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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? While the rest of you are loving nitrate, you can send it to me -- I'm not too squeamish:  Compared to safety film of a similar age (diacetate, usually), I say nitrate holds up tremendously better. The only damage I come across on most nitrate films are rust stains from being wound on the same reel for 90+ years. Safety film that old is usually too brittle to unwind without soaking it for weeks to limber up the base, and then you've got to be extremely careful with it as the emulsion is going to want to flake off as soon as it starts to dry. Nitrate is flammable, and degraded nitrate explosively so, but it never gives you such trouble. But for one of my favorite bits of obsolete technology, I give you notched 9.5mm film -- invented in 1922, and effectively obsoleted in '23 after the introduction of 16mm:  Although it's not much wider than 8mm film, the picture area is nearly the same size (and thus potentially the same quality) as 16mm. It manages this by moving the perforations to the center of the film, allowing the picture to stretch all the way from edge to edge, but that wasn't 9.5mm's main claim to fame: In silent films, you have intertitles for dialogue and narration and such. A ten second title might take anywhere from 160 to 200 frames of film (or in other words, 4 to 5 feet for 9.5mm), but those titles add up and film is expensive. To combat this, Pathé introduced the notch system. The projector would have a little arm that would feel along the side of the film. If it found a notch, it would pause on a single frame for around five seconds. That way, a title that before took 200 frames now only needed 2.  Now, that poses some issues. The original 9.5mm projector was the Pathé Baby. The lamp it uses is only 4 watts, which, even with the film paused in front of it for minutes on end, doesn't produce enough heat to cause any damage, but a 4 watt lamp doesn't let you throw a very large picture. Even in a pitch-black room, if you go any larger than around six inches across, the picture is too dim to make out.  In 1922, that was perfectly acceptable given how comparatively affordable 9.5mm was, but as time wore on, people wanted a larger, brighter picture. There were modifications sold that bolted on to an old Baby to modernize it and make it more competitive with the up-and-coming 16mm format, one of them being a new 24 watt lamp. At 24 watts, the lamp gets hot enough to melt film very quickly. Notched titles were no longer possible and were phased out in the late '20s. Pathé (...in France, and Pathex in the US, and Pathescope in the UK) even sold replacement running titles to splice into your old notched title films to make them playable on newer projectors. The notch system was a really innovative idea that unfortunately became obsolete almost as soon as it was invented. Nowadays, cool operating florescent or LED lamps -- many times brighter than the Baby's original nightlight bulb -- solve the problem, but those came too late to save Pathé's notched 9.5mm format.
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Nov 27, 2012 03:31
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It's certainly dangerous enough to warrant it voiding most insurance.
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Nov 27, 2012 03:49
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How about the ID4 toys that came with a floppy so you could "hack" the alien's system!
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Nov 27, 2012 04:00
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Phanatic posted:Yes. Alan Moore, nooooo 
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Nov 27, 2012 04:03
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I was visiting a technology museum recently and they had a microfiche (Microform) machine on display. How commonly is that stuff still used today?
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Nov 27, 2012 04:16
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Palpatine MD posted:I was visiting a technology museum recently and they had a microfiche (Microform) machine on display. How commonly is that stuff still used today? There's still a ton of them at my local library, they still have an entire massive collection of old microfilm newspapers and magazines that they don't have the funding or time to digitize.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:30
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Palpatine MD posted:I was visiting a technology museum recently and they had a microfiche (Microform) machine on display. How commonly is that stuff still used today? Airlines have most if their aircraft and engines histories archived on that. Old manuals used to come that way before computers too.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:31
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Yonic Symbolism posted:Alan Moore, nooooo I hate to break this to you, but Alan Moore is into a lot of weird kinky victorian sex stuff. He wrote a terribly unerotic porn comic called Lost Girls that was 100% classic children's novel characters from that era loving.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:36
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PatrickBateman posted:Airlines have most if their aircraft and engines histories archived on that. Old manuals used to come that way before computers too. It makes sense to store engineering drawings on something like that actually, modern CAD software isn't always compatible, and even trying to bring something from an older version of the same software to a newer one can have some pretty major changes. Also considering the chance that the manufacturer for a certain component could go out of business, it's a good safety net to have all the drawings stored in a non-changing permanent medium.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:36
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Palpatine MD posted:I was visiting a technology museum recently and they had a microfiche (Microform) machine on display. How commonly is that stuff still used today? I have had to bust out our old machine at work a few times to look up parts for older cars. The diagrams on our PC version for those cars are terrible scans of said microfiche.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:55
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:There's still a ton of them at my local library, they still have an entire massive collection of old microfilm newspapers and magazines that they don't have the funding or time to digitize. They're usually a massive pain in the rear end to use, but nobody so far has created a better archival medium that microfilm. Under reasonable conditions, microfilm has an estimated shelf life of about 500 years.
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Nov 27, 2012 05:04
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Qotile Swirl posted:
Is this the first ever video compression technology?  That's genius.
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Nov 27, 2012 05:29
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El Estrago Bonito posted:I hate to break this to you, but Alan Moore is into a lot of weird kinky victorian sex stuff. He wrote a terribly unerotic porn comic called Lost Girls that was 100% classic children's novel characters from that era loving. Look, I know about that. I know most of his other comics are also pretentious disturbing wank fodder now. Yet at the very least I could see some kind of (failed) artistic point in them. But Steampunk Sex? Really? That's something I would expect to find out a trawl through the underbelly of tumblr, not from an acclaimed writer with standards and any sense of shame. Thanks for this, this is really interesting.
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Nov 27, 2012 06:00
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ExplodingSquidx2 posted:How about the ID4 toys that came with a floppy so you could "hack" the alien's system! I think my local comic book shop still has a few of these!
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Nov 27, 2012 09:38
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ExplodingSquidx2 posted:How about the ID4 toys that came with a floppy so you could "hack" the alien's system! I remember playing one of those! The one I played wasn't a hacking game, but rather you piloted an F-18 in third person against alien fighters. It was one of those stand alone Flash games and the frame rate ran in the single digits. By the way, what ever happened to those crappy Flash-based games and screensavers movie websites let people download? I remember them being really popular in the late 90s and then they just disappeared. I guess mobile apps have replaced them somewhat.
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Nov 27, 2012 10:09
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With regards to microfilm, a shitload of presidential directives and memos from the 50's and 60's are only stored on microfilm, likely in the basement of the library that's the most inconvenient to get to on a college campus! A lot of that stuff has not been moved to digital for lack of will/funding, so if you are doing research on vietnam/world war II era government policy you will still be sitting with microfilm a lot of the time.
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Nov 27, 2012 12:35
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Yonic Symbolism posted:Thanks for this, this is really interesting. Agreed - that is really cool and I doubt I would ever have heard about it otherwise.
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Nov 27, 2012 12:50
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mrkillboy posted:By the way, what ever happened to those crappy Flash-based games and screensavers movie websites let people download? However when I did manage to force After Dark to splutter to life on Windows 7 (32 bit only because the app is 16 bit) I was surprised they were clever enough to have coded everything to work in a tiled grid setup so even in 1920x1200 just about everything worked short of attempting to display certain graphical effects that were locked to a set resolution and didn't scale well. Most flash games have been superseded by HTML5 creations that allow for far more flexibility, cross compatibility and generally less resource overload.
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Nov 27, 2012 14:09
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b0nes posted:Thanks that's it! Well going on that link I guess they are not obsolete since people are still using them today. There's no such thing as an obsolete musical instrument, just ones people don't use any more.
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Nov 27, 2012 15:22
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mrkillboy posted:I remember playing one of those! The one I played wasn't a hacking game, but rather you piloted an F-18 in third person against alien fighters. It was one of those stand alone Flash games and the frame rate ran in the single digits. Some of them still exist. For example, the Space Jam website is still online and more or less works. http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm
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Nov 27, 2012 15:58
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Kind Milkman posted:Some of them still exist. For example, the Space Jam website is still online and more or less works. Stargate was the first movie to have its own website. MGM have obviously updated it a few times since then, and the URL changed once or twice, but it's had continuity for 18 years.
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Nov 27, 2012 17:22
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Phanatic posted:Yes. What is steampunk sex anyway, do you use steam powered condoms?
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Nov 27, 2012 17:54
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step aside posted:What is steampunk sex anyway, do you use steam powered condoms? Victorian view on sex ie. nothing.
