Do Tools Ever 'Die?'

An anonymous reader writes "NPR recently ran a debate between two commenters regarding the perpetual lifespan of tools... in other words, that no tool ever goes completely out of use. This debate wasn't focused just on mechanical tools based on simple machines, but included electronics as well (vinyl record players, for example). Did you know you can still buy 8-inch floppy drives online? NPR is looking for examples of tools that have gone entirely out of use... any ideas, Slashdot?"

Comments

How sillilly obvious

[A nonymous Coward]

How many times have we read about NASA tapes and such from early missions where the hardware to read them has long since disappeared, and no one is even sure what format the tapes are in?

Re:How sillilly obvious

[sznupi]

TFA is about cherishing biases of our memory... We don't remember, we are hardly aware of those types of artifacts which disappeared.

Re:How sillilly obvious

[hazydave]

> Vacume tubes

Dictionaries and/or spell-checkers?

Tools for Encryption

[eldavojohn]

Aside from learning venues (which you could argue every tool has to offer), there's a whole range of tools of encryption that no longer function as they were intended when they were created. From Rome's Scytale to Germany's Enigma Machine, none of those tools are useful today on account of how easily they are cracked.

Re:Tools for Encryption

[KeithIrwin]

A scytale was a club carried by every Spartan (not Roman) officer. It was used as a bludgeon first and possibly a cryptographic tool second, but the historical records of its cryptographic use weren't written until a couple hundred years after the claimed use. None of the historical accounts which were contemporary to the time make any mention of them being used for any purpose other than hitting people (Sparta was known more for military might than for its intellect). So it's quite likely that their cryptographic use was invented after-the-fact by some historian and then repeated by others rather than an actual use.

I also disagree with the idea that either the hypothetical scytale or the cryptographic rotor have really gone out of use. People still, unfortunately, roll their own cryptographic schemes and one of the things that this implies is that they reinvent the wheel or sometimes randomly copy ideas from history. Hardware versions of the cryptographic rotor and the scytale are probably extinct, but the software implementations undoubtedly live on and are in use, even though they shouldn't be.

Radioactive tools

[rednip]

Some time ago radiation wasn't well understood, and a number of tools were built to take advantage of it for personal use. The radioactive shoe sizer came to mind right off the bat, but a searching for it I found a number of tools that were certainly ill advised. http://www.thingamababy.com/baby/2006/05/fun_with_radiat.html http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/offbeat-news/10-radioactive-products-that-people-actually-used/1388

Re:Radioactive tools

[MightyYar]

What things are we eating and drinking that, 100 years from now, our descendants will wonder how we didn't all just keel over dead?

Beyond obvious things like tobacco, when I lived in NYC I was always struck by the rich inhabitants coming out of the Whole Foods with their organic produce and stepping into the exhaust fumes of a million cars and buses. Yeah, it'll be the Apples that kill you...

Cotton fishing lines

[XanC]

I heard someplace that the quickest ever total replacement of a technology was cotton fishing lines. Cotton lines must be replaced every season. When nylon came out, it was cheaper than cotton, and lasted forever. Is there any use for cotton fishing lines anymore?

Re:Cotton fishing lines

[circletimessquare]

considering the continued harm to marine organisms that drifting nylon nets and lines do, there is a case to be made to bring cotton lines back. or rather, some sort of synthetic substance that is as strong as nylon, for awhile, but then degrades in the environment

Very easy answer

[HappyCycling]

The shoe-fitting fluoroscope.

Basically a box that you put your feet into where x-rays are fired upon your feet and you can look into the viewing ports on the top and see the bones in your feet for the purpose of getting correctly sized shoes.

It was used during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and was subsequently discontinued after employees experienced radiation burns from the constant exposure.

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm

Need some time

[Lev13than]

Too easy - I just took a bunch of pictures of obsolete technology to include in my response (and to make it authentic I shot it on film). Now, if you can please hold on a bit I just need to send the roll off to get processed into Kodachrome slides. Shouldn't take more than a few days, so please check back.

