The headphone jack.
Transistor. It was so far ahead of its time it is still being argued to be alien tech to this day.
I mean this thread is about tech that was perfect from it’s inception to the point where it didn’t or barely improved. Nothing could be further from the truth, transistor tech has had literally trillions of dollars and millions of smart people’s careers poured into it, and semiconductor IC manufacturing is now the most complicated single activity that our species does.
Internet Protocol.
ipv4 remains dominant.
tcp and ip merged in like 1973, and it lived in labs till 82 or 83. after that its been 40 years of nearly perfect ip spec
Not because it’s perfect but because its wide deployment means it takes a lot of effort to replace
Alternator Since its invention, the basic principle remained same, we are just finding a fancier ways to rotate it
The six classical machines.
- Screw
- Inclined plane
- … I forget the others
I’m surprised that I’m the first to say “p-trap” drain. Self-maintaining, no moving parts, affordable as anything, protects the indoors from sewer gas, catches rings. Chefs kiss 200 years old and still great
The 3.5mm audio jack. It’s so fundamentally simplistic from a manufacturing standpoint and circuitry standpoint that any headset you throw at it will work identically without fail (the key innovation being the speakers or headphones where the analog signal is sent to).
Technically 1/4” jacks were first. 1/8” only to make 1/4” smaller.
I disagree. The connector is fragile, subject to dust, contacts can wear out and audio quality suffers. Faulty connection means you have to twist it the correct way to have audio. Tug on your cable the wrong way and the connector on your phone is broken. Multiple standards for pinout for microphone and stereo. May cause shorts because every ring touches when plugging in. Disconnects too easily if the connector is fatigued, no locking mechanism.
At this point it would be better to reserve a few pins on a USB C connector to pass audio data. But not sure if analog can transmit fine with all the serial cables around it.Can you wire a normal headphones to a USB c directly?
Yes, and there are examples of headphones that do so, but it puts a lot of strain on the USB-C connector (and the audio quality is reliant on the phone’s internal DAC, which can suck).
I bet USB 4 will be a jack
Saw a post just today with a 1000 year old folding chair. Looked pretty much identical to the ones used today. Lost the post but kept the picture.
Wow, things really haven’t changed all that much, haha. Pretty sure you can get essentially that exact same design at outdoor stores.
Ones today would be mass produced from cheap materials though
The Bic pen. Sure, you can make it better, but then the price has to go up. You can still buy a nearly unchanged Bic pen from any office store for cheaper than any other writing tool, nearly identical to what they looked like when they were first invented.
I’ll add Bic lighter to this list too.
What else does Bic make? 🤔
I was curious too so I looked it up.
Pens. Lighters. And razors for shaving. Mostly the single use ones.
But also
BIC has drawn criticism for maintaining its business operations in Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
:C
But did they stop selling in the USA after e.g. the invasion of Grenada and Iraq and civilian bombing of Yugoslavia?
And obvious question is whether they still do business with the Zionazis…
I’ll see your Bic and raise you Zippo!
Just got my first one a while back, I bought it 2nd hand and it’s 7 years older than me and works better than any lighters I’ve borrowed off people over the years.
Replacement parts and even completely new lighter inserts still fit the original cases from the 1940s until now. And if something does break beyond you ability to repair, They got a lifetime warranty with no proof of purchase needed!
I had a chrome Zippo XIV, one of the models you just don’t fuck with.
I loaned it out one day to light fireworks. Somehow they overheated and ruined the flint wheel…
Anyways, if I catch you swapping Zippo parts, I’m gonna melt Frosty the Snowman…
I have a zippo, I like that it’s easy to pour in liquid fuel and they are somewhat wind resistant but the fuel does evaporate away over time. I keep it in a plastic bag which does slow the rate of fuel evaporation though.
Not sure what cheaper fuels could work well in it, that would reduce the cost of fuel that just evaporates then and I don’t use it that often so I suspect more is lost to evaporation than usage.
surfboards lol https://varialsurfboards.com/best-foam-surfboard/bic-review/
Microwave oven. It sort of just…appeared, and the design didn’t change much.
Well at first it looked and had a UX more like a regular oven, but yeah idk how much the internal tech has changed.
In my Flat we still have a microwave that does not have a rotating plate. Insteadt it has a spinning rotor in the roof that deflects the waves in order to cook food evenly. It works well but it is needlessly complicated compared to modern microwaves.
Most microwaves have a spinning wave stirrer in addition to the rotating plate. From the description here, it just sounds like either your plate rotation motor is broken or you’ve got a weirdly simple microwave.
This is the first time I’ve heard that they have a wave stirrer. I’ve never seen one in person.
Usually it’s not inside the same chamber as the food as then it would be a nuisance to clean. You need to take a microwave apart to see the wave stirrer.
The diagrams I’ve seen show the wave stirrer on the roof. The microwaves I’ve seen have the ceramic plate on the side where the magnetron is so there’s no space for a stirrer.
if the diagram’s any good, it should show the wave stirrer in the roof rather than on the ceiling of the food chamber. There’s typically a waveguide to take the microwaves from the magnetron to the top of the chamber, then the wave stirrer is at the end of the waveguide to vary the angle that microwaves enter the chamber at. There’s usually something to stop food splashing/spraying into that section, though, e.g. an extra few centimetres of waveguide afterwards with a bend in it.
