-[Narrator] Today, they’re the most commonly
used devices on the planet.
- Technology is moving very quickly.
- [Narrator] A total revolution in how we talk,
watch, and listen.
- I can just throw away this tape ’cause it’s all digital.
- But today’s high tech wonders weren’t always so wonderful.
(tape whirring) (exciting music)
From turntables to typewriters,
cathode rays to cassettes.
These are the gadgets that were once state of the art.
You’ll never boot up your tech trashes
the same way again on Modern Marvels.
(dramatic music)
(gears clanging)
- [Narrator] Not that long ago, these relics were parts
that lived inside our favorite gadgets.
The ones we absolutely couldn’t live without.
The ones we reluctantly retired to attics and garages.
These seemingly primitive products
were once our connection
to the world and to each other.
And no matter what new innovations we embrace,
we’ll always recall the retro originals
with nostalgic fondness.
Remember that cumbersome cathode ray tube TV set
and it’s annoying antenna.
For decades this clunky icon was your ticket to a world
of news and entertainment.
- We didn’t pay for anything, advertising paid
for everything.
You didn’t have a cable box.
You didn’t have wires connecting it.
You didn’t have a satellite dish.
- [Narrator] To get that free TV signal
you either had an aerial roof antenna,
or a pair of rabbit ears sitting atop the set.
The C R T TV owes its size and heft to the large tube
and the lead laden glass screen that protects the viewer
from the harmful x-rays generated inside.
In a C R T, the cathode is a heated filament.
It sits in a vacuum inside a glass tube.
The ray is a stream of electrons that pours off the cathode
becomes focused into a beam and strikes the phosphor coated
back of the screen, making it glow.
A magnet guides the beam as it sweeps 525 horizontal lines
across the screen, odd numbered lines first,
then the even, which makes up a video frame.
This happens 30 times every second to create the picture.
Up until 2010, when US commercial products of C R Ts
had largely ceased new C R T televisions could still
be purchased at your local big box electronic store.
And while they were large and heavy,
they were nothing compared to their earlier counterparts.
- [Samuel] TVs back then, I would say,
at least 150 to 200 pounds to lift,
so you’d need two strapping males to lift that for you.
Now, an old lady can lift one of the flat screen TVs.
- [Narrator] The original television signal was analog
and it looked decent enough because, well frankly,
we didn’t know any better.
Today that analog signal isn’t just obsolete,
it’s actually on the extinct list.
Thanks to the digital revolution powered by the binary code
of ones and zeros.
- An analog signal is a wave,
think of it as a up and down and up and down wave
that’s coming to you versus ones and zeros.
The benefit of digital is we can continually increase
how tight we pack those zeros and ones to get
increasing high fidelity.
In other words, high definition television today
will be considered in 10 years, low definition.
- [Narrator] Digital TV broadcasts began
in the late 1990s
and a decade later analogs fate was sealed.
These flat panel beauties began to line the walls
of electronic stores.
- We have plasma screen TVs.
We have L C D screen TVs, they’re all high definition
and of course we’re showing a beautiful high definition
picture on these.
- [Narrator] Today’s standard L E D TVs like L C D
and plasma technology before them rely
on small streamlined components to deliver
that superior picture quality,
allowing the boob tube to go tubeless.
And they don’t produce X radiation, so no need
for the heavy duty glass.
But if for whatever reason you’re still clinging
to your beloved rabbit ears and C R Ts
You don’t have to part with ’em just yet.
- The converter boxes have come out to actually boost
the signal of the rabbit ears.
C R T TVs can be hooked up to cable or satellite.
- [Narrator] The digital revolution triggered the decline
of many technologies.
Most notably the vinyl L P.
From the fifties to the seventies,
perhaps no single possession was more treasured
by American teenagers then their collection
of vinyl records.
Records on turntables and in jukeboxes
provided the soundtrack to our most cherished memories.
Perhaps you or your parents fell in love to the music
being played on one of these.
First eight track tapes and then cassettes
challenged vinyls reign.
But it was this digitally encoded piece of plastic
that ultimately toppled the records regime.
By the mid eighties, the recording industry
virtually stopped releasing on vinyl.
Of course, if history teaches us anything
it’s that what goes around often comes around.
Since the turn of the 20th century,
audio files have been grooving to the rich sounds
of needle on record.
In 1955 Rainbo Records in Canoga Park, California
began pressing vinyl discs.
