I was talking with a friend last week, his Great Grandmother recently passed on (not sad, she lived to see 101 and passed peacefully in her sleep). Anyway they have been going through her old house full of stuff and they found in the attic a Victrola from 1921 along with a 'huge' stack of records from the period.
Evidently somewhere in the early 20th century someone moved it to the attic, covered it with a canvas and stacked the records on top.
He and his wife pulled it downstairs, dusted it off, gave the crank an experimental turn or three and discovered that the darn old thing still works - perfectly.
This machine is 91-92 years old and plays wonderfully, it was pretty much abandoned in the attic for 70-80 years. It has sat in silence all of this time and all it needed was a crank and dusting.
I look about be at our modern world and I have to wonder if CDs and CD players would be able to sit in an attic for 70-80 years and some great grandkids pull them out and start them up and enjoy our old fashioned music.
My couch/sofa was built in the late 1880's, it still has its original horse hair cushions. My mother in law is on her 5th modern sofa in 15 years.... My percolator is circa 1950's, it has faithfully produced coffee for decades for me... my ex is on his 8th coffee maker (drip, bah!) in 15 years. (currently running vinegar water through it trying to keep it going).
I have a can opener that is older than me, it still opens cans like it did when it came off the American Factory Floor in the late 1950's. Before I found this gem I went through half a dozen can openers from a fancy electric one to hand crank ones.
Did we forget how to build things to last, or have we gotten so used with replacing everything that we no longer demand that some item we purchase can be passed down to future generations for their enjoyment and use?
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We could build things to last, but economies don't work like that anymore. If things lasted we wouldn't buy the next model and people would be out of work.
On the old recordings front, I've always been a bit of an audiophile, less these days, lots of bulshit about. I still have all my vinyl and a bunch of CDs but I'm not going to be persuaded to buy my basic catalogue yet again, this lot will have to last.
Some time back I had the opportunity to hear an acoustic gramophone of the Victrola type, a British model made by a company called EMG. It had a massive folded horn that filled the volume of a large cabinet. The sound was truly fantastic. You had to listen beyond the hiss and the clicks and listen to the actual realism. It was Isobel Baillie singing Handel or Purcell, I forget which but the immediacy made it seem like she was singing it just for me.
So I'm all in favour of people getting their reproducing equipment out and having a blast!
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Even pots and pans - all this modern non stick stuff pah! give me my well seasoned cast iron instead. (Crepe pan excepted)
Vehicles too, my fist semi made it 3.5 million miles, since then it keeps dropping begore the engine is beyond help, even with a rebuild or, the tranny goes, or the frame cracks, or some such nonsense happens and I have to junk the beasts.
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Nothing these days has the same quality , people used to put pride in their work ,right down to the smallest detail.
Mass production has killed all that, nearly everything has a life of one year max.
We have turned into disposable consumers , it drives me crazy.
Up until 10 years ago , I had a Masters Voice cabinet turn table, it was a thing of beauty and was twenty years old when I bought it at a garage sale for $10.00.
For your years I would troll the second shops for vacuum tubes and Stylus.
The sound of the thing was amazing.
Unfortunately towards the end I could not replace either one, it died and I retired it to an Antique sales man for $500.00 .( I knew the bastard had spare parts that he kept from me ,so I made him suffer .)
There is no pride in anything they make these days , the first sharp microwave I bought lasted 18 years ,it cost me about $400.00 , when it blew up this year I was in total shock at how low the prices were these days.
I am afraid I am one of the old fashioned people that will not keep up with the Jones , they can take a flying leap for all I care.
If I can fix it ,I do so, I will replace only when I have exhausted all other possibilities.
While I have my toolbox , soldering iron, amp counter, schematics and spare parts I am good to give it life.
It drives Terry nuts , but that's just me .
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What i hate and get annoyed at is cars
Cars once upon a time were built to be made to last... They had your safety first and made of metal to ensure we didnt go about being killed and gave some buff to them whereas now
THEY ARE PLASTIC AND DANGEROUS!
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Not only that Aunty , have you looked under the hood?
I am terrified to touch anything under there just in case I reprogram the stupid thing or blow the computer chip up.
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A friend of mine posted an article on facebook about the amount of garbage the current culture generates. It was a long article, but it was pretty trashy.
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^ I see what you did there.
Consumerism does drive the economy, and it's almost what western culture has become. We're not quite like Brave New World yet, but we're getting there. We like things that are pointless, fragile, and redundant: http://theworstthingsforsale.com/
Meanwhile, the things that last the longest are usually found in the kitchen nowadays. Mum has been using the same wok for over a decade, and it's used everyday. Same goes for our big chinese cleaver and the grubby old chopping board.
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Bowyn Aerrow Wrote:Did we forget how to build things to last, or have we gotten so used with replacing everything that we no longer demand that some item we purchase can be passed down to future generations for their enjoyment and use?
It is due to a little thing called planned obsolescence. The definition of planned obsolescence is:
A manufacturing decision by a company to make consumer products in such a way that they become out-of-date or useless within a known time period. The main goal of this type of production is to ensure that consumers will have to buy the product multiple times, rather than only once. This naturally stimulates demand for an industry's products because consumers have to keep coming back again and again.
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Well its a catch 22. Americans want cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. But expect the best. So something has to give somewhere and it's usually quality. Yes in the old days things lasted a lot longer. But people also didnt shop at Wallmart or Costco.
My parents always said buy the best because in the long run, its a better deal. I think that notion has got lost somewhere in our society. Corporate America wants Better Faster Cheaper.
That's a nice slogan but it's fatally flawed. You can only have 2 of those qualities at any given time.
Better, Faster = more labor, more expensive.
Faster, Cheaper = Low wage labor, design flaws, low quality materials
Better Cheaper = Longer delivery time, low labor force, slower production.
America has gone with fast and cheap. Think about that next time you go into a store to buy something what the record says in your head.
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Don't build things like they used to...
