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Old Technology


Palovana

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5 hours ago, ryn2 said:

Ugh, haven’t seen a towel roll in a while!

me neither

 

some places don't even do paper towels, just the stupid blow-dryers (I really dislike the kind where you have to slide your hands through a slot and try to avoid touching anything) which often don't dry very well 

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5 hours ago, InquisitivePhilosopher said:
7 hours ago, froglady said:

 

Cloth towels? I've never heard of that, only paper towels

Yes. There were two spools inside the metal thing on the wall. A person grabbed ahold of each side of the towel and pulled more of the clean towel from the top roll. There was supposed to be a mechanism that rolled up the dirty part on to the bottom spool. Often that part didn't work very well and there would be a long loop of used cloth toweling that hung down to the floor. There were businesses that laundered the towels and supplied the dispensers with clean rolls of towel. I don't know if I explained that very well.

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26 minutes ago, froglady said:

Yes. There were two spools inside the metal thing on the wall. A person grabbed ahold of each side of the towel and pulled more of the clean towel from the top roll. There was supposed to be a mechanism that rolled up the dirty part on to the bottom spool. Often that part didn't work very well and there would be a long loop of used cloth toweling that hung down to the floor. There were businesses that laundered the towels and supplied the dispensers with clean rolls of towel. I don't know if I explained that very well.

Exactly!  Sometimes they were coin-op, or exhausted, or jammed, so you had to look for a dry spot or go without.

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Those towel dispensers are a lot less common, but some businesses still have them. 

 

 Not old tech, but daft tech on the same subject, who thought high speed dryers with no water collection facilities were a good idea. The water off your hands either ends up on your clothes or makes the tiled floor slippery 

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8 hours ago, InquisitivePhilosopher said:

Cloth towels? I've never heard of that, only paper towels.

I love towel rolls.  Actual, clean cloth!  The ones I've used have always worked well.  And did I mention real cloth?  And...clean?

 

One old tech that was new to me was an abacus when I lived in Japan from 1981-1982 (age 23-24).  I got a job in a fancy bakery and my crash course in the abacus consisted of just diving in on my first day work.  That's what all the other employees were using so I just figured I had to (the cash registers did not figure change).  I was new in the country and still getting used to the Japanese money system, so it was a crash course in that as well, but I'm proud to say I was fine by the end of that first day.  Emergencies are good teachers/motivators.

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I'm slightly surprised my relatives didn't mention cloth towels existing when they were growing up, but I guess they either didn't live in areas that had them or it wasn't something they cared about. 

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Could be something they took for granted back then, but don't think about these days. 

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Cloth towel in public bathroom were full of awful germs!

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I don't necessarily "prefer" old technology to new, but I do find it fascinating to research and to learn about. One of my characters who I often write about is a self-proclaimed "tech historian" who eventually opens a museum dedicated to old electronics. I would love to check out an actual museum like that someday! (I know they exist, I just haven't been to any.)

 

The cloth towel rolls sound interesting. I'm grateful for paper towels, but I never knew that that's how it was done in the olden days!

 

As for my own relationship to old tech: I didn't get my first smartphone until earlier this year. Before then, I took pictures with my mom's old digital camera (she doesn't need it anymore now that she has a smartphone), only listened to music on my computer or on a CD player, played games on my Game Boy Advance (I still do sometimes- the screen doesn't emit any light, which my eyes appreciate), and researched driving routes ahead of time and wrote them down on paper (I don't miss that at all- GPS is so much safer than taking your eyes off the road to look at the directions you've written). I still listen to CDs using my car's CD player and occasionally check out books/DVDs/CDs from the library (it's free and I don't have to rely on other people downloading the same files like with torrents, haha).

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Harmonograph and cycloid drawing machines. 

The mechanical brailler.

Rotary boraxo soap dispensers.

 

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I've always stated that we are in a "era of useless technology". A lot of the stuff that comes out now is just dumb, but I have always had a soft spot for the older stuff. My car only has a cassette player and knobs  and any time any one mocks it I just say it's "vintage".

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LOL...  I still wish my car had a cassette player, because I have so many cassettes!

