What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations?

Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 448 points –

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

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Home stereo systems. As a kid I remained enthralled by the metal face and the heavily tactile buttons and switches and knobs. You felt a delicious variety of feedbacks for every action you took. I honestly think we really lost something special when tactility left technology. It was so satisfying to just use.

My friend's dad had one with a remote that when you changed the volume on the remote the volume knob would move. I thought it was so cool

My hifi does that, (a very cheap second hand Teac system) it makes me giddy every time it does it!

Luckily, the age of proper home stereo systems isn't over unless you want it to be. But be warned, it's an expensive rabbit hole to fall into...

Yeah, I grabbed an old Technics deck to fix up. So many other things were waaay too expensive.

Find a video of the Marantz 2150 with the oscilloscope built in,or the Telefunken reel to deal with the glowing level meter. Really wished I'd kept both of those