Steam engines.
The vast majority of our power comes from making something really hot and boiling water. Coal plant? Oil plant? Gas plant? Nuclear fission plant? Geothermal plant? The grand holy grail of energy production that would be a nuclear fusion plant? All steam engines.
Yes, unbeknownst to everyone, this is what a steampunk society realistically looks like.
After first contact
A: These are our mini neutron star fusion reactors. The most advanced technology to have ever existed. We basically take a chunk of neutron star matter and divide it into two. We neutralize the negative effect and extreme gravity with our space-time bending gravity manipulation technology. We let the two mini neutro spheres accelerate and collide. This generates enough energy to power atleast 3 planets for 1000 cycles. Not onl–
H: Wait a minute. I have a question.
A: Please feel free to ask any questions.
H: How do you convert the raw energy generated into a usable form at that scale?
A: We use utlra high intensity lasers for energy transfer to plane–
H: No. That’s not what I’m asking. How do you convert the raw energy at reactor into a usable form?
A: …
H: …
A: We boil water wi–
H: Motherf-- enrages and loses sanity
Stolen from reddit.
We made steampunk a reality by developing the technology to transfer steam power efficiently over long distances through metal wires.
Radio. I still listen to radio over the airwaves, and received by an antenna, as it has been done since 1920.
Bicycles are not much different since around 1900.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned jack plugs yet. Basically unchanged since 1877 when it was invented for phone switchboards, roughly as old as safety pins or modern hairpins (give or take a few decades)
That can’t be the actual name of those, is it?
I’ve always kinda wondered, and generally call them TRS or something (I’m audio engineering background, American, millennial), so looked it up:
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio) under the “other terms” section:
The 1902 International Library of Technology simply uses jack for the female and plug for the male connector.[3] The 1989 Sound Reinforcement Handbook uses phone jack for the female and phone plug for the male connector.[4] Robert McLeish, who worked at the BBC, uses jack or jack socket for the female and jack plug for the male connector in his 2005 book Radio Production.[5] The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, as of 2007, says the more fixed electrical connector is the jack, while the less fixed connector is the plug, without regard to the gender of the connector contacts.[6] The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1975 also made a standard that was withdrawn in 1997.[7]
The intended application for a phone connector has also resulted in names such as audio jack, headphone jack, stereo plug, microphone jack, aux input, etc. Among audio engineers, the connector may often simply be called a quarter-inch to distinguish it from XLR, another frequently used audio connector. These naming variations are also used for the 3.5 mm connectors, which have been called mini-phone, mini-stereo, mini jack, etc.
RCA connectors are differently shaped, but confusingly are similarly named as phono plugs and phono jacks (or in the UK, phono sockets). 3.5 mm connectors are sometimes—counter to the connector manufacturers’ nomenclature[8]—referred to as mini phonos.[9]
Confusion also arises because phone jack and phone plug may sometimes refer to the RJ11 and various older telephone sockets and plugs that connect wired telephones to wall outlets.
Yeah, these days I just call them 3.5mm audio plug, or quarter inch audio plug.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
The IRS still use COBOL.
So does pretty much the whole banking and credit industry. When you get money out of an ATM there’s usually some COBOL code involved.
True, we stack old technologies on top of older technologies, and somewhere at the bottom, there is z/OS with COBOL running. A young person right now learning COBOL has a secure future with big paychecks.
Depends on your tolerance for code spelunking. Back in the 90s I was encouraged to do Y2K prep because I had some COBOL experience, but I really hated pawing through old code. To be fair, COBOL was designed to be self documenting and English-like. But I’m glad I got into web dev instead back then. It was right at the dawn of “dynamic HTML” when web pages started actually doing things. Very cool time. Right now I’d be more inclined to go into helping companies recover from failed AI projects.
That’s not even a government thing. It’s a finance/banking thing, as most major banks are still using mainframes and legacy COBOL code for most of their business logic.
Reminds me I have to catalogue 2 Tandem Non-stop! Systems at work… I don’t need to meddle with the cobol code atop but still, this was quite a surprise to stumble upon.
Fax, still in official use in Germany.
It’s considered a secure method of document transfer over email, despite email being able to be secured and fax can be hacked with like a length of wire and a knife. Fucking irks me.
Because how many attackers are actually interested in attacking fax? Like… have you ever heard of hackers hacking physical mail? It’s to old for people to care, and “people not caring” is implicitely secure by ignorance.
Yeah for sure, but security through obscurity only works until it’s actually important or exploitable for monetary gain. I wouldn’t even mind that, but e-mail can do so much better and it’s treated like a giant security risk.
Because it doesn’t have encryption by default, and encryption is not a setting in many public providers + if security works, then only within a single provider, not between them.
I mean, if all the good secret information is going over fax and everyone knows it, sure, people will hack it. Blackhats are in it for the money, not to work with the newest technology. Most of what they do is already mind-numbing grinding.
The main security there is just the security of whatever phone line it’s going over. And that’s assuming you never dial a wrong number…
Also there is fax spam. I get all these random advertisements faxed to me for companies for window replacement services that don’t actually exist, and sometimes fortune tellers. I have no idea why.
How does one hack fax in that fashion?
Fax operates as data over phone line, similar to dialup. If you can get a wiretap on a phone line, you essentially can get everything that passes over it. Technically you could encrypt it, but it’s usually not required you do legally.
Very common in the US medical field as well
It will never go away in health care and government departments in Canada.
Fax is too simple to completely die.
Pagers.
Still in use by hospitals and emergency services
Shit works
Pager and satellite phone. Mostly a niche usecase for health workers and remote location settlement respectively.
Steam turbines.
Like those damn nuclear reactors!
