Cool things of times gone by.

[Bo_9]

My dad passed away last July (lung cancer. All you smokers out there stop it because it's stupid. Rant over) and as I (slowly) go through the 75 years of stuff collected by a lifelong mechanic I find a lot of neat things. Some I haven't seen since I was a kid, some I've never seen, and some I cannot identify. I figure I'll put the neat/odd stuff in here, feel free to add any neat old things you find as well.

First up is this guide first published the year he was born. This copy appears to have been printed when he was 11.
I had never seen this until we found it on a shelf.







It's printed like a bible, thin pages with gold on the edges. And if you cannot grasp a fundamental understanding of how the systems in a car work from reading this you never will.

[DerGolgo]

I love old "this is how a car works stuff".
These days, half of any such volume is "and this is where the computer plugs in".
I'm amazed at all the stuff people figured out to do without a computer.

I don't wanna imagine what it'd be like to lose my father. Mine is 73, smoker for about 50 years.

[guitargeek]

That looks like a really good read!

[xtian]

fantastic find. I have an equivalent "big book of the african wildlife and hunts" and a couple of dictionaries from mine, nothing this interesting. he used to work for a tobacco company. ah.

[Sisyphus]

I'll be left w/ a bunch of engineering classics, no doubt. Brenneman, Kepler, fairman and Cutshall, etc.

[guitargeek]

My grampa had everything ever written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Louis L'Amour, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, etc.
No engineering texts, though he was one, but my imagination was certainly shaped by those pulp novels!

[urbanscum]

Edgar Rice Burroughs was the man! I was (and still am) into his sci fi stuff, Martian series, Venus series.

As a 'yuff' there was a second hand bookshop around the corner from where I live that used to sell loads of 60's and 70's sci fi. For 50p. That's not very much. You cannot beat the smell of old books and I always liked the covers. Glorious ideals of a future that never happened.

Still got them in the loft and drag a few out now and again when I get nostalgic.

[guitargeek]

Since I got a Kindle, I've been reading a lot more science fiction. I find it stimulating.

[urbanscum]

I've managed to find most of the old books online and stuck them on the kindle (which I think is great).

But I still like to handle old books and all.

[Jaeger]

Mrs. Jaeger has a Kindle. While I acknowledge it's a nice bit of kit and is much more efficient than hauling around books... dammit, I like paper.

We were hauling around far too many books for a long time. When we moved into this new house we deliberately ditched a lot of the old paperbacks we'd been lugging around for years because they were just more shit in the way -- and fer chrissakes, I live within walking distance[/] to my local county library! Why the fuck do I need to keep my ugly, dog-eared copies of the LOTR trilogy when I can go borrow it whenever I want?

We still have a shitload of books, but they're all either nice hardbacks or hard-to-find books. We kept a few "special' ones, of course, but... hell, with as much time as I spend reading online shit, I can barely stand to read anything once I'm done with work. It's a shameful admission, but it's true.

--Jaeger

[Bo_9]

Cool very vintage Volt/Amp meter.
I can't find any dates or info on the company. Cool that is was made in KC.
Have not hooked it up to anything to see if it works yet. Or worked on cleaning it up for that matter.



I'm Guessing it's a mid to late 50's meter.

[Zim]

Eh, that's no Fluke. But really, that's not a Fluke!

Battery need testing? Let me eschew a digital readout for some lovely analog needling with that monstrosity. The thing almost needs it's own cart. I love it! Please tell me it wrapped in real leather.

On the Kindle... I do like paper. My kids came home with arm-fulls of Scholastic books. I opened them up, shoved my nose into the crease between pages, and inhaled new book smell. Glorious outgassing.

However, with the Kindle, I can hold an arm-full of my own books books in one hand, occasionally (right!) shove my nose into a glass filled with Scotch, and click page after page without any more to pick up than a 19 x 12 mm device. Because Scholastic books strewn over carpeting = ass over teakettle.

Plus, being married to a voracious speed-reading wife, e-books are much, much less expensive.

There are limitations, of course. A Kindle could never replicate my The Complete Calvin and Hobbes hardcover box set.

[beck]

I'm a huge fan of my kindle. Can you listen to pandora, browse UTMC, and watch netflix on your book? nope. didnt think so.

i do still really like paper books though, and while i only have a couple calvin and hobbes albums, i do however have every farside volume in print :

[Bo_9]

This one stumped everyone until I looked up the number on the bottom.

