Curiously pocket calculators probably lived less than a generation - at least for geek/nurd engineers. It was once part of the uniform that an engineer had an HP calculator on his (and then it almost always was he) belt, or desk. Before that a slide rule was often part of the geek uniform - and cute little pocket ones, or circular ones part of the geek chic. Laptops and Matlab killed all that off. Now you can get math apps for your smartphone that wipe the floor with the old calculators (and emulators for many HP calculators for smartphones.)
I own both an iPad and an e-ink Kindle, and there’s no way in hell I’m giving up that Kindle. Cold dead hands, etc. If Amazon ever announces that they’re discontinuing them, I’m going to buy three or four.
It isn’t just the “read in direct sunlight” issue. I find reading on an iPad very fatiguing. Many people have reported eyestrain from reading on tablets.
I used a Curta (a hand-held mechanical calculator) in the 50s when I worked in a laboratory.
Now *there’s *a piece of obsolete tech I’d love to have. I don’t know of any available at whimsical impulse purchase prices though.
Try white type on black. It makes a huge difference for me.
That’s how I read on my phone. I figure it use less power too.
Still gonna get a Kindle so I can read outside. Hope I can sync my phone and Kindle.
I don’t know if it counts as an invention, but the Pony Express lasted only about a year.
All of these are still in common use. :rolleyes:
Except mechanical pencils dont work well, IMHO, and you can still buy regular pencils everywhere.:rolleyes:
No, a lot of people are taking “obsolete to mean” that* they *no longer use it since they are so very cool and hip, thus of course no-one uses it, and they are so hip and cool they can’t see that it’s still in common use. :p:D
Pony Express- lasted 19 months, and in fact was never very effective. Maybe not a “invention”. (damn beat by madmonk28!)
Mercurochrome (altho I am told it’s still in use in some other nations! :eek:)
(1) The Gatling gun - invented during the Civil War, obsoleted by the turn of the century by the machine gun (I mean as a field armament, not the modern rotary cannon on airplanes and helicopters).
(2) The dirigible (rigid airship) - the premier way to travel for a time between the world wars. Advances in passenger airplanes killed them off, plus a rather spotty safety record (ignoring the Hindenburg, even the American airships which used helium (not available to the Germans) pretty much all ended up crashing).
(3) Steel or iron hulled sailing (cargo) ships (windjammers) - while some remained in service for a long time, they were mostly all built during a 30 year period at the end of the 19th century.
The default setting should be white on black (or grey on dark blue, whatever). Doesn’t use less power unless the phone has an OLED, which most phones do not use.
You’re right, that isn’t it either. But ultimately, the definition doesn’t have much to do with common use; something can be available to be bought, still widely used, and very, very obsolete.
Fax machines are a great example. There’s nothing that a fax machine can do that a scanner/copier can’t do (most these days are essentially digital scanners anyway), except connect to another fax machine at glacial speed. I mean, I can scan a 20 page document and email it to someone in a fraction of the time that I can send the same thing via fax machine, and to shine it up even more, the digital copy can be in color and in higher resolution than the fax.
Fax machines are as obsolete as buggy whips,but people still need fax machines because there are some companies and people stuck on the things, despite decades of better alternatives.
“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means”
ob·so·lete: no longer produced or used; out of date
You likely mean* obsolescent.*
In any case, mechanical vs wood pencil is a matter of personal taste, some prefer one, other the other. Many/most professional artists use wood pencils, not mechanical. Same with Food processors, etc.
It’s the “out of date” part that’s probably most important- plenty of obsolete stuff is still produced and used; photographic film, floppy drives, military equipment, etc…
Nobody’s going to argue that a 1.44 floppy isn’t obsolete, yet you can buy new production diskettes and drives ($20 for a USB external 1.44 floppy drive), so clearly the “out of date” part is what applies in most cases.
Similarly, you can still buy a buggy whip, and even a buggy and a horse to go with it. Doesn’t make it any less obsolete.
I’m no great fan of Keurig.
But as between a fresh-brewed cup of even WalMart brand K-cup knockoff coffee and a cup of perk grind Maxwell House from a pot brewed three hours ago in a clapped out never-washed Mr. Coffee I know which one I prefer.
And it ain’t the Mr. Coffee even if that is almost 120 whole entire seconds quicker.
I have a love-hate relationship with coffee. Sometimes, I love to hate it- keeps me awake better. I was never a coffee drinker until after college- and then the coffee I drank to stay awake came from a vending machine. I think the awful taste made it more effective.
Keurig is a good choice for community and public service - waiting rooms where the wait might be more than 5 minutes, most office staff rooms where there’s no consensus on or need for a pot of coffee, etc.
I am not convinced it’s a good choice anywhere else, though, and that’s the counter argument I see most often. It seems to be a case of a solution that went looking for an expanded market on somewhat flimsy pretenses… kind of like all the restaurant-ish espresso machines everyone had to have a few years ago.
My library has them-gathering dust-I never see anyone using them.