Children and gadgets of the past

Time flies incredibly fast. Technological progress jumps with him neck and neck and we're so used to it that stopped paying attention to it. Fresh, piping hot smartphones and tablets become outdated in a year after the purchase, about all sorts of graphics cards, TVs and cameras is better not to remember. Eighteen years ago could be proud to get a pager, twelve years ago -nosit belt "Mobile" in a case, seven years ago, the world of "blow up" the first iPhone and the era of smartphones. In general, the process starts to go out of control.

Childhood each generation marked characteristic of the time the material objects. Previously, technological change has been quite smooth and slow, so the children are generally well known and understood what had once been a valuable and important to the previous generation. But today, around a myriad variety of all sorts of gadgets and electronics that in fact there was a break of continuity of generations.

We decided to conduct a little experiment - to invite six children from six to ten years, and show them gadgets from the recent past.




Well, how to explain to a person born in the year 1995, why this picture is nostalgic for those who were born in the year 1980?





And this picture is generally squeezes avaricious man's tears at the generation of thirty or forty years:



And how can today's young people understand the joy we bring practical experience with these domestic galvanic cells? This, in the truest sense of the word, unique taste of childhood ?

Many of us long ago (or recently) become parents. We had the idea to make a video that modern children know about gadgets from our own childhood. Our children are already living in a different country, a different world around them, gadgets and technologies that were unknown to us at their age. In the video we decided to not only ask children if they know that for objects and devices we show them, but also how to use them. Yes, we ourselves have forgotten a lot. Let's remind ourselves of some so important once for tens of millions of people things.

Disk phone h4>

The most famous gadget in our video. Perhaps the phone rotary dialer is one of the most recognizable instruments of all time. Frankly, we were even a little bit sorry for those who have never used a similar method to dial the number.

For decades, home telephone number was available not for everyone. We had to go to the neighbors to call or go down to the phone booth. Once this rather slowly returning drive could bring to a white heat, while you quickly redial the number. We did not get sleepy in the right hole, and it happened that so sharply tapped that crawl the entire phone on the table. How many years have passed, and in the memory once there are buzzing returning the disc, tactile feel of the holes and the limiter, which rested a finger when typing.

«Oh, there have already been answered!
Well, hello, it's me ... » i>

Camera Polaroid h4>

Millions of people around the world who did not want to comprehend the science of photography, with joy and gratitude made this a vicious, in terms of real fans of photos, изобретение company Polaroid. Strange, massive and unsightly apparatus required no knowledge and settings, after pressing the shutter spit out a small piece of cardboard, which after some time in front of your eyes appeared image. No more shutter speed and aperture, developing and witchcraft on the enlarger. Click on the button - get the result, the apotheosis of consumer simplicity and efficiency. To speed up the manifestation, knowledgeable people recommend to shake the card after you exit the camera.

Plastic lenses and exhibited at the hyperfocal distance lens priori can not talk about more or less clear images. However, consumers voted ruble and Polaroids crowded planet. Of course, in our country the cost of both the camera and the tapes for him was very high compared to conventional membrane "Soap", which greatly hampered the prevalence of this gadget. However, it was not such a rare instrument in the families of the former Soviet Union. Many houses are still preserved Polaroids, but were frequent cases when a few years later the image disappeared.

Cassette h4>

That is the device , which reproduced recorded audio cassettes and compact. Perhaps, before the VCR, it was one of the main tehnofetishey in the USSR. Soviet industry produced mono and stereo tape, many of which were not cheap pleasure, their value could be 2-4 salaries ordinary citizen, "one sixth of the land" (we will not take into account the meager share of the lucky ones who had imported tape brought by relatives and useful acquaintances of zagrankomandirovok).

In the presence of tape recorders valued bilateral rewind to rewind the tape could without pulling out and turning the other party. Special chic is smooth opening cover kassetopriёmnika, most Soviet tape it without any hesitation abruptly swung open by the spring, like a jack-the-box. Especially owners of advanced tape sometimes a screwdriver to tighten the screw clamp's pickup head, to improve the sound quality.

