ADSactly Tech News - Memory Lane and Forgotten Devices of the Past (Part 4)
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Technology has advanced many times over and devices of the past often times have no place in the awareness of younger generations. It is my goal in this series to enlighten some and take others back to their youth with a bit of commentary on old gadgets!
Thinking about all the cool devices I've had, used, thrown away and lost, it really seems amazing to me how far we have come in terms of technology in just my lifetime alone.
Did you ever own a gameboy? What about a discman? How about a walkman? Did you have a big brick cellphone? What about a motorola flip phone?
This is what I'm talking about! The memories, the joys and the excitement of it all?
Where are all those gadgets now? I hope most have been recycled if they've been chucked away... They most likely are all sitting in some landfill somewhere. Depressing right?
Well, the show must go on!
Who knows what the future holds and what we may invent going forward? Will we create a depicted in all those zombie apocolypse movies? Or a perfect world (with dystopian edges) as depicted in the movie Gattaca? Only time will tell... But enough of the rant eh?
Let me unveil a few more magnificent gadgets of the past!
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Few people remember the age of the PDA and in all honesty, they are pretty much considered one of the biggest tech flops of all time...
The most famous PDA ever invented was probably the Apple Newton. It was sold at a huge price point compared to other Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) that were on the market.
Personal digital assistants were basically electronic timekeepers when a computer couldn't be fit in your pocket. The Newton’s development laid the groundwork for Apple’s hugely successful iPod and iPhone.
The Newton is a series of personal digital assistants (PDA) developed and marketed by Apple Computer, Inc. An early device in the PDA category – the Newton originated the term "personal digital assistant" – it was the first to feature handwriting recognition. Apple started developing the platform in 1987 and shipped the first devices in 1993. Production officially ended on February 27, 1998. Newton devices run on a proprietary operating system, Newton OS; examples include Apple's MessagePad series and the eMate 300, and other companies also released devices running on Newton OS. Most Newton devices were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor and all featured handwriting-based input.
It didn't take long for a competitor to hit the market. Pilot was the name of the first generation of personal digital assistants manufactured by Palm Computing in 1996 (by then a division of U.S. Robotics). The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing in 1992.The PalmPilot organizer went head to head with the Apple Newton creating a robust market of choices for PDAs.
I remember my mother had a PDA that she just loved. Thinking back I remember she used it for notes, its schedule feature and I think it even had games if I'm not mistaken... It was pretty cool at the time and it made her the envy of the office!
The fact of the matter is that these devices paved the way in a sense for the smartphones we have today.
It is funny that for being such an epic invention, nobody knows to this day who it was that actually invented the phone. It seems to remain a highly debated topic to this day.
One thing is not disputed and that is the fact that the first patent was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The telephone has come a long way and has evolved from rotary dial models to smart phones that we can use today to surf the internet!
In 1876, Scottish emigrant Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice. This instrument was further developed by many others. The telephone was the first device in history that enabled people to talk directly with each other across large distances. Telephones rapidly became indispensable to businesses, government and households and are today some of the most widely used small appliances.
The essential elements of a telephone are a microphone (transmitter) to speak into and an earphone (receiver) which reproduces the voice in a distant location.[1] In addition, most telephones contain a ringer, which produces a sound to announce an incoming telephone call, and a dial or keypad used to enter a telephone number when initiating a call to another telephone.
Until approximately the 1970s, most telephones used a rotary dial, which was superseded by the modern dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) push-button dial, first introduced to the public by AT&T in 1963.
To think that something so basic has evolved into the Apple and Samsung smartphones we carry around in our pockets today!
In all honesty, until I did a bit of research around this I had no clue what a Telex Machine was! Have you ever seen or used one of these fascinating technological relics? I thought not...
So what was it all about? What was it used for? Why don't we need them in this day and age? What has replaced them?
I'll do my best to answer these questions one at a time below...
According to my source, these machines used radio and/or microwaves to transmit information over the airwaves. Variations of them are still in use today for communications by the hearing impaired.
