Discussion on:

Tech gadgets we once loved but since abandoned (Photos)

"...the slide rule's longevity came to an abrupt end when personal computers became popular in the 1980s."

No, it came to an end when pocket calculators became affordable in the mid-70s. I had to use a slide rule in Trig my sophomore year; in Physics the next year ('76) we were allowed calculators.

Why is vinyl on here twice? Since some new recordings are being released on vinyl, some would question its obsolescence.

I wish fax machines were on this list.

I once self-made a light pen but it failed to work in the Apple II era. I wonder if a light pen would be useful nowadays as an alternative to touch screen.

I had a light pen on my Amiga computer but found it hard to use for to long having to raise it to the screen all the time. The Microsoft Kinect is being released for use on the home computer soon, and will apparently be supported by Windows 8 natively to allow you to control a computer just by waving your hand or hands around in the air.

I once had the displeasure of working with a modem that you strapped to the 'phone handest. It worked at a massive 300 baud (note, there's no k in that). You could see the characters appearing one by one on the 7 inch screen of my Compaq luggable, interspersed by the inevitable random corruption.

There's another technology we once loved. A portable computer the size and weight of loaded suitcase. Try carrying that one on the flight, kids.

And if you dig deep enough in history, the first "Compaq" luggable during its "beta" stage was named something like "Amqute". When they went retail production, they became "Compaq".

It had an amazing 20MB hard drive, an internal 1200 baud modem. Just the thing for running DOS 5 and PFS First Choice. Oh the thrill of connecting to CompuServe or the sound of the Epson dot matrix printer at work...

They would put a handle on top and call it "portable" although they weighed 60 pounds.

I used to get my service calls through dial up using a hand held device, it had an accoustic modem to use with a pay phone and it also had a phone connector to connect directly. It did not have straps to hold the phone hand set in place on the rubber accoustical couplings, I had to hold the hand set until the session completed.

The accoustical modem was only good for 180 baud. I was amused to watch the movie "War Games" when the young hacker found a friendly military computer that was able to compress computerized voice and respond to voices through an accoustical modem.

to circumvent the AT&T/FCC prohibition against any kind of customer-connected equipment to the "national telephone system" without written approval thru their engineering and the use of a "customer-supplied coupling device" for which you would pay a monthly fee. This lasted until the breakup ot AT&T by the Supreme Court.

I still remember my first modem that was 300bps I got near the end of the 80's but was the type that plugged into a telephone socket. It also had the option of doing a 1200/75bps split speed but no BBS computer around here at the time supported that. It was about the size of two CD-Rom drives placed side by side and was the budget model that did not have the optional dialing unit installed. I got it second hand as the seller was upgrading to a 1200/1200bps modem. I had to manually dial the local BBS computer I wanted to connect to and once I heard the other modem start its handshake screech, I had to flip a switch on the unit and quickly hang up the phone receiver. My computer at the time was an Amiga 500.

As a teen with my hot new Commodore 64 computer, I REALLY wanted one of those suction cup-looking speed demons! Could not CONCEIVE how anything could move so fast! And while I was dreaming...should I get the 300baud or save up forever and get the 1200baud?
I also remember being all doe-eyed over a magazine ad for the Compaq touting how it was conceived on a napkin. 8)
> Where is the VCR on this list? Almost but not quite dead yet. Betamax maybe?
> The 8-track? Oh, yeah. Nobody loved those.
> Video discs? (The BIG pizza-sized ones!)
> I like old sci-fi but even I feel like a dork when I realize the hero is figuring out an orbit burn around Jupiter with a slide rule hee hee!
> My kids (ages 16 and 19) have never been in the same room with a rotary phone.
> Payphones? Maybe this isn't true everywhere, but in my home town all you can find now are the backing plates where those things USED to be.
> While we're talking phones, what about phone booths? Not technical enough I guess.

Betamax home units lost out to the cheaper VHS tape systems but as the recording quality on Betamax was better they lived on as the Betacam system used by a lot of TV stations for news gathering. VHS only won the war for the home user, it lost the war to Betamax in the professional arena!

as a format, but the Sony machines were far more reliable, and that is what broadcasters really wanted.

Beta had great audio quality! Even over and above HiFi VHS and DAT (yes, DAT is STILL used in many engineering rooms)

Jeff Goldblum hacked the ship's mainframe a la Independence Day with his Apple? Then the hero would have no choice but to use a slide rule! Personally I believe the slide rule story more ...

Know what was cool about the big old 12 inch laser discs? You could play them backwards. Man we watched the Death Star come together over and over watching one on a stoned afternoon. We couldn't get enough of it.

You can probably still find Betamax machines in commercial studios. They never used VHS.

digital formats were making inroads about that time, too, and we all know who won that race.