- At the time we were probably making around six
to 8,000 pieces a day.
In the sixties we got much larger and we were
in the neighborhood of 30 to 40,000 records a day.
Our heyday was in ’77 when Elvis died.
Within three days of Elvis’ death,
we were pressing 60,000 records a day, seven days a week.
- [Narrator] By the late eighties, Rainbo was back down
to pressing eight to 10,000 vinyl records per day.
But thanks to loyal listeners and avid collectors,
records never completely went extinct.
As their company founder attested in 2009,
a hunger for vinyl was still out there.
- We are pressing close to 25,000 a day, six days a week.
There’s definitely a resurgence in vinyl.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Creating a vinyl record has always been
part science, part mechanics, part craft.
The modern method has its share of high tech tweaks,
but the basics have endured.
In a studio music is recorded as sound waves
onto magnetic tape or a digital medium.
Those sound patterns are fed
into a computer controlled lathe where a heated sapphire tip
cuts a continuous spiral groove into the surface
of a lacquer covered aluminum disc.
The groove is a mechanical translation of the frequency
and amplitude of the sound waves.
Low base tones produce a wide groove
while higher frequencies are narrower.
Next, a lacquer is sent to Rainbo for duplication.
- [Steven] We’re gonna spray it with silver
and then we’re gonna hang it into a tank
and build a nickel surface on it.
- [Narrator] The silver coating makes the surface conductive
to electricity, allowing a current to pass through
and the nickel to adhere to it through electro plating.
- Then we’re gonna separate the two pieces.
And then you had a positive and now you have a negative.
- [Narrator] The A and B side negatives called the master
are placed back in the electro plating tank
to create positives called the mother.
From the mother up to 40 pairs of negative stampers,
which will press the final records can be made
before quality degrades.
Now, science gives way to the mechanics and craft
of record making.
- This is a record press.
We have two labels.
Two stampers which have the information on it.
We glue the stamper onto the mold.
So you got an A side and a B side.
You got an A side and a B side label.
- [Narrator] Workers pour PVC pellets into the machine
where they’re melted and formed into a malleable puck
that will become the disc.
- [Steven] The polyvinyl fluoride or PVC
is about 330 degrees.
The press is about 330 degrees when it closes,
goes under 1,800 pounds of pressure and it squeezes out
and it’s kind of like making a waffle.
Instead of pouring in batter we’re pouring in vinyl.
- [Narrator] About 30 seconds later,
the formed disc emerges on the other side.
- [Steven] After the record gets pressed
and it gets cooled down, it comes out
to the trimming station
and the trimming station trims off the excess.
This excess we’ll recycle and use again,
once the record is trimmed that record is finished,
other than quality control and packaging.
- [Narrator] While Rainbo produced vinyl,
they simultaneously cranked out about a hundred thousand
CDs a day on the other side of the factory.
Industry wide, CDs market share dwindled
from over 13 billion dollars in sales in 2000
to just 483 million dollars today.
Thanks in large part to digital downloads
and in small part for the resurgence of vinyl.
But for some, the record was never superseded.
This is a digital free zone.
- Welcome to "The Record Collector",
which I established in 1974 with my personal collection of
50,000 78s, another 450,000 L Ps,
300,000 classical, 100,000 jazz
and 100,000 other.
And the records go 13 feet high.
- [Narrator] Sandy is passionate about vinyl
and not shy with his opinion of digital music.
- It’s loses a lot of the body and nuance
to the original performance and authenticity is everything.
And if there’s no authenticity and no integrity,
and you’re going to superimpose technical gadgetry
as a good substitute for your musical experience,
I think you’re being had.
- [Narrator] Any record lover would be hard pressed
to find a richer trove of vinyl treasures.
- It is the first complete recording of "Carmen by Bizet"
recorded in 1913, issued in Berlin, Germany
on gramophone records.
The Mozart 40th Symphony recorded in 1926.
Bruno Walter conducting the Berlin State Opera Orchestra
recorded in Berlin.
("Mozart 40th Symphony" plays)
- [Narrator] It’s not just the classics that live on vinyl.
Today’s big selling artists are back on the turntable
and the kids are finding out what their parents
already knew.
- [Steven] There’s audio file guys
who are still buying records,
but what’s really driving it today is 13 to 24 year olds
who have discovered this new thing called a record.
You know, people always ask you what you do for a living
and I would always say, you know,
I make CDs and records and I would always hear,
"They still make records?"
And you know, I’d tell ’em how many we make
and they’re always amazed.
Recently I was at a party sitting at a table
and same conversation, I said, we make records, CDs
and the comment back to me was, "They still make CDs?"
- [Narrator] Long before the days of television
and recorded music, the masses turned to the printed word
for entertainment and enlightenment.
As we said goodbye to our turntables and rabbit ears
we welcomed a new era, the computer era.
The modern computer is always evolving,
but one thing has remained constant, the trusty keyboard.
The birthplace of the keyboard,
the typewriter became obsolete in the 1980s,
but only after its reign is one of the most ubiquitous
machines of the 20th century.
- The typewriter definitely was a revolution.
Before that you had to hand write everything
and a good typist can type faster than the fastest writer
can write.
Let’s face it, something that I write may not be able
to even be read by anyone, but from a typewriter,
you can all read what’s typed.
- [Narrator] The typewriter attracted women
into the workforce and brought structure and uniformity
to the business world.
It became a virtual appendage of writers, secretaries,
and news reporters.
American inventor, Christopher Sholes and two partners
developed the first commercially manufactured typewriter
in 1874.
- They had Remington and Sons.
It was a manufacturer of guns and sewing machines
make their first typewriters.
- [Narrator] The odd looking contraption
was more of a curiosity at first and slow
to be accepted because business and personal correspondence
had always been conducted in long hand.
Mark Twain, who was reportedly the first
to submit a typewritten manuscript despised it
because he considered it awkward.
Even the earliest Remington’s boasted
that initially confusing letter key layout.
The QWERTY keyboard so-called for the first six letters
on the top row became the universally accepted design.
Some say this arrangement allowed salesman
to type the word
typewriter more easily when demonstrating the product
because all the required letters are in the top row.
But the more practical explanation is
that frequently used letters had to be separated
so the keys wouldn’t stick.
Early on, the machine went through
some design modifications.
- [Mark] We pressed the key and we can see exactly
where it’s hitting the platen.
So this was called a visible typewriter.
This particular one is a Remington 10.
It was basically the design that pre-dominated
for the next 60 years or so.
- [Narrator] In the 1930s,
companies began developing electric typewriters
with limited success and only in the business market.
- The huge development in typewriters was in 1961.
When the IBM Selectric came out.
It had a single golf ball type shaped element,
and you pressed the key and it would spin
to the correct letter and then strike.
Then in the early 1970s, IBM created the
correcting Selectrics typewriter.
’Cause before that time, you either had to use a eraser,
which usually didn’t work too well and got a lot
of eraser crumbs in the typewriter
or you had to use something like liquid correcting fluid.
- [Narrator] One version of the correcting typewriter
contained a cartridge with an ink coated cloth ribbon.
Another was a correctable carbon film.
After a typo, the user hit the corrector key
followed by the mistyped letter key.
A coverup tape strikes the mistake,
making it disappear.
A carbon film error could be lifted right off the paper.
This primitive delete function may have extended
a typewriter’s lifespan by a few years,
but once computers took hold in the mid 1980s,
there was no fighting progress.
The mighty typewriter that had served us so well
for nearly a century had fallen by the wayside.
A similar fate befell another printing icon developed
in the late 1800s.
The mimeograph.
The mimeograph employed an ink fed drum
around which a cut wax stencil rotated
as successive sheets of paper were fed into it.
- [Daniel] Some of us might remember having to make copies
in the old days, by turning a crank,
getting blue on your fingers and just trying
to get those copies made, smelling that smell
of not just the ink, but the paper itself.
And of course they didn’t look all that good.
Today 300 million tons of paper are produced
worldwide every year.
And US companies spend over 120 billion dollars annually
on printing, but it wasn’t until 1959,
when the mimeograph was replaced by the Xerox 914 copier,
which combined photo conductivity
with electrostatic printing that the world
of business changed forever.
- [Daniel] So we went from a mimeograph where you had
to turn a drum to being able to push a button
and make a thousand copies on the Xerox machine
and have them stapled and collate,
to now making digital copies of things
that maybe will never even be a paper copy.
- [Narrator] But there’s one industry
that must continue relying on paper copies,
at least for the time being.
Since the first continuously published newspaper emerged
in 1704, Americans have looked to their trusty gazettes
to keep them aware of the goings on in their community,
their country, and the world.
Reading the morning paper over coffee
is a deep rooted ritual that prepares us
for the day to come.
But after three centuries of success,
does the newspaper have an uncertain future?
In 1990, weekday newspaper circulation in the US
was over 63 million, but the numbers have steadily falling
over the last few decades.
By 2020, circulation dropped to just over 24 million.
But why?
In a word, competition.
Newspapers have encountered competition before,
but now they’re creating it.
The Houston Chronicle, once one of the top 10 US dailies,
is owned by the Hearst Corporation.
The paper launched its website in 1994.
- There’s been radio, there’s been television,
and today we see the internet,
but what we’ve decided to do this time is to embrace
and coexist with the internet and use technology
to our advantage.
- [Narrator] Print and online have joined forces.
- [Scott] The reaction of the people in the newsroom,
they saw the web as an interesting hobby that we had
as a newspaper.
What’s really changed is it’s become mainstream.
- [Narrator] These days, the Houston Chronicles website
chron.com averages about 95 million page views per month.
While circulation of the print edition
hovers around 155,000 per weekday.
Under the supervision of the Chronicles editor in chief,
both news entities collaborate in an endeavor reliant
on hundreds of reporters.
For them, the lines between prints and online are blurred.
Since both additions depend on their work.
- Magazine, leading out with the rate increase in the Dow.
- 19 people are probably buried and dead in the rubble.
- Do we still have the wind energy story?
- [Jeff] They go out and they cover events
and then in a very tight window of time,
they’re bringing that story back.
A headline writer is putting a compelling headline on it.
Illustrators and page layout people are making the stories
attractive and visually pleasing.
They’re adding a contemporary look.
- [Narrator] The finalized layout goes to the print plant
where these giant presses spit out papers
at a dizzying speed.
- And then it is on the doorstep of the reader
by 5:30 in the morning.
- [Narrator] Now compare the expenses
of the printed daily paper to the online version.
- We use about 200 metric tons of newsprint every day
and about 9,000 pounds of ink a day.
- A newspaper website has servers that maybe cost
thousands of dollars.
It doesn’t have multimillion dollar presses.
It does not have the delivery cost the newspaper does.
You don’t have the trucks and the rising gas prices
to worry about.
- [Narrator] And online offers another big advantage
that print does not.
- The biggest difference between online and print
is print is a snapshot of a point in time.
It’s a picture of what the world looked like
at 10:30 last night.
The website is continually being updated throughout the day.
- [Narrator] To feed the online edition,
as well as print, journalists have had to adapt.
- When I was a reporter many years ago,
I could spend most of the day writing a 750 word story.
But today that’s not the case.
- With the development of the web virtually every job
in the newsroom has changed.
Reporters become bloggers,
photographers have become videographers.
You know, editors have become web producers.
Even our editorial cartoonist today is producing animations
in 3D.
- [Narrator] So were newspapers ready to pull the plug
on the press?
- [Scott] Today, if we shut down printed newspaper
and just published a website,
we’d be isolating ourselves from about a third
of the population in Houston.
Because as much as the internet has become ubiquitous,
it has not reached everyone.
- [Narrator] But how long will the two additions continue
to coexist?
- There are a lot of people, 78 million baby boomers
to be precise that are using both right now,
but the young teenagers of today,
they are growing up fully digital.
- We’re in the middle of a media revolution
and revolutions don’t end in a tie.
- [Narrator] Still, there will always be something soothing
about doing a Sunday crossword puzzle in pen.
Okay, maybe pencil.
The smartphone replaced you have tthe MP3 player.
The MP3 player replaced the Discman.
The Discman replaced the Walkman
and the Walkman replaced the turntable.
No matter how much we loved each one,
the availability of more compact options
was certainly attractive.
The same held true for our cameras, phones and organizers.
- The first cameras were definitely not personal cameras.
It was a big giant device that went on a big giant tripod.
You had to be a pro, but then as they were able
to make the camera smaller and smaller,
it started to become something that you and I could do.
- [Narrator] Capturing and sharing memories
became family traditions, but it wasn’t always so convenient
until one company indulged our need
for instant gratification.
- [Brad] You bought a roll of film, put it in the camera
and when the film was all exposed,
you took it to the drugstore or you mailed it away.
The model 95 was introduced in 1948.
And with the introduction of this camera
and Polaroid instant film, we could produce pictures
right on the spot, wherever you were.