The telex network was a public switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, for the purposes of sending text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electronically between businesses in the post World War II period. Its usage went into decline as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.
The roots of the Telex movement began in Germany as a research and development program in 1926. It quickly became an operational teleprinter service in 1933. The service, operated by the Reichspost (Reich postal service)[1] had a speed of 50 baud — approximately 66 words per minute! This also seems to be the beginning of a system to measure the speed of early stage modems!
Telex service spread within Europe and (particularly after 1945) around the world.[2] By 1978, West Germany, including West Berlin, had 123,298 telex connections. Long before automatic telephony became available, most countries, even in central Africa and Asia, had at least a few high-frequency (shortwave) telex links. Often, government postal and telegraph services (PTTs) initiated these radio links. The most common radio standard, CCITT R.44 had error-corrected retransmitting time-division multiplexing of radio channels. Most impoverished PTTs operated their telex-on-radio (TOR) channels non-stop, to get the maximum value from them.
Essentially the modern fax machine seems to have been born from this fascinating technology! To this day I still find myself needing to send faxes from time to time! Thanks to Telex this has been made possible.
There's no debating the fact that over the past few decades technology has improved by leaps and bounds! We have major power in these small devices these days beyond the greatest supercomputers available in the past.
So just to quickly recap, the PDA, the rotary phone and telex machines have all played a significant role in the technological development of our species. Without these devices, where would we be? I have no clue...
I want to know what my fellow @ADSactly society members think about these inventions!
Here's a chance for the @ADSactly community to leave their thoughts and opinions on this topic. Don't hold back, contribute something and take advantage of the social benefits of our thriving community.
Thanks for reading.
Authored by: @techblogger
In-text citations sources:
Telex - Wikipedia
Rotary Phone - Wikipedia
PDA - Wikipedia
Image Sources:
Wikipedia
Pexels
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So here we go again :)
Telex. I told you I worked at a radio station in 1970. I liked playing the music but didn't like the BS that went with it. Anyway, our news source was a Telex machine connected directly to UPI (United Press International) one of two main news sources in the US. They had a bell system to announce new or updated stories. Twice per hour they had a summary that you could 'rip and read' to deliver the news. It was the way newspapers, television stations and radio stations got ALL their information. 'Big' stations had 2 Telex machines. One from UPI and one from Associated Press International (API). They absolutely controlled the disemination of news in the US.
I never had a Newton, but I did have a Palm Pilot. They were really good for shopping lists and 'to do' lists. Which meant that I didn't have much use for them :) In all honesty, I had one for the 'cool' factor, not that I actually used it, except to whip out at the appropriate time to impress whoever.
The rotary phone dial was around for a LONG time. It was just what everybody had, and they did't change much.
I got my fingers on the 'touch tone' phone for the first time at the Seattle Worlds Fair in 1962. AT & T had a display highlighting the technology. I got picked to show that an ordinary person (in this case a precocious 11 year old) could dial much faster even the very first time they used it. It was considered a really big deal at the time, and didn't come into popular use for a good many years. Mostly because AT&T had a complete monopoly on all things related to phones and it was much cheaper to continue with the rotary.
Thanks for another great post in the series. You KNOW I love remembering.
Wow! You actually got to experience the Telex machine. I've only ever seen them in movies. It seems pretty dang cool to me and that experience of working in a radio station and having to work with that thing regularly is exciting. You were a regular Clark Kent back in the day @bigtom13!
Wow, technology has really improved over the pass decades and I believe we're yet to see more.
I wasn't able to see or use some of the above devices been mentioned but if I'm to start with it'll be the gameboy. I was opportuned to play gameboy and then it was lovely, I mean awesome. If i could recall I guess there is one called gameboy Nintendo. I won't forget does lovely gadgets and not to talk more of Motorola phones. Then I wasn't able to operate the phone but I could remember something of that nature existed and I guess it was a very good device due to its usage in my family.
