[GHung]

John Michael Greer has posited that we need to, and likely will, revert back to the technologies of the 1940s and 1950s simply because economies won't be able to support the complexity embedded in, and required to produce, the things we use these days, not to mention "planned obsolescence" (things designed to break so they have to be replaced). His latest online fictional series is called "Retrotopia"; about one of the areas of the US, after it breaks up, that chose to revert to only proven "retro" technologies and processes. Fun read so far.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ ... gress.html

When I do a search of "retro technology" I generally get lists of stuff made in the 70s, 80s, and 90s (old computers, electronic games, early electric watches, Polaroid cameras, etc.). Seems the things made earlier (mainly pre-70s) are now referred to as "vintage"; mostly things that have no advanced electronics. Manual (non-electric) typewriters would be an example.

I sew a bit, mainly doing repairs and alterations to my farm clothing and other things, but am no expert. My daughter (a fairly accomplished "seamstress" - retro term there) has been working for a couple of years in a sewing shop doing alterations and custom work for her employer; a woman who immigrated from Russia a couple of decades ago, and she tells me the work-horse machines there are all "vintage", usually made in Europe, and that her employer shuns the newer computerised machines. Anyway, I needed a 'new' sewing machine because I detest sewing on my wife's newer (25 years old?) electronic POS, which is showing signs of needing repair, so I began looking for a replacement. It arrives today:



It's a "vintage (@1958?) Bernina 530 Record, made in Switzerland; all mechanical. I admit I was tempted to find something newer, and the new models Bernina, and others, market these days generally look like this, and the 'better' models cost $thousands, new:



They do embroidery and all sorts of things I'll never need.
My main concern was finding parts, and, while some parts are available for these vintage machines, especially the vintage Singers like the still popular 221 Featherlite series (I have my mother's, in great shape, but tuns out it's worth a lot, and tiny), only a few parts for the vintage Berninas are available. Seems there isn't much market because they just don't break, except for things like belts and bobbin holders which are still available. The inside of this vintage machine:



.... all metal except for two minor nylon gears which apparently almost never break in this model. Red dots indicate oiling points. Oil? You actually need to oil these things?

I also have two vintage typewriters including my mother's vintage Remington like this one, which still works great (@1940):



These, along with things like the two vintage KitchenAid Mixers, which I use pretty much every week to bake, make bread dough, grind meat, make sausage, etc., are the types of things I'm adding to my vintage stuff which either last almost forever, or can be easily repaired. My main worry is the motors burning out, but we have a couple of tradesmen nearby who repair and rewind these old motors. They'll even build new brushes if they aren't available.

Is this stuff actually better? Worth holding on to? Will we always get the latest/greatest technology, or will those who buy it, then cast it away when it breaks down, be caught flat-footed?

BTW: The old treadle or hand-cranked sewing machines in good working condition can still be had, but are generally expensive collector items. A good vintage sewing machine (or typewriter) from the 40s-50s-60s can be had for well under $200, sometimes for just a few dollars at salvage stores, Goodwill, etc..

Anyone else into this old stuff that is actually still quite useful?

Edit: I also admit that I think the vintage stuff looks more 'classic'; much more pleasing, aesthetically, IMO.

[dolanbaker]

Making new stuff that was durable as the old stuff is the way to go, plus making it serviceable with common components that remain the same through several models and design changes.

[GHung]

Making new stuff that was durable as the old stuff is the way to go, plus making it serviceable with common components that remain the same through several models and design changes.

Examples? Examples that don't cost an arm and leg? Sounds like a good plan, but I don't see that happening with typical consumer goods. Rolex, maybe?

[ROCKMAN]

Ghung - An interesting prospect for sure. OTOH a lot of the new tech has improved life for a great many. For instance AC makes life much more tolerable in the south then fans would have. Of course if one can afford the electric bill the reversion isn't optional. But that doesn't make the "old tech" more welcomed.

[GHung]

Ghung - An interesting prospect for sure. OTOH a lot of the new tech has improved life for a great many. For instance AC makes life much more tolerable in the south then fans would have. Of course if one can afford the electric bill the reversion isn't optional. But that doesn't make the "old tech" more welcomed.

Yeah, Rock. I'm just assuming my family will have some electricity for a while, and, turns out this old sewing machine (just arrived, looks like new!) can use AC or DC power with a wide range of variables. Not picky about having modern, perfectly clean 60 cycle grid energy.

I know a lot of new stuff has "improved life for a great many", but "improvement" can be a subjective term. It also assumes those improvements can be sustained, with their plastic parts, complex production and supply chains; all that. Becoming reliant upon things that don't last may be a fool's game going forward.