- [Narrator] Instant pictures, today we take them
for granted but in 1948, Polaroid was revolutionary.
The user took the picture, then pulled the tab.
The negative and receiving sheet slid through a set
of rollers, causing a pod of chemicals embedded
in the receiving sheet to burst.
The rollers distributed the chemicals across the negative
triggering a chemical reaction that processed the image.
90 seconds later, the negative was peeled away
and discarded.
In 1972, Polaroid introduced the SX 70,
which was able to develop images without tabs to pull
and negatives to peel.
It wasn’t that long ago that we had a separate camera,
phone, address book, calendar, music player, and computer.
But today the market is flooded with feature laden
combination gadgets that fit in the palm of your hand.
Each rendering a previous version obsolete.
The aptly named Palm Incorporated
in Sunnyvale, California pioneered the granddaddy
of must have pocket tools.
- In 1997, we came out with the Palm Pilot.
This really represented cultural phenomena
in mobile computing, ’cause it gave you a way
of entering information on the go without a full keyboard.
It was a stylist based interaction where you would
actually write in characters.
It actually forced you to learn a very specific way
to write your letters.
- [Narrator] Despite the added effort required
on the part of the user, this glorified address book
was surprisingly successful and entered the vernacular
is a synonym for personal digital assistance or PDAs,
regardless of the brand.
- [Peter] The original Palm Pilot had your contacts,
it had tasks and memos, basic calculator,
and it organized it into one place
with one magical killer app.
That killer app
was synchronization with your computer.
So all of that information was protected.
- [Narrator] While the Palm Pilot was organizing your life,
the cell phone was keeping you in touch.
By today’s standards the earlier versions were pricey,
unreliable and goofy looking.
But it was freedom from the cord and that was worth it.
If you had one of these, you were pretty cool.
The evolution of cellular phones rendered
some old faithfuls obsolete from rotary dial models
and payphones to car phones.
Some predicted the demise of the hallowed landline.
The cornerstone of modern communication had served us
so well since the days of Alexander Graham Bell.
Eventually cell phones evolved to combine the organizer,
the computer, the music player,
and a bunch of other features.
It was called the smartphone and unlike its ancestors,
it had a keyboard and it’s still smaller.
- [Peter] Keyboards are a big story because they are
the transition from handhelds to smartphones.
The unconventional wisdom here is that really big,
full size keyboards work,
but tiny keyboards work just as well
because you’re using your thumbs.
- [Narrator] Even in its early days,
smartphones were a nail in the coffin for many
of our trusty devices, because it really is the sum
of its parts.
- Our first real iconic phone,
which was the Trio 600 in 2003
was one of the first true smartphones.
- [Narrator] Even back in the late 2000s,
people predicted what smartphones
would one day become.
- [Daniel] It’s gonna be your bank.
It’s gonna be your credit card.
It’s going to be your educational tool.
It’s going to be your training tool.
It’s gonna be your radio.
It’s going to be your keys.
It’s gonna be how you buy things.
How you board a plane.
This is gonna be your ticket for your next airplane flight.
You see it’s evolving into many, many aspects
of different infrastructure that’ll be all emerged together
in a wireless way because that phone is going
to get smarter and smarter.
- [Narrator] But will all these advantages render
face to face human interaction obsolete?
- [Daniel] The biggest problem with smartphones
is we don’t always have smart users.
We get addicted to the phone so much that we forget
a very important thing.
There’s a time to plug in and a time to unplug.
Everyone remembers their first love and their first car.
For some, they were one and the same.
Few car aficionado’s are more enamored with their vehicles
then classic Mustang lovers.
They drive their collectibles, shine them up,
show them off and discuss them with other
classic Mustang lovers.
But underneath the hood of their retro babies
is an outdated technology.
This 1968 Shelby KR 500 is equipped
with a 428 Cobra jet carburetor motor,
which exhales a signature vintage roar
that gearheads love.
Up until the 1980s, most cars relied on a carburetor
to power the combustion engine.
Air travels in from outside passed a filter
and into the carburetor.
Pressure on the gas pedal allows a regulated amount of air
and a regulated amount of fuel into the chamber
where they mix.
The throttle valve allows the air fuel blend
to enter the engine.
As mechanics and emissions regulations evolved
over the decades so did engine design
and today’s Shelby GT 500 models are complete
with the works.
Fuel injectors on each cylinder,
a fuel rail, an equalizer too,
a throttle body and an electronic fuel equalizer
pressurized pump.
