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I have to wonder if some of you are calling pocket calculators adding machines? Because to me, an adding machine is a typewriter type device where you turn a crank to add the numbers. Pocket calculors became affordable sometime around 72 or 74 and rapidly made them obsolete.
No, I think we know what is meant by adding machines. What an adding machine did, that a calculator didn't, is provide a written record of the numbers added. It made it easier later to verify a total's accuracy, or find out why there was an error. Many times the paper roll would be ripped off and stapled to something as a permanent record of the addition. Pocket calculators could never serve that function. That kept adding machines a part of business offices for decades after the advent of the calculator.
Being involved in emergency planning and management I'd like to state that anyone who gives up a land line phone is a fool. In many emergency incidents, especially those related to weather, cell towers are the first to go down, or get jammed. The jamming is so bad people in emergency management have a special code (GETS) that knocks civilian users off the cell so emergency communications between agencies can get through.
It looks like the examples are eliciting surprise answers for you.
Being involved in emergency planning and management I'd like to state that anyone who gives up a land line phone is a fool. In many emergency incidents, especially those related to weather, cell towers are the first to go down, or get jammed. The jamming is so bad people in emergency management have a special code (GETS) that knocks civilian users off the cell so emergency communications between agencies can get through.
Yes, but assuming that you can get a basic landline phone for $10 a month (most people probably pay more). Is it really worth paying $120 a year, just incase you need to make one emergency phone call, at a time your cellphone is not working? Personally I'll take the chance, and I don't think I'm a fool for it.
From my experience, telephone lines are not that reliable in extreme weather. In fact I seriously doubt that they anymore reliable then wireless. Wind and ice often causes tree branches to fall on the lines, which causes outages. Depending on how widespread the outages are, it could take more then a few days to get service restored. Also most current phones wont even work if there is a power outage. As long as its charged, your cellphone should have no problem making calls under those conditions.
I will give landlines one point in emergencies. Making a 911 call on a landline is a lot faster then making it on a cellphone and waiting to be connected to the right agency. Is that one benefit worth a $120 a year. I don't think so.
Record players - Stopped using them as a kid probably mid-1980s when I got a tape deck. Started using them really in the late 90s when I started to DJ. Now I still use vinyl in addition to MP3s and occasionally CDs.
Typewriters - I think I played on my mom's typewriter as a small child around the mid-1980s. After that we had computers.
Cassette tapes (audio) - Was still listening to the occasional old mix tape in my car up until about 2005.
Engines with carbeurators - Never really drove one.
VHS - Probably about 2004 or 2005.
Beepers / pagers - Had one in 1998 and that was it.
Dial-up modems - 2003 or 2004
Film cameras - 2008. Would like to start using my old one again though if I get back into photography.
CD - Still use them.
CRT displays (monitors and TVs) - Last TV was about 2007. Last computer monitor was around 2010.
Landline telephones - 2005. Use one at work still however.
AM radio - Still listen for news and weather along with sports radio.
Yes, but assuming that you can get a basic landline phone for $10 a month (most people probably pay more). Is it really worth paying $120 a year, just incase you need to make one emergency phone call, at a time your cellphone is not working? Personally I'll take the chance, and I don't think I'm a fool for it.
From my experience, telephone lines are not that reliable in extreme weather. In fact I seriously doubt that they anymore reliable then wireless. Wind and ice often causes tree branches to fall on the lines, which causes outages. Depending on how widespread the outages are, it could take more then a few days to get service restored. Also most current phones wont even work if there is a power outage. As long as its charged, your cellphone should have no problem making calls under those conditions.
I will give landlines one point in emergencies. Making a 911 call on a landline is a lot faster then making it on a cellphone and waiting to be connected to the right agency. Is that one benefit worth a $120 a year. I don't think so.
You may not think so and that's ok. I gave you my perspective as someone involved in emergency planning and management and who develops emergency plans as an unpaid consultant/advisor.
As far as reliability goes, is an ambulance response for a heart attack worth $120? We go through several severe weather events here every year (tropical storms, severe thunderstorms, this summer's derecho, ice storms, Snowmageddon a couple years ago) and while we lost electricity in each of those not once did the land line phones go out.
With those events the cell towers either went down or were so jammed they were useless (except for those of us who hold the previously mentioned GETS code). What did work were my landlines.
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