From the front seat the rear door directly behind you may be the most difficult one to reach. In normal cars arms less than 3 feet long are sufficient to reach both doors on the opposite side. The old pop locks were very insecure. A coat hanger can open them. Even if there is no knob on the top of the peg the doors are still easier to open with a Slim Jim because of the mechanism needed for popping them up and down.
Some of the very modern locks are virtually unopenable without the fob or key code or whatever. The car would need to be towed to a shop and even then the emergency unlocking procedure may fail requiring replacement of a control module. Or maybe that mechanic didn’t do it right, not sure for the Corvette I saw up on the lift for a week to just open the door. It was a tough job to tackle though, that car didn’t even have door handles. If the electronic key didn’t unlock the doors remotely there was no getting in. My wife’s car should allow remotely unlocking doors from the net but we’ve found a problem if the remote app is used while someone holding the fob starts or stops the car.
Lead-free solder for electronics is replacing tin-lead solder. That stuff is crap.
Electronics parts distributers such as Digi-Key and Mouser used to print paper catalogs. They were bigger than the biggest phonebooks, and were great. You could quickly find what you were looking for, and the format provided a good education on what types of parts were available. They stopped doing that about ten years ago. Today you find parts using their parametric search tools on their websites. They suck compared to paper catalogs. (I still have my 2011 Digi-Key and Mouser catalogs. I covet them.)
I hear that some of the first automobiles were electric and quite popular until about 1920 when gasoline because cheap and readily available. (Cite)
Fast forward through 100 years of CO2 emissions, leaded gas and other environmental disasters, and we’re finally getting back to electric.
My musical appreciation formed during the switchover from LP to tape. OMG the tape hiss. I was so glad when, 5 years later, CD players and digital recordings were released. I have a large CD collection now, mostly unused, but I ripped about 75% of my favorite stuff to iTunes.
Now I’m being encouraged to do everything via streaming, which for me is also a step backwards. I’d prefer to listen to my favorite recordings, having paid for them once, and not have to listen to media exclusively on the cloud, or pay a subscription.
Car door handles. Back in the '60s and '70s they used to be a solid grip thing that didn’t move. The only moving part was a thumb push-button, and even it seemed fairly solid. Then (I can’t recall exactly when, maybe the '80s) they became this flimsy flippy thing that feels like it would just pull off of the car entirely if there was any resistance, like after a freezing rain or ice storm, which aren’t uncommon where I live.
So now, after such a weather event, if I want to get in the car I have to play archeological dig with various de-icers and chipping gear rather than simply unlocking the thing and giving it a good hearty pull. One time, when we had a minivan I was only able to open the rear hatch and crawl through to the front seat, like crawling from the lunar module to the command module, so that I could open the driver’s side door by pushing open from inside.
Speaking of cars, the high beam switch for the headlights used to be on the floorboard and actuated by the left foot. Made perfect sense, since the left foot wasn’t doing anything anyway (with the exception of cars w/ manual transmissions). And then they moved it to the turn signal switch, which was a step backwards, IMO.
I preferred the high beam switch on the steering column, but unfortunately it’s not consistently on one side or other, and the wiper controls are inconsistently implemented too. The foot switches weren’t consistently located either, in an unfamiliar car you’d start by sliding or stomping your foot around to find it, but that’s still not as much trouble as turning on your blinkers and wipers accidently before you can find the switch. So I’d prefer it on the steering column, in the same place every time. Don’t know when the last time I had to use a floor switch.
I would say that’s true about just about every “electronic” catalogue. They’re shat compared to a paper catalogue. One thing better though is the ability to use word searches. But if it’s pictures of merchandise you’re looking for or just plain browsing, then it’s crap because you’re looking forever and can’t “fold” the page corners for quick back-reference.
The user interface for ovens has greatly disimproved during my lifetime.
Formerly, there were two knobs: a temperature setpoint and a function selector. Turn the function selector to the desired position, the oven is on. When you are finished, use the same knob to turn it off. Simple and intuitive. Also quite manageable for blind people.
Sometime in the 1980s or 90s it became mandatory to set the clock time. The oven would not function unless you had set the time (which was usually a very complex and unintuitive process that required you to consult the manual). Okay fine, you only have to do that once, unless there’s a power cut.
Now turning on the oven requires the following 4 steps:
Select the function.
Set the desired temperature.
Set the desired time.
Press start button.
I would welcome a pdf version of the paper catalog. But big outfits like Digi-Key and Mouser have abandoned those, too. You now have to use the online “parametric” search tool. And the problem with the parametric search tool is that it “zooms you in too close”; it doesn’t let you step back and look at the all the components using a wide-angle lens.
An engineer can learn a lot browsing a paper catalog containing thousands of parts that are neatly organized in different sections. This educational component of searching for parts has disappeared with their online parametric search tools.
I can turn on my oven by pressing one single button: “Bake”. There are other functions like “Broil” and “Oven clean”, but that one button sets the temperature to the default 350°F. I can then turn the temperature up or down, but if I do nothing for a few seconds, it defaults to that temp and turns on. Or I can adjust the temperature up or down. And it does not require setting an oven timer, and I’ve never used that function.
Not true. You left out the biggest attraction of cassettes that was already mentioned upthread: you could record your own stuff on them, as well as create custom mixed tapes extremely easily.
In addition to millions of people hearing music they would’ve never had without those easy-to-make, easy-to-send, easy-to-store mixed tapes, at least a generation of rock, punk, hip hop etc. artists got their music first spread and noticed thanks to the cassette tech.
My 2002 Volvo had its left rear door handle snapped off in an instant, attempting to open the door after one very cold night.
I was stunned to see the “chrome” handle was in fact lightweight plastic, and the surface area of the sheared section that was keeping the handle in one piece was extremely small. Even a non-engineer like myself could see that combo could not survive any kind of use of force. Not that much of it was used, anyway.
Agreed, you’re quite right. I was thinking from the perspective of someone who had always owned reel-to-reel tape decks throughout the analog era, and took for granted the ability to make one’s own recordings and mix tapes. What I was trying to say is that the sole attraction of cassette tapes as a music distribution medium compared to vinyl LPs was that they were small and portable.
But it was indeed a compromise that sacrificed audio quality compared to LPs.
The phrase “can you hear me now?” wasn’t really a thing until cell phones. For at least a decade after they became popularly available, cell phones were notoriously unreliable for making phone calls.