Things that are "More Vintage" than you realised....

[Edward]

Every so often, I chance across something that I'd assumed was a relatively new item, which turns out to be much more 'vintage' than I'd realised. (Let's say 'relatively new' means within my lifetime - September 1974 onwards - or, perhaps better, within my living memory - which is from around March 1976.) The latest example? Velcro. Invented first around 1941, internationally patented by the mid fifties, and commercially available by 1957/58. I'd assumed that was 70s at least.

Other examples?

 

[Fading Fast]

My mom bought a hand-held hairdryer in the early '70s and I thought that's when they were invented. They all of a sudden seemed to pop up everywhere and I had (as a kid) never seen one before - however, they were patented in 1911 (and, I'm sure, some versions were probably around earlier).

In retrospect, it was probably the "loosening" up of women's hairstyles form the late '60s that led to a resurgences in hand-held hair dryers in the early '70s which gave me a false impression.

I held onto this misconception for years until - as an adult - my interest in "old things" led me to stumble across something similar to this early '20s model:

 

[LizzieMaine]

The paint roller. Invented in 1942, but it always felt like a sixties thing to me.

Stainless-steel sinks -- they scream OMG 1970 to me, but they were available in the 1930s.

Solid-state electronics -- if you think about it, what's a crystal set?

 

[Doctor Strange]

People think of miniaturization as a design trend of the 60s and 70s, but the tiny Minox "spy camera" was invented in the 30s in Latvia!



This is a model III-s from 1956. The design was improved and perfected in Germany in the 50s... In time to make these babies hot sellers during the 60s movie/TV spy boom.

 

[tonyb]

The paint roller. Invented in 1942, but it always felt like a sixties thing to me.

Stainless-steel sinks -- they scream OMG 1970 to me, but they were available in the 1930s.

Solid-state electronics -- if you think about it, what's a crystal set?

Gotta wonder how many household kitchen fixtures and appliances are downsized versions of what had been used in commercial applications long before.

And then there are all those specialized gadgets that eventually make their way into mass-market retail space and domestic kitchen drawers. You can bet that oyster knives and shrimp de-veiners were in use by people who shucked oysters by the thousands and prepared shrimp in commercial kitchens long before the average reader of Bon Appetit had ever heard of the things.

 

[Edward]

Indeed - not to mention how many things were first used by the military before making their way into civilian use.

 

[GHT]

Indeed - not to mention how many things were first used by the military before making their way into civilian use.

The actress Hedy Lamarr came up with the physics of a concept she called frequency hopping: a way of jumping around on radio frequencies in order to avoid a third party jamming your signal. Lamarr invented it in the 1940s for use as a secret wartime communication system that could keep the enemy from interfering with a ship's torpedoes. She got a patent for it in August 1942, and then donated it to the U.S. military to help fight the Nazis.

Unsure of what to do with it they locked it away and so they didn't use it during the war. It was after the Second World War that it emerged as a way of secretly communicating on all the gadgets that we use today. Lamarr's invention is the basis for remote technology in use today, everything from unlocking your car to bluetooth, wifi and GPS. Hedy's problem was her beauty, she lived in an era when beauty and brains didn't exist. Nobody as beautiful as Hedy could possibly have such an understanding of physics.

This website gives a list of Victorian inventions some of which are quite surprising. Did you know that rubber tyres have been around since 1845? Or that X-ray machines were first used in 1895? It's amazing just how old some inventions are.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Designated Hitter Rule. Connie Mack proposed it in 1906, and the National League considered trying it out in Spring Training in 1929, but more traditionalist heads prevailed for another forty years before it finally got serious consideration. I still don't like it though. Even if it was good I wouldn't like it.

 

[David Conwill]

A couple things spring to mind. The same type of hybrid drive as used on cars today like the Toyota Prius was available on the 1912 Rambler Cross Country (it's the battery technology that has improved over the past century).

I also am fascinated that the Army had turbocharged fighter planes in the 1920s...

'

And on cars, a dry lakes racer named Duke Hallock (who worked for Garrett AiResearch from the '30s to the '80s) was experimenting with turbos as early as 1938.

 

[GHT]

The first fire extinguisher was patented in 1722.
Alessandro Volta invents the battery in 1799 and from his name we get the unit we call volts.
The battery has been around for well over two hundred years, much longer than the internal combustion engine, and now we seem to be reverting back to Volta's invention.