The earliest digital watches, such as the Pulsar LED digital watch lasted just a few years, due to the two-handed operation and the high power usage of the LEDs. But they were cool if you could afford them.
The LED digital watches were replaced by LCD digital watches, which grew to add calendar and calculator capabilities. Today it’s hard to find any digital watch, since most people are using cell phones for that. If you’re wearing a watch, it’s a stylish analog watch, or one of the up-and-coming Apple watches or similar.
Your perception of time is off a bit, I think. I was born in late '60, so those born in '61 would have had nearly the same experience as me. Many people still had TVs with tubes in them long after 1960. Every drug store sold tubes when I was a kid, well into the '70s. I remember very well when my father would take tubes from our TVs there, test them, and get new ones. When I took electronics in high school ('76-78), we still learned tube theory, while realizing that tubes were becoming obsolete fast.
Planet Money on NPR once did a segment featuring the notion that anything and everything that was ever made by man or woman is still being made somewhere today. If the notion is correct, it means that everything is still extant, although many items may be obsolete, in the sense that they have been widely replaced and are no longer generally available.
Exactly. I was born in '65, and remember helping my father change the tubes in our TV sets in the early '70s. My parents bought a True Value hardware store in '75, and the store had a vacuum tube tester and display, which I helped stock for a few years.
Now that I think about it, you’re right. I was born in '73, and I remember my parents having a tube TV in the house. It was considered an oldie at the time, but was still perfectly serviceable.
As the tools for actually making things keep getting better, this may in fact remain the case. All sorts of finicky mechanical parts used to take a machinist to make when they were originally produced - now, a CNC machine can just cut the parts out of a block of metal automatically. It’s also practical to have worldwide supply chains now - with the internet, you can order virtually anything that is made anywhere, and get exactly the part you asked for, with just a few days lead time in most cases.
It’s possible that people a century from now will have nanoscale 3d printers or something and will be able to make “iphone version 1 circa 2006” with the click of a mouse, despite the insane internal complexity of such a device.
As a machinist, I have to nitpick this one. I have seen this idea before where people act as if you hold up a print to the CNC’s screen and then it spits out a part. There is no automatic to it. A machinist has to either write the program or draw up a 3D model and then have a CAM program come up with the program from the model. Then it takes a person’s skill and knowledge to set-up the workholding, tooling, and prove out and adjust the program.
CNC and CAD/CAM have made things easier and more productive but it still takes a machinist.
Not remotely true. I understand what you’re saying - there’s a large amount of parts shaped such that the robot needs a hand repositioning the part. And, a machinist + mechanical engineer probably had to develop the actual program files that the CNC machine uses.
Nevertheless, once that step has been done, 20 years later, some guy who hasn’t the slightest clue could take that design file, run it through a few scripts that convert it to the files that newer equipment uses, and print out an instance of the part. More sophisticated equipment will probably need less help.
(I’m using the words “design file” instead of CAD/CAM because I understand you need more than just the 3d model of the desired part, you need bits of various helper information to tell the robot how to actually go about cutting the part. 20 years later, there would have to be a software tool to convert that helper information + the old cad/cam design to a newer format that the robots of 20 years later can use. )
Similarly, while state of the art electronic circuits are still the domain of billion dollar budgets, you can build a new instance of circuits that do what computer and control systems 20 years ago did very easily. This is because you can now specify the core digital logic on an FPGA, and reuse that design with newer instances of FPGAs decades later. Or, you can take a microcontroller, which has various systems on it that used to occupy entire circuit boards, and do many basic control tasks. The original board 20 years ago would have had thousands of components, now, you can reduce that down to a microcontroller on a “stamp” sized package, and you can even mimic various analog filters with a single chip that is programmable and can mimic many possible filters. You end up with a circuit board that only has discrete parts for power - power to the ICs, power to the circuit being controlled, protection from high power surges from the wires that leave the board and go to the sensors.
I had my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek, if it wasn’t obvious.