Spoiler

Show

In it's proper environment.

[beck]

Didn't stump me! My dad's hobby was small engine repair when i was growing up, i am well acquainted with a wibble-wobble (technical name). mower blades get mighty upset when you dont take the same amount off both sides. i still use one every summer.

[Bo_9]

Yeah I was surprised that nobody around here had used one.

[Bo_9]

Cool old indicator-

[Bo_9]

The pre-erector set. I haven't found a date on it yet but believe it was actually my dad's as a kid in the 50's.
<sledit>Upon a short Google it sounds like they were a short lived contemporary of Erector, only produced for six years.</sledit>





All the makings for a carousel with the rods bent so the horses go up and down.


Little motor still works!

[2XSL]

i dont think todays toys teach as good

[Zim]

i dont think todays toys teach as good

Your write their, 2XSL.

That set reminds me of the Riviton set I got one Christmas. 'Cept the CPSC recalled the toy. I had it for less than a week, if I remember correctly. Maybe even just a couple of days.

Is that a mixer drum that I see in the "The Constructioneer" set?

[MoraleHazard]

"Your write their, 2XSL." Subtle troll?

My grandfather was a tool and die maker. He made some really, really awesome things. Candlesticks, derringers (from scratch), a zip gun, knives, etc. He left behind a drill press, a metal lathe (from the 1930s) and some very cool books.

My father was in the computer business since there was a computer business and has some cool very old school computer stuff at home. He's 75 this past March and not in the best of health. He still loves computer games though, working his way through the Mass Effect series. When he was recovering from his last heart attack, he was doing physical therapy in a nursing home. He was playing EVE Online (an MMO) at the time and the nurses were all agog when this old man pulled out a gaming laptop, put on the headphones and started up an MMO.

Hug them while you still can, especially if they're great fathers.

[Jaeger]

Hug them while you still can, especially if they're great fathers.

True dat, man.

--Jaeger

[guitargeek]

Indeed.

[Bo_9]

Yep, next week will be one year without my Dad.

[Bo_9]

Is that a mixer drum that I see in the "The Constructioneer" set?

Yes, yes it is. I found some model picture scans online if they have the mixer in there I'll get the kids to build it and post up pics.

In a fit of awesomeness SidVicious (my BIL) gave his old Legos from the 80's for my son to work with. I had told him that the old sets came with pictures but no "instructions" and now he finally believes me. Used to be if you wanted to make something you figured it out, now there's a step by step.

[Bo_9]

Found this nugget going through tubs of random tools.





It even still works! Apart from rust on the bits it's nearly perfect.

[DerGolgo]

My father has been sorting through his own and his parents' accumulation of many decades. What he has no use for and figures he can't get rid off on ebay, he is distributing among my sisters and I. Today, I scored some knick-knaks, including the following:





It doesn't fit my record player, but it must have been the bee's knees when it was new, look at what my grandpa paid for it in 1978:

DM 56.- in 1978 is equal to about $98.- in today's money, by purchase power. Yes, I actually worked it out with the historic exchange rate, I'm a geek like that.
If it had been made in Taiwan, I don't think I would have bothered to keep it. But they vinyl freaks probably recognize the brand and already know what's in the next image:


I also got to keep one of my father's several copies of the newspaper supplement of 1947 that, among other things, held my great-grandfather's obituary. My pa never met him, great-grandpa died four weeks before my pa and his own parents got to Scotland, after bolting from post-war Germany.
Tell me if that one big sentence at the beginning isn't one of the most flabberghastingly British things you've ever read:

[guitargeek]

Would this be the fellow?
I do see a resemblance, he's got your gigantic mellon.


James Beveridge circa 1896

[DerGolgo]

Cool, thanks!
I just looked it up, it's the wrong James Beveridge, I think. Clubmaker may well be an aphorism for some other ...professions..., but archaeologist, rector or antiquarian are not these, I don't think. Looking for a photo online hadn't even occurred to me, thanks for the idea!
As for resemblance ... Scotland has a very reasonable population size, that gentlemen may well be a relative, more or less distant.

[motorpsycho67]

I've been reading a lot more science fiction. I find it stimulating.

Early sci-fi is great....