Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Yeah, that's the one

re: Yeah, that's the one
SDAI-Tech1 — (archived)

Mine lasted for about a year. The Khaki one was purchased shortly after the baby blue one started scrambling numbers. It was at least a cool tech breakdown. You could turn it on and the numbers would keep changing, like some phantom was making lightspeed calculations faster than the eye could see.

I really didn't mind the descriptions of the technology or the factory. I took the baby blue one apart after it failed and the display did seem to be the weak link as I looked at it. The process you describe of testing seems natural. I suspect tube radio and electronic manufacturers had a similar burn-in period for new product. If the tubes last for a short while, they should last long enough to make the product salable.

When LCD dispays came out which were impossible to read at night or in bright light, I thought it was a big step backwards in display technology. I would've rather seen more money shelled into reliable led technology. And as time bore out, they were subject to scrambling and gibberish as well.

The baby blue ones looked cool too and were a status symbol among the geek crowd for a short while. Doing calculations in the car at night or during lunch at noon would never be easier.

As a car aficionado the gages transmitting performance data about the vehicle. In the early eighties Whenever I read the various car magazines complain about digital dashboards as 'idiot lights', I always felt they didn't appreciate the expense in R&D the digital displays represented. Yes, they didn't perform as well as analog gages and yes they were prone to system wide catastrophic failure, but they were the future.

I have an electroluminescent clock radio made by Sylvania circa 1962. At night or in the dark it still glows a cool ice blue illuminating the face behind the clock hands after 44 years. It was the first and last of its kind. 'Panelescent lighting' was its marketing name.

A charge is run through a mineral and the mineral emits a steady train of photons and the dispersal is consistent. At night if you look closely at it- the display looks like the sun seen from a SOHO satellite. The brightness pulsates and varies all over its surface ever so slightly like something alive.

In the Chrysler Imperial and other Chrysler models from 1960-62 Sylvania had manufactured their dash displays for the speedometer and other gages. I suspect it was pulled because dealers couldn't service it and replacements were expensive. For folks used to changing a speedometer lightbulb for 15 cents, you can imagine their horror when the dealer came up with some 30 dollar plus figure. I also supsect that is why Sylvania only made clock radios using this technology for the same short period. It was very expensive illumination technology compared to light bulbs. This was almost forty years before Lexus and Mercedes would pick up the same basic technology for their dash displays.

I had high hopes for electroluminescent technology. Sylvania was the pioneer and in the mid-fifties when their scientists had perfected it, there was talk of rooms being lit by entire walls made of electroluminescent panels. These walls could be dimmed, brightened or changed in color. Too expensive. Cheap, hot, unreliable light bulbs won out- and are still winning. My inner geek laments the passage of mainstream electromluminescent lighting.

Today, it is used like neon, for advertising purposes or for kids to place around their subwoofers in tubing. It had a much higher calling in my opinion.

Techno-reminiscing has its fair share of "if only" scenarios. When one sees how the world is shaped and molded by technology these "if only" possibilities have greater impact.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane 'old-timer'.

;-)

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