John M. Scalzi's Weekend Assignment #171: Unusual Tech

What am I doing in that picture above? Well, setting up this week's Weekend Assignment, that's what! Weekend Assignment #171: Talk about the most unusual piece of technology or machinery that you've ever used. It could be some specialized machine or tech you use for work, or perhaps some off-brand curiosity you found at an electronics store, or even (if you're technologically inclined) something you've created yourself. The key is that it's got to be something that makes people go "Huh. That's weird."

Extra Credit: Mp3/music player or cell phone: Which would you give up first?

Dear John,

Well, I hope your foray once again into the land of the Road Warrior allows for a safe and speedy return, despite the cumulo-nimbus activity I see on the radar. Also, I'm curious as to what you think Krissy and Athena have been up to since your departure. The sudden appearance of the three white vans with the dishes on the roof that set up beside the garage mere minutes after you pulled out of the drive makes me think Krissy has either tagged you with a GPS tracking bug or she's working covertly for the NSA when you're off gallivanting on your KGB rounds...

This is a challenging question on several levels. I've lived long enough now that many devices commonly accepted and used by your average Gen XYZed weren't even a blip on the radar screen when I was a youngster. Indeed, watching the noon news story regarding the difficulty the current NASA shuttle mission has been having on its mission to the International Space Station is just the tip of the technological iceberg. When I was Athena's age, we hadn't even sent a satellite into orbit yet! The only folks with a mobile phone worked for the Federal government or a handful of large corporations contracted thereto. And they were B I G, often occupying more space in the trunk than the spare tire and jack did in those black Lincolns and Cadillacs of yesteryear.

That which started the miniaturization of technological products, the transistor, hadn't come into general use yet. That had to wait for the 1960's and the introduction of the first mass-market affordable “portable” transistor radios. There had been “portable radios” in the past decades, but they employed vacuum tubes and wet cell batteries weighing twenty or thirty pounds. Until manufacturing of transistors on an economical scale became possible, such devices as computing machines, transistorized radio transmitters and receivers, medical devices, semiconductors of all types were merely the stuff of dreams. Indeed, modern communications truly didn't flourish until the advent of semiconductor technology. Oh, there were telephones and televisions, but the first phone I was consciously aware of was on a four-party line, weighed about fifteen pounds and put serious bruises on one when pulled off the telephone table in the hall.

Anyway, that bit of history merely leads us to the answer for this Weekend Assignment. The most complex-seeming piece of technology I was confronted with for the first time in 1968 was a standard radio mixing board that looked a bit like this:

The original Caroline studio, now used for commercial production.

The vintage Gates mixing desk is now largely for show.

Most of the actual production work is done

on the computer on the left of the picture.

Source: The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame.

Fortunately, all known photographs of me from that period have been utterly destroyed, so there'll be no sharing of the actual, older and far uglier mixing board I started out on. Still, it was a daunting first meeting. And my six month or so apprenticeship, as I lived and breathed radio, perhaps sleeping as much as four hours in twenty-four but more often surviving on two or three hours stolen in twenty-minute intervals, was one of the most intense experiences of my life. With not a small amount of hubris and pride, I became a master at that board in record time, assuming responsibilities for producing my own commercials and PSA's in next to no time. That led to on-air work, news reporting, working as a stringer for a national news organization and eventual employment as a news anchor with a local commercial station.

The only thing that rivals that for techno-titillation in my life was operating the master switchboard on ships. Although, in terms of weird technology, reverse-osmotic seawater purifiers take the cake for my personal level of weirdness. It took me quite a while to wrap my brain around the actual technology doing all of the heavy lifting in that thing.

Anyway, there you have my brush with techno-weirdness. As to whether it'd be a cellphone or the MP3 player getting the heave-ho first, no question but what I'd sacrifice and trash the cell phone. I just loves me peeps, I do. But I love music much, more mucho.

Safe landings,

wil