Gadgets

Some Vintage Products You Just Had To Buy!

~ beetleypete ~ 62 Comments

Wasn’t advertising great in the past? New must-have gadgets or essentials that were available at a good price. And you never knew you needed them until you saw the advert.

I’m guessing these would be very popular today.

Mum and baby enjoying a beer in the daytime? “Oh, it’s only for the malt”.

If only they still sold these, it would solve my problem.

There are none on my walls, honest!

Washing off that nuclear fallout was so easy back then.

Small wonder obesity has become such a problem in so many countries.

Now I need to buy some Bar Mix. Can’t think why.

Sauna pants were obviously the answer. They should bring them back on sale.

Tha family that shoots together stays together.

Where do they sell this? (And will it make my toaster greasy?)

A satisfying smoke and mouthwash combined. Solves two things at once.

You wouldn’t look silly using this, you really wouldn’t.

Retro-Tech: Old Inventions In Photos

~ beetleypete ~ 68 Comments

Some of these innovations are familiar to us today. Others just didn’t catch on…

This device was invented in the 1700s to enable researchers to have seven books open at once and to be able to rotate them for comparison.

‘Cycle Skates’, invented in around 1900.

Single wheel motorcycle. Germany, 1925.

A Native American lady operates a local telephone switchboard. Montana, 1925.

A propellor-driven train from the Zeppelin Company. Germany, 1931.

A Morrison shelter in use. These were installed in many British homes to try to reduce casualties during bombing in WW2.

US Air Force aerial camera used during WW2.

A tiny train used by police in the Holland Tunnel, New York City. It was introduced in 1955 to control speeding motorists.

The first ‘swivel-screen’ TV, 1958.

The first ‘Robot Vacuum Cleaner’, 1959.

Prototype flat screen TV and video recorder combined. Chicago, 1961.

Petrol-powered roller skates. America, 1961.

TV-watching headset. America, 1966.

The first-ever demonstration of a computer mouse, 1968.

A Motorola executive demonstrates the first truly portable phone. America, 1973.

An Alphabet Of My Life: T

~ beetleypete ~ 41 Comments

T=Technology.

It is impossible to fully describe the impact of technology since I was born. I was initially brought up using an outside toilet, and a tin bath filled on Friday nights. The television had one channel, if you were lucky enough that it was working properly. There was the wireless, (radio) and records played on a ‘gramaphone’.

Cars were unreliable, and constantly broke down. Heating was a coal fire, and nobody had heard of deodorant.

By the time I was 12, there was gas-fired heating, and the first cassette recorder. Cars began to work properly, and we had three channels on the TV, which was also (amazingly) available in colour by the time I was 17. Ballpoint pens had replaced bottles of ink, labour-saving devices had replaced hand-washing and preparing food, and there was a new thing called a ‘Freezer’, which froze food for later use.

I was living in the ‘Golden Age’, undoubtedly!

Things just kept getting better. When I was 18, I had a cassette player in my car, later changed to an 8-Track. Transistor radios had replaced the old wireless sets, and the TV actually worked without being constantly adjusted. Cheap jet travel had made foreign holidays possible for almost anyone, and people who had never left Britain were holidaying in exotic-sounding places like Benidorm, and Lloret Del Mar.

By the time I was married at 25 in 1977, there were VHS video recorders. A complete marvel at the time. Watch a propgramme while you taped something on the other side. It was like a magic trick!

It didn’t end there. I received a plastic card to allow me to spend money on credit without having to carry any cash around, and in 1999, I bought my first mobile phone. I could make a call from anywhere, at anytime. No need to queue outside a phone box ever again, as long as I had enough balance left on the SIM card. By 2002, I had a laptop. It was like something from a spaceship to me, and I had to spend all day at a friend’s house so he could show me how to use it.

But I still only had ‘dial-up’ Internet, and it took 15 minutes to download a photo sent to me on an email. That didn’t matter, because to me it was like a miracle unfolding in front of my eyes.

Just 20 years ago. Hard to believe now, isn’t it?

In the meantime we got CD, DVD, Broadband, Fibre Optics, Social Media, Streaming, Internet TV with 200 stations, Netflix, even more reliable cars, and we could travel the world for a fraction of what that cost previously.

Technology is an ever-developing monster of our own creation. It can do good. But it can also do bad, as we know.

Thinking Aloud On a Sunday

~ beetleypete ~ 59 Comments

Times change.

We are all aware how fast things change. I am using a computer to type this, yet when I left school, I never imagined that such a thing would exist. And I am posting this online, over the Internet. Who could ever have thought of that?