We live in the Southeast and very rarely use the AC. Then again, I grew up in Atlanta without AC. I suppose I'm acclimated Indeed, when I spent my summers mainly in air conditioned spaces, then worked outside, I had far more sinus problems.

It was the carpetbaggers with their air conditioners that destroyed the wonderful Atlanta that was.

[Ibon]

Where I live in Panama is in many ways like the 1950's. There are but a few street lights at night on the nearest town. Small cottage industries predominate. People fix things instead of throwing them away. It;s a mountainous region and there is a whole culture that still harvests resources from these forests, still use muscle power, etc, Most folks do not have a car. People bring their toasters or electric fans to someone to get fixed, there are small little shops that still do this.

So as a general comment, I have been thinking that unlike other episodes of civilization collapse we very well may ratchet down to an economy similar to what we had back in the 1950's and plateau there for quite a while.

A lot of the historical civilizations that went into decline were far less adept at extraction of resources from their local environments and were dependent on a simpler equation of food and energy sources. Our modern industrial civilization probably has more resiliency to recalibrate and plateau as we experience human overshoot and go into decline.

Learning retro technologies and teaching this to your kids seems to me to be really smart.

I follow JMG's blog regularly as well and his scenarios on this topic seems quite probable.

[efarmer]

We made tractors, sewing machines, and other machines that were designed well and built with
the quality of materials to last the owners lifetime and that of their children. We stopped doing
that in the 1960's for the most part. My skills in embedded systems design put electronic guts into
things for decades that provide tons of features in a a machine slated for 10 years of service max.

We not only forgot how to do this sort of machinery, we dismantled the infrastructure we had in place to do so.

Accumulating such vintage machines is IMHO far better than investing in the juked stock market, or hoarding bullets or survival rations, or freeze dried foodstuffs. A well stocked pantry is vital, but having something of lasting value to use or barter is the good stuff.

[Tanada]

I have one niece who far exceeds me in saleable retro skills, she went to school and is a certified farrier. Farriers are specialized blacksmiths who specialize specifically in making shoes for horses/mules/donkeys and the metal parts for all their harness and work equipment like bridals, bits and so on. She had to learn how to make her own blacksmith tools from raw bar stock, as well as diagnosing foot and leg problems that require special horse shoes as part of the treatment of the animal in question. For day to day work she uses a portable propane forge in the back of her truck, but she has the knowledge and skill to use an old style solid fuel forge burning coal, charcoal or coke, depending on what is available. If it ever hits the fan and we all survive she will be a very valuable member of the community. To top it all off she married a Tailor who is able to take leather or cloth and form it into the non metal parts of horse gear, as well as making clothes for sale, or repairing existing clothes.

Me, I can so a button on a shirt, but I never learned to use a sewing machine. My mother had two, my grandmothers foot treadle Singer and a 1965 electric Singer that came with a sewing table that it would flip down into so you could use it for other things when you were not sewing.



Like I said I never learned to use it, but my mother and my three sisters all used the daylights out of it and I don't recall it ever needing more than the simplest repairs like a new drive belt or a replacement bobbin.

[KaiserJeep]

As a technologist by training and trade AND inclination, I say that retro tech has a place, but it will not rule.

I do not think that anyone understands that modern micro-electronics is relatively cheap to produce. Silicon can be refined from beach sand, and the aluminum "wiring" that is vacuum-deposited onto a silicon wafer during fab is the commonest metal on Earth. The other elements necessary to infuse into the wafer (some of which are rare earths) are used in minute quantities. A semiconductor fab line fits in a large room (called a "clean room" because it uses filtered air) and need only employ a half dozen people. Several buildings of specialized machine tools by contrast would be required to produce the mechanical sewing machine above.

My point would be that I do not believe that any knowledge will be lost, ever. Nor will we lose electronics nor digital devices nor the web. Far from consuming resources, these things save lots and lots of resources. A 7000-lb Cadillac from the 1960s could be scrapped and recycled into three 2300-lb modern cars with electronic systems, and all three such vehicles together would use half the gasoline consumed by the Caddy, and carry their occupants in at least equal comfort.

When a machine such as pstarr's combo bandsaw and cutoff saw above performs a relatively simple task, it needs no electronics. But even a simple electric tool can benefit from an electric motor regulated by electronics - which will save power and offer a wider range of both RPM's and torque. But old-style metalworking lathes and milling machines, with the highly developed skills needed by the operators, have been eclipsed by the modern digital equivalents, so-called "CNC" machines. These "Computer Numerically Controlled" machines are cheaper, more accurate, and much easier to use - and can precisely and automatically repeat their tasks once programmed by the operator.

