A video cassette? Sorry, this is not the National Museum

Technology, said Andrew Heller of IBM, is like fish; the longer it stays on the shelf, the less desirable it becomes. How right he was! There was a time when a shopping bag of video cassettes indicated that you had ‘made it’, but, as DN2 writes, advances in technology have a way of consigning the status symbols of yesteryears to the backwaters of fashion, taste and prestige

Black-and-White TV

They were manual and in black plastic or formica covering. They were so huge they served as homework tables until 5:00pm, when VoK — now KBC — then Kenya’s sole TV station, opened shop until midnight.

Back in the day, it required the drawing of a winning card in a national lottery for a family to own one. Indeed, ownership was a curse as it attracted the whole neighbourhood to the only home with a TV set to watch news and programmes like Music Time, Mind Your Language and Football Made in Germany.

Then came the affordable Greatwall from China. The sets, in ubiquitous red or orange frames, showed black-and-white pictures, forcing football commentators to say something like: “And Bayern Munich is playing from left to right on your screen” as viewers could hardly differentiate them by the colour of the kit.

But enterprising Greatwall owners bought a translucent screen that made them appear like colour TVs. Today, like the bulk of electronic gadgets, colour TV sets are swanky silver, remote controlled, and Plasma-flat — like wall calendars.

Transistor radios

They can still be found in families where grandfather is a World War II veteran, and while they haven’t completely gone the way of the dinosaur, they were replaced by the Hi-Fi and, now, the Home Theatre.

But when they reigned supreme, listeners knobbed the MW (Mid Wave) or SW (Short Wave) and AM (Amplitude Modulation) bands when KBC radio presenters advised them to badilisha mita bendi (change the wavelength) during programmes such as Yours for the Asking, Sanyo Juu, Sanyo Tops!, Salamu za Majeshi and Salamu za Waliobaki Nyumbani.

The record player

Also called kinanda down these shores, it disappeared from people’s homes in the late 1980s despite its use during estate open-air discos or when raising money for a loved one by paying Sh5 to have one’s choice of music played during a music-driven funeral fundraiser.

But it serves DJs, recording studios and radio stations very well. The vinyl disc is a comical musical curiosity if one considers the fact that it stored music on both sides, yet today, one can carry 500 songs in an MP3 CD. Like a kitchen plate, the santuri required regular wiping with a soft cloth before storing it.

Video machines and tapes

Until the mid ’90s, they were the ultimate symbols of financial success — and class. Having a heap of video tapes meant you were not only a film buff, but that you also owned a video machine. Kenyans, on their way to a precarious middle-class, saved for eons to buy a VCR.

Video machines required a head cleaner to prevent the reel inside the tape from showing hazy images. If the reel got entangled inside the machine, that signalled the end of the movie. Video tapes only contained one movie and were replaced by the VCD and the DVD, which can carry tens of films in only one disc.

The “Compact”

The cassette tape, which is still fighting extinction, contained music of a 60- or 90-minute duration. It had to be reeled using a pen to rewind or forward a song. But when it got “chewed” inside the playback system, the music sounded like a cat being strangled using a maize cob.

Cassette tapes were of various types, with the TDK “Chrome” brand, which was very advanced as one could re-record music on it, being the most coveted. Then came “mix-tapes” of customised music from the hottest DJ of the day as “mixing” (using a turntable) required artistic aplomb punctuated by the occasional interruption of a voice-over interlude.