Click, Clack, Ding! Sigh ... | Forums

[stalkervision]

Vintage typewriters are all the rage now. I just got rid of a few recently that I was hanging onto forever.

"Manual typewriters have been attracting fresh converts, many too young to be nostalgic for spooled ribbons, ink-smudged fingers and corrective fluid. And unlike the typists of yore, these folks aren’t clacking away in solitude.

The subculture of revivalists includes Donna Brady, 35, and Brandi Kowalski, 33, of Brady & Kowalski Writing Machines, who sold the aforementioned Smith Corona Galaxie II one recent Saturday afternoon at the Brooklyn Flea, a market for crafts and antiques."

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/style/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slidesh...31-typewriter-4.html

[raaaid]

nothing like that sound instead of that clack, clack from plastic

also i miss the sound of the old telephone bell

[M_Gunz]

Anybody lame enough to prefer typing pages over with every revision deserves to have to. They can't be doing serious work.

[PhantomKira]

Originally posted by raaaid:
also i miss the sound of the old telephone bell

And the telephone that wouldn't break that came with the bell. Oh, look, a product that was built to last!

[M_Gunz]

Sure was except for one thing, they didn't outlast becoming obsolete. And they weren't cheap either.

ps -- Disney should set up a theme park where people do everything "the old way". Like dragging your finger in a circle to push a dial around to make a call. I've had sore index finger just from making a lot of calls in not a lot of time!

And be sure there should be a couch and TV 12 feet away. Every adjustment, every channel change, someone has to get up and go over to do it. I can see that ride being -real- popular, as long as they keep it short!

The park would be real popular as long as nobody had to live there for a month. Did you miss your TV show? There is no VCR or on-demand but someone will tell you if you let them! Call waiting? Not hardly. Miss a call? The phone will tell you nor will you be able to know who is calling unless you pick up and then you still may not know. Music? There is radio, vinyl disk and by late 60's mass-affordable cassette tape but maybe you have a reel-to-reel. Other than that, see a band or play your own.

[Ba5tard5word]

A while ago I saw an article saying that Nintendo Virtual Boy consoles were selling for something crazy like $40,000 a pop. I remember that something like in 1995 I was in a toy store and saw a whole line of dozens of them that were on sale for $25 each after the line had bombed badly. Man, I coulda bought my way through Harvard or bought a house if I'd seen into the future.

[stalkervision]

Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
A while ago I saw an article saying that Nintendo Virtual Boy consoles were selling for something crazy like $40,000 a pop. I remember that something like in 1995 I was in a toy store and saw a whole line of dozens of them that were on sale for $25 each after the line had bombed badly. Man, I coulda bought my way through Harvard or bought a house if I'd seen into the future.

I actually have one of them but the price has gone down on them. WAY WAY DOWN..

[Messaschnitzel]

Originally posted by M_Gunz:
Sure was except for one thing, they didn't outlast becoming obsolete. And they weren't cheap either.

ps -- Disney should set up a theme park where people do everything "the old way". Like dragging your finger in a circle to push a dial around to make a call. I've had sore index finger just from making a lot of calls in not a lot of time!

And be sure there should be a couch and TV 12 feet away. Every adjustment, every channel change, someone has to get up and go over to do it. I can see that ride being -real- popular, as long as they keep it short!

The park would be real popular as long as nobody had to live there for a month. Did you miss your TV show? There is no VCR or on-demand but someone will tell you if you let them! Call waiting? Not hardly. Miss a call? The phone will tell you nor will you be able to know who is calling unless you pick up and then you still may not know. Music? There is radio, vinyl disk and by late 60's mass-affordable cassette tape but maybe you have a reel-to-reel. Other than that, see a band or play your own.

That'd go over like a lead balloon. They might as well set up a theme park where you get to live, say in a late 19th - early 20th century environment with all the latest inventions to make life easier at the time back then. Hey, they could redo the whole area known as 'Frontierland'.

Seriously though, it's all about convieniences and how they are perceived. Ie, if it don't concern something like medical advances, it's all about what kind of gadgets what makes life easier such as electric microwaves versus wood fed cast iron box stoves, remote controls versus folks getting off they fat @$$es to change the channels on the TV. (Messing with the rabbit ears constantly was an acquired skill only mostly those over 40 knows about nowadays...)

The things I'd miss would be the convienience of the internet where if I need to find out something quick, or communicate with folks from around the world like how we all do on this particular forum, and the ease of having a portable telephone that I can pretty much use anywhere, but not having them wouldn't mean the end of the world for me. I can always go to the library, or buy a book on whatever subject I'm looking for.

It does sometimes pay to be kind of behind the times though. I just got a new job a couple of months ago where I got hired to run the manual machine tools side of a local manufacturing business. This is a place that's been in business since the mid 70s, and they got a lot of older manual machines such as Bridgeport mills, Warner and Swasey turret lathes, etc that the only person besides me knows how to run is one other machinist in his early 60s, and the manager who's been there for 30+ years. Most of the other employees are CNC operators who don't know anything about the manual equipment.

[M_Gunz]

There used to be more time to do things, not as rushed. Nostalgia won't bring it back. Some things are quicker done on hand machines. It takes time to set up a chucker, you need to crank out a fair number of parts to justify setup and the cost of the machine. If I want 1 or 10 of something, the old machine is probably the best.

You wouldn't have a turret punch press there?

[Ba5tard5word]

Originally posted by stalkervision:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
A while ago I saw an article saying that Nintendo Virtual Boy consoles were selling for something crazy like $40,000 a pop. I remember that something like in 1995 I was in a toy store and saw a whole line of dozens of them that were on sale for $25 each after the line had bombed badly. Man, I coulda bought my way through Harvard or bought a house if I'd seen into the future.

I actually have one of them but the price has gone down on them. WAY WAY DOWN.. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think someone found a stash of hundreds of them in Dubai or something in the last year or two, maybe that has something to do with the price.