Although the only time I’ve ever seen a food processor is the moment it gets opened as a wedding gift, and then promptly lives out the rest of its life in a bottom cupboard gathering dust until the first garage sale comes along, and some other schmuck buys it for $20 and the cycle repeats itself. Dragging all that crap out to chop, say, an onion is too onerous.
The Magic Bullet is the same, and I’ve said it before: sure anyone can make a chicken salad sandwich in 1-2-3 seconds! if everything is cooked and pre-chopped and sitting on the counter, and if that’s the case why not just continue on chopping make the damned sandwich?
I’m not sure if there are cases where a food processor is required. I have used them to make frozen banana ice cream (only one ingredient and pretty good):
The page I’m referencing mentions you can use a blender or food processor. I think the original instructions I saw specified food processor which is what I used.
I’ve also used them for chopping up parsnip for Alton browns Parsnip Muffin recipe (which also was very good). I wouldn’t have wanted to do that by hand, and am even less convinced that can be done with a blender (but don’t know).
“Cooking for geeks” has this to say:
“While not an essential, there are times where a food processor makes quick work of otherwise laborious tasks - for example making pesto or slicing 10 pounds of onions or pulsing pie dough to incorporate flour and butter”
I have very limited experience with the food processor - but I believe it would almost certainly cut things much neater than a blender would and would take a human a very long time to do. I believe there are special blades for even fancier looking cuts if memory serves.
I predict pod coffee makers will be obsolete, or at least a niche product, long before pot ones are. Keurig et al. are at a relatively small intersection of a couple of Venn circles, and relatively small changes in market, tastes and faddism could eliminate the mass market for them overnight.
No, people who cook - and I am completely in understanding of your use of the term as “a vanishingly small breed among us” - use a good-quality chef’s knife and a butcher block table.
Food processors are for the subset who either learned to cook in the 1980s or never learned what an asset good knife skills are. And, I suppose, some small set that does a lot of really high-bulk cooking and needs to slice 20 pounds of something in a hurry and doesn’t own a mandoline…
Car computers. Anyone remember these? Came and went in about five or six years as the ultimate tech/toy/car-geek things. Sort of a bridge between the non-electronic car era and the integrated engine control era that could drive a little display for MPG and the like.
They’re a labor saver at their core, and really useful for things that require a lot of effort or time. For example, you could grate a 2 lb block of cheese by hand. It would take you a while, and run the risk of grating a knuckle or two.
Or you can chop your block of cheese into pieces small enough to fit into the food processor neck, and grate the entire damn thing in less than 10 seconds. Lots of other tasks are similarly accelerated. You could make romesco sauce or pesto sauce with a mortar and pestle like they did back in the day, but you can do it with a food processor in seconds.
(yes, I know you can buy pre-grated cheese, but you can’t buy every sort of cheese pre-grated. I’m kind of partial to mac & cheese using the Tillamook Special reserve extra sharp, and I can’t get that pre-grated.)
And that’s bullshit that “real cooks” use only knives and cutting boards, Amateur Barbarian. There are definitely applications where it comes in really, really handy, especially if you’re making more than one meal’s worth. My wife was part of a sort of co-op of recent mothers who’d swap frozen meals, and when you’re making meals for 4 other families of four, something like a food processor is a godsend.
Maybe. I’ve had a very good, upper-end Cuisinart for over ten years, one I carefully selected to be as usable and maintenance-free as possible. Easy to wash, big feed chute, everything to get around the limitations of smaller, fussier and less-“usable” ones.
Every time I get it out and slice a load of potatoes for a casserole, or grate a pound of cheese, or whatever, I find it’s more hassle than if I’d just gotten out the big Wusthof or block grater or whatever. I guess it was easier in that a motor did the actual chopping/grating, but it didn’t save a lot of time or overall effort, start to finish.
No way. In an office environment you can brew a cup of your choice in seconds: always fresh.
It may be more convenient to put a pot of coffee on at your house or cottage if many people are looking for their morning fix, but allowing everyone to just pick their preferred brew (even tea) is way more convenient at all levels.