 

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BabyBenz has still got the factory blanking plate where no radio equipment has ever been installed. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
cavalier080854

My job in the Military in the 1970s meant I was fixing communications which had valves. Only one radio had transistors. Analogue rules OK

Alas they introduced chips in the late 70s. Booo

 

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cavalier080854

I can remember when Gender didn't exist and there were only 2 sexes, and 4 sexual orientations, hetero, homo, bi and asexual.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/30/2018 at 9:53 PM, cavalier080854 said:

I can remember when Gender didn't exist and there were only 2 sexes, and 4 sexual orientations, hetero, homo, bi and asexual.

Do you mean that the recognition of asexuality as a sexual orientation predates the establishment of gender studies? That'd be news to me.

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On 10/30/2018 at 4:53 PM, cavalier080854 said:

I can remember when Gender didn't exist and there were only 2 sexes, and 4 sexual orientations, hetero, homo, bi and asexual.

LOL...  I can remember when Gender didn't exist and there were only 2 sexes, and people just didn't "talk about those other orientations!"  And if they did talk, they whispered.

 

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa
On 10/30/2018 at 8:53 PM, cavalier080854 said:

I can remember when Gender didn't exist and there were only 2 sexes, and 4 sexual orientations, hetero, homo, bi and asexual.

Ah, Kinsey? 1950s? Or were you thinking of earlier than that?

 

My workplace wastes so much paper I could scream, None of it is recycled.

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On 7/22/2018 at 2:42 PM, kiaroskuro said:

As a matter of fact, I learned touch typing in a typing class on a mechanical typewriter. Anyone else?

It was electric, but it was a typewriter.  Not a word processor.  I remember my mom telling me stories of typing papers in high school and college and having to re-do a whole page because there was an error or she wanted to edit.  She still has her typewriter, and based on the color, it is probably from the '60s.  She let me type on it a couple of times, but I remember I kept getting my fingers stuck between the keys.  Now that I can type, I want to try again.  Mostly I like the sounds they make. 

 

I will admit I am thankful to have the ease of editing with all of the documents I have to type, although I prefer to write out notes if I have the option.

 

As far as everything else, I had an ipad 2 for 6 years before I had to replace it because it wasn't working well.  I do love that thing.  I have a cell phone, but don't check it all that often as I don't receive a lot of calls or texts.  I prefer paper maps, although I will print maps from google.  I don't use GPS.  I wouldn't learn how to navigate if something always told me the way.  And it takes the fun out of it.  I miss rotary phones.  Grew up with one.  I thought button phones and showers were new technology because my grandmothers had them but we did not...and I still buy cds.  I must have a car with a cd player.  No satellite or ipods in the car (although I have one I listen to podcasts and music on when I am running or walking).  And I do have a small assortment of records and cassettes.  You could hear the imperfections or mistakes that musicians made when they recorded on tape.  That is real life.

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Vacuum cleaners with no disposable bag, so when you emptied the bag into the dustbin it all blew back in the house, so you had to start again. When it was full... 

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On 8/26/2018 at 6:24 AM, Tanwen said:

I would NOT want to go back to life without central heating, I was always so cold in the winter, and we literally had to scrape the ice off the window to see out of it. At school, the toilets were outside and we'd sit there with our legs crossed rather than go, milk was frozen and we had to stand it in warm water to defrost it.

I was first home most nights and it was my job to light the coal fire - how on earth I didn't set fire to myself I'll never know and it was magical when we moved into our new house and we had a gas poker - made life so much easier! :D . In the old house, I missed the range when they removed it and put a standard cooker in, 

When I was a kid we lived in an apartment that didn't have central heating.  The kitchen had a stove that included a kerosene space heater,  The fuel was fed by a 5-gallon canister like this one.

 

46411935_2412605102090142_81229204769608

 

When the thing was empty I had to go down into the basement to refill it from a 250-gallon tank that we had down there.  Then I had to lug that heavy thing up several flights of stairs, which were outside, back to our 2nd-floor apartment.  Not fun when it was winter, night and snowing.  Also, the wire handle hurt my fingers. 

 

 

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