I'm writing this particular article on a train. Believe it or not, I've been writing other documents on this machine for over an hour and the battery is still nearly full. That's because it is not a standard laptop but a smaller one without as many functions. It says 1999 underneath, so it's about seven years old. The thing is, if I wanted to buy one today, I wouldn't be able to. I got this one second-hand over the internet and the closest similar model would be twice as big, over five times as expensive and would run for about one sixth of the time before the battery ran out.

Of course I could use a PDA and a foldable keyboard but then the screen would be too small. The trouble is, this is the perfect size for me but the technology has got better. The market either wants something smaller (so you can put it in your pocket) or something bigger (so you can do more things with it). A portable word processor, that only works as a word processor, only existed for a couple of years.

That's not all that has disappeared over the years. I was making some fudge a year ago and I needed a cooking thermometer (it needs a temperature of about 150 degrees Celsius). In the seventies we used a metal one that looked like your average room thermometer. Now you can only buy the electronic ones. True, you get a timer and alarm with it as well, but the old type was smaller and you did not have to plug it in or use batteries. You also have to keep the plastic part away from the heat while you hold the probe in place. It's much easier just to stick a short metal thermometer in and read the mercury level.

Do shoe shops still use those machines for measuring children's feet automatically? They had four metal bars that moved inwards until they touched your foot, and the shop assistant read the size off a back-lit screen (before the days of computer displays). What about blue carbon paper? This was a piece of paper with blue wax on one side. You put it between two pieces of paper, wrote on the top one and the second piece got a copy of the same message. Now the paper is made with special chemicals in but does anyone still make carbon copies?

Finally, there used to be hi-fi purists who said that a brand new LP (the black vinyl disc we used to listen to music on) sounded better than a CD the first time you played it. Of course, they said, it all depended on the quality of your hi-fi equipment and it was only the first time the disc was played, but do people still say that? I've noticed that you can still buy record players (the thing an LP goes on) but I don't know anyone who owns a new one. Also, the last time I heard anyone say that LPs were better was over sixteen years ago.

Glossary

underneath poniżej

fudge krówka

mercury rtęć

wax wosk

brand new = new (fresh from the shop or manufacturer)

These have all been replaced by newer inventions. What do we use instead?

film projectors
player pianos
ice boxes
ink wells
lead toys

KEY

Televisions, video recorders and DVD players.
CD players and other hi-fi equipment. If you were wondering, player pianos are the ones that read the music off a roll of paper with small holes in it. You sometimes see them in films about the American Wild West, in the saloon scenes.
Refrigerators (fridges).
Ink cartridges. Old pens in schools were put in a small pot of ink after every two or three words. It was a very slow way of writing! The pot was called the ink well and every school classroom had space for one in a hole in the desk.
Plastic toys. Some lead toys, e.g. soldiers, can still be bought but with a label that reads 'This is not a toy.' Toys were no longer made from lead when people discovered that lead was poisonous.

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