Old Tech Lives!

Tue 24 Dec 2024, 11:30

I collected a handful of slide-rules from neighbours in our area, and with my trusty old SR sent them off to Africa. Via Oxfam If I recall correctly.

One doesn't find oneself with dead batteries or no lekky with a SR! This was before Solar PV panels underwent the massive cost decline of 21st century.

I sort of regret passing on Old Faithful calculating friend but nowadays can't remember how to use one ...   :-(

Mon 23 Dec 2024, 22:36

Years ago, whilst the airbus could do the sums provided that you (eventually) selected the right pages, it was actually quicker to use the "Dalton circular slide rule". In the diversion scenario this was actually important: a minute saved allowed you to finish your cup of coffee and a ton of fuel either way was barely here or there!

Mon 23 Dec 2024, 22:30

2011 'older tech'??  I still have a couple of fully working valve amplifiers from 1958 (my Dad's Leak 20) and 1960 (a Rogers Master - rarer than hen's teeth!).  From a different era...

Mon 23 Dec 2024, 20:28

I still have my slide rule ....

Mon 23 Dec 2024, 19:50

I started out with a number of slide rulers. The Texas instruments Ti-57 was a must, we had them in a case hanging off our trouser belt. Like some maths cowboy...

Mon 23 Dec 2024, 19:42

I immediately thought about the Museum of Computing up in the site of the famous Bletchley Park complex where the hero of Computing, Alan Turing, created his "Bombes" decoding the German Enigma rotor encryption machines.

A decade or so time ago they were hunting around for functional electronic calculators. I have a, much used in the past, a fully operational Casio FX29 full science with statistical functions calculator an example of which they just couldn't find anywhere! Although I had a full student grant at the time, having utterly no family income etc, it still cost me nearly a Term's Grant of full allowance to purchase in the 70s! But mine seemed to be the sole, functional, example to be found on the whole Island. And this was an important machine in the 70s history amongst scientists. And then, poueff!, all examples seemed gone by the 20 'teens'.

Moral: Don't just bin/recycle old Computational devices. Or even "common" household devices. What I think Museum Archivists(?) call "Ephemera" can just disappear into oblivion because everyone thinks "they are so common nobody is interested". And then there are none of once common household goods like vacuum cleaners or DIY tools.

I recall the Amberley Museum seeking to put together Set Displays of 20s, 30s, 40s, households and their gadgets. And finding examples of those "in between" decades were really, really, hard to find - and much missing totally. Victorian = old, antique. Even Edwardian = sort of old. Proto "antique". But find a ration era vacuum ca '45-54....? Hens proverbial.

So just spare a thought about what ay seem "just recent stuff" or suddenly nothings no more... Pass it by a Tech Curator first - like my FX29!

And I wonder how many single 128kb floppy disk IBM PCs are still extant... and working.

Sun 22 Dec 2024, 20:12

I have an iPad 2 from 2011 to pass on and, rather to my surprise, 4 people responded to the ad I posted earlier! I've offered it to the first person to respond but thanks to the other respondents.

Great to see older tech can still find a home!