serial terminals hanging off mainframes).

Another user of them is fire brigades - a few years ago I was involved with a project to upgrade the station alerter systems at a number of fire brigades. The old embedded contollers at the stations used Oki Microline ML280 dot matrix printers with RS232 interfaces, some of which were around 20 years old and still working (the print heads are life-rated for 200 million characters, and the ribbons for 3 million characters). They are used to print out the incident details, which the crew then tear off as they head to the engine (they have touchscreen terminals in the cabs these days too, but prefer having a physical copy as well).

The new single-board PC Windows Embedded-based controllers used Oki Microline ML280 dot matrix printers with USB interfaces. Exactly the same printer, all Oki did was design a new interface module (they use plug-in modules so they can offer any interface - RS232, RS485, Centronics/Parallel or USB).

[Ferris]

Put me down as a fan of Tim, although I only discovered his stuff last year when he started uploading them to his channel.

A previous job had me working in air traffic control centres.  These places have millions of dollars in equipment to make sure planes get to where they need to be safely, but one of the things they use is a wooden block that they attach a piece of paper with the flight details onto, which is physically passed around each controller as a plane enters and leaves their areas.  The thought process behind it is that if everything goes titsup, network goes down or whatever, each controller has a physical and up to date record of which plane is in their airspace.

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

According to wikipedia they've been phased out now and replaced with digital equivalents. Register article about them being phased out

Also on the topic of old stuff that airplanes use, the last place I heard a dot matrix printer was at the departure gates at the airport.  I have a sneaky feeling most of them are still using decades old software for the passenger loading that's only compatible with a certain type of printer, but I have nothing to back this up with.  This post reckons it's due to impact printers being able to make carbon copies

That's amazing!

[KennyMonster]

It seems from Apple's point of view having a podcast app that makes any sense is now redundant.

This weekend just gone I have replaced my old 2009 iMac with a new Macbook and so iTunes has bitten the dust.

This leaves me with the replaced Apple Podcasts app plus a whole library of 100s of unlistened to podcasts on my old classic ipod that my mac wants to sync into oblivion.

I have tried setting my ipod to 'disk mode' and adding new podcasts individually to it but on Apple Podcasts they get saved under weird filenames called something like "386gudba78gnsngrOE" so finding them is a pain in the arse.
It also won't let me saved them in a different directory, I have all my old itunes librabry saved on a separate hard drive so my "C:" drive didn't get full, but this is an option on Apple Music but not on Apple Podcasts.

I saw something on Google saying that Acast are thinking of doing away with their app as a listening platform.

What Podcast Apps do other people use?
(or is it all just Spotify and Ketamine shots you kids are doing these days whilst listeneing to your Hippity Hop rapping music?)

[gilbertharding]

I saw something on Google saying that Acast are thinking of doing away with their app as a listening platform.

What Podcast Apps do other people use?
(or is it all just Spotify and Ketamine shots you kids are doing these days whilst listeneing to your Hippity Hop rapping music?)

I use the podbean app on my phone and Spotify when I'm at work (because I don't have a paid for Spotify account it is absolute GASH on a mobile device). And because I usually listen where there's wifi, I rarely download anything.

The big issue with all of these platforms is when the podcast you're listening to finishes - say it's episode 19 of something - it starts to play episode 18, rather than episode 20. And it's fucking annoying.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Google podcasts is pretty good as a browser-only thing, although google seem to be trying to keep it a secret, I practically found out about it by accident.

[mjwilson]

Apparently universal remotes are redundant now - there were various announcements about companies stopping making them. I think we're all just supposed to be using HDMI-CEC to be controlling everything, although half of my technology seems to be too old to support it.