Microwave oven. It sort of just…appeared, and the design didn’t change much.
In my Flat we still have a microwave that does not have a rotating plate. Insteadt it has a spinning rotor in the roof that deflects the waves in order to cook food evenly. It works well but it is needlessly complicated compared to modern microwaves.
Most microwaves have a spinning wave stirrer in addition to the rotating plate. From the description here, it just sounds like either your plate rotation motor is broken or you’ve got a weirdly simple microwave.
Weirdly simple. It does not have a rotation motor. It is quite old.
This is the first time I’ve heard that they have a wave stirrer. I’ve never seen one in person.
Usually it’s not inside the same chamber as the food as then it would be a nuisance to clean. You need to take a microwave apart to see the wave stirrer.
But maybe don’t take apart a microwave unless you absolutely know what you are doing. Otherwise, what you find may be shocking.
Of all the dangerous devices to disassemble, they’re one of the safest. A phone charger might still have 400V across one of the capacitors ten minutes after unplugging it (if you’re in a 230V RMS country, so have more than 400V peak-to-peak), but a microwave’s high-voltage section is only powered when it’s plugged in, and microwaves are so long wavelength that even if you reassemble the waveguide or outer case badly and leave gaps, there probably won’t be dangerous levels of microwaves escaping as gaps much smaller than the wavelength in question don’t compromise the Faraday cage.
The diagrams I’ve seen show the wave stirrer on the roof. The microwaves I’ve seen have the ceramic plate on the side where the magnetron is so there’s no space for a stirrer.
if the diagram’s any good, it should show the wave stirrer in the roof rather than on the ceiling of the food chamber. There’s typically a waveguide to take the microwaves from the magnetron to the top of the chamber, then the wave stirrer is at the end of the waveguide to vary the angle that microwaves enter the chamber at. There’s usually something to stop food splashing/spraying into that section, though, e.g. an extra few centimetres of waveguide afterwards with a bend in it.
I understand what you’re saying, I’ve just not seen one with any indication of a wave stirrer. They all just shoot the beams from the magnetron through a ceramic plate on the side if the microwave. The top interior of the microwaves I’ve used (even one ones from Samsung and LG) had no holes or vents. Maybe it’s just an American thing?
The Bic pen. Sure, you can make it better, but then the price has to go up. You can still buy a nearly unchanged Bic pen from any office store for cheaper than any other writing tool, nearly identical to what they looked like when they were first invented.
I’ll add Bic lighter to this list too.
What else does Bic make? 🤔
I was curious too so I looked it up.
Pens. Lighters. And razors for shaving. Mostly the single use ones.
But also
BIC has drawn criticism for maintaining its business operations in Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
:C
I’ll see your Bic and raise you Zippo!
Just got my first one a while back, I bought it 2nd hand and it’s 7 years older than me and works better than any lighters I’ve borrowed off people over the years.
Replacement parts and even completely new lighter inserts still fit the original cases from the 1940s until now. And if something does break beyond you ability to repair, They got a lifetime warranty with no proof of purchase needed!
I had a chrome Zippo XIV, one of the models you just don’t fuck with.
I loaned it out one day to light fireworks. Somehow they overheated and ruined the flint wheel…
Anyways, if I catch you swapping Zippo parts, I’m gonna melt Frosty the Snowman…
Lego. Lego from now will still mate with Lego from 40 years ago without a problem. Apart from a growing number of shapes, the basic blocks are still the foundation of everything sold today.
Velcro? Inspired by nature’s invention
https://www.microphotonics.com/biomimicry-burr-invention-velcro/
Also outdoor grills don’t seem to have changed much other than the material used to keep the fire going.
I read your last sentence as “good girls” didn’t change much :3
Solid body electric guitars- the first models have been in continuous production and are still available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Telecaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Les_Paul
There were earlier “electric guitars” but I’m thinking all inventions build on previous creations. I don’t think you’ll find many pure answers to OPs question. I think the closest you’ll find is going to be an advancement that produced a single step change in design that flattened the innovation curve forever after. I think the microwave oven was a great example.
Electric fuses also come to mind. Little has changed since 1890.
On a high level, all simple machines.
The wheel
The lever
The pulley
Etc.
All other machines (except maybe things like computer chips) are just a variation of simple machines, or a combination of them.
Wheels have definitely changed a lot though.
Wheels are fundamentally the same, mechanically.
How they’re made changes, and what they’re made of changes, but they are fundamentally the same mechanically for how they function
I would argue that Wi-Fi is also fundamentally the same as it was invented, it’s just network packets sent over high-frequency radio waves, but there has been a lot of changes in specifics. It’s the same for wheels, while the fundamental principle is the same, the differences between a wheel 4000 years ago and today are staggering.
I like how this old teaching tool doesn’t include an electric circuit.
It can if we include things such as power generators
RSS Feeds
So good, that Google abandoned their reader
I don’t think QR codes have changed at all. Only the tools we use to scan them have
Oh, but they have, and they still are.
Did you know that you can halftone dither two different but same size QR codes on top of each other?
I wish I had a link to the article handy, but yeah I’ve tried that myself and it totally works! You basically get a 50/50 chance of one or the other code scanning. It’s literally two QR codes in one!
And no, that’s not some new special QR code format either, it’s basically taking advantage of the nature of the scanners plus the built in error correction.
What’s a use for an ambiguous QR code panel where you can’t predict which of two codes may be scanned? I’m struggling to come up with anything that makes sense where the mechanism potentially slightly favours one or the other depending on the scanner/ tones used.
The two QR codes could be totally related, like two different versions of a rickroll, or two different versions of bad apple.
You just never know exactly which one you’re gonna get…
Hint, in my experience testing that, it partly depends what angle you’re holding your device when scanning such combo QR codes.
The new 50/50 lol
The headphone jack.
Old refrigerators before all the ice makers were added.
Wireguard. I haven’t heard of any huge changes to it over the years. And it somehow just works
It’s very niche, but the only thing I could come up with is Kvevri, a traditional Georgian winemaking vessel. They’re sold today (and still used for their stated purpose, aging wine), I’ve personally seen kvevris with the exact same shape buried in a wine cellar of 12th century monastery, and at least going by the article they’re like 8000 years old, and haven’t changed much in that time.
My other ideas were:
- Bricks (turns out the earliest sun-dried mudbricks, which are very different from modern ones)
- Concrete (turns out it changed a whole lot since the Romans, modern concrete is much easier to pour, sets faster and is much stronger)
- Nuts & bolts (initially were hand-crafted and non-interchangeable - yuck!)
- Knives (I’ll let knife enthusiasts speak about that one)
Internet Protocol.
ipv4 remains dominant.
tcp and ip merged in like 1973, and it lived in labs till 82 or 83. after that its been 40 years of nearly perfect ip spec
I’m surprised that I’m the first to say “p-trap” drain. Self-maintaining, no moving parts, affordable as anything, protects the indoors from sewer gas, catches rings. Chefs kiss 200 years old and still great
Lots of weight-training equipment. Bars, manuals etc.
