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Vanishing Technology
By, Gary Ferrington

My father was gadget oriented and loved to purchase the newest "toys" of the day. He would have loved the digital age but unfortunately passed on in 1959 nearly fifteen years before the first home 1K computer was was introduced by Scelbi Computer Consulting Company of Milford, Connecticut.

I've often thought of all the technological innovations that have developed since 1959. But lately I've started to think about the technology we have left behind as well.

I recognized that many once popular technologies were disappearing when a young friend visited and was fascinated by an 8mm film camera I have on display. He asked how the images were recorded and transferred to the computer for editing. I found myself explaining how film was different than digital media and that the equipment you needed in order to facilitate editing and viewing was mechanical in function. A spring wound motor was something entirely "new" to an individual who had grown up in the age of battery operated electronic gear.

There seem to be many technologies that we have abandoned along the digital super highway. Others have evolved. Here's a look back over the past 46 years ago to see what we have left behind.

Long Distant Calling

Communicating over long distances was a common practice using a telephone or telegraph by mid-century. But cell phones were science fiction in 1959 with Dick Tracy's wrist phone being something kids wanted but would not have for decades to come. People at the end of 1950's had to be satisfied with either the rotary dial telephone, or send a message by telegraph.

Rotary Dial Telephone. The rotary dial telephone is rarely found today. In fact many, if not all, phone systems will no longer recognize pulse phone signals.

The rotary dial phone had replace the hand crank that had to be turned in a series of short and long rings to call someone on the same line. The rotary phone dial sent interrupted electrical pulses that corresponded to the number dialed and automatically rang the appropriate phone.

Telegraph. The telegraph was an apparatus with a single key that when pressed completed an electrical circuit sending a pulse over a distance by wire. Morse code was used to communicate messages in the form of dots and dashes. The receiving end could print the code on paper strips. But many telegraph operators learned to listen to the clicking code and understand the message being sent. The telegraph and Morse code were used well into the middle of the last century. This was as close to e-mail as one could get in those days.

Mechanical Type and Lettering

Microcomputers have replaced many tools used for creating documents, displays, and other materials. Today we easily word process documents. Or, we use our computers to make signs, posters, and other text and visual display material. Back in the 1950's you were smart to have had a good typewriter. And, if you were a graphic artist, you had to have a Leroy Lettering set to design visual displays with text.

Typewriter. I had my own typewriter in elementary school. Typewriters of the time were mechanical and included a key board that would look very familiar to a computer user today. However, when the keys were pressed cast metal letters were slammed forward against a carbon ribbon that would leave an ink impression on a piece of paper. Keyboards were purposely designed to facilitate slow typing. If one typed too fast the mechanical levers could be easily jammed together. Typewriters remain valuable tools should batteries die or power fail. With a typewriter you can quickly prepare a letter and post it by snail mail, of course.

Leroy Lettering. During the days when lettering for charts, graphs, and other visual displays was done by hand, neat lettering could be accomplished using a Leroy lettering™ set made by Keuffel & Esser.  Probably every graphic arts department had one or more of these sets. Sets often came in nice mahogany boxes each with slots for 10 or 15 templates of various sizes and typeface, pens in a wide range of widths, and room for scriber and ink.

Print Duplication

Making copies of printed documents was not easy at mid-century. One couldn't go down the hall and make a quick photocopy. Here are four common print duplication processes of the time.

Carbon paper. There were no paper copiers in the 1950's. If you wanted an immediate copy you could put a piece of thin tissue paper coated with carbon black on one side which is transferred to a sheet of paper underneath when pressure is applied using a typewriter, or writing tool. One could prepare an original of a letter and make a couple of copies simultaneously. However, correcting an error became a challenge when you had to erase each copy, insert fresh carbon paper and try again.

Mimeograph. Multiple copies of a document could be made with a mimeograph. This was a duplicator that produces copies by pressing ink onto paper through openings cut in a stencil. A special stencil could be place in a typewriter and the force of the keys would cut holes in it the shape of each letter. When you placed a stencil on the duplicator you could make many copies as ink squeezed through the stencil and onto the paper.

Ditto. A spirit duplicator or ditto machine was well used up into the 1980's when plain paper copiers became available. A "master" was placed in a typewriter. As the letters hit the page the back of the page would be coated with a special colored carbon. This carbon master was placed on the duplicator and as a crank was turned it would come in contact with paper that had been moistened by an alcohol in the printing process. A small piece of carbon would transfer to the paper from the master. Many copies could be made before a new master had to be prepared. The spirit duplicator was popular in schools and may still be used in some places around the world where electronic duplication is not available. Kids always remember ditto copied worksheets because of the lingering chemical smell made while printing.

Hectograph. A gelatin duplicator involves transferring from an original sheet prepared with special inks to a gelatin pad. I remember helping my mother print a social club newsletter using this technique. She had to keep telling me the gelatin was not Jello!

