I don’t think that counts as a tool - it’s an end product, not something used to manufacture something else. It’s a tool in the sense that you use it for something, but in that sense every single thing and even every single person and animal is a tool too. And not just by the pejorative definition.
@Claverhouse: I have one of those. They’re definitely still being manufactured - I see them on sale at the nearby ‘random useful homewares’ shops.
Cutting cold butter is difficult and results in a lump that’s too thick for most palates and doesn’t spread easily. Butter curlers give you nice thin portions that you can just put on your hot toast and allow to melt. You can do the same by turning your knife on the side and scraping butter off, but butter curlers do that in a more efficient way. The decorative aspect is incidental.
I reckon a lot of the old automotive tools mentioned in this thread are good suggestions.
Dave Gorman’s ‘America Unchained’ mentions an old-fashioned Mom 'n Pop style soda counter that was closing down. They still had an ancient till (I know that’s not the American word, but my brain’s refusing to deliver the American equivalent), but couldn’t use it much longer because nobody was manufacturing parts for it, not even the ink cartridges.
That’s why I specified functional replicas. His piecemeal-assembled Saturn V was probably good enough for a museum piece, but I doubt he’d be able to launch it.
And SciFiSam, there’s nothing in the definition of “tool” that implies that it has to be used to manufacture something else, and in fact, most tools aren’t used to manufacture something. The OP started the thread by listing buggy whips as an example of a tool. If a whip is a tool, then surely an entire vehicle is, too. Heck, for that matter, the cash register you mention isn’t used for manufacture, either.
But if you use that definition of tool, then, like I said, it can be anything at all, and that’d make for a very boring question with no possible answer. I mean, the Saturn V is no longer being made, but neither are dozens of brands of car, brands of candy, quack ‘medicines,’ varieties of grains… it goes on and on. It basically just means ‘thing which can be used by people’ which is almost anything.
I never said the cash register (that’s the word! thanks) was a tool, either. The parts used to manufacture it are, but I just offered it as a related anecdote.
I guess a buggy whip is at least used to make something else happen (driving the horses on) rather than being the end product in itself; I’m not sure it’d really count as a tool, but in any case, it doesn’t count as ‘no longer being manufactured.’ The S&M industry is huge.
Do lumberjacks still use the muscle-powered two man saw to cut down trees? In fact, were they ever used in real life? I used to see them used a lot in cartoons;-).
I work in the forest products industry and no, cross cut saws aren’t used anymore in actual logging. They are manufactured and used in logger sports competitions and for use in certain places like identified Wilderness Areas on USFS land which have rules that don’t allow for motorized equipment like chainsaws.
The only thing I could think of in my industry that isn’t used and has no real equivalent would be my post on the 1st and that would be a [log flume](I work in the forest products industry and no, cross cut saws aren’t used anymore in actual logging. They are manufactured and used in logger sports competitions and for use in certain places like identified Wilderness Areas on USFS land which have rules that don’t allow for motorized equipment like chainsaws."
The only thing I could think of in my industry that isn’t used and has no real equivalent would be my post on the 1st and that would be a [URL="Log flume - Wikipedia).
If you’ve used a Proportion Wheel, it’s really just a circular slide rule. My graphic design students use them, and can buy them at a number of stores.
But again, the Saturn V is distinct from other rockets in a way that car brands aren’t. As for a buggy whip being something to make something happen, well, so is a Saturn V. What it makes happen is people getting to the Moon. Now, if we had some other vehicle for getting to the Moon, I’d count that as being the “same thing”, but we don’t.
Still made by many companies. Very useful in drilling holes where you want to go s-l-o-w-l-y and reach a certain depth.
Bonus use for brace sets is driving screws. With a common screw adapter you can put hundred of pounds of torque on screws and seat them much faster than with power tools.
The only other space launch vehicle that has anywhere near the lift-to-orbit capacity of the Saturn V is the enormous Energia-based Vulkan (sometimes referred to as “Hercules” although not in the Soviet-era documentation). The Energia was the Soviet rocket launch system used to provide surface-to-orbit propulsion for their Buran reusable shuttle system, which unlike the American Space Transportation System, did not have on-board to-orbit engines and was dependent upon an external rocket booster to achieve orbit. The Vulkan configuration, with eight strap on liquid Zenit boosters was never actually flown due to financial constraints and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the Energia core vehicle and Zenit strap-ons were flown twice, once in an unmanned launch of the Buran and once with the Polyus spacecraft (a Functional Cargo Block with a a mass simulator for an anti-satellite CO[sub]2[/sub] laser system that was never actually developed). The Energia was not developed for a Moon shot–the Soviets terminated their manned moon program in 1974 after a series of catastrophic failures with the N-1 rocket–but ironically the Zenit boosters actually used the same engines as those on the N-1. It could have been easily used to launch payloads that included transtages that would permit Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI), but the Energia itself was never intended to deliver payloads beyond geosynchronous orbit. The Zenit lives on as the core vehicle for the Boeing Sealaunch venture, but the tooling for the core Energia vehicle is long gone.
