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Old 14th Jul 2019, 7:18 am   #21
Argus25
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

On the time machine thing, I was recently given this very cool T shirt that was designed by my daughter.
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Old 15th Jul 2019, 8:42 am   #22
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

I was think more in terms of this equipment being new and un-molested rather than its price

Penciled in is a date of 18/10/47 so this stuff really was pretty fresh then.

I think rather than comparing it to the price of beer it's more helpfull to compare it to the cost of new domestic radios etc.

A Cossor 469 which is a simple 4 valve all dry portable ( and possibly the ugliest set ever made by a major manufacturer) was release in October 1947 at a cost of £13-15s-0d + Purchase Tax which I think was still at 33 1/3%

Still as already said not pocket money prices but for the serious amatuer a real bonanza

To be fair in the Mid 60's when I started my interest, when I bopped an AC126 from my Philips Electronic Engineer ISTR a replacement was about 15/- so 6 weeks pocket money
There was a friendly Radio and TV repair shop at the top of Tregenna Hill St Ives, It was on my way between School and the Bus station. The names have long since faded from my memory but I got a lot of my parts there and occasionally I would be gifted a Radio or TV chassis to play with which I would drag home on the bus

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Old 15th Jul 2019, 9:28 am   #23
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

I hope this is not too tangential - but the flyer in the OP is full of skilfully and what I would guess to be expensively executed art - drawings of the things for sale, which must have been undertaken just for the ad. It reminds me that my books as a kid were full of drawings, and a reproduced photo ('plate'!) was a bit of a treat - and I am not that old, under 50. Was there something about the binary 'line / not-line' nature of that kind of drawing which lent itself more cheaply to the printing process, as opposed to a greyscale photograph? I do remember photos used to freak out a photocopier, only 30 years ago.
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Old 21st Jul 2019, 6:15 pm   #24
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

That was one of the things I do recall with great fondness - the friendliness of a Bert or Reg in the local surplus shop or place stacked with boxes. Usually rumpled, in brown shop coat and smoking they would say after looking at your circuit 'well OK you need a capacitor there but it's not critical - try a 0.5uf 150 volt electrolytic' - even once or twice - 'look this should do the trick - take it and see - drop off the payment next time you are in town'. All mostly gone now but a great memory for a then 14 year old. Nowadays they are efficient and knowledgeable but . . .
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Old 21st Jul 2019, 7:47 pm   #25
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

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Originally Posted by mark_in_manc View Post
I hope this is not too tangential - but the flyer in the OP is full of skilfully and what I would guess to be expensively executed art - drawings of the things for sale, which must have been undertaken just for the ad. It reminds me that my books as a kid were full of drawings, and a reproduced photo ('plate'!) was a bit of a treat - and I am not that old, under 50. Was there something about the binary 'line / not-line' nature of that kind of drawing which lent itself more cheaply to the printing process, as opposed to a greyscale photograph? I do remember photos used to freak out a photocopier, only 30 years ago.
A simple printing press would have only printed full black or nothing, so greyscale photographs would have been rasterised. That would surely add to the cost.
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Old 22nd Jul 2019, 11:19 am   #26
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

Many of us will remember photographs in books were often printed on high quality paper in a section between the ordinary pages that was inserted when the book was bound.

Reproducing a photograph made up of half-tone dots would often end up as a muddy indistinct image when printed on cheaper paper due to the absorbancy of the paper which would cause the ink dot to spread. Newspapers used a very coarse screen for their photographs. The detail was held if the image was fairly large on the page but for small images of complicated items it would be lost.

Thus, line drawings conveyed more information and were far more pleasing and attractive to the eye - important in the case of advertisements - due to the contrast between the solid ink areas and the paper.

There were ways and means of controlling the 'dot gain' in the pre-press stages to get acceptable reproduction on low grade stock and these adjustments depended on the charactaristics of the particular press, the image content and the paper used amongst other factors.

However, due to the vagaries above, for advertising artwork the same ad might be placed in several different magazines of variable printed quality and the one way of ensuring the most consistent reproduction results was to use line drawings.

Also, making a half-tone from a photographic print was a skilled process and this added to cost. The same ad might be reproduced at different sizes which would necessitate half-tones being made to suit each size. Magazines would also specify different screens which further complicated the issue. Line drawings were easily copied on the average studio camera and could be enlarged and reduced in size with ease. (The original drawing would be quite large.) In the long run it was cheaper to employ an illustrator to produce a line drawing, especially if the product was going to be on sale for a long period. Most ad agencies and art studios had in-house illustrators and retouchers.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was a process called Schafline that was regularly used on artwork for high profile advertising accounts. This was a proprietary process that applied a high contrast screen to photographic image which retained the photographic look but was much crisper than a regular half-tone screen. Typically you would see these images on ads for large retailers and upmarket brands back in those days - ads for Scotch whisky showing bottle and cut-glass tumblers and Schreiber furniture come to mind. It was a very expensive process and involved skilled retouching of the photograph before the Schafline screen process was applied but had the advantage of being easily copied on the studio 'repro' camera.