IMHO, we will not ever "regress" to a more primitive version of the world from an earlier age. You may have a lot less things in your life, but those things will all be digital - we cannot afford to produce the old stuff. Those older mechanical sewing machines for example, were produced on a generation of machine tools controlled by punched paper (or mylar) tapes, that no longer exist. The newer machines use fewer raw materials and cost less.

YES you won't have as much "stuff". But that is because food will cost more. Instead of the present 6.5% of the average American income, it may cost you 65% of your income to eat, when cheap agricultural fuels are just memories.

I DO appreciate older tech when appropriate. The wife and I bought a Maytag washer soon after we got married. It was a classic, a vintage 1966 A806S "Suds Saver" model that had been in the appliance store inventory for over a decade - we got it for half price. It is identical to the unit in this YouTube video, save that ours is white not turquoise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqWtdVVJXm4 .

We have carried this unit with us whenever we moved in the 40+ years since. Everywhere we go, I install a new plastic laundry sink next to it, and we save hot soapy water for the next load using that sink, sometimes reusing the water twice. Today we have given up our swimming pool because of the drought, but our Maytag washer allows us to save enough water to keep our small front lawn. I have replaced the hoses and twice replaced a plastic "bypass valve" that tends to get stuck when hard water deposits foul it - which happens because we also had to quit using our water softener, again due to the drought. Even with hard water, the bypass valve lasts about 10 years - and I used the Internet to diagnose the problem and order the replacement part.

A microelectronics fab line such as I described above can be programmed to produce a wide variety of silicon chips on the same machines. The chip designs are all digital files, the "electron beam lithography" used to infuse the devices into each layer of silicon is just a pattern swept by an electron beam in a vacuum - we are two decades past the last generation of optical lithography, when photographic etched slides were used to etch devices into silicon.

Microelectronics and digital devices are too useful to give up - when the alternative is an older mechanical device which costs more, doesn't last as long, and is harder to keep running.

[Outcast_Searcher]

We made tractors, sewing machines, and other machines that were designed well and built with
the quality of materials to last the owners lifetime and that of their children. We stopped doing
that in the 1960's for the most part. My skills in embedded systems design put electronic guts into
things for decades that provide tons of features in a a machine slated for 10 years of service max.

We not only forgot how to do this sort of machinery, we dismantled the infrastructure we had in place to do so.

Accumulating such vintage machines is IMHO far better than investing in the juked stock market, or hoarding bullets or survival rations, or freeze dried foodstuffs. A well stocked pantry is vital, but having something of lasting value to use or barter is the good stuff.

I respectfully think you are looking at this far too romantically, but I notice I don't see any actual facts or links to back you up.

Consider something most of us who lived in the 60's or before can relate to: cars.

How many people would want to return to the old world "romance" of cars that only lasted well under 100,000 miles of (reliable) service? To carbs, so the car had trouble starting in cold weather? To pre-platinum plugs so cars needed to be tuned every year (or two at most) to run reliably?

Nope. I'll take a car which costs less than double what a similar car cost 35 years ago, but aside from oil and fluids and belt changes and tires now and then, I can just drive for 12 years or 100,000 miles and have a reliable car that feels more or less new on the inside.

And the old school way of making things very big and very heavy was also very wasteful of resources, including energy.

This idea that society will collapse so we can't make microchips, but we can make and maintain '57 Chevy equivalents is about as silly as the idea that (each and every year) THIS year is the year that society will have a major economic collapse we'll never recover from.

[ennui2]

If you expand the time-horizon long enough, yes, being a McGuyver type would be advisable. However, right now if you do things in a more manual-labor way you're being very inefficient with your time. As a single parent, I need as many time-saving devices as I can get. I don't have time to darn socks or knit sweaters. If we do wind up back in a world made by hand then we'll have a lot more unemployed people that will have plenty of time on their hands to service the household economy, but right now, households are largely atomic like mine and time really is a premium.

[dolanbaker]

Making new stuff that was durable as the old stuff is the way to go, plus making it serviceable with common components that remain the same through several models and design changes.

Examples? Examples that don't cost an arm and leg? Sounds like a good plan, but I don't see that happening with typical consumer goods. Rolex, maybe?

