Four Obsolete (or not) Technologies

I have blogged before about a number of ways in which our life today is different from life a few decades ago—all changes resulting from new technology.

Here I want to look a bit more at four technologies which have almost—but maybe not quite—disappeared:

Typewriters
Vinyl records
Film cameras
Audio tape recorders/players

Typewriters. I have heard that there is some new interest in typewriters. Supposedly, young people who had not seen a typewriter before think it's cool, when they see one, that you get print appearing instantaneously, as soon as you press a key. No need to send your document to the printer and then wait for the printer to complete its job.

I think one or two of my doctors' offices have typewriters; but you don't see typewriters every day. They were superceded first by dedicated word processors and then by the personal computer (PC) running word-processing software—and of course the necessary connected printer.

I am not sure any typewriters are being manufactured today. I am sure you can find one for sale. But all of the businesses connected with typewriters—selling them, servicing them—are gone. (There might be a dealer in typewriters somewhere. Maybe even two or three in the US today, I'd guess.)

Vinyl records. The death of vinyl records was pronounced years ago, but they have not gone away. Disc jockeys use them, and many audiophiles and others believe that those old LPs, as we used to call them, offer better sound.

In fact, among high-end audio aficionados, there is a lot of record-playing equipment available—turntables, tone arms, cartridges (the part that holds the needle), plus devices that provide the required additional amplification. Plus, there still exists that whole culture of playing records, which I for one would largely be happy to forget: all manner of devices for cleaning records, devices for setting up and adjusting your turntable, tone arm, and cartridge, etc.

What is more astonishing than the fact that all of this still exists—and there are in fact many turntables on the market currently—is the fact that much of this record-playing gear is extremely expensive, and you've got people willing to buy this stuff for four- and even five-digit prices.

Film cameras. The technology of photography that used various chemical processes to record an image was with us for 150 years, but photography has changed dramatically in the last 15 years.

One day when I was downtown I saw three young people—separate and presumably unconnected sightings, if you will—carrying film cameras. I think film cameras are favored by some photography courses. I recently heard someone say that the quality of image you get with film can't be equaled by digital cameras.

As with record-playing equipment, I know that some of the cameras I saw being carried that day cost around $1000. I myself still own a film camera, a late, modern model (just as I still own a very late-generation electronic typewriter, a not-so-recent turntable, and audio and video tape machines).

But, again, there is what I might call a whole culture around film cameras that is pretty much gone. People who were serious about photography and who wanted to do their own lab work owned tanks for developing the film, enlargers for making the print, and equipment for developing those paper prints—plus a myriad of small accessories. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to find that stuff nowadays. Heck, you can't even find a camera store anymore; people buy their digital cameras at Best Buy, if not online.

And, perhaps as an aside, another thing that's obsolete is the amateur movie camera, replaced by video. You can still buy film for a still camera—certainly it's less ubiquitous than it once was—but I bet it's very hard to find amateur movie film.

Audio tape recorders/players. (This one may more unequivocally be obsolete.) The use of magnetic tape to record sound goes back at least to the time of World War II. In the 1950s the tape cassette was developed, originally intended for dictation. A decade or so later, the cassette tape and the machines to record and play it had been developed into a high-fidelity medium.

My car, which is a 2004 model, has a cassette-player slot—as well as a CD changer. (I am sure that tape players have disappeared from newer cars; and I understand that car CD changers are also disappearing as car makers bring out cars that let you plug in your iPad.)

In the days when television was beginning to become common in American homes—the early 1950s—the TV broadcast industry had no means of recording a TV signal. When anyone wished to make TV programs that could be preserved, either the program had to be filmed before broadcast, or a process called kinescope was used, which actually involved filming the program's image as it displayed on a CRT (TV screen).

Home recorders for a TV signal became available in the early 1980s (of course commercial video recorders were available before that). Home video tapes, in VHS format, have become obsolete, replaced by discs. Discs offer the advantage of "random access," which means that you can go from one point on the disc to another in a second or two—rather than having to wind the tape forward or backward. Discs never have to be rewound, and they're more compact, as well—though they may be more liable to damage from scratches. Now there are several options for recording sound or video: on iPods for sound, and on DVRs for video. Or maybe more likely for both audio and video, on CDs (CD ROM R/W) or our computer hard drives.

It's a problem for archives and archival collections, like the Library of Congress, that they hold a lot of information on media which has become obsolete, so there can be the problem of finding machines on which to play the material.


© 2012 by Richard Stein