Museum of Obsolete Objects
youtube.com
youtube.com
Here's a good video of an obsolete technology - a punched card reader.[1] No voice over. No intro. No outro. No clickbait. Just a beautifully clear demonstration of what it is and how it works.
Wanna know what another obsolete object is, a real one, no longer made and with no functional use anymore?
An lubricant oil can spout.
We stopped selling lubricating oil in cans like at least 35 years ago.
I have vague memories from my childhood of seeing cans of oil stacked in a store, but I can't tell if its a hallucination or memory, or something I actually saw, it would have been when I was very young based on the perspective I can recall them at.
(edited to add the word lubricant)
https://www.odysea.com/product/odysea-greek-extra-vrigin-oli...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/134826590749
Here is an example of what one looks like.
Some additional context - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-02-10-fi-3748-s...
No, it's still common, but used more in industrial settings. Most machine shops and auto shops will have such a can in easy reach.
I'm not talking about metal cans with a screw top or port on it, these were completely sealed, and you had to use an external opener which pierced the metal top.
All of the metal oil cans I've seen in machine shops are larger 5gal ones, that have a screw on port.
Interesting that the nameplate clearly documented its current draw at startup and while running (1/3 the startup).
That tells you that the device needs to be on a circuit with a slow-blow fuse or circuit breaker. Motors draw more current during startup. Look up "inrush current" and "motor protection circuit breaker".
(Starting AC electric motors is surprisingly difficult. Tesla's big contribution to electrical technology was figuring out how to start AC motors simply, cheaply, and reliably.)
For anyone wondering why the card deck has the diagonal stripes on the edge, those are for when you drop the deck and have to put the cards back in order.
And don't get me started on TTS voice-overs! The first time I heard one, I actually thought for a few moments, "There is something wrong with this guy's voice." Then I figured it out.
But do the diagonal stripes actually work? If you dropped the deck and then re-assembled it with a single pair of cards swapped, would you really be able to catch that based on the stripe?
Listening to the machine work was incredibly interesting, too. I wonder how much stress it puts on the cards to be run through the machine each time. Did they have to make "fresh" copies once the cards got worn down by going through the machine too many times?
The blank cards I've seen had printing on one side, and usually some sort of title area. so you could get orientation correct.
The punched cards I've seen were all hand numbered.
The stripe, I think, was mostly a quick check. if it looks like a line, they're probably in order. if there's a spot that looks weird, you can check that range quickly.
I don't think the failure mode was like someone grabbing your deck and throwing it in the air, it was more they got dropped, stayed mostly stacked, but you could quickly file the strays in the right order. and be pretty confident the cards that stayed stacked were right. if you've got a blurry spot of the line, you can quickly check that section.
so, yes? I think the stripes worked? Again, before my time, this is lore handed down from professors. I think if you secretly swapped 2 cards, and they didn't notice, they would hunt you down and beat you up.
IIRC, the cards did wear down, but there were duplicators, that would read old cards and punch fresh ones. Obviously, if something was torn or damaged, you'd have to fix that by hand. I think I've seen one once, but I don't recall exactly where.
edit- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_519#514 <- that's not what I remember, but they did exist.
Less than almost every other card reader ever made, which is why that Documation unit took over the industry. The hard problem is pulling exactly one card off the bottom of the stack. Most previous readers involved some kind of pusher which had a ledge slightly less than one card thick. The pusher pushed the card through a gate slightly more than one card thick. The IBM 1402 card reader, and all the earlier IBM electromechanical card machines, used that technology.[1] Pushing cards through a gate works only if cards are within tolerance and in good condition. Otherwise, card jams are frequent. Card data processing operations had dehumidifiers, because high humidity would make the cards thicker.
Documation made a breakthrough. There's a crosswise air jet that separates the bottom few cards in the stack before picking. The video shows that. The picking device itself is a vacuum picker. It grabs the bottom card, rotates, and starts the card into the rollers. The card is always pulled by a face, never pushed by an edge. Card thickness does not matter much. It just works.
That air jet trick is still used in some printers and printing presses. It's one of those clever tricks of mechanical engineering that yields a simple, reliable device.
* The Computer Mouse is an essential part of every day life.
* Radio Receivers are both common and still in daily use by a huge percentage of the planet.
* Electric Lightbulbs still have many specialty applications that cannot be replaced by other forms of technology (same with the neon lamp).
* Morse Code is still used in the radio and aviation world to identify radio transmitters
* Pocket Calculators are still fairly common, particularly in specialized fields, and are still developed and sold new.
We don’t own a calculator either. One of the only reasons they’re still around is their simplicity, which is desirable in an educational setting. If it wasn’t for that, nobody[1] would use them any more. Excel and computer algebra systems are superior for all practical purposes.
[1] For some values of “nobody”. There’s always the elderly, purists, luddites, or just those slow to adopt.
There are other applications too, where the resistance of the bulb itself, and how it changes with the amount of current going thru the device is also important.
In a sense, the exception makes the rule: the fact that only niche applications remain reinforces the point that these are legacy technologies.
I know lots of legacy technologies that are far from even approaching obsolescence. I know many specialty technologies that used to be mainstream.
Thats sorta my point - like my industry uses 2w analog control loops with inband signaling - while this has been obsolete for new designs in most other industries, in mine its still current technology and continues to be used for new designs and implementations - if for no other reason than its a well understood easy to implement interface.
Calculators are still sold in many shops. I can literally cross the street and go buy one at the supermarket. It's not about being "slow to adopt": they're superior to using a computer's calculator or, even worse, a smartphone's calculator app. A smartphone has shitty input controls compared to a calculator and it's not "one button to press" to get it ready. First unlock the phone, then open the calculator, then use the shitty input method.
Also many calculators, since decades, are solar-powered. It makes lots of sense: you're not going to use them in the dark. And they use so little power that a tiny solar panel incorporated into the calculator is sufficient. No need for USB-C crap cables.
You know where you see a lot of these, next to computers, used by people spending their entire the day at the computer and with their phone in reach and used by people doing computation at all times? In accounting offices.
Accountants are neither luddites nor old nor purists nor slow adopters. It just happens that for some kind of computation, a pocket calculator is simply the very top of the chain.
The following picture shows what survival of the fittest looks like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator#/media/File:Casio_c...
There are even calculators to make construction estimation easier too.
Most people who are just using it as a tool to figure something really quickly have probably moved on to use something less specialized, like their smartphone.
• • • •
And that is the letter "H" in Morse code!
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/hyundai/ioniq-5/2023/pho...
We casually discard obsolete devices and practices, but learning about them isn’t just a fun glance into the past but is a kind of Chesterton’s fence too.