So what’s the upside to this complicated
fuel injection system?
By replacing carburetors with more efficient systems
like fuel injection, vehicles can now operate
at higher mileage per gallon.
For instance, this older Shelby may get only 12 to 15 miles
per gallon,
while the latest models can get up to 20 miles per gallon.
One downside to the state of the art tech
is the time honored engines could be worked on
by amateur mechanics, but newer versions may require
more expertise.
Just another case of mechanical versus computerized.
For some, no computer chips can ever replace
the soulful roar of the engine
and a familiar smell of exhaust.
It’s not just the insides of cars that demanded a makeover,
bumpers and paint have also evolved.
Imagine today’s freeways full of these lead painted
steel bumper dinosaurs.
- Some of the interesting ingredients that have been used
in the paint are metal flakes, fish scales,
which were added to give another kind of iridescent look.
These paints used to be lead then they went to water base.
- [Narrator] Body styles and bumper designs have changed
to reflect tastes and ever improving safety regulations.
- Back in the 1970s,
when we started the heavy focus on safety standards,
we went to the five mile per hour bumpers,
which when applied to existing automobile designs
of the time were pretty unattractive.
- [Earl] In the seventies we had shock absorber bumpers.
And at the same time, we started with the rubber
across the front chrome of the bumpers,
which became a standard later on in the design of cars.
This is an ’89 Porshe Speedster,
the heavy rubber across here and no chrome to the car.
This is an ’06 Ford Mustang and here you can see
the fiberglass bumper as opposed to the chrome bumpers
and no rubber integrated here.
It’s all part of the whole design of the car.
- [Narrator] But first things first,
before you can enjoy your car’s fuel injectors
and safety features you have to get in.
Even that has changed.
Nearly gone are the days of the metal door and ignition key.
- [Jim] You still have a driver’s side key entry,
but you don’t see a door lock anywhere on the passenger side
door in due course, we’re gonna see an end
to the ignition key door key.
- [Narrator] In the past decade,
modern cars began to incorporate smart key technology.
Smart keys triggered door locks and ignition buttons
simply through sensors that detect the keys proximity
to the vehicle.
- This car was locked, but it senses my presence,
and now is unlocked.
How it did that is with this smart key.
I didn’t have to take it outta my pocket.
Don’t have to do anything, but just keep it on my body.
It’ll actually open the car for me and to start it,
I just sit in the car, hit the button, it starts itself.
Don’t have to stick this in anything,
it’s called smart key technology.
- [Narrator] Perhaps someday all old doors
will unlock instinctively,
but until then this plastic key card, isn’t a bad option.
It’s what has made millions of metal hotel room keys
and those obligatory dangling numbered key chains obsolete.
In the late 1970s to combat key theft
and subsequent hotel crime, the lodging industry started
to do away with a standard metal key in favor
of a reprogrammable disposable solution.
The Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas has over 3,500 rooms
and issues 2.4 million key cards each year.
- Upon registration, we gain access
to the customer’s reservation.
Actually go to the key making application,
punch in for a brand new key, and we’re all set.
- [Narrator] The computer encodes the cards magnetic strip
with a check in, check out dates as well
as the particular room sequential numeric access code.
- [Jay] The locks understand what keys due to come in
based on the previous customers of sequence.
Since we cut this key downstairs just now,
this would be the next one in the sequence.
You’d be get the green light, you’d be able
to access the guest room.
If you were to try to access the room
through a non-sequential or an expired key,
you’d be getting the yellow light,
which would not allow you access.
If you improperly insert the key into the guest lock,
you will get a red light.
- [Narrator] 400,000 Of the key cards
the Flamingo issues each year are never returned.
And at four cents a pop that costs the hotel 16 grand
but it’s a small price to pay for the increased security
and convenience over metal keys.
So how long before the old faithful metal key
goes completely extinct.
- [Daniel] Physical metal keys that we deal with today
will increasingly become obsolete, but it will be slow.
The reason it’ll be slow is there are a lot of us that still
have homes and still have devices that need metal keys
and let’s face it to change all of the locks in your home,
a lot of people are not gonna do that very quickly.
- [Narrator] And there’s something to be said
about the secure feeling of hearing that lock turn.
If your favorite music and videos still live
on the obsolete formats and your players bite
the proverbial dust, are you out of luck?
