Along the same lines, there was a slate mine in northern Wales that was still using an 18th-century steam engine to pump water when I was there in 1993. The mine was basically defunct but they were still bringing up slate on a small scale for tourists, and still using the pump. I can’t remember which mine it was, though.
Ah, okay. If you had to guess, how much of a modern B-52 differs from the originals, percentage wise?
My old boarding school in the UK is still using BBC Micros to teach BASIC programming, though they have perfectly good PCs.
Not as old as some of the examples given, but one of my rifles is a Lee-Enfield .303 British rifle; my example is from WWI, but they’ve been around since 1895 or thereabouts.
In some key ways, this rifle (and there are others, I’m sure) is a good example: the rifle is still in active use by a large number of people, particularly in India and neighboring areas. It’s also the most-powerful rifle I own (others are .223 or similar), so if I was placed in a situation to dispatch, say, a bear, it would be my go-to weapon. I take it to the range every couple of years and it works flawlessly.
The chucks–if that’s the right word–and other metal forming equipment from Waldo (full name?) copper pot company, from the late 19th century, are still in use. (Old cite, but I know the guy, and still used until very recently.)
But those aren’t machines, but maybe still count, as negative-Theseus components of one.
Right, and the US .50 caliber machine gun is still being made and used, from a 1915 or so design. Machine guns tend to wear out, but I assume somewhere there’s a few almost 100 year old parts. Not as old as the Lee-Enfield, but I give bonus points for the added complexity.
And, not quite so complex, but still containing multiple moving parts, I have a mechanical apple peeler-corer that I use regularly. I don’t know when it was made, but the design is surely at least a century old.
A 30 year old Commodore computer is still controlling the HVAC systems for 19 Grand Rapids public schools. That’s pretty old for a program running 24/7. It was written by a high school student who apparently still maintains it.
They’re about to spend 2 million bucks to replace it.
I toured an old mill just a couple of years ago, which was still using the Jacquard looms imported in/around 1860.
They were still ticking away weaving cloth. They wove cloth for restoration of antique houses and cars, mostly. They still had all the original patterns of that mill on file.
Unfortunately my memory is playing a trick on me and I can’t remember the name of the mill. It would have been in the Pennsylvania area though, as best I recall.
These were the Jacquards driven by hole-punch cards, which are thought to be ancestral to computers.
The Salsbury Cathedral Clock may be a contender for the oldest - the majority of historians date ot to the 1380s, and it is still working (and mostly original parts). Note similar claims by clocks in France and Italy.
The hoist that carried workers and ore at the Tower Soudan Mine, Tower MN is 90 years old and still running.
The mine started underground operations in 1892 and closed in 1962.
The Electric Hoist was installed in 1924.
The SMN State Park Service has been operating this Hoist and has been carrying tourist 1/2 mile underground for the last 50 +years. Find a video tour. at this site. about 3/4 of the way down the page there are links to snapshot tours and the Video tour.
(I am not able to link straight to the video tour, Sorry).
I’ve ridden that elevator twice - once back in the '80s, and again in 2005. It’s a long way from top to bottom (2300 feet, vs. 1400 feet for the Willis tower), and it hauls ass, and it’s pretty loud (clanky/rumbly). Interesting tour if you happen to be in the area.
Machines today are produced with greater consistency and engineering. Good engineering means not over-engineering. Greater consistency means a narrower variance between the “better” and “worse” versions of the same device that come out of the production line.
So overall, it’s likely that modern machines won’t last as long as the behemoths which have made it to today. But they will work first time out of the box and continue functioning for as long as was expected by their designer.
The coffee grinders at a coffee company I worked at were installed in the 1940’s and were still under daily heavy use. Bearings were replaced periodicaly as well as motors and other componets. Not unusual to see lathes and mills from world war II days still in use.
The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation has a lot of examples of 19th century machinery, much of which is in operating condition and used on a regular basis in demonstration – lathes, mills, saws, and weird pieces of equipment I’ve never seen before, like large-scale mils that will plane a large piece of metal in one sweep.
They’re not re-creations, like many of the operating machines at places like Sturbridge Village, but the original machinery.
I believe the operating industrial looms and spinning machines at American Textile Museum in Lowell, MA are original, as well, and have been restored to working order. But they aren’t re-creations.
Of course, the above are, despite being originals and working, not used on a continual basis as practical machines.
Sparkler’s Filters in Texas is still using an archaic IBM 402 Accounting Machine - they keep their inventory on punch cards. When they need to run different reports, they plug in different hard-wired control panels which reprograms how the machine works. In 2012 they told the Computer History Museum that as long as they’re working, they’ll keep using them.
Definitely not the oldest but I thought this story about 19 schools still having their AC and heating controlled by a 30 year old Commodore Amiga computer was funny:
