Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology

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Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

MRC48B posted:

IIRC the idea was to use the reactor to heat an intermediary, either liquid metal or water, and that would use a heat-exchanger to heat up air in the combustion section of the turbines.

Wikipedia has an image of the test setup:

Obviously, with the materials science of the 50s and 60s, it was unworkable.

It wasn't the materials science that made it unworkable, actually. It was the much more mundane reason that there was no way in hell to make a nuclear-powered aircraft a viable proposition (under anything other than experimental conditions, at least, because by all accounts the X-6 would've flown just fine) because it's a goddamned flying nuclear reactor.

Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 19:29 on May 6, 2013

# ¿ May 6, 2013 19:24

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# ¿ Jan 16, 2021 12:32

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

I like how they got a stereotypical middle-aged midwesterner to stand by the locomotive.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2013 06:05

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

When I lived in Britain I had to ride the Class 142s a lot to get from Liverpool back to Manchester. They never seemed all that lovely (apart from the interiors not having been cleaned since before the Falklands War). Of course then maybe I'm broken too, since I always felt like the seats the Pendolinos were designed by a sadist to keep you juuuust uncomfortable enough to feel lovely without actually being bad enough to complain about it. Also I'm American so what would I know from trains anyway?

Seriously, what happened to British engineering after the Second World War? You went from Spitfires and Lancasters and the Queen Mary (and dozens of lovely tank designs) to crap like apparently every single locomotive built after VE-Day.

Vincent Van Goatse has a new favorite as of 16:42 on Jul 2, 2013

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 16:39

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Krispy Kareem posted:

So the Bone Phone was bone conductive sound? Like the new Google Glass?

It wasn't obsolete, it was ahead of its time.

Actually no, it was just some speakers built into a giant vibrating horse collar for humans.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2013 18:22

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Brother Jonathan posted:

Hardware terminals aren't used anymore, though. Computing power is so cheap that it's wasteful to dedicate a machine to just providing a text terminal.

Even as a tech-illiterate teen in the mid-90s I knew that Larry Ellison was completely full of poo poo when he tried to promote dumb internet terminals like this as a Microsoft-killing app. I mean seriously the first thing I thought when I heard his spiel on those things was "but how do I save my own work/files/porn?"

Ahahahaha of course there's a Wikipedia entry about those worthless shitboxes.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 07:31

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Yeah but I distinctly remember him saying that his Network Computer terminal things would end the PC as we knew it. Which pretty comprehensibly didn't happen. We're doing cloud poo poo on the same PCs that Ellison predicted would be doomed.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 07:42

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

HEY GAL posted:

International standard for microfilm is 500 years.

Yeah but microfilm is the devil's own invention.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2014 05:14

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

flosofl posted:

I grew up on the Model M keyboard. When I was a kid my dad bought an IBM XT and it everything was steel and plastic. They board had a base of solid steel and that sucker weighed a million pounds.

Every other keyboard sounds wrong compared to that thing.

# ¿ May 25, 2015 00:19

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Pham Nuwen posted:

My parents bought a color TV when I was born* so I missed that particular part, but we definitely only received... let me think... 5 channels. PBS, CBS, ABC, FOX, and NBC in that order from lowest channel to highest; I'm pretty sure PBS was UHF channel 52 and FOX was 64, I remember 64 because it never came in for poo poo unless you hosed around with the antenna.

If you were really lucky there was also an independent UHF station that showed oddball reruns and movies, so that's six loving channels.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 23:03

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Georges M�li�s made a skin flick called Apres le Bath that involved a woman undressing and being showered with something that's supposed to be water but isn't by her maid. The most interesting part of the film is that because of the tight corset the woman wears, her rear end is almost square-shaped.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2015 21:58

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Speaking of obsolete technology, I volunteer at a museum ship and I'm going to be spending the next few days cleaning the guts of an old navy teletype machine so I can plop them into one currently on display that had most of its keys stolen by tourists over the years.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2015 12:30

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Krispy Kareem posted:

My dumbass uncle had the fantastic idea to back up all his music to VHS. In his own words, you could get 8 hours on one tape and it's in high fidelity. You just had to remember the tracking number for each song.

That'd be useful for a restaurant that needed eight hours of background muzak with minimal effort.

Not now, of course, but back then.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2015 23:52

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Non Serviam posted:

Why did you want that phone?

Why would you not?

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 10:33

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Krispy Kareem posted:

When we last moved I got a couple of big boxes for my wife. One was a wardrobe box. Probably small in terms of wardrobe boxes but absolutely gravitationally altering massive for books. That was a fun experience.

I'm a historian. The last time I moved there was pretty much nothing but books.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 17:25

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

I don't understand why you'd need a Sodastream or whatever in the first place. Then again I almost never drink soda so maybe I'm just not the target market.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 10:06

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

FruitNYogurtParfait posted:

Since when?

Since NATO.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2015 02:04

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Post the very best in overthinking fart jokes.

Good job, PYF!

# ¿ May 5, 2016 12:57

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Obsolete and decaying storage formats are the crisis issue for contemporary archivists, combined with the ease of deleting information. It takes hard work to search several filing cabinets' worth of paper to find all trace of the documents you want to destroy. It's trivial to throw away a PowerPoint after its use is over.

It's not just archivists who are worried about this. It's a pain in the rear end for historians too. I was trying to do some research at a museum archive and one of the collections was microfilm only. One of the reels was missing the beginning and then it got jammed onto the spindle so they had to call the maintenance company to unfuck the thing which apparently took a couple weeks.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2016 09:21

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Collateral Damage posted:

Microform is probably one of the better long-term archival methods (at least for text) we have though. It doesn't deteriorate if stored properly, it's probably the highest density analog storage medium, and all you need to read it is a light source and a magnifier so we can read it even after the apocalypse when all computers are gone.

All things being equal I'd agree. The problem here wasn't the microfilm itself but the technology needed to actually use the stuff.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 17:16

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Danger - Octopus! posted:

Someone ought to write a parody horror/twilight zone thing about an audiophile whose hearing starts going.

They more or less made this already.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2017 12:22

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

mng posted:

What if you're still a pothead?

Is it even safe to smoke enough weed to make Kevin Smith movies funny?

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 12:49

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Sitting in them isn't the uncomfortable bit.

Yeah, the uncomfortable part is having to deal with No. 6 all the drat time.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2020 00:34

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

SLOSifl posted:

Technology Connections 5 part series on CED:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA

I remember a long-closed video store in Lincoln, California that had a big painted sign explaining how they rented out every format in the world. It must've been painted in the early-80s because it listed CED and I never knew what that meant until I stumbled across a website about the drat things.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 17:14

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

Vanagoon posted:

You don't know Mr Blobby?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1pJ4dluj0U

This explains Brexit.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2020 14:09

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# ¿ Jan 16, 2021 12:32

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.; Smellrose

My Lovely Horse posted:

Been toying with the idea of getting a CRT for my retrogaming and someone in my area is more or less giving away a Trinitron. I'm tempted but extremely wary of the rumours of its weight.

Do you have stairs in your house?

No, really. Don't get a used Trinitron if you have to carry it up or down stairs.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2020 23:35

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite (or Request): I'm existing just for listing!!! > Post the very best in obsolete and failed technology