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What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations? (pawb.social)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

481 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Big hospitals still have them to send medications and random lightweight stuff around the complex. My wife has worked in two large hospitals that had pretty extensive tube systems, used especially with pharmacy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Tom Scott does a youtube video about one in Canada (IIRC) where they send radioactive medicine from the lab a down the road to a hospital due to the half life of the medication making traditional transport (ie vehicles) impractical.

Edit: bothered to look it up

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I know of a hospital where the local university sends tracers with F-18 for PET scans in much the same way. Half-life of 110 minutes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

My Walmart has them for a pharmacy drive thru.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

The two major hospitals, relatively near me, use a combination of tubes, and robots, to dispense medications. One is working on completely robotic food service, and has completely robotic floor cleaning/polishing. Both, also, have robots that do the basic landscaping maintenance, like mowing/edging. There is more, it is interesting to walk around and see all these infrastructure systems work. Feels, at least partially, like the promised future of sci-fi.