I don't really have much to say about the PDA device because I really don't know about it neither have I heard about it but it's a beautiful thing that I've learnt. At least now I could brag about it anywhere with my little idea here.
Alexander Graham bell had made a huge impact today, please send my regards to him if he is still alive. It's not easy, without him I don't think we would have been using all this smartphones and iPhones. Tho I wasn't able to meet the phone he invited, I would have loved to see it and use it too, actually to know how it feels.
Telex machine played a good role too, helping people to communicate with one another even during the war period. How would it have been that there was no telex machine, how would they communicate, all this gadgets seems to be amazing but it's so sad that I wasn't able to see it and most especially I wasn't able to use it but all the same, thanks @adsactly for the great experience, would I have known about them? Would I know who invented it?. Well it's a pleasure acquire such knowledge. Thanks
The gameboy was an outstanding device! I really miss mine.
I'm about 10 years newer than @bigtom13
I grew up with a rotary phone on what was called a "Party Line".
That meant we shared a phone line with one other household in the neighborhood.
We had different phone numbers so someone calling their phone wouldn't make ours ring but you could only use it one house hold at a time. If you picked up the receiver when the other people were using it, you would actually intrude on their conversation, you could talk to them.
Being a young kid, I would sometimes quietly pick up the phone and listen in.
Thats my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20. It comes with a whopping 20 KB of RAM!
You could upgrade it with a cartridge (the size of a pack of cigarettes) to a maximum of 32KB. That's 32,000 Bytes of information.
When I programmed my first BASIC game (BASIC is a Programming language) that ran into the Maximum Memory Limit, I knew 32KB was not that much.
Don't be impressed by my "programming" at such a young age. At that time I was just copying the program out of a magazine. 32,000 Bytes is roughly 32,000 letters, ABC's, you can easily fit that on a few pages.
That is also my first edition Sony DiskMan AM/FM Radio.
It got decent Radio reception, had superior sound but it would skip if you were walking to fast.
Maybe that's why it's not called a WalkMan.. ;-)
Yep, I remember the partyline, I must be of similar age because I had it when I was growing up as well. Its actually how I met my first real girlfriend.
"First real girlfriend", does that mean firs.... ya it's raining here, has been for a few days.
I never got that lucky with my party line eves dropping. Just boring how's the weather and kids kind of intrigue...
I'm glad I didn't work for the NSA, before computers. Real individual people would have to listen to all those boring conversations. ;-)
Technology is growing and modifying very fast and become better after every day. I wish that steemit grow same as well.
Yes, technology has a way of growing... Steem has a way of growing too. Do not despair!
I love it, it reminds me so many memories this phone! All my grandparents and even my parents had exactly old rotary dial phones and when I was little, I loved listening to all the "big" conversations via the mini headset ...
After, I do not know if "it was better before" but what is certain is that all the electrical / electronic devices of today are no longer designed to last (whereas this was not the case at the time) and it's a shame ... To give you an example, the oven of my parents was bought a year before my birth and it still works great!
Thank you for this nice feedback back in the morning, anyway ^^
Of the three devices you brought us today, only the old phone had seen it personally. Not the other two. Although I used fax, I had never seen an old one. As you say,@techblogger, we cannot forget that many of these devices made what we have today a reality. They opened the way to perfected products with more power or capacity. I like this kind of text because people need to know that the objects they use today had their roots decades ago, that surely many of today's devices will be the roots of tomorrow's inventions. Because technology is like that: changing, evolving and transforming. Thank you very much for always bringing us excellent information! Greetings
@techblogger, For sure those times are awesome and particularly i want to talk about the old Gaming Pads and literally music which were played in it, now whenever i listen those sounds, genuinely speaking i move into the childhood times.
And another aspect is Gaming aspect, and in childhood days Super Mario was an pro game for us and everyday without playing it i cannot end my day because that much enthusiasm i was holding in those days.
Wishing you an great day and stay blessed. 🙂
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