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userbinator·

Sadly, nobody has time or budget for beauty any more

It's amazing how ornately decorated early equipment was --- especially 19th century and earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cooke_and_Wheatstone_elec...

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There has been an inversion in cost. It used to be that Materials cost a lot, and labor cost very little. There wasn't cheap plastics. particle board or synthetic rubber, it was real rubber, real wood, real metal. So it was worth it to buy the better quality thing made of nicer materials that was more artisinal and decorative. It was also cheaper to employ people just to enhance the look in a time consuming fashion. Plus since there was no miniaturization if parts broke you could replace them instead of buying a new one.

Or the utilitarian cost has gone down much faster than cost of decorative. If your bulb cost $10, spending $5 to make beautiful lamp post makes sense. But if bulb cost has fallen to 10 cents now to justify $2 is difficult.

It's down to taste and materials too - in the past 50 years or so the general design trend is more minimalist, wood has become more and more expensive (and good quality harder to come by), etc.

But the main reason is of course cost, the linked device looks like a woodworker would spend a few hours to build it (although they probably had machinery to automate parts of the process already).

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