Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Ravendas posted:

VCD is still, in 2012, a thing in Asia. The movie shops I go to here have a VCD section, as do night markets.

Obsolete, maybe, but still in use.

Actually they are a still a thing in areas with a large Asian prescence. I only know of VCDs existence because of Boston's Chinatown and wondering what the hell that format was.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2012 16:19

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 15:44

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Manky posted:

Popular Science is still around

Not in the same capacity that it was in the past.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2012 15:02

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Fozaldo posted:

This goes on all the time, I recall several articles on Hack a Day where people would bridge a solder connection on a circuit board and turn an average oscilloscope or voltage meter etc. into a top of the range model with more features worth hundreds more.

That is stupid though because you should be able to buy a high end oscilloscope fairly cheaply. An old engineering trick which extends out to almost every single product you can imagine is that for every high brand product line that one can find you can find a cheaper variant from which the only difference is in name only.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2012 16:46

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Terrible Robot posted:

Speaking of obsolete, it blows my mind that there used to be a catalog, from a SINGLE company, that you could order literally everything you could ever possibly hope to need from, including a loving house.

Hahaha... What makes you think they still don't exist?

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 13:49

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Terrible Robot posted:

If you can find me a paper catalog that I can order a house, food, guns, furniture, whatever, I will buy the catalog in an instant.

As I said earlier insanely bizarre paper catalogs that have an eclectic bunch of goods are not uncommon. Mcmaster Carr, Grainger (Which you probably can't even do business with last I knew), and MSC Direct are three industrial supply companies who are famous for having rather insane paper catalogs.
EDIT:
Hahaha... Mcmaster Carr's catalog has existed for 118 years. I didn't actually think it was that old.

MadScientistWorking has a new favorite as of 18:36 on Oct 4, 2012

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 18:33

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Terrible Robot posted:

There are certainly plenty of companies that have catalogs with a staggering amount of poo poo to buy, but I've yet to find one that is as widely varied as the old Sears, Roebuck ones.

They are industrial supply companies. Widely varied poo poo to buy is in the definition.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 19:22

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Terrible Robot posted:

Agreed, but when was the last time you saw an industrial supply company that also sells food in the catalog? I think we will just have to agree to disagree on the definition of widely varied, sir.

No I think you have a really oddball definition of widely varied because I know for a fact that the Sears catalog didn't carry even a small fraction of what is found in your average industrial supply catalog.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 19:30

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Killer robot posted:

Really that's true of a lot of hazardous old materials/processes. They pose no real danger to the end consumer in the targeted product, but the people making them in contact with volatile forms or inhaling powders and whatever all day were in real danger.

Similarly, until the 1950s or so X-ray fitting devices were common in shoe stores. Put your foot in, look right in and see how it fits you! People today will gasp and say "oh, all those customers in danger from radiation!" and while it wasn't exactly healthy it wasn't that dangerous if you kept kids from just fooling around with the machine all day: the main risk was to employees who were working next to poorly shielded X-ray machines all day, every day.

Nope. The formation of the FDA as we know it actually resulted from these inane products actually killing off some rather influential figures in the most gruesome way possible. I believe it specifically was someone's jaw falling off.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2012 04:35

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

Different book as I grew up later, but you reminded me that I still have my original copy of this wonderful thing:
hose mammoths taught me so much about the world

I saw this in a children's bookstore relatively recently.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2012 19:36

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Libluini posted:

What the gently caress? If you want to be nitpicky, you should really know that glass is a liquid

Its not. Its an amorphous solid.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 19:25

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Libluini posted:

And it is also described as subcooled liquid. That's beside the point. I just saw someone going "Bill Bryson sure is stupid, thinking glass is a liquid, durr!" when in reality, glass is described as liquid or liquid-like even on something easily available as Wikipedia.

I love how someone is trying to correct going for their PHD in chemistry with a Wikipedia article. One that ironically is contradicted by the English variant of the same article. A glass is any solid categorized by an unordered structure and undergoes a state change where it becomes gooey and liquid at a temperature called the glass transition temperature. Closest analogous thing is to think of the bricks of raman noodles and how they remain a giant brick before you cook them. They in theory can move apart on their own but the odds of that happening are slim. As you cook the raman and apply energy you end up with the Raman noodles moving about far more easier. Its akin to melting but it not the same exact thing. Sorry about the weird example but its pretty much how it looks if you are dealing with polymers like polycarbonate. The chains of the polymer are not really linked together in any significant way but because they are in such a jumble twisted mess they can't really go anywhere.

Also, its actually an entirely appropriate discussion because of how this idiotic myth got reinforced. The myth itself was reinforced by obsolete glass making techniques which resulted in thinker edges on the bottom and thinner middles. Of course the old fashion way of making glass was rather inaccurate which resulted in an uneven distribution of materials but people thought it was because "glass flows".