Whenever I complain about how things are, people wisely remind me that ‘times change’, or ‘it’s just progress’. Staring at mobile phones all day is progress then, I assume. I do try, I really do. Look how much I use technology to blog, and to spread the word about everything from how much it rains, to the stories I have written. But I confess that it is never less than a daily struggle, trying to keep up with those changing times.

As I get older, I complain a great deal. Regular readers will no doubt have noticed the increase in that, I’m sure.

Much of what I lament is caused by the addition of rose-tinted spectacles, and they make me firmly believe that everything was better ‘before’. Before times changed, and before so much progress. Does anyone under forty realise that their beloved smartphones and Internet televisions will be laughed at in thirty year’s time? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter.

But they will be.

Is life really so much better because you can switch on your house lights from the bus, by using an app on your phone? Well that is certainly progress, but is it either a good thing, or necessary? I struggle to believe it is.

When you are young, moany old codgers get on your nerves, always going on about how things were so much better ‘before’. They did it when I was young, and now I am upholding the tradition. And for you younger readers, a word of warning.

You will do it too.

You will hear yourself saying that your old X-Box was better than whatever is around when you are seventy years old. You will drone on about films and TV shows being so much better in your youth, and how the celebrities and stars of your day were much better-looking, and nicer people too. You will bore the pants off the future younger generation by going on about the food you used to eat, and how you used to cook it. The fast-food places that no longer exist, and the shops that closed down when you were in your sixties.

You will tell them about High Street Shops, and how you could buy just one cake in a baker’s. Regale them with how good it was to go to a doctor or the hospital, and not have to pay. You will become misty-eyed with memories of how people got state pensions, winter fuel allowance, and free bus travel when they were old. Of course, you will not have any of that for yourself, but you will remember when other people did.

You will find it hard to cope with progress, and increasingly difficult to change with the times.

I know, because I can see into your future.

And it is the same as mine.

Techno fear

~ beetleypete ~ 27 Comments

Another old post from 2012, lamenting the addiction to technology, and the controlling practices of the major electronics corporations. It only had one like and comment, so nobody should remember it. 🙂

beetleypete

There is something sinister about the way that Technology creeps up on you. One day, life is going on as normal, and the next, you can’t remember how to use a telephone box, or even know where to find one. I can almost remember the last time I made a call from a public kiosk, queuing patiently, until it was free to use. Then, in what seemed an instant, I had a mobile phone in my hand, and I have never used a public box since; though I still had a phone card in my wallet, until very recently.

Can any of you remember what life was like before mobile phones? Imagine breaking down in your car, on a country road, late at night, in an unfamiliar area. You had to walk for an unknown time, until you could find a telephone box to use, to summon assistance. You also…

View original post 998 more words

Life before gadgets

~ beetleypete ~ 57 Comments

Many things that are considered to be normal everyday items now didn’t exist in my youth. The idea of owning a machine to wash your clothes was something that didn’t even enter the heads of the adults in my family, and we didn’t get one until 1968. Likewise a machine to wash plates, dishes, and cutlery. That was something I didn’t see until the late 1970s, and to this day, I have never owned one.

The one thing we did have was an electric 2-slice toaster. This appeared around the time of my tenth birthday, and seemed like something from the future to me back then. I was so excited to watch the toast pop up when it was done, it was not uncommon for me to toast a few slices even when I didn’t want to eat them. The one in my kitchen in Beetley at the moment is virtually identical to that first one in 1962, showing that a good design never needs to be altered.

Just because gadgets started to arrive on the scene didn’t mean they appeared in our houses. Things like electric food mixers were incredibly expensive then, and well beyond the financial reach of working-class families. Electric knives, electric can-openers, such things were even laughed at, when we had perfectly serviceable knives and can-openers that we could use with our hands. Plug-in crock pots, slow-cookers, they just took up space on worktops, and we already had casserole dishes that could be put into the oven.

The proliferation of gadgets appeared like an unstoppable tidal wave though, and it became harder to resist. One day, I arrived home from school to find that virtually everything in the kitchen was now stored in a Tupperware container. From my breakfast cereal to Oxo cubes, they all had a perfectly airtight-sealed place on a shelf. Not long after that, small wire devices turned up, propped over each of the heating radiators. They were to be used for drying clothes during bad weather, turning every room into a miniature laundry.