Today, anyone anywhere can distribute the files in the player in the track list, and nowadays successful collections of songs on cassette walked on his hands and repeatedly replicated. We are thrilled and happy after listening to all these sizzling 3-5 record and fonyaschie "spin." To avoid being to write something on top of valuable music could use a disposable mechanical fuse - break down the plastic tab on one end of the tape. However, when the tastes and priorities have changed, and it was all the same to overwrite the tape, the resulting hole sealed with a piece of electrical tape (not Scotch, then it did not exist), or close up clay.

By the way, if you do sense the very first picture in this post is a mystery: with a pencil or pen with a faceted body tape rewound manually. Why not do it on a tape recorder? Sometimes, when the film is pulled out of the cassette tape recorder head and it stuck - "tape zazhёvyvalo." Then I had to carefully remove it by gently pulling crumpled membrane loop and carefully hand-wound into the cassette. Doing this finger it was uncomfortable and a bit unpleasant because of tooth coils, so the inserted pencil was the ideal solution, at times increases the speed and convenience of this procedure.

And yet, many with a pencil just rewound the tape, with the whole. Holding a pencil vertically impaled on a cassette, to make quick rotational movement of the brush, which is why the cassette itself revolves around a pencil. Of course you can rewind and tape, but he was not always at hand. A tape rewind needed here is such a paradox. That is to say, from the realm of the irrational.

Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the country there were personal computers monoblock. The most popular were many variations on the theme ZX-Spectrum . They had built a data warehouse and had only a memory. Therefore, all programs are stored on tapes, and work had previously considered them using a tape recorder to the computer memory. Those who do, are unlikely to forget the cacophony of sounds and tense waiting anxiously finished loading - will be a failure in reading or not. But that's another story about the whole IT-subculture that time.

And if the music was cool to have a stereo tape recorder to work with the ZX-Spectrum preferred to use mono-tape, as it was believed that they occur less frequently read data error.

Radio h4>

Once the tape recorders were still too expensive, so the radios was the massive gadget in the country. With their help, we not only listened to "I will dooooolgo gnaaaaat bike" and "Uchkuduuuuuk - three well!", But also listened to a variety of information and educational and political programs. A sort of portable entertainment and news portal on batteries, cheap and cheerful. Advanced models can accept a wide range of radio waves, and the "magic" with the rotary knob was a whole ritual. And do not understand modern children, which was a pleasure when after a busy listening to the hiss and crackle of air able to catch any station.

Gradually began to replace tape radios as possessing comparable size, we had one incomparable advantage - they can listen to what you want and not what the broadcast.

Videotape h4>

In the early nineties, VCRs have become much more accessible, and counters towns and villages flooded video. Most often, they have been recorded 2 film or a bunch of cartoons. Video clubs, which appeared in the houses of culture and various cellars helped to popularize the Hollywood cinema. Remember those hand-written posters with a repertoire hung around the city?

And now, watching videos has become one of the most fashionable and popular ways of spending time at home and away. Therefore, those who are now 25 to 40, videocassettes consistently associated with many discoveries in the film, with amazing experiences in strength from watching then so unusual foreign films. Associated with childhood.

reel tape recorder h4>

If the cassette is familiar today, almost everyone is with his predecessor, катушечным tape , even many of the generation of 30-year-old has not faced. By the end of the 1980s, Soviet citizens had had their bit. Large and expensive, "katushechniki" acquired mostly music lovers and audiophiles, who could afford them. Unlike subsequently appeared more compact and lightweight cassette, reel tape are substantially stationary. Yes, and not too much has been willing to take on the nature dorogushchuju technique with lots of open sensitive parts, including rotating.

Reel tape recorder began, in fact, the first and for many decades the only way to save and play your favorite music. It is because of the ease of replication of recorded music via tape nation-wide fame received a lot of artists.

Of course, the weakest of these gadgets was the principle of the storage and playback of films - on two independent coils (rolls). Long open path to the heads and the tape drive is also not improved protected. In general, these recorders require careful handling and care. But if the film is torn, it was easier and easier to glue than is the case with cassettes.

