21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (6 page)
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Authors: Steve Stack
They changed everything. The sound quality was much better than the previously popular cassette (although not as warm and rich as vinyl, as luddites were keen to point out at every available opportunity). They were smaller, so took up less space. They contained more information, so had a longer playing time. There was no A or B side, so bands approached albums very differently, recording songs that were intended to be listened to in a 70(ish)-minute stretch, rather than two 25-minute sessions. The inner sleeve was replaced by the CD booklet. And, although they weren’t indestructible and did skip, they were much more durable than tapes or LPs.
During the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s, music fans spent billions of pounds replacing their old tape and LP collections with new CD versions, which were often remastered with extra tracks. The CD format was seen as the perfect fit for the new albums that came out during that period – albums such as
Brothers in Arms
by Dire Straits, that is widely claimed to be the first million-selling CD, although U2’s
The Joshua Tree
is often given that title.
The compact disc itself was invented in the late ’70s and was an offshoot of the laserdisc technology of the same period. Both Sony and Philips were working on prototypes, and the first test CD was a recording of Richard Strauss’s
Alpine Symphony
. That
Tomorrow’s World
demonstration took place in 1981, and the album they
played was
Living Eyes
by The Bee Gees which, ironically, is an album that pretty much the whole world has subsequently forgotten including, quite possibly, the brothers Gibb themselves.
The CD went into commercial production in 1982 and the first album to be released on it, rather than an existing album being made available on the format, was
52nd Street
by Billy Joel. Since that time, several billion have been manufactured and sold; 400 million a year at the height of its popularity.
Sadly for a technology with the word ‘compact’ in its name, the CD is slowly being killed off by digital music. We can now hold our entire music collection on a device about the size of a playing card, whereas we used to require countless CD racks from IKEA to do the same. Even hardened musos are seemingly content to download new albums straight to their iPod or phone, and sales of compact discs are plummeting, with some artists ignoring the format completely. The CD isn’t dead, and probably won’t be for a fair while given the sheer volume of discs that are out there, but it deserves its place on this endangered list as it is certainly on the decline.
And, somewhere in his huge mansion, Mark Knopfler is softly crying in front of his wall of platinum discs.
Dodo Rating:
Now we come to our cover star, the Walkman. If Sony were to invent it today, it would have to be called the Walkperson, but back in the late ’70s it was perfectly acceptable to be sexist in a brand name.
The origins of the Walkman are actually very interesting. It was created by a Sony engineer, Nobutoshi Kihara, for his chairman, Akio Morita. Morita was flying all around the world on business, and wanted to be able to listen to his favourite operas while travelling. Kihara created a portable tape player with small headphones – a personal stereo.
Of course, Walkman is actually the Sony brand name, most other manufacturers used ‘personal stereo’ as a generic term. Although Sony were widely credited with inventing the technology, there was something called a Stereobelt created by a German, Andreas Pavel, in the early ’70s, and 30 years later Sony had to settle with him and credit him with founding the device.
But, whoever was responsible, it revolutionised entertainment for years, perhaps forever, with the current digital incarnation of iPods and similar devices all owing a great debt to that first simple idea – ‘I want to listen to music on the move, without annoying the people around me.’
Or, ‘without annoying them
too much
’. The incessant chhzzchhhzchhhzz of noise bleed from the headphones would gradually drive other people mad, especially on commuter trains and buses. This is still a problem today, but most would consider it a small price to pay in return for music on the go.
The first Walkman was a cassette player and that was the standard device for many years. It did evolve into a CD version – the Discman – and now the digital devices we know today. It was the accessory of choice for joggers and roller skaters throughout
the ’80s, and paved the way for today’s society where everyone goes around with white earbuds and nobody talks to each other any more.
Oh.
I am sure there are still some people who own and use a Walkman in its original cassette form, but they must be few and far between. As is the nature with any cutting-edge technology, it has been overtaken by smaller, better, and cheaper devices. It played its part, but has now been cast aside.
End of side one.
Dodo Rating:
Where we all grew up …
You know you are getting old when an everyday object you grew up with now looks like an ancient museum piece. Give a rotary dial phone to anyone under about 25 and they won’t have a clue what to do with it.
Yet, despite the fact that phones haven’t had dials for more than two decades, we still refer to dialling a phone number or dialling someone up. Curious, don’t you think?
The physical act of putting your finger in a hole and moving the dial round meant that many frequently dialled numbers were fixed in our memories, far more so than in these days of speed dial and smartphones. And to prove it, you can probably remember the phone number of the house you grew up in, or perhaps your first boyfriend/girlfriend, purely because your brain has processed the movement so many times. How many numbers on your mobile contacts list do you know by heart today?
Still don’t believe me? Try this: 01 811 8055. Ring any bells?
Rotary dials were essential in the early days of the telephone system as the exchanges operated a pulse dialling system. Each number was represented by a number of pulses, which is why when you dialled the number 5, you could hear five short clicks as the dial moved back round. But, as these networks were updated, we moved to tone dialling, which required buttons.
While this technological progress means we no longer get sore index fingers from repeatedly calling
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
to speak to Bucks Fizz (see, you knew you recognised that number), and no longer suffer the physical agony of getting ten numbers into an international call only to misdial the last digit and having to start all over again, we now have to put up with the annoying ‘Press 1 for customer services, press 2 for deliveries, press 3 to speak to an operator’ and so on.
Not all progress is good.
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Do these ring a bell? (Pun noted, but not intended.)
‘Will you get off the phone? I’m expecting a call!’
Followed by:
‘No, you hang up first … no, you … I’m not … love you … bye … bye … bye … are you still there? Yeah, me too …’
If they do, then you probably remember a time when most homes only had one phone. This was before the days of mobiles, of course. If you wanted to make a call you often had to do so in front of your entire family, something that could prove incredibly embarrassing to a teenager in the first flush of love or bloody annoying to anyone trying to watch television while mother hollered down the mouthpiece to a deaf grandparent.
Don’t forget: no texts, no email, no instant messaging. If you wanted to speak to someone when you got home from school, or from work, then you had to do so using the only phone in the house.
That is, if your parents would let you, what with the cost of phone bills and all that. Nowadays kids spend more in a month on their mobile bill than our folks used to pay in a quarter for their landline.
Oh, how times have changed.
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Nothing dates an object more quickly than futuristic design. Create a telephone in the 1960s that looks like it is from the 21st century, and by the time you reach the 21st century, it will look more like an object of the ’60s than anything else from that time.
Such was the case with the Trimphone, an attempt by the GPO (before it was privatised and became BT) to create a luxury telephone for which they could charge more than the traditional rotary dial version.
The handset of the Trimphone (Tone Ring Illuminator Model) sat vertically on top of a body that resembled a slap of Cheddar cheese. The dial lit up when in use (although there was a health scare about the gas used to create this effect and it was removed from later models), and you could use the phone cradle as a handle to carry the whole thing about with as you chatted nonchalantly but in a futuristic fashion.