Yes, the music formats of the past have been supplanted by digitized, soulless, utilitarian, reduced to a bunch of 0's and 1's, tick-tock recordings that can never compete with high quality analog (read as capturing the whole performance without chopping it into little pieces similar to the smooth transit of the second hand on an analog watch compared to the tick tick of a digital) recordings. I predict that when someone finally invents a analog format that is as compressible as digital there will be another music revolution.

But then, i could be wrong, just ask my wife.

CD Quality recordings are digitised at 44,100 samples per second, and high-quality master DAT is sampled at 48000 samples. One could just as easily sample at a million bits per second - and store it on an audio casette - but there would be no point as the human ear cant move fast enough to transition the extra information into a usable signal. The membrane only moves so fast and so far in one cycle, and that limits the amount of information it can receive.

The reason why CDs have an 'empty' sound compared to tape or vinyl is NOT because of the digitisation, its because of the noise generated by the medium itself. Its completely absent in a digital recording, and provides a bass rumble and treble hiss that is attenuated by the audio signal.

Compare a CD to a live performance and its is more faithfully reproduced than any vinyl or analog tape copy. Thats not to say that the sound of a good quality amplifier driven by a smooth deck isnt superior in listening pleasure, but it isnt a faithful recording of the original.

Even with the best recording digital or analog there is always "noise". The best playback equipment still generates noise during the playback (see aliasing, jitter and quantization noise) not to mention noise generated by the speakers. Even high end amps and players come with distortion canceling circuits, BEE clamps in the power supply, tone control circuits, short path PCB layouts etc. to help reduce noise and distortion.
There is a certain "warmth" with analog that somehow falls through the holes (small as they are) in digital recordings. Some things just can't be measured.

...is noise, and compression on a tape or vinyl. It can indeed be measured and is absent from CD recording.

All analog tape was recorded using RIAA compensation. Because a tape cannot store the entire bandwidth of say, a music recording, cheap systems simply chop off the upper and lower frequencies that lay just within our hearing range. More expensive systems boost the extremes and filter out the noise, but still only record a portion of the sound on the tape.

CDs store a wider range of frequencies than RIAA includes, so the sound is crisper and more bassy than a tape, plus there is no transport noise.
Even if you are using a Class A amp, which an audiophile would have, you would not be able to distinguish between a CD recording of a tape, and the tape itself.

Vinyl also has scratches, muffle, and mechanical limitations on the frequencies it stores, and in fact is truly awful as true reproduction goes.

I will agree with you on one thing though. Listening to analog recordings is a more pleasant thing, simply from nostalgia. Hifi equipment is no longer chosen for the tone it has, but for its fidelity instead, and thats part of the pleasure gone. All of the mechanical noises, and the response of the amp used to be part of musical experience and digital has done for it.

of the combined frequency response and equalization which the signal encounters throughout the recording/playback chain, not noise and compression.
And not all recordings were mastered using RIAA/EAI eq, a great deal was done with AME (Ampex Master Equalization) which produced a much heavier low freq. balance, at the expense of overcoming the tape hiss. AME was used mostly on full track mono machines where much ot the tape noise averaged out and saturation levels weren't so critical.
And as for your mention of "tone" and "fidelity", while it's true that most systems had "tone" controls, usually bass and treble, you will find that higher and higher *fidelity* was pursued by most music lovers long before even stereo recordings became available. The was a constant search for the widest and flattest frequency response curves and the lowest distortion possible. Signal-to-noise ratios where constantly being improved, as well as dynamic range. Mechanical noise was simply not tolerated.
Your implication that people only wanted "pleasing tone" is apparently some you heard from grandme talking about her Zenith table radio with the various switches for different types of program material.
I find that mindset returning in mant surround systems marketed today, with settings for "heavy", "classical", "C&W", etc...so now it seems like some people are looking to find only "pleasing tone" in their sound systems.

The number of distortion generating stages in an analog recording and reproduction system is significantly larger than on a digital system. As for those who talk about jitter (analog equivalent wow and flutter) or quantization noise (are you telling me your speaker cones can reproduce frequencies in excess of 40KHz?) don't forget the granularity of the LP material which introduces tiny irregularities into the smooth wave of the recording. The analog myth is purely psychological. Yes, you may prefer an analog sound, but digital is closer to perfect reproduction.
And as for valve amplifiers (power wasting behemoths), the Field Effect Transistor (FET) has identical electrical characteristics to the valve ( I have a degree in electronics) so if you don't like the sound of an amplifier with bipolar transistor output stages - a justifiable dislike - try an amplifier with FET output stages and compare it with a valve amplifier. You may be surprised.

I think "identical" is a bit strong when comparing valves and fets. The do operate in a broadly similar way, but in terms of detailed behaviour like transfer curves and noise generation, they are a long way from "identical".

