Tech and Project – Vintage Technology

Vintage Technology Displays

Displays of Vintage Technology are very popular with people who frequent Local Museums, Galleries and Libraries. Children like to see how their parents lived and parents wax nostalgic for the old days.

Most of the technologies that we have used in the past have been eclipsed by the remarkable technology that we use today.

Advances in their design have occurred in tandem with the advances in technology in this digital era, with many large products being redesigned and miniaturized into amazingly small sizes.

While we may laugh at the fact that anyone ever found this technology to be cutting-edge, we can’t discount its place in history as a forerunner for all of the technology that wouldn’t exist today without its dinosaur ancestry.

Below are a few ideas for displaying vintage technologies that we no longer use.

At Princeton University they have an Ice cream social to feature vintage technology. Display cases filled with artifacts are on display.

Vintage Technology is easy to come by. Search attics and basements or go to any local garage sales or flee market for some great finds. This is just a small example of what you can display:

Movie Cameras – non cell phone versions. Bell & Howell Zoomatic camera used by Abraham Zapruder

Batamax

Watches – yes watches – Different kinds of movements move the hands differently as shown in this 2 second exposure. The left watch has a 24-hour analog dial with a mechanical 1/6 s movement, the right one has a more common 12-hour dial and a “1 s” quartz movement

Typewriters – children are fascinated by mechanical typewriters. Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Touchmaster Five, were long-time standards of government agencies, newsrooms, and offices

Display Typewriters of any vintage. Like this 1920s Underwood typewriter with Swedish layout.

Dial Up Modems and Acoustic Couplers – How we used to get on-line

Slide Projectors – A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device for showing photographic slides

Floppy Disc – 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks. How we used to store data. Make sure to do a comparison – how many floppies to today’s storage medium.

Polaroid Square Shooter 2 – instant camera. How to see a photo you just took.

Super 8 home movies and educational films were shown on these simple projectors. While they are still used in some schools, they have been largely replaced by digital projectors and the fact that you can now burn most home movies to a DVD.

A standard wide-hole 7-inch vinyl record from 1978 on its sleeve. I am sure you can find some of these.

The inside of an 8-track cartridge. The black rubber pinch roller is at upper right.