Old Tech thread

[Wayne Mack]

View attachment 101540

Another picture to nominate for th e300 word challenges.

 

[Ursa major]

Another picture to nominate for th e300 word challenges.

Wooden't we get a lot of stories based on legends...?

 

[Elentarri]

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Interesting "legs". Do you have any idea when they were manufactured?

 

[dask]

No, sorry, I don’t.

 

[Parson]

Wooden't we get a lot of stories based on legends...?

Steel, I don't know.

 

[Boaz]

And here, thanks to Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, is the latest amazing wonder of directional wireless, which could allow London Croydon pilots to fly in a perfectly straight line, or to land, through cloud, or even at night!!!


View attachment 43178

What is my friend’s wife works for a US company that dismantled these wireless installations. They traveled all over the United States for a decade.

 

[Pyan]

Hands up all those that thought home computing started in the 1980's? Here's an ad from Meccano Magazine, January 1968...

 

[Elentarri]

Tsk Tsk that's about 2000 years after this "home" (i.e. it's portable) computer!
Antikythera Mechanism, The World’s Oldest Computer

 

[Vladd67]

This is the ideal setting for a steam punk story.

Or dieselpunk perhaps

 

[Pyan]

Again from Meccano Magazine - why we didn't have electric cars in 1968...

 

[Parson]

Actually, I think the jury was out as to whether a Corvair was a real car or not.

 

[dask]

 

[Ravensquawk]

Back in mid seventies I was a trainee in a UK coalmine. In one area of older workings there was a row of lights giving off a strange blue glow.
As far as I recall each light had an enclosed turbine/dynamo that was powered by compressed air.
I remember some old collier saying they'd been operating since the fifties in that area.

I've googled and you can still get compressed air lamps but these ones are hand held for inspection work inside oil tanks etc, the ones I saw were large and permanently mounted.

Just another bit of forgotten technology. No doubt the manufacturer has long since gone - very little coalmining now

That was fascinating. Completely new to me.
Once in a while I refresh myself on carbide lamps, especially after touring mines in Michigan's UP, and learning about the chemistry of the actual lime involved in limelights, before forgetting and getting to learn it all over again, but this wasn't forgettery; it was completely new.
I know just enough to be dangerous: that any escape of air under pressure could ignite, like, the grease on your welding glove. And anything around the glove. (I was careful enough not to learn the hard way.)

I like reading about light subjects.

 

[Harpo]

 

[Pyan]

1930's experimental airliner - the Bleriot 125:

 

[Vertigo]

1930's experimental airliner - the Bleriot 125:

"Each fuselage nose carries six seats, arranged very comfortably and with a wide range of vision." Wow that would have been pretty exclusive sort of travel!

 

[Pyan]

"Each fuselage nose carries six seats, arranged very comfortably and with a wide range of vision." Wow that would have been pretty exclusive sort of travel!

Must have been a bit unnerving, though, especially when landing!

 

[Vertigo]

Must have been a bit unnerving, though, especially when landing!

I should say so!

 

[dask]

 

[Parson]

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Is there any evidence that this is 1969? The haircuts, dresses, and tech suggest to me a date more like 1955-60 or so. And I think by 69, at least in the States, most of the telephone calls were more automated than this.