October 1 – Outmoded Inventions Day

nPostednon October 1, 2015

nTodaynis CD Player Day!

nOnnthis date in 1982, the first ever commercially available compact disknplayer was released. You might guess that it was produced by Sony,nand first sold in Japan – and those guesses would be right!

nWhatnyou would probably not guess is that it was sold for around 168,000nyen – what would be about U.S. $1750 today!

nSonmuch money!

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The first CD player was kinda big!

nThenpeople who want to be first with every new invention have to pay anlot for the privilege. Back in the late 1970s, I was the first personnon my block to own a home computer (actually, the first person that Inknew to own one!) – and I paid about $3,000 for a computer that wasnlarger than most a 3-ring binder, that had to be hooked up to a colornTV (and that’s when TVs were really, really thick!) because there wasnno monitor. Worse yet, there was only 64 kilobytes of memory! n

nIfnyou use an inflation calculator to compute how much my late-1970sn$3,000 would be today, it’s a shocking TEN THOUSAND dollars! Yikes!

nNowadays,na teeny-in-comparison iPhone might have as much as128 gigabytes ofnmemory – which is more than a million times as much memory!!! Andnsuch a memory-heavy iPhone might be pretty pricey – but it’s stillnless than a thousand dollars (ten times less than my pitiful 64 KBncomputer!).

nOfncourse, the prices of CD players dropped hugely, quickly, as well.nYou can buys one, these days, for less than 20 bucks!

nOldnfolks like me – people who had bought audio-cassette tape versionsnof all our favorite LP records, because record players aren’t foundnin cars and can’t be easily carried about, boom-box style – weren’tntoo eager to buy all the same music again in a new format.

Sure,ncompact discs were pretty in all their silvery – rainbow-ynglory…but I remember thinking, “I already own all the Doors musicnin both LPs and audio cassettes. Do I need it all in CD, too?”

nBynthe mid-1990s, it turned out that, yes, I did. After all, most carsnat that point had only CD players – no tape players! n

nInwas a bit comforted by some people reassuring me that CDs were soooonwonderful – combining great quality with durability – that Inwould never need to buy music in another format again.

This modern CD boom box is a bit
large, too – but most of it is speakers!
And it’s portable!

nSigh.nYou just knew that was a silly, silly thought, right? Nowadays musicnis much more common in a digital format – perhaps moving it fromndevice to device, or storing it on the cloud, or streaming it onnSpotify or Pandora or…?

nAnyway,nI didn’t think that CD players would be pretty much out-modelednalready…but they pretty much are.

nToday is also Model T Day!n

nOnnthis date in 1908, the first Model T Ford came off the assembly line.nLike so many other sorts of technology, automobiles were a supernluxury at first. The Model T was actually designed to be affordable –nHenry Ford wanted to make a car that ordinary folks could buy. Henkept his prices down by making just one model of car, so the partsnwere interchangeable from one car to another, and by creating annefficient assembly line.

nInnits heyday, the Ford Motor Company was producing as many as 8,900nModel Ts a day! After producing them for two decades – afternproducing more than 15 million cars! – Ford stopped producing thatnmodel.

ThenModel T is the most influential automobile in American (and maybenworld) history. It is said to have put the nation on wheels! Itnpushed the need for better roads, and it reshaped the nation thanksnto urban sprawl into suburban spaces. It revolutionized massnproduction (thanks to the interchangeable parts and assembly line),nand it helped establish a strong middle class. Sunday drives, motels,nfamily outings – a lot of other stuff came about because morenpeople were able to be mobile!

nAlsonon this date: