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Tech gadgets we once loved but since abandoned (Photos)

by ZDNet Author  |  February 9, 2012 12:00pm PST  |  Image 1 of 16

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Kodak digital camera
Talk about a high-profile casualty of the digital age. Come July, Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, will stop making its digital camera. Yes, it's the end of an era but the news is hardly a shocker. What with Kodak's inability to fend of stepped-up competition from rivals with better digital cameras - not to mention the emergence of smartphones doubling as cameras - this was a slow-motion rendezvous with failure. Then last month the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
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RE: Tech gadgets we once loved but since abandoned (Photos)
BrewmanNH 11th Feb
@dgari
Then he's still wrong, because even today's phones are still analog up to the central office or first repeater (land line phones for households).

Just because a phone has push buttons does not make it a "digital" phone. A push button phone is analog as far as the signal going out of it to the central office, you push a button on the phone, 2 tones are generated at 2 distinct frequencies, you talk into it and the signal to the CO is an analog signal, nothing digital there.
I can describe the modem sound!

Drrrrr.... beeee bop bee bop bee boppy boppy boppy bop! ....... Beeeeep DRRRRRR BING BONG BING BONG CRACK CHRRRhhhhRRRR-RRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
@Imrhien
Actually i think it was something like waaaaaaaaaaa, poink poink,click click. sput, spuuuuuuuut, chonk wonk, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiir wop wop wop, but who knew??
I owned every one!
@brunet42

Me too! And I still have more than a few of them around and in use or at least usable!
I would argue that HP engineering calculators in the late 70s killed the slide rule.
@daveintempe

Still have, and use, my HP 48gx. I also have a emulator of it on my PC and use it almost daily. Still have my Pickett slipstick too, but don't use it much.
The "analog" phone you show is actually a digital phone (of sorts), todays phones that use push button dialling use analog signals to do the actual dialling. So, basically the digital phone has been supplanted by the analog one, not the other way around.
@BrewmanNH
He's talking about analog voice over the wires (POTS or Plain Old Telephone System: 48 volts DC voice; 90 volt AC ringer), _not_ Pulse vs.Touchtone dialing...
Voice "digitization" didn't exist when the pictured phone was made.
@dgari
Then he's still wrong, because even today's phones are still analog up to the central office or first repeater (land line phones for households).

Just because a phone has push buttons does not make it a "digital" phone. A push button phone is analog as far as the signal going out of it to the central office, you push a button on the phone, 2 tones are generated at 2 distinct frequencies, you talk into it and the signal to the CO is an analog signal, nothing digital there.
Hmm. I have a dial phone, got a typewriter for Christmas (1940s gunmetal grey, solid and lovely), listen to tapes in my car still, have three portable radios around the house and until such time as the tube fails, still watch television on a cathode-ray tube version. Oh, and my son's favourite Christmas present? A record player and Pink Floyd vinyl; he sits playing on his ipad listening to it!
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Just think, they designed the GoldenGate Bridge, Boulder Dam and B17's with slide rules like the one above and adding machines!!! I remember read an account of Chuck Yeager as he was nearing then actually testing the Bell X 1. These old guys, with their slide rules were SO FREAKING GOOD at CFD calculations they told Chuck that around mach 1. whatever it would probably get a little squirrelly because there would be a bubble over the tail, minimising the authority of the tail feathers!!! He said right on schedule, it happened!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where's the Zip/Jazz drives?
Nobody else is going to say it? Really?

What's up with "by ZDNet Author"? They were too embarrassed to reveal themselves?
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Comeback
birdsonabat@... 10th Feb
Actually records have had quite the come-back in recent years. For a long time you couldn't find hardly anything made in vinyl, but any more a lot of big name bands and indie artists alike are releasing their new music on vinyl in addition to cd and mp3....
In 1975 I bought a $20 calculator, used it mostly surveying or class, because it was less bulky and less expensive than my 18" K & E slipper. I still use the K & E at home.

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