I was looking at my digital alarm clock radio this morning and realized that I’ve had it since 1984. 26 years of being set every day, and very rarely letting me down.
It has a battery backup, but I’ve never used it. There have been a handful of days the alarm simply hasn’t gone off. No reason, no AM/PM, snooze or volume knob. Just didn’t go off.
However, I can count those on maybe 2 hands. For 26 years, it’s worked exactly as advertised. I still like the looks of it. I bought it because the numerals are in a blue light, not the normal red or whatever. The radio works, the snooze still works, everything still works. In fact, the only time it’s ever been unplugged is when I’ve had to move.
It is a GE brand clock radio.
So, what is your oldest electronic item or appliance you still have, how old is it, and is it still used regularly?
i have a GE clock radio with an analog motor driven clock. it is transistorized, it comes on instantly unlike my GE clock radio with an analog motor driven clock, it has electron tubes and needs to warm up.
Do game systems count? We have an Atari 2800 (1982), Colecovision (1982), Atari 7800 (1986 or so), Twin Famicom (1987 'round abouts), NES (1985), Lynx handheld (1989), plus an old tv probably from '79-'82 or so that a couple of the old game systems are hooked up to. We do use them on occasion. Most recently I hauled the NES, along with the dance mat, and a tv to a 4H lock-in. The kids had a blast (and a few arguments) with it.
I’ve used the same alarm clock (Sears) since about 1978.
I’m waitin’ for my dad’s tube amp from the early 70’s. I’m gonna tell my mom I got something “new and better” for her! I use his Mult-meter (looks like its made of Bake-o-lite and radioactive) from the 40’s or 50’s.
My bedroom TV is a Fisher 25" video monitor from the late 1980s. It doesn’t get a lot of use, but just continues working. I have some other monitors that are older, and of course my Amiga computers, but I haven’t fired those up in a long time. Now that I think of it, I have used the 3/4" JVC editing deck in the last year (just to dub off a tape) as well as the Laserdisc and Betamax decks.
I have and Onkyo amplifier from the mid-late seventies. I use it daily. Apart from that my oldest piece of electronics that I still use (albeit very occasionally) must be my Commodore 64 from the mid-eighties.
I have a large button, solar powered calculator from 1999 or 2000. My wife and I still fight over who gets to use it. As far as I can tell, it’s relatively rare because it goes up to 11 digits or something.
Other than that, I have a viewsonic monitor from 2005 or so. Everything else is newer.
Electronic? We have one at Mom’s, but it’s mechanical, as is the gramophone (which is the oldest complicated machine in working order we have). The oldest functioning piece of electronic equipment my family has and which I can date is a boombox from sometime in the 1970s: it was part of a shipment made in the factory where Dad worked, which became clay bricks after the warehouse got flooded. The radios were taken back to the factory in a truck which would otherwise have done that run empty; they were cleaned by hand during slow times and given away to anybody who would take one. It’s the one I used to have in my dorm room in college; my grandmother has it now. She also has Grandpa’s electronic typewriter, which replaced that mechanical one now at Mom’s.
I have a SEGA Mega Drive I still play occasionally for a nostalgia booster shot. I am not 100% certain of the year we got it but it’s way older than the next oldest thing I own: a shower radio from the mid-nineties.
I have a Pioneer tube amp, an early top-load laserdisc player, and assorted pong systems all from the mid to late 70s, as well as the early cartridge game systems (Channel F, Studio II, Bally Astrocade, Intellivision, and Atari 2600) from the late 70s. I have a few early 70s computer systems I occasionally trot out and fire up: IMSAI 8080, KIM-1, RCA COSMAC, etc., as well as dozens of computers and game systems from the late 1970s through 2000.