I understand what you’re saying, I’ve just not seen one with any indication of a wave stirrer. They all just shoot the beams from the magnetron through a ceramic plate on the side if the microwave. The top interior of the microwaves I’ve used (even one ones from Samsung and LG) had no holes or vents. Maybe it’s just an American thing?
But maybe don’t take apart a microwave unless you absolutely know what you are doing. Otherwise, what you find may be shocking.
Of all the dangerous devices to disassemble, they’re one of the safest. A phone charger might still have 400V across one of the capacitors ten minutes after unplugging it (if you’re in a 230V RMS country, so have more than 400V peak-to-peak), but a microwave’s high-voltage section is only powered when it’s plugged in, and microwaves are so long wavelength that even if you reassemble the waveguide or outer case badly and leave gaps, there probably won’t be dangerous levels of microwaves escaping as gaps much smaller than the wavelength in question don’t compromise the Faraday cage.
Weirdly simple. It does not have a rotation motor. It is quite old.
Potato peelers. The ergonomic handle was a big step forward, yes. But the basic design hasn’t (and likely won’t) change.
Wasn’t expecting this answer. Can you elaborate?
Show this to a person from 1900 and other than the plastic, nothing has changed.
I would happily argue that the plastic is a step down; metal potato peelers last a lot longer.
The metal ones last longer, but the Oxo ones (like above) don’t hurt as much.
The MIDI protocal. The technologies that use it have evolved in all sorts of ways, but the protocol has remained unchanged.
MPE and MIDI 2.0 would like a word zir
That’s fair. But the fact that MIDI 1.0 isn’t going away anytime soon shows how good it was from conception. From Sweetwater:
Because MIDI 2.0 coexists well with MIDI 1.0, it’s likely MIDI 1.0 devices will continue to be produced in the future if MIDI 2.0’s features are not needed for a particular application. In developing MIDI 2.0, backward compatibility with MIDI 1.0 was always a priority.
MIDI 2.0 is not about replacing the original specification but about adding features that enhance the spec with features users have wanted almost since MIDI 1.0 appeared.
The best inventions do progress with backwards compatibility
MIDI protocol for users might be good enough but for developers is a nightmare if you want to do advanced synthesis
Maybe not perfect upon conception, but after a couple of decades from common adoption, the bicycle really didn’t change much. Sure, you can use lighter and more advanced materials, you can add an electric motor to it (though I wouldn’t classify it as a bycicle) but you can probably take a 100 years old bike and it would work just as good as a modern one.
Disagree - it’s amazing me, buying a road bike for the first time in 10 years, just how much frames have changed in that time.
It also too about 100 years to reach the modern design of rubber tyres and a drive train, with the rider sitting slightly forward of the rear axle and well behind the front wheel.
Who needs gears when you can build the mechanical reduction into the wheel size.
Well, my bike looks exactly like that. It’s just carbon all the way down now 😄
At least urban tank drivers can see you before they obliterate you
Have you seen belt drive bikes? Not the electric ones. Pretty cool stuff, much lower maintenance. Also internal gear hubs. There’s still innovation happening in bicycles to make them stronger against abuse
I did almost consider an internal gear hub for my bike but they are not common so not sure if parts of maintenance may be difficult to come by. Also not really sure how I could fit one myself. Maybe some day though, I think some can manage quite a few gears.
Fine with a chain though, mine is wax instead of oil lubricated.
They are a pain if they ever break. You basically have to replace it or get a specialist to work on it.
Don’t they last a long time though? Presumably even more so if you are someone that benefits from a lower maintenance option. I use my bike multiple times a week, cleaning it after every use is just impractical and I often go out when it’s raining.
Yes they do last a long time. They can be a great option. Just not easy to fix if something goes wrong.
You don’t have to clean a regular chain that often, but it will last longer if you do. A regular chain is perfectly fine to use in the rain / snow/ etc.
In my mind, I know the chain and cassettes will wear out, so when they do, I would rather have ones I can replace myself. But an internal geared hub is a great option as well. It is lower maintenance, but with the trade off that it is difficult to work on.
I looked at prices for internal hubs with a decent number of gears, ahh fuck that! Its more than half the cost of my entire bike.
Think I will stick with what I have now then, I get the full gear range at like a tenth of the cost. Learning to do maintenance on it sometime might be a good idea though.
I only bought it because it’s necessary for belt drive, and I wanted a maintenance free commuter. My coworker also has one as a daily commuter, though on a traditional chain drive, and hasn’t had any issues with it.
Mine is new so I can’t speak to maintenance
I think sewing machines would count? They certainly got a hell lot more “portable”, but the basic design hasn’t changed much since the 1880s. Those things are little mechanical marvels
Well, for “normal” ones they changed a lot about the lower thread. Also there came overlock machines to make life easier for certain stitches.
But nonetheless, they are marvelous machines, I love them so much. It is mechanic porn, and granted, the design of the old ones was perfect. Don’t need all that plastic 😅
nearly
I thought it changed a bunch through the years. Small changes tho
If you think C is perfect then I think your mother dropped you one too many.
How many sequels has it had? C++ (and Kava and C#), D, etc.
“nearly” is, by definition, not.