I agree 100% with SiO2's comments. I do not deny that some people prefer the sound of LPs or reel-to-reel tape to that of CDs but CDs give the most faithful reproduction of any popular format - no amplitude fluctuation over the frequency range, no hiss, crackles or pops, no tracking error distortion and, an important point, playing a CD doesn't damage it whereas playing an LP does damage it so the reproduction quality deteriorates with every playing. Having said all that, back in the early days of CDs (1987-ish), I took my CD player over to a friend who had a high quality turntable and an identical classical music recording on LP to one I had on CD. We started both simultaneously and switched between the two sources on the amplifier. I was astonished at how close the LP came to the CD sound - but the CD was definitely superior.

Even my almost 70 year old ears can still hear the brilliance of cymbals and strings, the light coming from glissando chimes, the fullness of gongs, the clarity of bass instruments that is completely absent in the "distortionless", "greater bandwidth", "greater dynamic range" of the CD.
I had placed all my vinyl in storage for years to enjoy the performance of CDs, but one day i stumblred across a mid-range B&O turntable at a thrift store and thaouht i would give it a try...suddenly i heard things in the music (which i also had on top-grade CDs) that i had forgotten ever existed...now half the recorded music i listen to is on vinyl, even the worn and scratched ones!

All Amplifiers and speakers add color to the sound that they produce so the actual equipment without any alteration to the base settings change the sound from the recording to what is heard by the ear.

Running the same recording on the same equipment is better but even still the differences between turntables and CD Players vary drastically. A good Quality Turntable can be very faithful to the sound it produces where as a cheaper one can be downright nasty and add all sorts of frequencies that where not in the original sound.

The same applies to CD Players many of which color the sound that they produce to makeup for shortcomings in the recordings that they are being used to play. Even then unless you use the same original source without alteration as the Master that all Media is made from you can get massive differences between the way supposedly the same recording on different media sounds.

I have listened to Cd's of music that was taken exactly from what was used to make a Vinyl Disc and they are terrible. If they are not Remastered they many introduce a lot of noise that simply wasn't present when listened to on the Vinyl and add lots of Tape Hiss and other sounds from the actual Process of recording the same piece of music.

However when it's all said and done both have their place and depending on the equipment used to reproduce the sounds both can sound better than the other depending on what the listener expects and believes. I've watched some people compare really high end Audio Equipment in the form of a B&O Turntable a Medium Power Amp only around 300 W per channel and really good speakers to what is effectively a Mass produced Boom Box that adds lots of Bass and they insist that the CD played on the Boom Box is the better sound.

To their ears it very well may be as that is what they expect to sound better and what they have been educated to believe sounds better just the same as the people who prefer Vinyl may believe sounds better to their ears.

Here it all depends on what the listener expects to hear and short of introducing lots of Noise into a Recording either can sound better to different people who have been educated in what Good Sound is in different ears.

Col

from this conversation (which we must admit has drifted a long way from the article witch spawned it) is that device at the from of the recording chain, and i believe it has made more improvement to the result than any other technology: the microphones that were used. While i love the sound of a good ribbon velocity mike, the condenser mikes available now have done far more to improve the definition and overall accuracy of the recordings.

I poked into the speaker side of things, meaning that no matter what you prefer, ALL speakers colour audio, even those said to be the most transparent. The ribbon mikes were awesome but they are far too revealing for today's mediums, thus I agree wholly with your accuracy comment.

With a focus on source clarity and not a mention of how such source quality is absolutely destroyed without speakers almost nobody would enjoy listening to. Speakers are designed to colour sound in order to make up for their own deficiencies. Even the match between capacitors, crossover frequency, roll off will colour sound. So WHO CARES if you have a CD player that reproduces the MASTER sound immaculately, especially when the engineer had monitors that coloured the original sound and then it was coloured to suit HIS ears on HIS studio monitors.

I look for slightly forward, spacial sound stage, with tube warmth. Something you just won't find in a digital format.

We can aurgue all day on the merits of the formats but you gentlemen missed the point of my posting. I quote: " I predict that when someone finally invents a analog format that is as compressible as digital there will be another music revolution." When an analog recording format is available that can perfectly capture a live performance, digital won't be able to compete.

Someday a variable state chip will be invented and digital computers, recordings, photographs etc will become obsolete. Imagine a computer that can actually represent 1/3 as an absolute value rather than 0.33333...

You obviously never heard of analog and hybrid computers that use variable voltages to represent real (as in non-integer) values.
You obviously also dont know what interpolation is. This is where a mathematical formula is used to produce a curve on a scope from a series of steps by averaging the voltage between two points. With a sample frequency twice as fast as the fastest signal needed, the curve reproduced from the samples is close enough to the original waveform as to be identical to the ear.
You obviously never heard of Fourier Transforms either, that can be used to predict the exact voltage present in a signal at any point using reference points within it, regardless of their position.

