Once upon a time we couldn't live without it, now we hardly think about it at all.If it's vintage and in any stretch of the imagination technological, it belongs here.This is a safe-for-work collection of awesome old technology, so enjoy!Also available for your amusement: Yet Another Thrift Blog, my thriftstore finds!Welcome to the Slideshow, a collection of slides.A Typewritten Blog, blogging from a typewriter.You should buy my vintage-derived stuff on Threadless!Write me in Ask or Submit (anon is on) or the messenger!!
The BlackBerry PlayBook, a tablet with a 1ghz processor and 16gb flash storage which ran on BlackBerry's own OS but Android 2.3 apps were compatable. (The Android apps usually had to come from BlackBerry's app store; popular apps that they didn't support were blocked after an OS update.) It premiered in 2011 but due to lagging sales was discontinued and support ended in 2013.
I thought BlackBerry (rather, its parent Research In Motion) was dead long ago, but actually they're still out there; they just phased out their BlackBerry OS phone support two years ago and have been doing other things since getting out of the smartphone market.
So it's been a few months (original post October 2023, update November 2023, and here it be March 2024) but I finally located an LED lamp with the right details on a certain discount Chinese website to replace the incandescent bulb in this lamp.
That's the original 1970s bulb on the right. Probably a good thing the shade hides how COBby the replacement looks. Anyhow, got it screwed in and here's the result, again in my unlit restroom but in its low setting:
So we go from 12 watts to half a watt, yay, but gain a noteable flicker since the lamp's transformer produces 12V or 15V AC... not the DC that your average light emitting diode expects, and tungsten filaments are a lot more forgiving. Still, happy.
Today's reno and repair: 1970s pyramid desk lamp
I've seen these around for years but never had one in my hands. Someone donated this to me today because she couldn't get it to turn on and I'm told the bulb works (according to a coworker, but I have my doubts he actually tested it... the bulb is the kind you find in the tail lights of cars, which has two knobs on the sides of the base to hold it in place). My coworker claimed the transformer had gone bad after fifty years of use. Here's one reference to this kind of light.
The switch at the bottom is Low, Off, High. The black bottom of the light unit is warped from fifty years of bulb heat, something I'm not sure if I can straighten but I am considering hunting up an LED version of a tail lamp to eliminate further melting. So I took it apart, which was no easy feat because the two screws in the bottom are 'jailer screws', the one-way security variety that take a special tool or destructive means to remove. My new rotary tool from Temu with a sawblade mandrel was able to cut the grooves a little deeper so a flatblade screwdriver could be used. Here it is on the inside:
Starting with the obvious, I plugged it in and tested out the transformer's output, the two white solder joints at the upper part [as photographed] of the yellow block, with my multitester. Low position was putting out 12.6 volts, High position was putting out 15.2 volts. So it's NOT the transformer!
But what is this I see? That's a 1 amp, 240 volt fuse... soldered inline to the wire going up to the bulb! Who would permanently attach a fuse where you can't get to it?! Switch to continuity tester and touch both ends of the fuse... Nope. It's blown. This should be easy-peasy!
Using the 9 volt DC power supply from my rotary tool, I confirm that the bulb works. Knowing is literally half the battle.
Friday's task is to unsolder the fuse, obtain a new one from work (and two non-security screws), solder that back in, and maybe see if I can find an LED bulb at the auto parts store.
There will be a followup to this post so stay tuned.
Two thrift finds: 2 two-record instruction courses for a Sears Tower typewriter and various models of Smith Corona typewriters. Both from 1959 with the same tracklist but different pictures so they may be the same recordings. 😂
The Sears records box curiously also contains the paper ephemera from a General Electric television with built-in record player purchased in Utah, the owner's manual for the Tower typewriter, and the paper disc that goes over the turntable in that record player. Those will be a separate post.
A booklet of canning labels that came with a package of U&I sugar.
Trivia: The name of C&H Sugar comes from California and Hawai'i and the product is comes primarily from sugar cane, where U&I Sugar's name comes from Utah and Idaho and the product primarily came from sugar beets.
And despite those two inland states being named, there was a U&I sugar beet factory in Toppenish, Washington which was a major employer until their closure circa 1979. Here it is today:
The first two (owned by the same company, ergo...) were a product of their own bad decisions and inflexibility. And as someone who worked at Kmart for a week and had Sears reject my online application a whole decade later because of it, I can't miss them.
The latter was a product of technology shifts, plus a dab of being behind the curve when it came to being flexible to meet those shifts... and they did try, honestly, but Netflix and Redbox got them beat at their own game. Them I miss, not because I ever rented videos but because they believed in physical media one could borrow or own, where today everything is intangible and reliant upon the Internet.
Tumblr LOVES cameras. Here are two -- a regular Land camera you might still be able to use, and a smallish large-format camera with a carrying trunk and several exposure plates for shooting on the go.
The item itself isn't vintage (this is in the freezer case of a supermarket) but the brand is... Bob's Big Boy was a chain of burger restaurants. And I don't recall there being anything special about the meat in a Big Boy (thus the quotemarks around "original"?). Apparently other people felt similarly if this is in the "take it before we throw it away" category.
Wikipedia says it still exists (66 in the US, 274 in Japan??), however they had a bankruptcy in 2000 after years of dwindling -- there were over a thousand in 1980, and I haven't seen a restaurant since about 1985 when the one in Yakima turned to a "JB's" -- this came as a surprise to me because I thought they were long gone.
I can tell you why that was $30: it's vintage. I had one like it circa 1980, and the barrel flips out on a hinge to hold a plastic cap (see below). Pull back the hammer, pull the trigger, it goes BANG.
Have not seen another one ever, so this is an awesome find!
I hadn't seen this video until now. Haven't seen almost any of the designs shown here, though I did see one similar to a Fackle or Boot & Helmet once (probably called a "steel match", a desktop model that looked like a regular block lighter) and really wanted one.
Can picture someone with the watch-lighter being asked for the time, and the person looks at the face then flicks the flint and says "it's 3:25pm and time for a smoke."
So while the onslaught of bots was stopped, this new iteration has shown up five times in my new followers: this exact page (with different names and descriptions) with the popup in the middle and no follow/block links in the upper right corner.