Diaproektor h4>

Long ago, when the main entertainment houses were only television and books, kids really wanted something fabulous. And some light came up with the idea: why not make a simple little device that children themselves showed a colorful history. Nothing special for this is not necessary, except for bulbs but the age-old technology, invented for people to show a movie - a 35-mm film. Thus was born one of the best gadgets for children, slide projector.

You are not fortunate enough to breath its hidden scroll in the dark film, viewing pictures appearing on the sheet? Then that is the essence of the overhead projector: positive (slide) of film is passed through a box in which a lamp is illuminated through a lens and projected onto any blank area. Miniature projector, only manually operated.

Films sold in small cylindrical boxes with lids, plastic or aluminum. Each film consisted of 10-20 frames, which depicted the colorful pictures and short texts. History in a nutshell, a kind of comic.

It was a ritual - turn off the light, tightly shuttered windows, hang a sheet or a piece of free wall. Fill the foil, turn on the projector and plunge into contemplation of the large projected images. You were his own cinema and projectionist, lacking only ice cream, blue helicopter and water on the asphalt river.

3-inch floppy h4>

Once a personal computer without the three-inch drive was unthinkable. You caught that time? A small slot with a button below it was such a fixture in the same as the keyboard. Дискеты were vital - to them to install the operating system, they store and transfer any data. By the way, in the early 1990s, personal computers were distributed, which did not have a hard drive, so they are loaded only from floppy disks.

Floppy disks were the most popular media. They sold a lot of programs, including large professional package. Imagine a pack of 1, 4-MB diskette on which is recorded the distribution of the same Windows or Corel Draw.

Any self-respecting IT-specialist and enthusiastic people had computers in a bag portable box of floppy disks. Many save on the cost of buying a model at 720 kbps, and make them into 1, 4-megabyte by cutting out of the second hole in one corner of the floppy disk. Yes, the reliability of data storage decreases, but who do not risk, that does not double the amount of memory available.

Do you remember this mechanical slider that protects the diskette from the record? Who of us in moments of nervous tension not clicked it back and forth, or a metal curtain covering the holes heads?

It so happened that the heyday of 3-inch floppy disk came in the period of rapid formation and development of IT. Their importance was so great that the images of floppy disks are still constantly come across us in the eye, although the floppy disk is not so easy to find. And so now it is difficult to explain to children what a strange icon denotes the function "Save" in the vast majority of applications at all computer platforms, fixed and mobile.

5-inch floppy h4>

Question on filling Young: where 5-inch floppy is the slider, which protects from the record? Hands off of Google! Of course, this is a joke - they had no slider. To protect the floppy disk from the recording, it was necessary to stick a piece of paper or duct tape (tape was still ephemeral exotic) slot on the right. Sami дискеты gently worn in paper envelopes, with boxes for them often do yourself. To facilitate the search for the right floppy disk in the stack, many glued to the end of the colored paper strips.

Again returning to the ZX-Spectrum: while the majority of owners mayalos cassettes and tape recorders, for a few minutes downloading any game, some could boast of a 5-inch drive, which gave multiple gains in download speed. However, floppy disks could store less data than a standard cassette, but it was a small price to pay for the convenience, speed and reliability of the reading.

Fun fact: the people went to the bike that of the 8-inch floppy disks can be carefully cut 5-inch. Of course, it was not so. By the early 1990s pyatidyuymovki were already practically ousted three-inch floppy disks.

That's all the gadgets that we showed our young participants of the experiment. Finally we want to thank them with all my heart! You coped with the recognition of all these countries to you and generally obscure subjects. To be honest, we were surprised.

And all the rest of the We congratulate the Day of protection of children! B>

Love them, be indulgent to them, because their little problems for them are no less important than yours for yourself. And do not forget to tell them about the gadgets of his youth to better understand you and your time, when they grow up.

Source: habrahabr.ru/company/mailru/blog/224357/