Quote:
Originally Posted by Othen
There is a little bit of value in the 'interesting engineering' category Andrew - but sadly not a huge amount.
I may have mentioned previously I'm a surveyor by profession; in my vocation we scrapped generation after generation of beautifully made mechanical/optical instruments in favour of increasingly electronic solutions as each became obsolete. Machines that cost us tens of thousands and had been the very zenith of the technology of their day quickly became scrap, regardless of their engineering beauty.
Survey instruments were not unusual in this respect, the same happened everywhere. Virtually all piston engined aircraft became obsolete almost overnight when jet engines became widely available, wet film cameras disappeared almost overnight, CRT (in TVs, instruments and so on) the same... the list goes on almost indefinitely.
Just the ramblings of an old man :-)
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Agreed Alan , I recently bought a 30s Siemens 16mm camera with a massive fps speed, great thing, £5.
As you say engineering counts for little in old gear. On Friday I saw the ultimate insult, an AVO meter turned into a LAMP!🤨