There is no other existing man-rated launch vehicle extant or under development that can haul the kind of payload the Saturn V system can into a direct TLI trajectory. The now-suspended Ares IV and Ares V vehicles would have had this capability (although the Ares V was not intended to be man-rated), and the DIRECT 3.0 proposal would have also achieved Saturn V payload capability in the heaviest configuration (Jupiter-246), but the shutdown of ATK’s Solid Rocket Booster production places the future of any Shuttle-derived vehicles in grave doubt.
Chronos is fundamentally correct: there are no other space launch vehicle systems, extant or proposed, that can perform the tasks that the Saturn V could, nor is there any existing system that could be readily upscaled to propel manned-spacecraft size payloads to TLI. Starting from a clean sheet design would take years–likely in excess of a decade–of design and development of new systems, even using existing propulsion elements (engines and propellant feed systems) before we could put people back on the Lunar surface. This is not just a single tool, but a complete capability and experience that has been lost, and will have to be painfully regained by a new generation of engineers and technicians.
I don’t know what you mean by this. The Apollo program was the United States manned Moon exploration program, of which the Saturn family of rockets, and in particular the Saturn V, were used as tools to achieve orbit and Trans-Lunar Injection.
A tool, in the most general sense, is any device, implement, or machine which extends the user’s natural abilities. A crowbar is a tool in that it enables the user to lift and pry larger loads than one could accomplish with bare hands along via the principle of leverage. Similarly, the Saturn V is a tool that permits the lifting of large payloads into orbit with a delicacy and reliability that allows for living cargo, which I think we can all agree cannot be performed by an unequipped person alone. While the vehicle is composed of a large number of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and thermodynamic mechanisms, in sum it is used for that single purpose, and is a capability that no longer exists in any immediately useable or manufacturable form.
OK. For the second time today, I’m going to have to just agree to disagree. ‘Tool’ can be used the way you’re using it and if you do then Saturn V is a good answer, but to me that seems pretty pointless for this thread. Just two different perspectives, I guess.
(One day someone on the Dope will actually agree with me on at least one thing I post. I mean, statistically it has to happen sometime).
Without taking or meaning to give umbrage, I’m not sure by what definition of tool you would hold that excludes the Saturn V rocket, as first mentioned in post #8. As noted, other things considered tools, including storage media or detection systems (like the Freon leak detector mentioned by Rick in post #97) are regarded as tools but are not used to manufacture anything. A rocket is certainly not a hand tool or manufacturing tooling, but it is a tool in the general sense of being used to expand the natural ability of an individual to perform some task. If we’re to exclude it as being a tool based upon complexity or its use in manufacturing other items, there are a whole host of other objects we normally think of as tools that are also excluded.
Anything used in traditional men’s hatmaking - blocks, flanges, jacks, tollickers and the like - is either no longer made or very expensive to find new.
It was an Industrial Age skilled trade with a lot of proprietary techniques, which millinery or Western hatmaking didn’t always share. Much of the knowledge has nearly died out, along with the tools and the men who used them. Many of them, trained on strict guild or union terms, simply refused to pass on the skills.
I’m not sure I’d think of as floppy disc as a tool either, but I didn’t mention it because it seems they’re still in production anyway.
Well, Merriam-Webster Unabridged has these two main definitions (plus the slang and human meanings):
1 a : an instrument (as a hammer or saw) used or worked by hand : an instrument used by a handicraftsman or laborer in his work : IMPLEMENT b (1) : the cutting or shaping part in a machine or machine tool (2) : a machine for shaping metal : MACHINE TOOL c : a particular kind of hand tool: as (1) : a bookbinder’s instrument headed with a cut or engraved design with which impressions are made (as in finishing) (2) : a small brush used in painting window sashes
2 a : an implement or object used in performing an operation or carrying on work of any kind : an instrument or apparatus necessary to a person in the practice of his vocation or profession <a barber’s chair, a photographer’s camera, a scholar’s books are all tools> b : something that serves as a means to an end : an instrument by which something is effected or accomplished <words are the tools with which men think – J.E.Gloag> <respected advertising as an indispensable tool of business – Newsweek>
It seems that you’re using something like definition two and I’m using something like definition one. They’re both perfectly fine meanings for the word tool, but any object can potentially be included under definition 2; it’s just too broad to be interesting.