Fear not, there are ways to salvage and preserve
your treasures in more current formats
like this early method of using media transfer hardware
and software.
- We recognized that everyone had some of the old media,
either L Ps, VHS tapes, tape cassettes,
and they were storing them, but they weren’t playing them.
The actual hardware to play back this medium
is disappearing.
That’s when we conceived that the idea
of transfer technology, turning this into something
you could use.
Basically it takes an analog format and transfers it
into a digital format.
So it’s kind of like old school meets new school.
- [Narrator] And with the introduction of MP3 players
in the late 1990s, turning old school media
into portable files could be done with a click.
- [Felix] The LP dock is the easiest way to convert music
from vinyl to digital.
It’s actually going to record a wav file that you can
then process in your computer if you wanted to,
or just for easy play on your iPod.
- [Narrator] Anticipating that some customers
might be technologically challenged,
they’ve made it as simple as installing the software
on your computer and following a few easy steps.
- [Felix] Once my
recording is done,
I can just go ahead and type the name of the artist,
name of the album and the track title.
- [Narrator] The tape to PC cassette converter
works much the same way.
- [Felix] And now what was once in here,
I can just throw away this tape, ’cause it’s all digital.
- [Narrator] But not all memories are audio.
Odds are you still have a few VHS tapes
or cherished home movies lying around your house.
With a VCR to PC, all of this can now fit onto this.
- Where you can take thousands of videos and just put ’em
on your hard drive and once I have it on my hard drive,
I can go ahead and burn it into a DVD or put it
into a portable device.
- [Narrator] All your old stuff can now live
on your new computer.
But what happens in the future when that new computer
is suddenly old.
It’s inevitable that you’ll eventually bid farewell
to your once treasured electronic gadgets.
You have a choice, you can toss them into the drawer
or the trash, or you can give them the respectful
and responsible end they deserve.
Back when C R T TVs became obsolete,
a recycling facility like this one in Commerce, California
became the resting place.
- Our facility here is about 40,000 square feet
and we take anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 pounds
of e-waste a month.
- [Narrator] These gadget graveyards serve
as collection hubs for discarded tech,
including TVs, computers,
office equipment, and cell phones.
- The most common item we get here are TV C R Ts.
And we get about 5,000 of them a month.
- [Narrator] These TVs are among the 27 million
that were taken out of service in just one year.
So what happens to them and the rest of the e-waste
that comes here.
- [Dana] We weigh it, we sort it and it’s taken
to the dismantling line where the metals are taken apart,
the plastics are taken out.
The circuit boards are taken out, the glass.
Everything gets demanufactured.
So think of a manufacturing line, but backwards.
- [Narrator] This process is mostly done by hand.
So as not to contaminate the reusable materials
with the harmful ones like the lead found in C R T TVs.
Some of the reusable components need to be compressed
for easier transport.
- [Dana] Imagine a giant trash compactor,
but for plastics and metals, and these are sent off
to processors where they will be melted and remanufactured.
- [Narrator] There just may be life after death,
but be careful because some of that outdated equipment
might contain important data.
- Because everybody has sensitive information
on their computers, whether it’s personal use
or for business use, make sure that when you take it
to an e-waste recycler to ask them to physically destroy
your hard drive, deleting it will not do.
As part of the recycling process we remove the hard drives
from the computer and upon a request,
we will destroy the hard drives by punching three holes
into the disc itself so that the data is unretrievable.
- [Narrator] But it’s not just the information
that might leak into the wrong places.
- The rate of technological change and obsolescence
of course has a dark, deep and bad downside.
- [Narrator] Some environmentally
and socially irresponsible companies export
unwanted electronics overseas,
where they’re dismantled unsafely.
Often by children paid pennies a day.
- [Dana] There are a lot of quote unquote recyclers
that will send their electronic waste to underdeveloped
countries where they don’t have strict environmental laws
and labor laws.
So right now there are villages where people
are actually cooking the circuit boards,
inhaling the toxic fumes and then disposing of the waste
into their water supply as well as their soil.
However, recyclers like us,
we use responsible downstream vendors who have
high tech facilities to handle these hazardous materials
in the proper way.
- [Narrator] Today with technology evolving
at near light speed, don’t get too attached
to your TVs and cell phones ’cause their days are numbered.
- I’m sure that our laptops and our MP3 players
in 10 or 20 years will be collecting dust.
- Innovation and change is not slowing down.
It is speeding up.
Be ready.