The oldest tech you still use

[Kaodi]

The lever and the wheel.

I think the humble blanket probably has those beat.

 

[Belen]

Printed books.

We have some that are a few hundred years old.

 

[payn]

Printed books.

We have some that are a few hundred years old.

Damn, how you stay alive that long?

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Yikes. Oldest book in my house, far as I know, is a 1900 printing of Heinrich Heine poems, which I can't read - partly because my German is fur Scheiße, mainly because it's printed in an extreme version of Black Letter and I can't tell which letters are what.

 

[Tonguez]

Printed books.

We have some that are a few hundred years old.

You do? what are they?

 

[Mad_Jack]

I still have and use a Hotmail account.

Still using the original hotmail account I've had since I first got online in the early '90's...

A spoon.

I still have and regularly use my Campbell's Soup mug and the matched metal spoon with the red plastic handles... My mom bought them for my brother and I when they came out in 1998, and to this day it's my default mug for drinking anything - You can pour a 20-oz. soda in there with room to spare. I've re-glued the plastic handles of the spoon twice over the years.

I think the oldest pieces of tech I have around the house are some of my father's power tools...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Printed books.

We have some that are a few hundred years old.

I don’t have anything that old, AFAIK. At least not as a discrete, distinct object still in its original form. Mom has some jewelry partially made with Roman beads, though, and some with slightly younger African beads.

Our dining room table set is approximately 200 years old, though.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One thing bugging me about old tech is people continuing to use it when doing so can cause problems.

I got my Econ degree in a program taught by the biggest names in the field at the time. 101 was taught by a guy whose name was on the book used by most departments in the English speaking world. Antitrust class had a week off when the prof went to DC to testify against the Time-Warner Merger. Etc.

And I was one of the grading curve breakers.

One of my profs was inexplicably enamored of his old mimeograph machine, and used it to print his tests instead of using the department’s printing services. I knew I was crushing the purple-printed, 3-question midterm as I flew through it.

It was handed back to me with a D+, with all of the missed points subtracted from the 3rd question.

I asked him, and he said I had answered the question 180 degrees from correct, which surprised him, all things considered.

When I read the question aloud to him, the light went on: 2 words were missing from my test- there was a void in the ink on the mimeograph’s roller. I had answered the question on my test perfectly, but the intended question‘s answer given to the grading assistant* was obviously different.

And he was unwilling to change my grade. (I didn’t know people could challenge BS like that.)

I got enough points in the rest of the class to finish with a B+, but the damage to my GPA cost me national honors by 1/100th of a point.

Could an 80s era copier/printer have screwed up my test? Absolutely! But it had more safeguards against that than a half-blind man noticing a roller was short of ink.





* which he needed because he had macular degeneration