Obsolete Stuff

[Black_Fly]

I ran across this old engineer's scale, from my cartographic drafting days. I started hand drafting maps from pencil manuscripts to scribe coat, which could be used as a huge negative in the dark room to make copies onto photosensitive mylar, which could then be used for field blueprints. Back then, the finished scale was pre-determined, and civil engineering used feet per inch almost universally in the US. That changed with GIS systems and satellite technology. Anyway, each side of the scale is a different units per inch. So, if you had a 60 scale map (1"=60'), you could measure on the 60 face. Many engineering map products were 40-100 scale ones. The 20 scale face could be used for a 200 scale map measurements also just by multiplying by 10. This linear measurement helped locating objects from a grid system
.

Show me your obsolete tools and gadgets. There's a million of them, more every day.

 

[yknpdlr]

i have one of those triangular scales, as well as a couple of slide manual rules. I did not much have need to use the scale as intended, but I could not have lived in college without my faithful slide rule in the early 1970's. Within a short time, 4 function calculators became available, but at first, they sold for $800. Most waited for the $400 version. When the TI-59 first came out, I also waited until its price came down to around $400. That was a lot then, but I learned to efficiently program it on 3 inch magnetic card strips, with a maximum of 99 key steps. I programmed it to do spherical trig for calculations of celestial navigation and distance and angle measurements over the surface of the earth, when I was an AF flight navigator, all calculations programmed within 99 key press steps. I'm sure I still have all of that stuff, but deeply buried in boxes in the basement, I will not drag them out for show.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

I found my old slide rule recently while digging through storage. Might have to relearn how to use it just for fun.

Dad's engineering scale, still in its sleeve...


I'll see your scale and raise you a 6' ruler.


How about this stinky thing?

 

[dramey]

6’ rules and hand warmers are obsolete?

 

[sailsman63]

Still use the foldable ruler, and I'm young enough that they were mostly on the way out when I was a kid. Good, solid, high-contrast ruler with a defined end point is the best way I've found to set a cranky tablesaw fence.

Also have one of the triangle scales, perhaps a little newer than those pictured, from my dad's mechanical drafting classes. Scales range from 3" = 1' to 1/8" = 1'. Best for specing out mechanical parts, up through architectural drawings. I worked through some old textbook stuff in high school. Never used it directly in a professional sense, but it did affect how I approach planning and communicating about physical objects.

I picked up a slide rule many years ago at a garage sale just because I thought they were really cool. No practical use to me, though.

 

[ppine]

Yes. We used the engineers rule. And the architects rule. I have an undergrad degree in geography. When I started environmental consulting 53 years ago, we wrote reports with a pencil and an eraser. The calculators were Monroe and mechanical. My Dad was a slide rule man. Mechanical typewriters gave way to electric ones. We had a steno pool.

We had no graphics dept in those days. We did all our own graphics by hand. We would print and bind the reports and send them in the mail. I remember when I got Fax machines for our company in 1988. It was a big deal. I got fired from a company once because I complained that we should have computers to write reports on in 1989. The archaeologists had them but none of the other disciplines. We got on airplanes to meet with people in person.

In forestry we learned the old ways of plane table mapping with a staff compass and Jacob's staff. We could make contour maps if none were available. We could throw a surveyors chain. We learned to throw a diamond hitch, how to use dynamite and how to build log houses. We used an Abney level instead of clinometer.

In the field we used USGS maps. 7.5 minute quads were standard but in remote areas they were 15 minute quads. In Alaska there were no maps. We used aerial photography, ortho photo quads taken in stereo. With practice we could see in stereo without using a stereoscope. A compass was always in the vest. I carried a hand lens. There was no GPS and no cell phones. If you said to someone "I will meet you Tuesday in Coyote Canyon at 0800" you showed up.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

6’ rules and hand warmers are obsolete?

Most people would probably say so. I haven't used either for years - except to see if I still could. Dry chemical hand warmers are so much more convenient, safer, and they don't stink.

Good, solid, high-contrast ruler with a defined end point is the best way I've found to set a cranky tablesaw fence.

I hear ya. But my saw fence has its own very accurate scale.

 

[SouthernKevlar]

The question should be:
"If an item still works and is useful, is it truly obsolete?"
I still carry a compass even when I have a GPS with me. I don't consider the compass obsolete, but perhaps superseded; I know the compass will not run out of power.