MadScientistWorking has a new favorite as of 20:42 on Nov 1, 2012

# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 20:18

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Libluini posted:

(I looked up my notes and you are right -glass was described as an amorphous, crystalin mass. Apparently we just discussed how liquid-like glass was with our professor and I confused that with GLASS REALLY IS LIKE SOME SORT OF LIQUID, YOU GUYS! Oops.)

Its really dam confusing. The only reason why I know this is because of the fact that its come up in the course of my research.

MadScientistWorking has a new favorite as of 21:04 on Nov 1, 2012

# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 20:58

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Ron Burgundy posted:

Ugh gently caress nitrate. I've been collecting film half my life (I'm 26) and I have a couple of nitrate newsreels that I'm still too scared to run with the lamp on.

For those that don't know, nitrate film was the only film stock used for 35mm film prints up until the 1950s, although prints circulated later than that. It is essentially guncotton and extremely flammable. As it breaks down it spontaneously combusts. You cannot put nitrate film fires out with water, it generates oxygen as it burns and will burn underwater once alight.

Its actually nitrocellulose which is a low grade explosive.

Jedit posted:

It was also used in pyrotechnic effects, which is what happened to most of the "lost movies" of the silent era - studios weren't going to reissue the movies, so why waste space archiving the reels when there was a good use for them?

Actually its a problem endemic to a lot of film stock because if I remember correctly the next technological development in film stock still degraded but wasn't actually explosive.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2012 00:18

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

I knew a guy who was doing his CS master's thesis on biometrics. He told me to never, ever trust biometrics, even the professional ones, because "all that stupid poo poo you see people do in movies to get past them actually works." Things like taking someone's fingerprint off a glass and making a crappy fake thumb out of it, using a picture taped to a mask to fool face recognition, etc.

Actually, depending on the security device all you need is a photocopied picture of your thumbprint.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 18:51

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Captain Postal posted:

Part of me really wants to say that the germans, either by interception or espionage, found out about this "project watertank" that was going to produce new armored mobile fighting platforms that would defeat trenches, and they thought they should get in on the act without really knowing what project watertank was. And the british might have helped it along with the 1914 equivalent of popular mechanics and the bullshit they produced in the cold war, by "leaking" these design drawings.

The 1914 equivalent of Popular Mechanics was Popular Mechanics. You can find the old issues on Google Books for free if you are interested as I think it goes back to when the magazine was first designed.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2013 17:12

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Call Now posted:

Trolleybuses still function in my city and they totally own, dewiring happens incredibly rarely. Also they are more comfortable than normal buses

Unless your in Boston where it happens every single time you take the bus. :psyduck:

And no I'm not actually joking either for some bizarre reason certain trolley buses are actually dual mode meaning that they switch over to diesel or electric.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 20:14

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Elim Garak posted:

That's only the silver line though, right? Or do you mean like the green line west of Kenmore?

Its only the silver line. The only other bus lines that I've seen use trolley lines are the 71,73, and 77 in Watertown. And for some strange reason I haven't seen a trolly bus on those lines in ages.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 22:14

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Monkey Fracas posted:

This car is pretty much Fallout: The Car. It's got that "Yaaayyy nuclear power! Everything should be nuclear powered! My toaster has a small reactor in it! " vibe to it.

Well truth be told this actually did happen to a certain extent. Russia has about a 1000 of RTGs them lying around the country side and combined with scrap metal hunters you can imagine what happens. Its not even an obsolete technology though as nuclear batteries are in use right now.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2013 19:42

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

longview posted:

As mentioned, they are still in use for deep space probes -- and are the only reason we can still talk to the Voyager probes, -- this is a problem, since should the rocket launching the probes need to be terminated, it would spray fairly poisonous and radioactive substances (remember: lower half-life = more nuclear energy) over a pretty wide area. Hopefully the area would be large enough that individual casualties are not an issue, but the environmental concerns are huge with launching RTGs.

You've been breathing in fairly poisonous radiation since the day you were born its not going to be that drastic of a worry.
EDIT:
Never mind I forgot Plutonium is a Calcium substitute.

MadScientistWorking has a new favorite as of 20:30 on Jul 16, 2013

# ¿ Jul 16, 2013 20:27

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 15:44

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Ron Burgundy posted:

I'm going off a vague memory here but wasn't the Genesis control port RS-232 serial.

e: d-sub 9 pin.

Funny to think that at one point, what we commonly call a parallel port connector was considered subminiature.

No d-sub 9 connectors were serial ports. Parallel ports were huge in comparison.

Inspector_71 posted:

The MBTA (I would probably argue Boston as a whole) is obsolete and antiquated.

Honestly Boston is no more antiquated than a lot of cities or areas that are old in general. Its just that Boston is more noticeable because its a massive city.

MadScientistWorking has a new favorite as of 21:00 on Jul 29, 2013

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 20:52

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