2. Do you remember an answering machine?
Technologies develop fast. Some innovations come to life, but soon they are substituted by something better and become obsolete and forgotten by everyone.
There are many examples of technologies that came before the internet and are still in use to this day. There are also many examples, that are no longer in use, and probably won´t even be recognized by today's youth.
Do you remember an answering machine... with a tape?
If you do, you must be over 25.
First answering machine with a voice recorder was invented in 1935. Voice recording itself was possible by using a magnetic recording technology. Of course that answering machine was not accessible to general public in 1935, and it's updated version came into wider use only in 1984. These commercially produced answering machines still used magnetic recording technologies and had a cassette to which caller message was recorded.
By the way, cassette is yet another forgotten technology, which I actually wanted to write about first. But after some research, to my surprise, I found that around 5 million dollars worth of cassettes have been sold in 2015 with a 31% increase from 2014. It was an interesting discovery following which I have decided to write about answering machines.
But back to machines - why are they gone? Actually the idea is not completely gone, as you might suspect, and the practice of recording messages is still out there as a voicemail. Voicemail is not such a recent innovation, but surely it has undergone some technological advances over time and is now widely used. Unlike the answering machine, it is not stationed in our homes with a cassette, but uses digital recording technologies and is stored on the phone carrier server.
Weird enough, I still hate leaving a voicemail and usually prefer to call back than talking to a silent phone.
What do you say is the difference between the turntable and my laptop streaming Spotify?
The list of technologies invented long ago but which are still in use is surprisingly long.
For example an eBook that was meant to kill the paper book, but have not yet managed to do so.
Surprisingly enough floppy disks are also still in use, but mostly in cases where old computers are still in operation, for example in the U.S. Air force (yeap.. maybe they are the ones who bought the cassettes in 2014).
There are also such examples as television, radio, phone and others.
But I would like to write about the turntable. Turntables for commercial use were first introduced in 1895.
How do they work? A sound is recorded on a vinyl using analogue acoustics technique and in order to retrieve it a stylus or a needle attached to the bar of a turntable is used. As vinyl record moves, the needle bumps on a groove of a vinyl getting vibrations, that are transmitted to electrical signals, that are then amplified to generate a sound.
Turntable use have declined with the introduction of radio and later optical discs, but has then resurrected from ashes and is now used by music lovers and DJs around the world. Why is that, considering that vinyl's ability to store 8 songs is irrelevant in a digital world?
As they say, vinyl music sounds much better, it is the closest to what artist has intended to make and it retains the quality because it is not compressed unlike digital music.
However not all vinyl records are created equal. Above statement might be true for quality produced records, but there are some out there which would not be much better than the digital counterpart. For example, if many songs are recorded to a vinyl record, the sound quality is reduced due to narrower grooves. Additionally, some vinyl records are produced from a digital master file, which essentially means the same quality sound.
Leave a comment and share if you are using a record player, or maybe a answering machine from the past?
References
https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/
http://theblackhistorychannel.com/2013/benjamin-f-thornton/
http://www.currypilot.com/opinion/columns/5417972-151/answer-me-this
http://www.gibson.com/news-lifestyle/features/en-us/turn!-turn!-turn!-a-history-of-turntables.aspx
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-do-floppy-disks-still-exist-the-world-isnt-ready-to-move-on/
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/record-players.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/music/index.ssf/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_sound_better.html
There are many examples of technologies that came before the internet and are still in use to this day. There are also many examples, that are no longer in use, and probably won´t even be recognized by today's youth.
Do you remember an answering machine... with a tape?
If you do, you must be over 25.
First answering machine with a voice recorder was invented in 1935. Voice recording itself was possible by using a magnetic recording technology. Of course that answering machine was not accessible to general public in 1935, and it's updated version came into wider use only in 1984. These commercially produced answering machines still used magnetic recording technologies and had a cassette to which caller message was recorded.
By the way, cassette is yet another forgotten technology, which I actually wanted to write about first. But after some research, to my surprise, I found that around 5 million dollars worth of cassettes have been sold in 2015 with a 31% increase from 2014. It was an interesting discovery following which I have decided to write about answering machines.
But back to machines - why are they gone? Actually the idea is not completely gone, as you might suspect, and the practice of recording messages is still out there as a voicemail. Voicemail is not such a recent innovation, but surely it has undergone some technological advances over time and is now widely used. Unlike the answering machine, it is not stationed in our homes with a cassette, but uses digital recording technologies and is stored on the phone carrier server.
Weird enough, I still hate leaving a voicemail and usually prefer to call back than talking to a silent phone.
What do you say is the difference between the turntable and my laptop streaming Spotify?
The list of technologies invented long ago but which are still in use is surprisingly long.
For example an eBook that was meant to kill the paper book, but have not yet managed to do so.
Surprisingly enough floppy disks are also still in use, but mostly in cases where old computers are still in operation, for example in the U.S. Air force (yeap.. maybe they are the ones who bought the cassettes in 2014).
There are also such examples as television, radio, phone and others.
But I would like to write about the turntable. Turntables for commercial use were first introduced in 1895.
How do they work? A sound is recorded on a vinyl using analogue acoustics technique and in order to retrieve it a stylus or a needle attached to the bar of a turntable is used. As vinyl record moves, the needle bumps on a groove of a vinyl getting vibrations, that are transmitted to electrical signals, that are then amplified to generate a sound.
Turntable use have declined with the introduction of radio and later optical discs, but has then resurrected from ashes and is now used by music lovers and DJs around the world. Why is that, considering that vinyl's ability to store 8 songs is irrelevant in a digital world?
As they say, vinyl music sounds much better, it is the closest to what artist has intended to make and it retains the quality because it is not compressed unlike digital music.
However not all vinyl records are created equal. Above statement might be true for quality produced records, but there are some out there which would not be much better than the digital counterpart. For example, if many songs are recorded to a vinyl record, the sound quality is reduced due to narrower grooves. Additionally, some vinyl records are produced from a digital master file, which essentially means the same quality sound.
Leave a comment and share if you are using a record player, or maybe a answering machine from the past?
References
https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/
http://theblackhistorychannel.com/2013/benjamin-f-thornton/
http://www.currypilot.com/opinion/columns/5417972-151/answer-me-this
http://www.gibson.com/news-lifestyle/features/en-us/turn!-turn!-turn!-a-history-of-turntables.aspx
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-do-floppy-disks-still-exist-the-world-isnt-ready-to-move-on/
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/record-players.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/music/index.ssf/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_sound_better.html
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