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

[David In Indy]

This is still one contraption that I still can't figure out. How they send these images through telephone wires to another fax machine is beyond me.

I can't figure out how computers work. 

I still think a little man with a Harvard degree is sitting in there doing all the work.

I never do see him though. I think he runs and hides every time I open up the computer.

Isn't that what the little man in the refrigerator does? You know, the one who always turns the light on and off?   

Fax machines are confusing and weird. I don't understand them either Geri.   

Edit: Speaking of confusing things, I could never figure out how the telephone worked. Somebody speaks into it, everything is changed into electrical impulses or something, it's sent through a tiny wire, the whole thing is put back together again in the other telephone and the voice sounds exactly like it is suppose to.  How?  And they invented the telephone in 1870. Boy, I really do get confused easily!

[Jeff Wrangler]

<raising hand>

I do. That was one of the most God awful inventions in all of history. 

If you wanted to listen to a song again, you had to wait until all the other songs on the track played (normally three or four). If you hadn't lost interest by then, you would have to fight with the machine to keep it from changing to the next track.

Yep. I remember the 8-tracks all right.

Tell you what, my family is notorious for being one step behind the technology curve. While I was still in college, in the late '70s, my mother bought me a new stereo (got a discount at the department store where she worked). It was one of those so-called "compact" systems that weren't really compact. I had a choice of a model with a built-in casette player-recorder and one with a built-in 8-track player-recorder. Guess which one I picked. 

I used to record from my record albums right over the track change on the 8-tracks. Mainly I listened to classical music, so I didn't find the technology a problem.

[nakymaton]

Edit: Speaking of confusing things, I could never figure out how the telephone worked. Somebody speaks into it, everything is changed into electrical impulses or something, it's sent through a tiny wire, the whole thing is put back together again in the other telephone and the voice sounds exactly like it is suppose to.  How?  And they invented the telephone in 1870. Boy, I really do get confused easily!

That would be a great question to send to Dr. Science. And he would say something like:

"Did you ever wonder what happened to Mr. Watson? I think he was transformed into electrical impulses, and forced to run back and forth across electrical wires. Today, the entire process has been speeded up by changing him, instead, into a beam of light and sending him down fiber optic cables."

[David In Indy]

That would be a great question to send to Dr. Science. And he would say something like:

"Did you ever wonder what happened to Mr. Watson? I think he was transformed into electrical impulses, and forced to run back and forth across electrical wires. Today, the entire process has been speeded up by changing him, instead, into a beam of light and sending him down fiber optic cables."

Huh? 

Beams of light and fiber optic cables?

That sounds like something they have in kinky gay bars.

I thought we were talking about telephones. 

[nakymaton]

Huh? 

Beams of light and fiber optic cables?

That sounds like something they have in kinky gay bars.

Either that or on Star Trek.

[Shuggy]

It's crazy what has changed at my radio station during the last ten years or so. When I began to work there, the editing of audio material was still real handicraft, and "to cut" meant really just this: cut the audio tape with a little knife and then glue it together again at the place you wanted. I remember working through whole nights at one of these machines in our studio:

 

Today, it's all digital:


In fact, I can do a lot of stuff with a relatively cheap software at home. It's gotten easier and more comfortable in a lot of ways, but sometimes I still miss the "good old times" when you didn't have to sit in front of a computer all day...

 

Me too. I did a job that required literally thousands of splice edits - I got to be a dab hand at them, but I could also do dub edits, which involved chalk marks on the tape, spinning one's idler up to speed, and rolling one as the mark passed the playback head of the other. Then came Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and you couldn't do that any more. Then came MiniDiscs (MD), and now digital.

Come to think of it, I can remember when I was tiny, being taken to Speech Therapy with a lateral lisp (couldn't pronounce my SSs - they came out both sides) and they recorded me with a SoundMirror on 1/4" tape. The machine was the size of a small suitcase. You changed direction with a gear lever, and monitored volume with a Magic Eye (tiny Cathode Ray Tube that indicated volume with the angle of bright green). (I cried when I heard my own voice.) We kept using reel-to-reel tape for the next 40 years. Notice how things are speeding up?

I remember worrying because I couldn't get my head around valve (vacuum tube) technology - bias and grid leak and all that. Now look at it, gone with the wind.

Also when I was small, I was taken to see - TELEVISION, in the electical engineering laboratory of the university. It was actually broadcast. Trouble was, you couldn't see yourself when you were in front of the camera. A room full of valves. We went home and tried to pick up the sound on our radio, which had a "television" setting on the dial. Little did we know it dated from 20 years earlier, when TV was sent at radio frequency, and had about 30 lines and involved rotating discs with holes in them.

Broadcast television - one channel, black and white, evenings only, didn't begin for another 10 years.

[David]

When I was about ten years old, my parents got me a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder.

And anybody else around here, besides Leslie and me, old enough to remember 8-track tapes? 

Ha ha ha!     My 1980 Chrysler LeBaron still has a working original AM/FM stereo 8-track player in it!     

That was also the first year you could factory order a new fangled "cassette" stereo too.   I think it was available a year before on some Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles.    But 8-track player car radios were still offered right into the mid 1980s.       I had a 1980 Cadillac Eldorado with an AM/FM 8-track that had a built in CB radio too!     It was great to listen in on the truckers to find out where the Police speed traps were!

[MaineWriter]

David,

Is there some reason why all your old cars seem to come from 1980? Was that a special year for you?

Leslie

[MaineWriter]

Blow dryers

I had my first blow dryer my freshman year in college (1973). Before that, we had these complicated bouffant things for drying our hair.

Along the same lines

Unisex Salons

Remember when beauty shops were segregated by sex? They were. Laws had to change to allow men and women to get their hair done in the same shop.

Electric rollers

For instant hair-dos!

Leslie

[David]

David,

Is there some reason why all your old cars seem to come from 1980? Was that a special year for you?

Leslie

HA HA HA!     Well, the reason was really financial at first.    A car must be 25 years old to be registered and insured as a "Classic".      So in 2005,  when I was shopping for an inexpensive pleasure car, I figured 1980 would be a good year to start.   Insuring it with regular insurance can cost up to $1000 a year.  But Classic car insurance is about $50 a year.    Of course there are mileage  and use restrictions.   They cannot be used for commuting for example.

  Other reasons?    I graduated High School in 1984.   So cars of the 1970s and 1980s are what I remember as a teenager.     Plus,  these cars are new enough where you can still get them serviced just about anywhere.  Parts are still cheap and nobody else is collecting them.   They are nice, big, comfortable cars.

  The downside?   Quality in 1980 was not the best.   Neither is fuel economy.   But still not any worse than a full size pickup gets today.


  And yes,  I have owned other older (and newer) cars.    Such as.....

1961 Plymouth Fury wagon
1967 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 Lincoln Continental
1974 Chrysler Newport
1974 Cadillac Eldorado hardtop
1974 Cadillac Calais Sedan
1975 Cadillac Eldorado convertible
1975 Chrysler New Yorker
1977 Cadillac Coupe DeVille
1980 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1980 Cadillac Eldorado
1982 Cadillac Cimarron
1989 Ford Crown Victoria
1996 Mercury Sable
1996 Geo Prizm
1999 Chevrolet S-10 pickup
2002 Mercury Sable

and currently..

1980 Chrysler LeBaron sedan
1980 Dodge St.Regis sedan
2003 Chysler PT Cruiser woody
1980 Chrysler LeBaron Wagon!