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| Page Views: 2,156 | Cutting edge technology . . . by Nemorino - last update: Dec 29, 2007 |
. . . of bygone decades | UHER 4000 Report-L reel-to-reel tape recorders |
In the 1960s I worked for several years as a radio journalist. When I wanted to record interviews or reports outside the studios I always used one of these UHER 4000 Report-L portable reel-to-reel tape recorders, which were more or less standard equipment at the time.
I mentioned this here on VirtualTourist over three years ago in one of the first Off the Beaten Path tips that I wrote back in 2004 for my Frankfurt am Main page:"You young folks wouldn't believe the huge reel-to-reel tape recorders we used to lug around in those days, but I shouldn't complain because my Uher saved me from getting a mighty bash on the head at one of the demonstrations. The club-wielding policeman noticed my tape recorder and microphone just in time, and decided I was a reporter, not a demonstrator. I did get soaked by the water cannon, though, and a friend of mine got badly clubbed on the head that day." The reason we have two of these tape recorders is that my wife and I each brought one into the marriage, so to speak.
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| This was called a "typewriter" |
See if you can guess what the strange machine is that I'm using in this photo from the year 1968.
It had a keyboard like a computer, but the keys were attached to metal rods that banged metal keys against an ink ribbon in front of a piece of paper. Your text appeared immediately on the paper. If you made a mistake there were various options, but often the only way was to put in a new sheet of paper and type it all again.
Since it didn't need any electricity, I sometimes used it by the light of a Coleman lantern while we were out camping.
I once wrote a 192-page dissertation on one of these contraptions.
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| The Osborne One computer in my basement |
In the winter of 1989 one of the monthly computer magazines -- I forget if it was a German or an American one -- came out with an article about "The Ten Worst Computers of the 1980s." As the absolutely worst computer of the decade they chose the Osborne 1, calling it "an idea whose time had not yet come".
At the time I was highly offended by this. MY COMPUTER was the worst of the decade, and I'd been using it daily for seven years!
Well, in retrospect I guess I can admit it was a bit clunky. But it was very educational, since it couldn't do anything I didn't learn how to make it do.
I posted this text in the Miscellaneous Forum and the Technical Help Forum a couple of years ago, along with two questions:
1) Are there any other VT members who cut their teeth on an Osborne computer in the 1980s?
2) Were any of you members of a computer club that was affiliated with the First Osborne Group (FOG)?
(There have been no positive replies up to now.)
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| Brother HR-15 Daisy Wheel printer |
While cleaning out the attic I was surprised to come across this Brother HR-15 Daisy Wheel printer -- surprised because I thought I had chucked it out years ago.
This was a printer that I bought in 1983 for use with the Osborne 1. In the box with the printer I also found dozens of test printings that I did at the time as I was trying to figure out how to make the printer cooperate with my word processing software WordStar 1.14, which was famous for having hundreds of commands that you had to learn to make it do things, such as control-K-B to mark the beginning of a block, and control-K-K to mark the end of it. (There was no such thing as a mouse in those days, and no graphic interface.)
The reason I bought this kind of printer, and not one of the cheaper dot matrix printers that were common at the time, was that I wanted printed pages that at least didn't look worse than the ones I had been getting out of my typewriter. In fact, this type of printer was sometimes referred to as a "letter-quality printer", as opposed to the so-called "near letter quality (NLQ)" of the dot matrix printers, which in my opinion was nowhere near the quality I wanted to have for my letters. |
After I got it working, this turned out to be a very dependable (though loud!) printer, and I used it for a number of years, even after replacing the Osborne, until inkjet and laser printers became affordable.
The way a daisy wheel printer worked was that this little wheel with nearly a hundred tiny keys on it would spin quickly around (depends what you mean by quickly, of course, but it looked quick to me) until the software told it to stop, i.e. until the desired key was at the top. Then a tiny hammer would tap the key so it would hit the ink ribbon that was in front of the paper.
I still find this a quite fascinating technology -- but not so fascinating that I would trade it for the laser printer I use today.
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For the past two decades I have been a member of a team of authors writing a series of textbooks for German-speaking adults who want to learn English. For the first few years we had to photocopy all our stuff and send it around by snail mail (which isn't what we called it at the time) to the other team members.
So it was a fantastic improvement when we all got our first fax machines. We could just put the pages into the machine, push the start button and it would go chug-a-chug-chug for a few minutes and the same text would be printed out on a colleague's machine in some other city entirely. Wow!
Little did we know that this amazing technology would soon be made obsolete by e-mails, which are faster and have the additional advantage that we can have everything in digital form, so when my colleague in Munich writes something she can send it to me, I can work on it some more and send it back to her, etc.
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| Slide rule at the Arithmeum in Bonn |
I still have two or three slide rules around the house somewhere, but haven't used them for years since a 5-Euro pocket calculator can now achieve the same results. I'll take a picture of my old slide rules if I ever find them, but in the meantime I'll use this photo from one of the Arithmeum tips on my Bonn page.
In high school the real math freaks used to wear 36-inch slide rules in a scabbard on their belts, like a sword. I wasn't in that league, but always had my normal 12-inch slide rule with me.
Mathematics, science and engineering were basically all done with slide rules throughout the first six decades of the twentieth century. Then in 1972 Hewlett Packard came out with the first handheld calculator, and by 1975 slide rules were a thing of the past. In his website www.sliderule.ca Eric R. Marcotte writes: "In the history of the modern world, probably no other technological instrument was so widely used for so long, only to disappear virtually overnight."
There is now an international organization dedicated to the history and collection of slide rules and related calculating devices. It is called The Oughtred Society after a man named William Oughtred, who invented the first slide rule in 1625.
To find out more about slide rules, try Ron Manley's Slide Rule site or the virtual international Slide Rule Museum, or look up the article "When Slide Rules Ruled" in the May 2006 issue of Scientific American.
There is an online Java slide rule that really works (just move it around with your mouse) at www.syssrc.com. |
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 Comments for Nemorino about World | | | | |
Trekki Mon Nov 16, 2009 07:35 UTC
Thank you dear Don for having walked on this cute lovely enchanting island of Kärningön :-)) Yes, it is special and being car free makes it even more special :-) | travelfrosch Mon Nov 16, 2009 01:16 UTC
Thanks for your visit, Don! Maybe ol' Rick will start sending royalty checks my way now that I'm sending him new fans! ;) Cheers, Mark | lynnehamman Sun Nov 15, 2009 21:59 UTC
Don thanks for visiting Barmer page. It is not really 'on the tourist route' and that made it more interesting for us. | Cristian_Uluru Sun Nov 15, 2009 08:54 UTC
Hi Don, thanks for visiting my Norway page!!! Norway is a fantastic country!! I can suggest to visit Bergen and the fjord area! It is amazing! Ciao |
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