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New inventions in our lifetime........

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Shuggy:

--- Quote from: opinionista on October 10, 2006, 07:26:40 pm ---Sepaking of cameras, another invention of our lifetime were the polaroid instant cameras. I remember when they became trendy and everyone had one. 



--- End quote ---
And that's an SX-70 or something very similar, a second-generation polaroid, where you didn't have to count seconds and then peel the negative off the positive, let alone go over it with a squeegee, just wait and watch the image appear.

Kodak made one very similar, except that the image went in the back of the film, which meant it required two mirrors in the camera to get it the right way round. So the camera was a tall thing with the lens at the top and the film below in front. Didn't last long, as Polaroid won the patent case.

Does anyone remember Polaroid movies? The film was in a cassette and they could only be projected in a special self-contained back projection unit. (Quite ingenious, the colours were on fine stripes side by side down the film - which is why it could never be enlarged to big screen size). I can't remember if development happened in the camera or the projector. They came in and went out again almost immediately some time around 1980, swamped by video cameras.

Shuggy:

--- Quote from: MaineWriter on October 11, 2006, 08:25:35 am ---Polaroid was invented by a man named Edward Land and the early models were called "the Polaroid Land camera." For years, I thought that mean you could only use them on land, ie, you couldn't take Polaroid on a boat to take a picture. I had a "Swinger" (remember those? the $19.99 Polaroid?) and one day I decided to be very daring and yes, take it on our boat to take a picture. Imagine my amazement when it worked!

Leslie


--- End quote ---

Edwin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Land

I thought "Land" meant it was for taking landscapes, not portraits - very long focus, perhaps.

Katie77:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on October 12, 2006, 09:58:24 am ---"
Hey, how about toasters with slots wide enough for bagels?

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Speaking about toasters......why have settings from 1-6...when setting 2 or 3 makes the toast just right........who in the helll uses setting 5 and 6....(obviously someone who likes to eat charcoal)

rick:
I do.  I love dark or even black toast. with alot of unmelted butter on it. It's great. so they did put the 5-6 on it for some of us anyways.

Shuggy:
Don't be too hard on the 8-track recordings. They were intended for cars, and the idea was to be eyes-off, just pop them in and away they'd go (again and again).

So were 7" 16 2/3 rpm recordings, but everyone wanted to play them inside as well, so for years automatic record changers had a 16 2/3 speed and nothing to play at it. Though there were a few 12" spoken word discs that played for about 3 hours.

Condoms shouldn't be listed here. They go back centuries: Casanova used sheepgut ones, which are still made. (no good against HIV, though, they have tiny holes a virus can get through).

The invention that came in in my time I'm most grateful for is the high speed dental drill. I'm showing my age when I tell you that when I was a child the school dental nurse drilled our teeth with a drill that she turned with a treadle, like an old sewing machine, with the most amazing arrangement of cords and pulleys to give her manouverability. It went "URRurrURRurrURR..." now that was terrifying.

But a whole huge field of inventions in the last few decades are in materials science.

When someone advised Benjamin in The Graduate (1968) to go into "plastics", that was a joke because plastics were so passé, but plastics have made enormous strides since then.

Think of the huge things that are now made of plastic, such as wheely rubbish bins and car dashboards, thanks to improved strength and durability. Plastic spectacle lenses, strong and clear. All the ways mechanical features like snap fasteners and hinges are now built into the body of the material. Ziplok bags. Have you tried to break a CD? Quite impressive. All sorts of composite materials, like pre-stressed reinforced concrete, fibreglass and carbon-fibre. Two-pot glues. Think of how some plastics are now heat-resistant, sun-resistant, etc. The roof of my house is plastic!

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