Reminiscing: The mechanical marvels of yesteryear
by steamtug on May.12, 2011, under General
Reminiscing: The mechanical marvels or yesteryear!
“Why can’t we get a new tele?”
“Because this one has a life of 25 years, so we don’t need a new one for another 15 years!”
My son was not impressed by my answer, acknowledging he was probably going to be stuck with the technology in front of him which had slipped a couple of years behind his friend’s newer, wide screen model.
“What’s wrong with this one? It works perfectly and you are lucky it’s in color! When I was your age… “ His eyes rolled in his head as I began trying to support my flimsy case which was based more around stinginess than my readily acceptance that the outdated technology was good enough. After all, a few years earlier you left a light on to create the illusion someone was home so that nobody stole your tele, now you have to pay to dispose of it, working condition or not!
His grumbling faded from my ears as I reminisced about the old “black & white” televisions of an earlier era and the astounding mechanics they contained. Back in the days when you had to get up from your comfy lounge chair to clunk the big old channel knob around by hand. Back when rods, levers and knobs did the work of today’s electronic pulses and infra red beams. I should know about this stuff, as when I was a school boy, I demolished many an old black and white tele, recycling parts to satisfy my amateur radio hobby’s need for components like, matching transformers for coupling together amplifiers, knobs and switches, old power supply components, big coils for antennae matching devices, various resistors and capacitors and short bits of salvaged wire were always in demand. An old discarded tele was a boy’s treasure trove!
It still amazes me today the mechanical complexity used to make the whole thing work. 
For example, the big tuning knob had behind it, 12 small circuit boards arranged around the circumference, each with a different sized coil to change the frequency the circuit picked up, sifting out the required channel from the mixed up 12 available frequencies that came down the old twin lead from the coat hanger style antennae up on the chimney. Of course we had only 4 channels then, and the volume knob was pulled to turn the whole thing “on” and when you finished you pushed it and everything was “off”. Completely off! No need to seek out the wall switch to save an extra 5 watts of power. And searching down the back of the couch was only for finding loose change and never in a vain attempt to locate the remote. Those knobs were permanently in the same place, always!
Even more amazingly, the big knob had a band around the outside which you pushed inward, to engage a dog clutch which drove a screwed ferrite rod within the channel selecting coil, to fine tune the frequency. The whole case was a labyrinth of folded metal sheets all delicately fitted together, with 3,000 volts of DC running through the core. It was a mass of complication, all worked out with slide rule and pencil! But it worked!!
Then came the VCR. Beta or VHS? We were all experts on the acronyms in those days… And do you remember the complex system of belts, pulleys and that super rotating head that revolved backwards across the broad tape picking up a mind boggling amount of data to be sent out the little plugs on the back. “Be careful to rewind your tapes properly, and not use video search mode. That expensive little head only has a life of 20 years, and you might wear it out!” was the advice of the serviceman. Who was to know it would get chucked out for a DVD player in 5 years!!
Why are these modern tellies so expensive when there is nothing in them! Look inside and you will see they are as gutless as a “Bon Accord” rabbit. (Hanging in the window of the shop in Moorabool Street) with a meek 5 or 12 volts only. Sadly, the modern technology is so lame; there is nothing the mechanical mind has to look at now.
There are many examples throughout history of how complexity was tolerated, embraced and no matter how complicated a solution was “engineered”. An striking example that springs to mind is the first ever steam turbine ship (RMS Mauretania) which had a turbine the size of a small house taking up enormous space not to mention the weight. This was because the huge diameter enabling the blade/steam speed ratio to be met for efficient operation was needed to satisfy the propeller’s maximum speed of 180rpm. But despite however complicated the situation was, they did it, and it worked better than anyone could have expected, taking the Blue Riband on its first ever run! Now days, they use a tiny turbine and spin it to 8,000rpm through a gearbox to produce the same power at a fraction of the weight. And now they don’t even want the boiler, instead choosing to run the turbine on superheated compressed air instead of steam. (Gas turbine!) We all get it too easy nowadays!!!
I’m sure you can think of an example from years gone by, that looks like a really dumb idea compared to the modern technology of how we do it now. Write me a comment with your ideas!