When I no longer saw the kettle standing on the cooker hob, I was told that we now had an electric one instead. Very noisy in operation, and not much faster to boil water than the one we had used all my life until then, it now took up valuable space in the kitchen. And we had to have one. Because everyone else did. The next arrival was an electric hand mixer. My Mum was a keen cake-maker, and she loved the twin-head mixer that saved her the effort of spending so much time with a hand-whisk.

TV advertising soon embraced the sales of all sorts of weird and wonderful ‘must-have’ gadgets. One really crazy one I remember my mum buying was a plastic tray to make slicing a cucumber supposedly ‘easier’. The vegetable was placed inside, and a knife could be used in the numerous slots, leaving her with a perfect, evenly-sliced sliced cucumber. To me, it looked no different to how it had been sliced previously, but she was delighted with her purchase.

I will spare you a list of the many useless items that followed. Things like an inflatable ‘bath-pillow’ that fixed to the bath with suction cups, or trays that hung upside down in the fridge to store cooked meats. But they came thick and fast.

All of a sudden, it seemed that nobody could remember a time without such wonderful gadgets. How did we ever cope?

Is it me?

~ beetleypete ~ 4 Comments

Some time ago, I posted two articles, Nothing Works 1 and 2. They were bemoaning the modern trend of gadgets, and electrical items, that never work as they are supposed to. At the time, I was having a lot of trouble with a flat-screen TV, and a hard drive Freeview recorder. It was eventually sorted out, with the help of a local retailer.

Today, it is Julie’s birthday. I wanted to get her something nice, but she has lots of jewellery, and I bought perfume for Christmas, not that long ago. So, I bought her a Tablet, a Samsung Tab 2, with a 10 inch screen. It looks a lot like an i-Pad, though it isn’t. I still cannot bring myself to get anything Apple. The people are just so smug and superior about their stuff, and consumers are Apple-mad, with i-Pads, i-Pods, and i-Phones as well. Then there is the Mac book, The Mac book Air, and all the other ridiculously over-priced computers from that company. All tied in with i-Tune accounts, and no doubt all connected to each other by some i-gizmo, it is like the Freemasonry of electronics, and I want no part of it. I will take the other route, choose the other way; Android.

Julie was pleased with her gift. It started up out of the box, and there was just the Wi-fi connection to sort out, and she was on her way to Tablet Heaven. The only thing was, the device could not connect to our Wi-fi, so was as much use as a chocolate teapot. Thus began a morning of telephone calls, e mails, and internet searches. Samsung admitted that it might be a hardware problem, and suggested returning the whole thing to the seller. Amazon were as efficient as usual, and arranged for a replacement to be sent by close of play tomorrow. We had tried to search for a solution in the instruction book, naturally. Sadly, this was little more than a leaflet, telling you how to turn the thing on and off. The full manual is a PDF, which had to be downloaded, using the desktop PC. After some difficulty finding this after downloading, almost an hour reading through it still supplied no answers. We resolved to send it back, and await the new one.

I then rang BT, to ask if my Wi-fi could have been the cause, despite boasting a strong signal, and full connection. The helpful man in the call centre ran a full diagnostic check. He concluded that my Wi-fi was robust, and should present no problem, with any device. He asked for my password, to make sure that I had the correct one. I was confident that it would be, as it was printed below the router. Confirming this was in order, he asked if my wireless key was entered correctly. ‘You are using this to log on aren’t you?’ he asked. Sheepishly, I admitted that I had been using the password, after all, I insisted, it WAS asking for a password, not a wireless key. I didn’t bother to tell him that I had no idea what a wireless key was in the first place. He calmly suggested that I enter this new code, and of course, it connected immediately, at a speed so fast, NASA would have considered it a transmission from space.

I had to call Amazon back, and apologise. As it turned out, they had been so efficient, that within thirty minutes, they had already dispatched a new one. I now have to ‘refuse delivery’, and get it returned to sender. I was suitably embarrassed, and should have had a device that glowed red at their end, so they could have seen how stupid I felt. Perhaps people like me should have a free training course, sponsored by the industry, so that I understand how it all works, and it would save time and money dealing with all my pointless complaints and enquiries.

The next time I put up a post called ‘Nothing works’, feel free to comment, along the lines of; ‘it might be you’.

Techno fear

~ beetleypete ~ 31 Comments

There is something sinister about the way that Technology creeps up on you. One day, life is going on as normal, and the next, you can’t remember how to use a telephone box, or even know where to find one. I can almost remember the last time I made a call from a public kiosk, queuing patiently, until it was free to use. Then, in what seemed an instant, I had a mobile phone in my hand, and I have never used a public box since; though I still had a phone card in my wallet, until very recently.

