Posted on 08/06/2016 1:34:34 PM PDT by PROCON
Have you had to write a rent check lately? Or maybe fax some important documents? Despite things like Venmo and email that normal people use every day, these ancient bits of tech and culture just keep hanging on. There's clearly better technology, it's just that not everyone is using it.
Here are nine outmoded technologies that just won't disappear.
Fax Machine
When they were invented: 1843
Purpose: Sending copies of physical documents over phone lines
Where they're still used: Doctors' offices, lawyers, the CIA (which demands the FOI requests be faxed, rather than mailed or sent online), people in Japan
Why they're still used: Sometimes you have to send a paper document, and sometimes you have to send it where there is a phone line but no internet access. Faxing can also be more secure than email; faxes are hard to intercept because they are a direct communication from the sender to the receiver, while emails get moved through a central server. That means you need physical access to a specific phone line at just the right moment to intercept a fax instead of being able to just access the main server everything goes through. Though if it's just left on the machine, a fax is particularly easy for any random person in the office to pick up. Nowadays, fax machines are most widely used in Japan, where 1.7 million fax machines were purchased in 2013 for use in for business transactions, restaurant orders, and other communication.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
“Man you could have made a mint on all that old vinyl.”
—
Well the person who scooped them probably did,and good luck to them.
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Forget the vinyl - I’ll give you 10g’s for those goblets with the big marbles in them.
They were old cassette players! I asked at Target if they had cassette players and they laughed at me.
The thing I really miss is carbon ribbons for my typewriter. I can only get fabric ribbons now.
The carbon ribbons made beautiful sharp letters. The fabric ribbons make fuzzy letters and I have to retype to get them dark enough.
Luckily I only use the typewriter mostly for checks and envelopes.
That’s what I’m going to have to do.
The audio resolution on vinyl is far superior to CDs/DVDs/Blu-Rays.
On vinyl the audio is strictly analog. In digital the audio is ‘sampled’ at varying rates. The ‘gaps’ are lost forever on digital.
Please take it from a former Sonarman and BSEE.
Hey, a linear tracking arm! Denon? I run a big Micro Seiki deck with two arms currently. Have a Souther/Clearaudio TriQuarz sitting around but no suitable mounting base at this time...some day... Nothing like relaxing to a good (clean) LP...
“I don’t think a storage medium is much protection against a hacker.”
You can’t hack it if it is not stored in a machine
Fax - I had to fax a number of papers when selling a small piece of property in another county. For what it’s worth, Staples have faxes you can pay to use.
Checks - lawn maintenance and several small contractor type businesses still require checks.
That’s it though I do have boxes of floppies and vinyl recorders somewhere in the garage.
Yeah, that’s one it’s powers. If you sign a document and fax it to somebody their copy is considered as viable as the original. Really handy for mortgages and contracts and such. Fax will change shape (most faxing these days is actually computer to computer) but it’ll never go away, as long as people want to sue each other the protocol will be necessary.
The public libraries often have faxes too.
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I learned about this before (Thanks, Cracked!) but isn’t it amazing that the fax machine predates the telephone by decades?
What we know as the FAX machine in practical terms hasn’t been around for all that long. Might as well call jungle drums or smoke signals the first telegraph...no offense! :-)
Plus fax machines are so easy to use.
Fax machines are the only accepted way of transmitting medical records. that or the mail.
I used a dot matrix printer up until the mid 1990s - when laser printers started taking over. I remember the boxes of green and white shaded paper with the perforated edges.
I had a huge collection of floppy disks. Back in the early days of having a personal computer, I would reserve Sunday nights to laboriously backing up my 80MB hard drive. Took about 50-60 of those floppy disks. Never once did I have to restore and I'm not sure I'd know what to do if I had to. But backing up was important so I did it.
I had a huge collection of vinyl records at one time. I liked the artwork and the liner notes but typically my most used records would get all scratched up and would skip frequently.
I liked the cassette format and used to tape off the radio. I have boxes of cassette tapes in my basement that I will convert to digital MP3 - someday. But I have some historical stuff in there. Such as the week after John Lennon was assassinated. I spent most of that week taping the Beatles tributes that were on the radio during that time. Sure that's worth something to somebody.
I always hated fax machines. I only scan to email now.
Haven't written a check in years.
I don't know why, but that sounds like King Missile. I was halfway expecting something to be detachable.
An 1881 fax machine could scan any 2-D printed image, convert the image to a signal, relay that signal and reprint it at the other end. That’s pretty amazingly similar to 1990s-style fax machines.
We are still executing contracts in some European areas the old fashioned way — both parties put ink signatures on a paper agreement. Talk about “old tech.”
After you turned me onto Chrome I knew I would never doubt you again :-)
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