I mean, that’s 20th century, or (IIRC) just before depending on the level of tech maturity you require. The 19th century ran on pistons.
Steam engines? Plenty of those ran the Industrial Revolution factories.
You said turbines specifically. Parsons invented those around the turn of the 20th century.
Before that, it was the chugga-chugga kind of steam engine. They’re a lot simpler to design and machine, and don’t require the really high RPMs to operate, but then again can break in many different ways a turbine can’t.
It surprises me how little stick-built houses have changed in the last 50 years or so, at least in the USA.
Pagers
Hospitals use pagers because the frequency band they run on is better at penetrating walls. Shorter waves carry more data, but are easily blocked by walls. Pagers don’t need a lot of data, so they use really long waves.
And hospitals are built like bunkers, to avoid the potential need to evacuate patients during an emergency. Things like fire breaks between individual rooms, earthquake protections, being strong enough to stand up during a hurricane, etc… The goal is to be able to shelter in place instead of evacuating, because a mass evacuation of bedridden patients who all need monitoring equipment would be a logistical nightmare.
But this also means hospitals are really good at blocking wireless signals, because the walls are all super thick and sturdy. So they use pagers, which use long waves and can reliably penetrate the bunker-like walls. You don’t want a doctor to miss an emergency call because they were sitting in the basement; Hospitals need a wireless connection that reliably works every time. And pagers just happen to fit that specific niche.
Seems like a good level of digital freedom actually. Be connected, but only just enough.
Meshtastic > Pagers
Didn’t think I’d ever see THAT again. Damn lol
Have you used one before? If so, how did it go? What are the pros and cons?
That’s a good one. Why would companies give employees special purpose gizmos that just tell them to use the phone in their pocket to call the office.
General Aviation is still using magnetos. The typical GA airplane is hilariously primitive.
NOOO I NEED LEADED FUEL CAUSE MY LYCOMING IS FROM THE 60s 😭😭
If you buy a brand new Skyhawk here in the space year 2025, it will come with a newly made Lycoming IO-360 that requires 100LL. I think they’re still working on eliminating leaded avgas, I think because the Trump regime hasn’t noticed it yet.
Yeah, it’s so hilarious to want an engine that will continue to run after a complete electrical system failure at 10000ft.
Fuck 100LL though.
The Rotax engines use digital CDI ignition that is independent if the airframe electrical system, and from each other. I’ve never seen one fail.
Toilet paper
Bidet gang
rise upsit down!I’m on vacation right now and our AirBnB came with a bidet. I am so stoked about it because once I got used to it at home, I can’t go back.
I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite bidet on the Citadel.
70% of humans dont use toilet paper, so it might be a new tech instead of an old one.
A lot of those don’t use water toilets either
Fax machines will never die no matter how they are mocked. It simply is the easiest way to send documents with private information and it’s fast. At least we have e-faxing now to receive documents.
Please don’t tell me you buy that “they can’t be hacked”. It’s pretty much on the same tier as email.
Not so much they can’t be hacked, but that nobody seems to bother to.
Well, I don’t really love that as a security philosophy. If it’s somehow not going on now it will be soon.
I’ve never heard of it happening in my 20 years of faxing if that helps at all.
The sewing machine. Like we got 3d printers than can give me whatever I want in 20 hrs but I still got to fight with a sewing machine to stitch an outfit. Like why no polyester clothes printer?
For one, polyester fabric and clothes are just terrible
Two, technically you can 3d print a chainmail shirt, but it’d suck to wear normally
We have knitting machines, and automated looms (weaving machines,) we even have sergers for fancy sewing. Its just plain easier to make the finished product as a custom job since humans aren’t uniform in size, and it’s way easier to weave a rectangular piece of cloth than any other shape.
An Ikarus 256 was used as a train replacement bus in normal traffic in Hungary yesterday
For the uninitiated, Ikarus was a Hungarian bus factory that produced buses to the Eastern block, some of those are probably still running somewhere in Mongolia. The Ikarus 256 was produced between 1974-2002, so in the best case that thing was at least 23 years old.
But even better, someone got to travel on an Ikarus 55 on the same day (1954-1974), which used to be great in their time, but definitely weren’t made for 36C summers, the lack of air conditioning combined with the sunshine roof that used to increase the feel of comfort in 1958 created a living hell for the passengers packed into that rolling museum with barely openable windows.
Ah, so it’s the Hungarian version of the USPS Grumman LLV (Long Life Vehicle).
The United States Postal Service needed a vendor to produce mail trucks. They ended up signing a contract with an aerospace manufacturer named Grumman. The manufacturer retooled one of their plane factories, and started producing what they called the LLV. The company sold each truck extremely cheaply, but had an exclusive maintenance agreement to service the vehicles. Their goal was to make a profit on the service instead.
But Grumman made the vehicles too well. The LLVs were basically a thin airplane aluminum skin bolted to a pre-fabbed General Motors wheel frame, and the engines were rock solid. They skipped basically all of the modern design conveniences like AC/heating or a radio. It was basically a glorified go kart with a windshield that could do ~55MPH. It basically bankrupted Grumman, because the LLVs never needed maintenance. They spent a ton of money to retool their factory and sold a ton of LLVs basically at materials cost, then never recouped their expenses. The LLVs were produced all the way back in the 80’s and early 90’s, and the USPS is still actively trying to phase them out in favor of newer EVs. Grumman folded in the mid 90’s, after a decade of continuous losses from the LLVs.
Basically any American old enough to vote will know what a Grumman LLV looks like, even if they don’t know what it’s called:
I love the payload capacity on these. Exact in the way you expect aircraft to be.
In Germany they’d charge extra for riding historic vehicles