Can any of you remember what life was like before mobile phones? Imagine breaking down in your car, on a country road, late at night, in an unfamiliar area. You had to walk for an unknown time, until you could find a telephone box to use, to summon assistance. You also had to make sure that you had the correct money to make the call. There were no Freephone numbers, and breakdown companies did not accept reverse charge calls. Or perhaps there was an emergency, and you had to inform a relative, or ring in to your job. You would have to search in a similar way, hoping that there was nobody inside already, in the process of making a long call; or worse still, that all the equipment had been vandalised.

Of course, cars rarely break down these days, compared to years ago. If you wanted to be a driver in the 1960’s, you would have to have had a reasonable standard of mechanical know-how, or face the prospect of being constantly stranded. A working knowledge of the distributor, HT leads, points, plugs, and fan-belts, was more or less essential then. Have you even bothered to look under the bonnet of your car lately? All you will see is a large plastic cover, concealing almost all of the workings of the modern engine. There will be electronics leading into boxes, housing small computers that regulate all the functions of the car. Good luck with trying to fathom out what is going on, unless you are a qualified car mechanic. Technology again, making us dependent on experts, removing our skills, however basic. Controlling us.

Let’s not forget the desire factor. As the gadgets become more and more widespread, part of you might consider that you don’t need any more, enough is enough. After all, you have a mobile phone, a nice TV, a home music system, a portable music system, even a laptop computer. This is where the technology companies really show their mettle. They know that there is little chance of you replacing those items for many years, so they give you a good reason to do just that. They take the same things, and re-package them into a more desirable format. The screens become thinner, the functions increase, the gadgets become smaller, then bigger again, until you cannot resist the urge to change. It is human nature to always want to know what is on the other side of the fence, after all.

So, you have a nice new PC. It is super fast, with enough RAM to supply your needs, and a hard drive that you will never fill to capacity. Then a swish new laptop is announced. It has even more functions, is lighter than a crispbread, and the battery lasts for six hours. The screen is so clear, you feel that you could dive into it; you just have to get one. Then, your mobile contract is up for renewal; you need the phone, so you might as well get a good one. You notice a new one advertised extensively. It has a huge screen, a camera with more pixels than your existing DSLR, and Internet access as fast as your PC. You can browse the web on it, store all your photos, and sort out all your e mails too. Better still, it fits in a coat pocket, so it will save you lugging that tiresome laptop around, in the smart neoprene case that you bought specially for it.

You now own three things that all do the same thing. The PC sits dusty and unused, in a room that you like to call ‘The Office’. The laptop resides in its case, probably propped up under the desk that has the PC on it. You sit happily in your living room, playing games, updating social media sites, and texting your friends, all from the arm of your settee. You glance across at the TV, and see an advertisement for something new; it is called a ‘tablet’. Sleek, slim, and with a bigger screen than your phone. Still portable, though not as cumbersome as your laptop. Next day, you are off to check it out. Everyone seems to be getting one. Your photos look better, you can watch a film on it on the train going to work, and it has a memory capacity that you can actually fill. No hesitation, it is a must buy. You now have four things that do the same thing. Technology triumphs over Man once again.

Of course, you can choose to ignore all this. You can stick with your Nokia handset,  your VHS player, with your collection of films and blank tapes ready to record TV programmes. You might even still have a cassette player in your car, and you may have decided to forego the Internet, and not bother to get a computer. That electric typewriter you bought in 1977 still works well, doesn’t it?

The Technology companies have the answer to your stubbornness. Planned obsolescence. They just stop making it. No more VHS tapes, or parts for your old machine. Don’t try using that typewriter too much, as they don’t make the ribbons anymore, and once your cassettes are worn out, and start to come off their spools in the car, you will never be able to buy any again. Happy with your CRT television? Forget that, you will never be able to get it repaired. Anyway, there will be a change in the way that the TV is broadcast, making all those millions of sets just so much junk.

How long will it be before compact discs give way to ‘downloads only’?  Then all those resisting change will be forced to buy a computer, and connect to the Internet, if they ever want to buy music again. Technology is control, and I am controlled. I must be, as I am using a PC to write this blog, but I also have a laptop, a smartphone, and a super-slim, Internet-enabled TV. I have  been considering getting a netbook too, so even as I write this, I am overwhelmed, and there seems to be no way back.

As for digital cameras and the demise of those using real film, don’t even get me started on that!