Obsolete Technology and Lost Crafts

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I’m interested in history, the people the places and the things they used. Have you ever found an old tool or gadget and wondered what it did and how it was used? It seems the more technology we gain, the more we lose of ourselves and our past knowledge and ingenuity.

Have you ever dialled a rotary phone? Do you remember carefully placing the needle on the record player? Would you be able to sit at a typewriter and write a letter, using carbon copy paper? Do you still have cassette tapes, even after you lost track of your tape player?

Do you remember using a pay phone in a phone booth rather than a mobile phone? Spending money on film for your camera and then spending more to get your film developed at the store? Do you remember floppy disks? Do you remember paying extra for a letter to be delivered the next day when there wasn’t another option? I doubt you can even find a wind-up wrist watch now. Wrist watches of any kind are falling into being obsolete as the mobile phone has that function too.

Analog anything is not so easily found. I wanted a clock radio for a Christmas gift and couldn’t find one, not a well made one. The only clock radios I found were cheap-made, so cheaply made I wouldn’t ever have bought one. People aren’t listening to the radio as often these days.

Technology leaves so many things behind as it grows and changes. It’s expensive. But, the computer is just a modern technology still, there are older technologies and crafts which have been replaced or lost before computers came into popularity. Even something which used to seem so essential as writing in the cursive script. It’s not even taught in school now. My nieces can only print. They can read my cursive writing, but don’t know how to create it themselves.

You can still find a blacksmith, stonemason or a bookbinder. But, you would have to look a lot harder to find a carriage builder or a lighthouse keeper. Some of those old trades have changed a lot and aren’t much in use except for someone who wants something created just like it was 100 years ago.

You won’t find people telling time with sundials or hourglasses now. You won’t find telegraph machines busy with use either. Next up are the old calculators. Not because they aren’t being used, but they aren’t being used on their own, as one machine not connected or a part of something else.

Two things in the modern versus obsolete technology I don’t agree with are books and landline phones. I don’t own (or want) a mobile phone. I like the landline. I can leave it at home and check messages when I want to. I’m not paying a huge bill for a phone I don’t really want to answer. I’m not availalble for people to phone me, unless I want to be available. In the case of books… you just can’t take an eReader to bed with you the same way you can take a book to bed with you.

It’s a bit sad, seeing those old friends left behind as technology changes. I like to see how people are finding new uses for some of the old things, not as a joke, but as a real use, keeping them practical. I like the term repurposing.