What's the Oldest Technology You've Used In a Production Environment?

itwbennett writes: Sometimes it's a matter of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' sometimes corporate inertia is to blame, but perhaps even more often what keeps old technology plugging away in businesses large and small is the sense that it does a single, specific job the way that someone wants it done. George R.R. Martin's preference for using a DOS computer running WordStar 4 to write his Song of Ice and Fire series is one such example, but so is the hospital computer whose sole job was to search and print medical images, however badly or slowly it may have done the job. We all have such stories of obsolete tech we've had to use at one point or another. What's yours?

Comments

Uhmmmm

[Daimanta]

Pen and paper?

Maybe the question should be...

[sudden.zero]

...what is the oldest computer technology that you have used in a production environment?

Morse Code

[Bruce Perens]

I lobbied to end the requirement for an examination of the ability to decode Morse code with your ear and brain. Until 2007, the U.S. Federal Government required it before they would license all but the lowest grade of Amateur Radio hobbyists.

As part of my lobbying effort, I successfully passed a test for receiving code at 20 words per minute, and then subsequently refused to use the code on the air. 20 WPM is so fast that you have to decode by the sound of each character, you don't have enough time to pick out the individual dots and dashes.

We won.

Re:25+ years

[lucm]

And exactly what were people committing into in 1980?

Crimes against fashion.

Re: Finger and Sand

[rsilvergun]

I use power point. Does that count?