Sadly, as in so many industries, the high skills required for much of this work have long since disappeared.
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Old 24th Jul 2019, 10:29 am   #27
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

I think I'd probably go back to the 80's, when 'boatanchors' were being scrapped by amateurs. Even in the late 90's I found amazing things at the local tip they would sell me for a few quid - eg, a Quad mono block in a scrap metal bin, valves smashed when they threw it in. Regrettably sold to pay for an MOT. A lot of stuff needed rescuing at that time.
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 12:05 am   #28
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

In the late 1940s my mother worked for a large department store in Middlesbrough. She would make detailed drawings of things like furniture and items of clothing that were to be featured in newspaper adverts. I think this was because the finished artwork looked nicer than a photograph.

On the time machine subject, I would go back to the late 1970s and buy up Leak Stereo 20s and Varislope preamps.
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 8:12 am   #29
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

1968-70 would suffice for me, I still think from time to time of all the wondrous things that must have passed disregarded through just Fakenham's Thursday auctions when I couldn't be there because of the pesky business of having to go to school. I didn't fare too badly, of course. An Ekco A22, Philips 834A and Bush SAC25 (ACO44 output triode still in place) were mine for nineteen bob (£0.95) the lot and are still with me 50 years later, a four minute walk from where I bought them, though like me they've spent most of the intervening time in Lincolnshire and County Durham.

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Old 26th Jul 2019, 9:31 am   #30
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

OK, here's the time machine, what do you do? Correct the errors you made when you were young and foolish? Perhaps undo a few of those acts of unkindness that in retrospect you now regret? No, buy a few more junk radios and TV sets for a couple hundred pounds less than you can still get them for.

Forget the time machine, just do a bit of overtime at work. Then you can buy whatever you want without messing up your everyday finances. Its a chore, but easier than time travel.
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 10:58 am   #31
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

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Originally Posted by Studio263 View Post
Forget the time machine, just do a bit of overtime at work. Then you can buy whatever you want without messing up your everyday finances.
Just speaking for myself, I'm very happy to have retired, even forty hours a week surrendered to paid employment drove me half crazy and I'd not progressed far up the career ladder before I was wishing I could put in half the work for half the pay. So I'm not craving more old radios (though I did back then!), merely indulging the pleasing fancy of being able to meet and preserve more of the ones that got away, which almost certainly aren't around any more. Pleasing fancies are what time machines were made for...

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Old 26th Jul 2019, 12:40 pm   #32
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

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Forget the time machine, just do a bit of overtime at work. Then you can buy whatever you want without messing up your everyday finances. Its a chore, but easier than time travel.
For 25+ years I worked in places that expected overtime and didn't pay for it. Electronic Design, Network systems, IT and programming.

I did work in some other places with paid overtime.

Not once in my entire working life did you opt in or out of overtime. Either there was, and you had to, or there wasn't.

Also what is the point of enough overtime to earn for luxuries and then have no time with family or for hobbies?
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 2:23 pm   #33
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

Given a time machine, I'd feel there were higher priorities on it than me acquiring a few toys. There are great injustices in the past to right, wars to prevent, genocide to avoid. I couldn't waste it on that CRM-R6A I've always fancied

Besides that, the bl**dy daleks always show up 15 mins after you've 'landed'.

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Old 26th Jul 2019, 2:33 pm   #34
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

If I had a time-machine I wouldn't be going back and acquiring war-surplus junk; I'd be going back to the very-very-early-1980s and investing my summer-vacation-earnings in Microsoft shares rather than on a new car.

But alas, I bought the car - and wrote it off 9 months later!
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 2:50 pm   #35
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There are great injustices in the past to right, wars to prevent, genocide to avoid. I couldn't waste it on that CRM-R6A I've always fancied.
Ah, but you must remember that you can't change the past.

https://www.philosophersmag.com/essa...hange-the-past

So assassinating a young Hitler can't be done, because the whole world knows it didn't happen. Nobody but me, on the other hand, knows that there isn't a Marconi V2 in the attic that's been following me around these 50 years: so, provided I can persuade myself that there is or might be, and given, of course, a time machine, there's nothing to stop me nipping back and saving one from the skip.

EDIT: Except, darn it, I've just gone and told you lot...
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 3:52 pm   #36
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

So the two possible universes have now converged, and we're probably in the one without the V2 in your attic.

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Old 26th Jul 2019, 4:06 pm   #37
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

Whacking the disgruntled Austrian painter would have stopped other V2s in other attics, though.
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Old 26th Jul 2019, 4:47 pm   #38
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Studio263 View Post
Forget the time machine, just do a bit of overtime at work. Then you can buy whatever you want without messing up your everyday finances. Its a chore, but easier than time travel.
That's how I've avoided decorating most of my life. Now if that butterfly in the Amazon would just get a move on!
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Old 27th Jul 2019, 10:18 am   #39
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

Bear in mind when hearing some folk on the TV complaining about things that happened in the past, that had things been different they almost certainly would not be here to make such or similar comments!
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Old 27th Jul 2019, 10:45 am   #40
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Default Re: Oh for a time machine.

True, but that's surely something that has exercised the minds of philosophers for aeons- the fate of the individual versus the fate of the mass. It's nice to have an AR88 on a table here, but I would happily surrender it to the time machine if it meant that tens of millions of people hadn't been killed as a consequence of the events that lead to its presence here in the first place.
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