And finally, you obviously arent aware that human speech uses frequencies that average around 15,000 cycles per second, mostly sine waves, with the top frequencies being 'pink noise'. Computer processors operate on frequencies in the 3,000,000 cycle per second range. If you think samples of that speed dont approximate real signals with an error so small as to be unmeasurable, then you really are truly uneducated on the subject.

I'm a musician, computer programmer and hardware engineer, and Mr Foggit has an education too - and you havent listened to either of us.

It is your right to be wrong if you want of course.

I am also a musician, I have advanced degrees in both mathematics (including Fourier Transforms, studied those in beginning Calculus) and computer science, I have worked on every kind of computer since IBM 360 as a programmer and system engineer and I helped design the first production scanning system for the US Patent Office. I am quite aware of analog computers and how they work. I built my first one when I was sixteen. I couldn't care less about, how did you put it, "an error so small as to be unmeasurable", I want no error at all not just in music but computing in general. Our scientific advances will someday not be content with approximations. A lack of vision does not make you right.

A fork built to nanometer specifications feeds me no better than the flatware presently in my kitchen. So try to live in today with the rest of us rather than in your fantasy someday. A gentleman of yesterday said this:

"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." --Eugene Delacroix

We'll see how many quote you in 200 years. Well, we won't but someone will. Rather more likely no one. Not unless you learn the errors of your own ways, then adjust accordingly.

As my final comment on this thread:
Citing ridiculous examples of attempts at perfection do not make good arguments. If by trying to be a visionary and looking towards the future separates me from those who can't see past today, sign me up. Where do you think all the modern technology came from? Certainly from visionaries.

???Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.???
- Lord Chesterfield

" It is foolish to make anything higher toerance than it needs to be"
The human voice is perfectly understandable in a band of 300 to 3000 cycles ('scuse me, Hertz). So you're saying that all the top-line condenser mikes used for vocals in the those studios and on stage are wasted effort and expense?

Two paper cups with a string is all you need.

in my free time I am a nuclear physicist (just a side gig). My dad was both a King and the Pope, my mother was also known as Sister Theresa, my uncle Ghandi. WHO GIVES A CRAP? It's not an interview, you don't need to post your resume here, nobody cares, it does not qualify your opinion on sound in any way at all. Sound is subjective, not scientific.

Man, talk about a mindless, pissing contest.

I engineer and sell music worldwide, today's production and CD quality is so low that having such conversations is ridiculous.

What's best is what sells, end of story. Music reproduction is a multi-billion dollar industry, not in the reproduction but in the resale. CD's sell because today's audience is all but tone deaf, due to the perpetuation of crappy recordings and cheap reproduction.

I personally prefer vinyl for most recordings, especially classical and hard rock but, for pop music, CD's will sound superior mainly because of the crappy, mainstream systems the are played on.

I have to disagree with the Phonograph, there is a surge in retro going around, LP records seem to be all the rage again with collectors. Second hand stores sell LP's as fast as they get them in (Not including Herb Alpert, which seems to multiply like rabbits!) I have a USB Phonograph and transfer the LP when I get it to MP3 and then store the LP. Vinyl records are a big seller again but you have to know where to buy them. Besides hundreds of online stores selling new releases again on Vinyl you can pick some up at Best Buy and Hot Topic stores.

As someone else said, the calculator killed the slide rule, long before the PC. Also, a slide rule was not a tech "gadget", but the most important tool an engineer had. True, for most people, a slide rule was an evil of calc class, but look up in the air, see the airplanes? The slide rule was as important as the rivets for most of the planes in the air today. Think NASA is cool? We put a man on the moon on the back of slide rule.

Technically obsolete, yes. Gadget, no.

The calc is just a computer with a limited function range. It does math & does it better and faster than manual methods, but it is still a computer, though how personal you want to call it is up to you.

It wasn't the personal computer that brought about the demise of the slide rule but the pocket calculator. I was in engineering school during the transition and could use either. Pocket RPN scientific calculators were expensive then and I remember renting one from the university bookstore to use on a mid-term exam. I completed the exam in half the alotted time because of all the time saved with the calculator and was sold on them! I cashed in a couple savings bonds and bought a new Hewlett-Packard HP-21, which I still have. I also still have my K&E slide rule, which is now considered a collector's item and I also have a yellow 6 foot Pickett classroom instructional sliderule.

Seems you forgot one of the best ever designed item!

The Psion 5 mx was a small laptop in a pocket. Far more practical than any netbook, it got the job done ...on 2 AA batteries for a month. I used one extensively while I was in the military and I wish they could do a similar product today. Sure 16 MB would not amount to much today and everybody wants a color screen but it was so practical. I cannot stop thinking of the look of my neighbor when I would pull it out in a plane and start working on my reports. The keyboard design was the best. I miss it! Sure in today's world it could use a little upgrade memory-wise but what a great piece of equipment!