Re:Need some time

[Richy_T]

I thought the "whoosh" was no longer in use but I hear it's been seen in the wild recently.

Re:/. News Network

[imakemusic]

People also buy vinyl because it is easier to mix with. You have direct physical control over the movement of the disc and therefore the speed of the music which gives you more control for beat-matching and makes scratching possible/easier. Obviously, it has it's disadvantages. Your bags are heavier, vinyl can get damaged, it takes longer to find a piece of vinyl than search a digital disk etc. but as a tool for this specific job, many still (rightly, in my opinion) consider it superior.

The tools used to build StoneHenge

[gurps_npc]

Someone already mentioned the pyramids. The key thing about tools we no longer make is that we lose the NAMES for around the time we lose the tool. Because once we stop making them, we stop talking about them. Here is another example, from less than 200 years The original 'phonograph' used a wax cylinder instead of a vinyl LP disk. They had a 'mechanism' that would shave the cylinders, erasing the current recording and allowing you craft a new one. We don't make this tool anymore and no longer even have a name for it, siumply because we would NEVER under any circumstances, shave an existing 200 year old musical cylinder.

Marriage

[__aayejd672]

My tool hasn't been in use since I got married.

If you need an example

[Steauengeglase]

Just look at the textile industry. There are lot of odd tools they used from the early 1900s that today, we honestly have no idea what they are even used for. That doesn't even include the mountains of wood bobbins, loom repair devices, etc.

Re:The Internet in anti-government actions

[MikeDirnt69]

Censorship is a very usefull tool, one of the most ancient too. It can make other tools useless! And this is how you make a offtopic message "ontopic".

the stones.

[mevets]

I saw a documentary about stone-age families. Apparently they used baby wooly mammoths to wash their dishes, and adult wooly mammoths to shower themselves. The woolly mammoth is quite extinct, so it is unlikely that it is still in use.

Re:Dead writing tools.

[rickb928]

The point of the NPR article (which I listened to this morning) was hese tools were still being produced and used, even if only by hobbyists etc.

Papyrus qualifies. Still being made and used.

Nothing to see...

[dzfoo]

I heard the story on NPR this morning and I think it's overrated. In my opinion, by including in the report tools and inventions that are custom made for leisure or passion and not necessity or practical use, the scope of invention "death" is reduced artificially.

The report included some examples of old farming implements that are still in use in some developing countries, ostensibly because they cannot afford the newer technology and the old tools are certainly effective. These surely are examples of old technology that is still "alive."

However, the problem is that, while the authors concentrated on the advertisements shown on a late-19th Century Farmer's Almanac, and offer these as proof; they extrapolated their observations to apply to the entire breadth of all human civilizations.

I disagree with this. Obviously some inventions have become obsolete when newer and better technology superseded it. The fact that some fringe group or individual continues to manufacture ancient items for study or pleasure (with no intention to apply or use it in practice), does not mean that the technology is still "alive". Such technology is obsolete and out of circulation for practical use. Understanding or knowledge of it may still remain, but it is effectively dead.

Their thesis then can be rephrased as such: Knowledge acquired by humanity throughout the course of history is accumulated and seldom lost. This is a much more intuitive and obvious assertion than the original one, but also a much less interesting one.

          -dZ.

Many a medical tool has gone to never come back

[mpieters]

Due to changes in medical knowledge, plenty of 'tools' used in medical practices have fallen into disuse because the underlying medical theory has been dis-proven.

As an example, I present to you the Tobacco smoke enema device. How many of these do you think are still in use today? Do you really want tobacco smoke blown up your backside when you just have been pulled out of the water with a set of bellows and a pipe? Yet in the 17th and 18th centuries they hung these things all along the river Thames to help 'warm' people just pulled out of the water.

Re:Modem?

[dlingman]

Nope. LG washing machines use this to report problems to the service counter. You dial a number, hold the phone to the washing machine, and it hisses to the other end...

Regrettably

[reboot246]

I don't use my tool as often as I did when I was younger. There may come a day in a few years when I won't use it at all, except for draining the bladder.