May 12th, 2011 on 1:42 pm
when we think about tech, if we went back to communication through the wire, it was delivered by a tella gram. Then the phone exchange became this new communication to talk throught the lines, you had to be connected at the exchange buy these big pluged wire’s. Then came the home land line, we had to insert a finger into a hole on a disk with numbers in it to dial a number connection dirrectly to the recieving phone. Then came the intercom with then wire free phone hand sets to walk around the office or home. That’s all but finished now with most communication through mobile phones not even attached to a wire to our homes or office. We can send messages called text’s message, or talk over the air waves with complete privacy, we hope with no one lissening on the other end????????
May 17th, 2011 on 9:49 pm
Murray (YLO) wrote to me by email:
Excluding the word dumb, what was an amazing feat of engineering a 100 years ago but so easy today is train signal system. So easy now with electronics, even a student could design it.
May 18th, 2011 on 10:21 am
hey mark, i was presented with a hopeless situation on the weekend. the mud and slush was abundant at the heyfield rally, traction engines trudging around 5inchs lower than that hard stand where the roadrollers darent move from and people standing on the lee side of any engine which was alite such was the bitter sleet of “gumboot country”… in short you could bog a duck.
anyways, in the vintage car lineup was a perfectly restored “Willies Jeep” (jeep, of course coming from the american army term “GP” for “general purpose”… or “car”). eleonora and i befriended the owner, the outcome being that he opened the bonnet so as i could see the engine. there, before me was a no bullshit, no frills, everything you need: nothing you don’t, mechanic-friendly, “i mean business” engine bay… like the sort of engine you can fix with parts off a lawnmower! all these good points were brought to ele’s attention, here response was not convincing. i said “but this is a proper four wheel drive, you wouldn’t hesitate to get the seats wet crossing a river for example” she was still not convinced as to the reliability of these “toy cars” that actually look exactly like their matchbox equivilant.
anyhow, fast forward to the saturday night. after freezing our duck feet off around the brazier. i was asked to drive eles toyota rav4 out of the slush in the dark and home to the nice warm house. bearing in mind that Toyota, in many ways, will always define four wheel drives along with the likes of willies jeep and mk1 land rover, so i wasn’t expecting the vehicle to disapoint me as it did. the instant i turned the key the car started by alerting me that i had purposely neglected my seat belt in this muddy paddock… yes, i meant that… so stop bleeping… stop bleeping i said! fine! keep bleeping… i hate this car already… it thinks im stupid. as i accelerated through the mud, a little sidewards… more alarms… what?? why? ele points out that that the traction control was limiting the power because the wheels are slipping… well, dah! it’s muddy you stupid car… and gimmie back the power i asked for dammit! then, as we finally started to make some headway in the never ending sea of sludge… approaching the gate where the mud was deepest from all the traffic over the past three days, the gate; where control is vital but stopping is not an option. from 60 yards back i lined it up… streight, true… and… floor it! the little 4×4 that could got into quite a stride… faster and faster we went until, right at the deepest spot… the worst place to stop… “BLEEEEEEEEEP!” and we lost all steering… ele then adds “if you go above 35kph the car takes you out of four wheel drive”……… (long pause)…. WHAT???!!!! ARE YOU SHITTING ME???!!! if i ask you for four wheel drive it’s because i need it you stupid car! i want four wheels to drive and steer right up to 180kph if i like!… dammit!
give me a real, proper four wheel drive any day. there’s a lot to be said for the likes of jeep, land rover and landcruser… but nothing they’ve built in the last 30 years deserves to be called “a development”.
May 18th, 2011 on 12:00 pm
Thank you Basil Faulty for the great story! It reminds me of working on my computer only to discover it is engaged in something much more important than anything I want it to do, I hate that! Who is in charge here???
Interestingly, your story just goes to show the opposite of what I was proposing in my story. You have taken something intelligent and reliable because of it’s lack of technology, throw a microprocessor chip into it, so the person in control becomes the slave, not having to think while it makes all the smart decisions that you are too dumb to make. But usually, as was your case, it fails to understand the situation and gets it all wrong.
I think it’s sad that the computer age expects us all to remain dumb and let a microprocessor make all decisions. You don’t need to know anything accept how to accept that “this is the way it must be done” because it has been programmed by big brother.
Is this the beginning of what Orson Wells predicted? Computers waiting patiently until mankinds intelligence level falls to that of the common garden slug before finally taking over? Scarey stuff! Listen instead to your grandfather. He has done all these things before without a computer to take over and gained valuable experience that furthers mankinds evolvement, making a few new brain cell connections along the way. Amen…