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Nov 27, 2012 18:56
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SaintFu posted:They're usually a massive pain in the rear end to use, but nobody so far has created a better archival medium that microfilm. Under reasonable conditions, microfilm has an estimated shelf life of about 500 years. There are even ideas to use microfiches or microfilms for the long-term storage of digital data, i.d. putting a photographic representation of a stream of bytes (kind like a barcode or QR code) on the microform. That may sound strange, but this way you can keep your data much longer than on any other storage media (magnetic tape, another "obsolete technology", may come close). Of course you also need the right software to read these bytes after 500 years.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:35
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step aside posted:What is steampunk sex anyway, do you use steam powered condoms? Petticoats, brass dildos, leather straps with ornate embroidery, corsets, and mustaches. I am basing this on absolutely nothing.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:14
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mind the walrus posted:Petticoats, brass dildos, leather straps with ornate embroidery, corsets, and mustaches. Weird hosed up poo poo involving bondage gear and a steam-powered vibrator. I am basing this on Alan Moore.
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Nov 27, 2012 20:31
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Kind Milkman posted:Some of them still exist. For example, the Space Jam website is still online and more or less works. Also, the '96 Bob Dole and Bill Clinton campaign sites are still alive and kicking:        
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Nov 27, 2012 20:52
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Farbtoner posted:Also, the '96 Bob Dole and Bill Clinton campaign sites are still alive and kicking:
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Nov 27, 2012 21:50
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SHAM BAM BAMINA posted:I wouldn't say that something that only exists as an archive is "alive and kicking". well, the Dole/Kemp one is at least.
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Nov 27, 2012 21:54
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spog posted:Agreed - that is really cool and I doubt I would ever have heard about it otherwise. Yes, thank you Qotile Swirl! That was fascinating. I'd love to read a whole book about the history of film, similar to your post. Specifically the engineering and mechanics of film itself, that is. Are there any books you'd recommend? It's one of those questions that difficult to phrase in an Amazon search.
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Nov 27, 2012 22:17
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step aside posted:What is steampunk sex anyway, do you use steam powered condoms? Take your pick.  
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Nov 27, 2012 22:25
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Fozaldo posted:Take your pick. Not enough random gears glued on.
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Nov 27, 2012 23:57
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Fozaldo posted:Take your pick. What on earth is it saying about Phyllis Schlafly?
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Nov 28, 2012 00:23
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According to Mat Honan at WIRED (   ), the password is now obsolete technology. I can't see the password going away any time soon, I just think better web-surfing hygiene and encryption is necessary. Thoughts?
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Nov 28, 2012 00:30
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Fozaldo posted:Take your pick. Trying to figure out why conservative nutbag Phyllis Schlafly is mentioned in that photo. Her son runs Conservapedia, which should be failed, obsolete technology, but sadly, isn't. Gertrude Perkins posted:What on earth is it saying about Phyllis Schlafly?
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Nov 28, 2012 00:34
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Treguna Mekoides posted:According to Mat Honan at WIRED ( :wank: ), the password is now obsolete technology. I can't see the password going away any time soon, I just think better web-surfing hygiene and encryption is necessary. Thoughts? At my job we would love to be rid of passwords. No matter what rules we put out for passwords people always manage to find a way to gently caress it up. If we just set a minimum character limit they make their passwords something dumb like password, their last name, their birthday, or kids names. If we require them to be more complicated they leave the password on sticky notes tapes under their desks. Biometrics would be neat. If you're willing to cut someone's thumb off to look at their email go for it.
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Nov 28, 2012 00:40
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Really, in the physical world passwords have been largely phased out by retina scanners, thumb scanners, and RFID fobs. 15 years ago you'd still punch in your password to get into your office or lab or whatever, these days you just wave your magic wand. I can't really think of much outside of computers and ATMs that you use passwords for these days. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like the Yubikey become standard. That being said, passwords are not currently obsolete in any way, shape, or form but that's just Wired's propensity towards overstatement and generally lovely articles.
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Nov 28, 2012 01:01
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Palpatine MD posted:I was visiting a technology museum recently and they had a microfiche (Microform) machine on display. How commonly is that stuff still used today? The vast majority of local newspapers that are on file at libraries are also on microfilm. National or regional papers tended to be on microfiche from what I remember but have almost all been digitized by now.
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Nov 28, 2012 02:11
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Palpatine MD posted:I was visiting a technology museum recently and they had a microfiche (Microform) machine on display. How commonly is that stuff still used today? I had to get a certified copy of my parent's marriage license earlier this year and when I went to the probate court office they had to find it on a microfiche reel and used one of those viewer/scanner to print a copy.
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Nov 28, 2012 03:50
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My father used to have a microfilm machine and lots of legal(?) documents on the actual film. I loved playing with it as a kid.
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Nov 28, 2012 04:01
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