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.

When one visited rural Kenya, it wasn’t uncommon to hear neighbours borrowing “a compact” from across the kay-apple fence to entertain you with the music of Joseph Kamaru or Boney M while you thumbed through the family album.

The cassette magnetic tape held sway from ’63 until it became a music relic in the ’90s. It was replaced by the burning of CD compilations and trading MP3 playlists. Cassette players are rarely on sale, but car manufacturers still have cassette players on dashboards, which would explain why all major Kenyan supermarkets and music stores stock these things.

Analog camera

They served a whole generation of Kenyans who had to wait for pictures to be processed — sometimes for a month. Now photos are on the spot, like instant coffee.

And one can delete unwanted ones and edit out unwanted parties in a digital family photo taken using your mobile phone and sent to a relative in Iceland in a matter of seconds. Does it surprise anybody that, for refusing to change with the times, Kodak, the mother of photographic films, is going under? So much for Kodak moments.

Telephone landlines

For calls outside Nairobi, one had to call the operator and hold or wait to be called back while requesting for a reverse call. Placing a call outside the country meant trooping to Extelcoms House along Haile Selassie Avenue to “book” a call to sister Trufena, then studying in Minnesota. Indeed, landlines occasioned long-distance charges as necks strained from cuddling receivers.

Rotary dial models (which had to be chained in most Kenyan homes for use only when parents were around) were replaced by the current range of smart phones that have Internet access, cameras, FM radio, TV, money transfer services, digital recorders, in-built diaries, menstrual cycle calendars even.

Having a home landline in Kenya meant you were either a church minister, a civil servant or “doing very well”. Today, landlines are specific to offices and are almost redundant in homes. Quite a journey these phones have dialed since Alexander Graham Bell was awarded patent rights for inventing the telephone in 1876.

Walkmans and Discmans

Walkmans were invented under the urging of Sony co-founder Akio Morita for the sole purpose of listening to his favourite operas in between flights.

They were built for him in 1978 by Sony’s audio-division engineer, Nobutoshi Kihara. Marketing the Walkman (a name Morita hated) and which Sony executives told him would flop, began in ’79 under different names: Soundabout (US), Freestyle (Sweden) and Stowaway (UK).

The Walkman was a “hip” item, one that helped to diffuse Japan’s miniaturisation of technology in global music culture. In Kenya, the Walkman was for those who lived West of Uhuru Highway, and was a rare commodity among those who bought more shoes than tires.

The Walkman was shortly followed by the Discman, Sony’s first portable CD player, in 1984. They are now called CD Walkmans and are gradually being edged off by i-Pods from Apple, which released the portable media players in 2001.

The Boom-Box

Introduced in the late 1970s, this portable all-in-one music system used batteries and served those who loved break-dance well into the ’80s. It had a “record” button, which was very crucial while dubbing Peter Tosh’s music over Reggae Time music programme.

The floppy disc

Also called the diskette, these data storage devices existed from the ’70s until the 2000s, when this invention of IBM was replaced by flash discs, memory cards, optical discs and external hard disks. In their place is the flash disk, also known as the memory stick which stores anything, from music to the Bible.

Digital wristwatches

Seiko Watch Company launched the computerised wrist watch in 1984, complete with a stopwatch. Equally high-tech then were calculator watches from Casio. For its quaint nature, the mechanical watch has refused to disappear completely.

The public phone booth

These were a permanent feature at every street corner, but are currently on their deathbed and ultimate extinction.

Back in the day, call booths were social places where people hanged around, a sack of coins in hand, waiting to use the directory and make calls. There were calling cards of Sh100, Sh200 and Sh500 denominations; the “in-thing” for those above coin-chuggers frustrated on endless queues.

The entry of cordless phones, cellphones and the ubiquitous Simu ya Jamii gradually rendered them “so 1945”. As of April last year, there were about 1,000 working booths around the country, down from 9,700 less than 10 years ago, according to figures by Telkom Kenya.

Typewriters

Some writers, like American Frederick Forsyth, author of, among other titles, Day of the Jackal, Dogs of War and Odessa File, still swear by the manual typewriter, but there were times when most writers swore at them.

“I like to see black words on white paper rolling in front of my gaze,” the 73-year-old told the BBC in 2008. Typewriters were clunky and dirty. But they didn’t need power cables, making them useful in remote government outposts without electricity.

Unlike the computer, they have zero chance of data loss. And one can’t accidentally send salacious material. Typewriters have only one function though — typing. They can’t surf the Internet, and, after existing since 1867 as the invention of American Christoper Latham Sholes, they were replaced by PCs, laptops, palmtops and now the i-Pad.

The jukebox

Jukeboxes are pre-DJ, coin-operated music machines that play a patron’s selection of music. The classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers on them that, when entered in combination, play a specific selection.

The name ‘jukebox’ emerged from African-Americans in 1940s and was derived from the word ‘jook’, meaning ‘to dance’. Low-class Southerners, mostly farmhands, haunted makeshift bars called juke joints, where early jukeboxes first appeared. They were popular because they received the latest music first, played on demand, and without commercial breaks.

The pager

Pagers were used from the ’70s until the late ’90s, when the entry of the cellphone beeped them out. While they are still used by those who work in “emergency” departments such as doctors, they are not as cool as when they had to shown off by hanging them on belts for envious small-timers to see.

The telex

Before the fax was the telex and their granny, the telegraph. Initially used by shipping operators and military personnel, the telegraph required skill to transmit and receive messages. The telex used radio or microwaves to transmit info over the airwaves. It had a printer, a scanner and analog technology that worked together to waste time, money, paper and electricity.

The phonograph

They are now museum-like decorations in homes of music connoisseurs who swell with pride when curious visitors enquire how they work, although they don’t. Thomas Edison invented them in 1877, but they were replaced by the massive record player in the later half of the 20th century.