Audio Reproduction and Recording

The recording and reproduction of sound had grown into a major industry by the late 1950's and the music industry was taking off as focal point in popular culture. One could listen to recordings on a mechanical phonograph or make audio recordings on discs or a wire recorder. Of course there was the radio which had reached its peak as a home entertainment medium. It was slowly surrendering its role as storyteller to TV.

Phonograph. It is getting more difficult to find a phonograph - a.k.a. record player, today. These devices played a spinning grooved disc that that caused a stylus to vibrate and these vibrations were amplified acoustically or electronically. I would often demonstrate the simplicity of this concept in my classes by taking a paper cup, pushing a pin through the bottom and attaching it to the cups paper surface with tape. I would then place the cup with needle on a spinning disc. The disc's grooves would vibrate the pin which would transfer the vibrations to the bottom of the cup which served as a diaphragm. As the diaphragm moved it caused the surround air to move creating sound waves. The sound from this vibrating diaphragm could be clearly heard in a small room.

The evolution of the phonodisc had many variations over the first half of the last century. Sound on rotating cylinders was replace by a flat discs playing at 78 revolutions per minute. This was eventually replaced with the long play (LP) that allowed nearly 30 minutes on each side of the disc. The 45 rpm disc allowed for the release of single songs and were popular with teens. The Compact Disc (CD) has replace most disc media although collector discs have limited release. Many claim the older formats have a warmer and more realistic sound.

Wire Recorder. An early form of recording was done on wire that passed through a recording head and became magnetized much as tape is recorded today. The hair thin wire could be recorded on and erased. The wire recorder became popular after World War II. My family owned one and it was carried around on family trips to record the voices of family members. My father, the movie buff he was, even made sound tracks to go along with his 8mm home movies. The wire recorder was made obsolete by the tape recorder which came on the market in the 1960s.

Radio. Radio and TV sets were built as furniture and not as component units like today. Fine woods and excellent cabinetry enhanced the addition of a consol radio or TV to most any living room in the 1950's. Radio's were central to the living room and it is no surprise that the first TV sets looked very much like the radio's they would replace. Everything you needed was in one handsomely designed cabinet.

Movies on the Big and Small Screens

Going to the movies was a very popular family entertainment during the 1930's and '40's. But in the 1950's television had become serious competition for family time. The movie industry responded by making it easy to pack up the kids in their pajamas and go to the drive-in movie. And if the small screen seemed too small there was the extremely wide, but short lived Cinerama theater that seemed to place you in the center of the action. Later on even the big screen became threatened again by new technologies that brought movies into the home via disc recordings.

Drive-in movie theaters. The post-war boom in automobile production allowed people to live in their cars with drive-ins becoming a mainstay of American culture. The Drive-in movie theater was an outdoor facility designed to permit families to remain in their cars while watching a movie projected on a large whitewashed wall. Speakers for car use were attached to a window. Dive-in movie theaters became popular with teens who enjoyed the comfort and privacy of their own cars. Expanded television programming and other home media spelled the end of the Drive-in with only a handful still in operation around the country.

Cinerama Theaters. Movies had to compete with television and so wider became better. Cinerama movies were filmed with three 35mm cameras mounted side by side and projected in a theater using three projectors. The screen was curved and seemed to surround the audience's field of vision. The closest thing today to the Cinerama experience is the IMAX experience at special museum and theme park theaters.

RCA VideoDiscs. Video discs were marketed by RCA from 1981 through 1986. These discs looked very much like the standard LP (Long Play) audio disc of the day. Instead of a laser that read the disc a diamond stylus with titanium electrode rode across the surface of a grooved disc. The image quality of the video image was the same as VHS or about 240 lines. One of the first feature films released was the first episode of Star Wars. The goal was to get people wanting to collect movies and buying a home video machine - a time when no one was doing so. VideoDiscs were replaced by emerging LaserDisc technology that used a laser beam to read a disc. The laser disc was very flexible in that one could quickly locate "chapters" and "scenes" with a click of the button. Introduced in the 1970's the Laser Disc found a large market in education and business as well as the home.

Just as the VideoDisc was dominated by the laser disc, the DVD began to replace laser discs in the 1990's

Television. Even television has changed. All programming for TV was originally black and white. It is difficult to find a black and white TV set today set except at a garage sale. Color eventually ended the sales of black and white television just as high definition and digital TV will end the use of analogue TV today.

There are many other technologies which have either fallen by the roadside or are less popular than they were in the 1950's and the decades which followed. The electronic keyboard is an example. It can reproduce a wide range of instrumental sounds have replaced the traditional mechanical piano as an instrument budding musicians want.

Our tools have changed but our need to communicate hasn't. The old school technologies were often more simple and yet less efficient in terms of time and sophistication. Nonetheless, it is fun to look back and perhaps collect those tools as reminders of where we've been.