Looking at the examples of older durable goods in the first post, just how expensive were they for the original buyers?
The precision engineering didn’t come cheap back then, these days there is an expectation that stuff is cheap enough to do the job for a few years and then is junked. With some products, durability (in the form of better bearings, for example) can only have a small affect on the final factory price. Or cheap shoes could be made to last much longer by simply filling the voids in the heel with some filler that costs less than the labelling!

In other products, the upgrade of components could double the cost of the finished unit.

Consumers have been conditioned into wanting the latest and greatest!

With the "arms race" of product development currently running white hot, there's little appetite for long lived products and the manufacturers know this.

[ennui2]

A lot of the obsolescence you see is genuine obsolescence. What value is an old iPhone that will work for 200 years but only supports 2G?

An old rotary POTS land-line phone from 100 years ago still works today because POTS hasn't changed. But most things do, as we become more and more borgified (internet of things).

[Shaved Monkey]

Mum used this pedal powered machine even when dad bought her an electric one.
Its still at dads house I might inherit it if my sister doesnt want it.
Ive got the base of one I found as a table with the marble off cut from my sink, when they did my kitchen, as a top .

[vtsnowedin]

I like my fuel injected computer controlled pickup that starts at forty below zero , goes 5000 miles between oil changes and will last me 250,000 miles if I don't wreck it. If the gas goes away I'll walk or ride a bicycle.
I prefer a good razor sharp butchers knife to a Cuisinart because it is more versatile and easier to clean. I love my chain saw but know how to use a axe and crosscut saw if needed.
I have a 42 HP diesel tractor with loader and tillage tools to grow all my own food if needed but spent $250 at the market the other day.
My plan is to use the best thing available but know how to get by if the high tech stuff stops working or becomes unavailable.

[Hawkcreek]

I like my fuel injected computer controlled pickup that starts at forty below zero , goes 5000 miles between oil changes and will last me 250,000 miles if I don't wreck it. If the gas goes away I'll walk or ride a bicycle.
I prefer a good razor sharp butchers knife to a Cuisinart because it is more versatile and easier to clean. I love my chain saw but know how to use a axe and crosscut saw if needed.
I have a 42 HP diesel tractor with loader and tillage tools to grow all my own food if needed but spent $250 at the market the other day.
My plan is to use the best thing available but know how to get by if the high tech stuff stops working or becomes unavailable.

I worked for years on the Alaskan North Slope, and the only way we could get any of our trucks to start reliably at 40 to 50 below was to add battery heaters, block heaters, and oil pan heaters. And remember to keep them plugged into the bull rail. But these were diesel rigs. Probably a good bit easier with gas.
I agree with you though, the new stuff is much improved.

[Loki]

Anyone else into this old stuff that is actually still quite useful?

Edit: I also admit that I think the vintage stuff looks more 'classic'; much more pleasing, aesthetically, IMO.

I've been descending down the rabbit hole of hand tool woodworking. I've accumulated a decent arsenal of "vintage" hand tools. Oldest one is a wooden rabbet plane from the 1860s or 1870s, but most of my saws and planes were made from the 1890s-1920s. I'm continually amazed how well they still work, plus they're beautiful to look at.

I've been looking at the old treadle sewing machines. Pretty neat. A bunch on the local Craigslist for $50-$125. I can't sew but I'd like to learn the basics. Would much rather spend $100 on an antique than $100 on a cheap plastic item meant to be thrown away after a few years.

I don't think we'll be descending into Kunstler's "world made by hand" in our lifetime, so I'm not sure how "useful" learning how to use and maintain vintage tools is. But it can be pleasing.

[Pennzoil bill]

Good day, I'm a mechanic and I have (in all practical sense) a complete set of hand tools to take apart and rebuild any vehicle and resourceful enough to include pipes as torque extenders but give me a battery or pneumatic impact driver any day to break lug nuts. My point, take advantage of the situation and remember that a small computer can upgrade and improve efficiency on older and reliable tech.

[dolanbaker]

A lot of the obsolescence you see is genuine obsolescence. What value is an old iPhone that will work for 200 years but only supports 2G?

An old rotary POTS land-line phone from 100 years ago still works today because POTS hasn't changed. But most things do, as we become more and more borgified (internet of things).

That's very true, technology is currently evolving so rapidly that most tech products are completely obsolete before their "shelf life" expires. The real problems arise when critical infrastructure is running on tech that was current when constructed, but now is completely obsolete and reliant on the service engineers playing "lucky dip" on ebay and junk sales to keep mission critical control systems operational. I've heard stories about utilities having to reverse engineer control systems and design plug-in replacements using modern tech.