an interesting little TV box
huge console with a little tube TV inside
this is a cool TV cabinet
an evolution of Apple computers
an evolution of texting phones
Mobile Internet and email in 1997!
I had a phone like that but didn't know anybody who could afford this kind of internet accessory
2002 for Blackberry seems like forever ago and just yesterday all at the same time
Old computers with huge price tags and very little memory or computing power are always interesting to see. Compare this big cabinet to what's in our pockets now and maybe we can't imagine what another 50 years will make.
Card punch and card punch tabulator.
Put holes in cards and use a machine to count them up. That was progress!
Put holes in cards and use a machine to count them up. That was progress!
A prototype telephone transmitter and receiver
The first telephone with rotary dial so you can dial direct without an operator
...and an automated phone switch to route calls through the phone lines
Marconi's wireless telegraph
wireless receiver to hear Morse code as crackling noises
this "new" shipboard wireless set looks like a mad scientist's lab
The phones on the right look familiar like my first cell phone.
The car phone on the left is huge!
Stock ticker tape machine from 1904 showing off it's mechanisms under glass. See through cases are fascinating on devices for seeing what's going on inside instead of having a boring box.
This funky little keyboard thing was for producing telegrams on paper strips, which were then glued onto the telegram form. I've seen the end result in museums before but I've never seen this cool contraption.
Telegraphs were the first real-time medium which completely transformed society. It took a while for telephone adoption to impact telegram volume. Germany's telegraphy service lasted until 2000!
copier and old computer with dot matrix printer
The Commodore C64 computer from 1982. I played with one at my cousin's house. My first modem plugged in instead of this acoustic coupler model but this is fun to see.
This is a NeXT Cube computer which wasn't very common. What makes this special is that it's the type of computer that was used to develop the world wide web and first web server in 1989. I wouldn't be sharing these pictures and text with you without that work.
This is an interesting device from 1932 since it recorded sound magnetically on a thin steel wire coiled inside a huge cassette.
Enigma encryption devices
evolution of recording devices
That's a huge external CD burner like the one I had at my first Air Force assignment in the early 90s. There's a Diamond Rio MP3 player in the back right from 1998 when lots of people started sharing music on Napster. In front of that is the first iPod from 2001. Music is now streamed instead of stored. It's all apps on phones instead of separate devices like these.
Back to the early TVs and mechanical televisions. These displayed images with a rotating perforated disc. I didn't know about this early attempt at displaying broadcast TV but here's a link to a demonstration video of it working. It was crude but ingenious. Who thinks of these things???
another mechanical TV
This is an early picture tube which was very much tube shaped and definitely doesn't fit in a flat screen
here's a few old radios with their old sense of style
Finally, I leave you with the words of the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. "And then, of course, you must also have time to sit there and stare in front of you." This was next to a chair with a pull down hood. Inside was empty with pleasant lights and no sound. It was an escape from technology to allow you to sit there and stare at nothing. It was the worst 10 seconds of my life until I figured out what was going on, got the heck out of that nightmare, and checked my smartphone for anything new happening in the last minute!
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