
Tech From a 30-Year-Old Sears Catalog - pepperpizza
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/sears-catalog
======
joezydeco
The writers at Wired are probably too young to remember that Sears catalogs
_were_ the equivalent of Wired magazine back in the day. Where else would we
discover things like home computers, videodisc players, Walkmans, etc? There's
nothing ridiculous about these items being shown here. They were state of the
art in the early 1980s.

And the word "Ridiculous" in the headline is a kind of throwing stones in a
glass house as far as Wired goes. I have a CueCat that proves it.

~~~
hga
" _The writers at Wired are probably too young to remember that Sears
catalogs_ were _the equivalent of Wired magazine back in the day. Where else
would we discover things like home computers, videodisc players, Walkmans,
etc?_ "

Hmmm, in the '70s is was more like _Popular Electronics_ , which famously
launched Microsoft (I wish I'd saved that issue!). And I found the Heathkit
catalog to be the most interesting in this direction; heck, they even had an
LSI-11 (PDP-11 on a chipset) based computer
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit_H11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit_H11)).

But it's telling the Sears catalog devoted real estate to a glossary of
computer terms (last item in this article); there was a lot of educating to do
to develop customers back then. I was also impressed that most of the terms
were still in use, even if we aren't using floppies any more.

~~~
imaginator
Archive.org has some Byte Magazine back issues (eg:
[http://archive.org/stream/BYTE-1993-05#page/n11/mode/2up](http://archive.org/stream/BYTE-1993-05#page/n11/mode/2up))

~~~
twoodfin
Awesome. The ads are the best part. I loved finding the very Gateway 2000
model I was lucky enough to get that year. With the "Windows Programmer Pack"!

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NSAID
"Sears should have morphed into Amazon."

They were so close. They started the Discover CC, the Prodigy computer
network, and were the largest retailer nationwide. They shut down mail orders
two years before Amazon launched.

[http://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-
Decline...](http://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-
Decline#1742245)

~~~
thought_alarm
I don't know about the US, but many small towns in Canada still have a Sears
storefront where people can pick up their orders. My parents furnished their
cottage that way.

The Sears "Catalogue" is also still alive and well. The 2013 Wish Book is 700
pages: [https://secure.sears.ca/catalog-
request](https://secure.sears.ca/catalog-request)

~~~
awor
Can confirm. I live in Northern Canada, and often Sears has the cheapest
shipping on larger items, appliances, etc. Our shipping options are extremely
limited (mostly just Canada Post). I bought a 40" TV that cost me only $7 in
shipping, delivered to my local gas station /Sears Pickup Depot. I'm about a
~30 hour drive north of Vancouver

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51Cards
What's equally amazing for me is the human mind after seeing this article. In
1983 I was heavily into cycling and probably went through all the bike pages
over and over. When I hit the second last image just now and saw the faux
"action" shot of the guy on the bike I remembered it vividly. Hard to believe
my mind has been holding that image for 30 years just waiting for a match.

Great trip down memory lane for my generation. Thanks.

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ck2
I loved reading the Sears catalog. That and the heathkit catalog (because I
couldn't afford anything in it, just the catalog).

Before they stopped making it, I always though the solution to stopping many
wars would be to airdrop them into the countries fighting and see how much
better the world can be.

Today that is naive I guess.

~~~
twoodfin
Not so naive. Read enough Soviet history, and you see how desperate the
Communist leadership was to provide their citizenry with household goods
comparable to those available in the West. It's as if one of Ronald Reagan's
major policy struggles was ensuring every house had a microwave oven.

The inability to simulanteously fund a superpower-level military establishment
while enabling a rich "lifestyle" for the people led Gorbachev into the
economic and governmental reforms that ultimately undermined the regime.

~~~
hga
Indeed; a Refusenik friend of mine said the TV propaganda contrasting "the
rich" and "the poor" in the US generally failed because the target audience
could see the poor in the US in the '70s or so really weren't that bad off,
something members of the _nomenklatura_ making this stuff probably didn't
really appreciate.

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Bulkington
Seriously, no one mentions the lingerie section?

[http://my-retrospace.blogspot.com/2011/10/catalog-15-more-sl...](http://my-
retrospace.blogspot.com/2011/10/catalog-15-more-sleazy-80s-catalogs.html)

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didyousaymeow
I still have my TI 99/4A - best christmas ever.

~~~
jebblue
I still have my Timex/Sinclair 1000, Atari 800 and Canon AE1 Program. :)

~~~
autodidakto
And unlike the other pieces of tech, the Canon AE1 Program can take better
pictures and has a better interface than most cameras today.

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lttlrck
Ridiculous? Way to look down on old tech...

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MarkNederhoed
A Canon ae-1 or Pentax K1000 is still very popular with people that either
shoot film, or are just starting to experiment with a 35mm camera.

~~~
ams6110
The K1000... the workhorse entry level SLR. Popular in High School
photojournalism classes everywhere at that time. Also my first "real" camera.
Entirely manual but also brilliantly simple... to set the aperture you simply
center the needle in the viewfinder, feedback on over/underexposure was
instant and intuitive.

~~~
VLM
I also had a K1000 and it was a blast from the past to see it in the corner of
the catalog.

They made them unchanged from the mid 70s to the turn of the century, a good
quarter century run.

The prices in wikipedia are ridiculous. 40% off, yeah whatever. My K1000 body
was barely over $100 new in the very early 90s. I bought lenses on sale and
they generally set me back $50 or so each, roughly a high school kids weekly
part time job paycheck.

The differences between my K1000 and my father's old spotmatic were the
spotmatic used a threaded lens and the K1000 used a bayonet mount (like a BNC
connector, kinda) Also the spotmatic required a now unobtainium mercury based
battery. Not mercury added to lower internal resistance like modern alkalines,
but mercury itself was an electrode.

I agree the UI on the K1000 kicked butt. Trivial to adjust while shooting,
fast, simple. No modern camera app comes close because of hardware
limitations. Also image quality was vastly superior especially with lower ASA
films and even a cheap high school student lens.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Pentax also had the best lens coating of the time, so even the cheaper 50mm
students could afford had great color transmission. It's still sought after
for it's unique color rendering, and pristine lenses sell for a premium.

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hide_nowhere
30 years from now, some future "Wired" will give the Sears Catalog treatment
to today's Wired.

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dhughes
From age 14 to 31 I worked for my uncle who had a coin-op business from what I
recall the Dragon's Lair arcade game used the CED but it may have been a Video
Laser Disc player I can't remember but I do know the thing was huge and never
worked.

~~~
hga
It used a Laserdisc, the CED needle in a groove system would have probably
worn out the media probably faster than the game's random access of scenes
worse out the mechanics of the Pioneer players, which while industrial models
didn't quite envision the extremes of games. E.g. probably more for teaching
people how to repair stuff.

Wikipedia devotes quite a bit to the problems in keeping the games running:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair)
e.g.:

" _The life of the original player 's gas laser was about 650 hours; although
later models had solid state lasers with an estimated life of 50,000 hours,
the spindle motor typically failed long before that._"

~~~
ljf
There was an NFL arcade game that used CED though
[http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/nfl.html](http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/nfl.html)

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tonyedgecombe
Cameras, phones, music players, computers, not much has changed really.

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hcarvalhoalves
You know it's the 80's when everything is built out of right angles, from
phones to cameras to bicycles.

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ivanbrussik
oh man this is great, i remember all of this

