What's the oldest "gadget" you have that you're still using?

Let's include computers, television sets, VCRs, radios, DVD players, kitchen appliances and personal items in that. Think of everything you have in your house or car that turns on and then does something and tell me the oldest thing you've got.

I', pretty sure the oldest thing I have is a toaster that I bought in 1991 when I was living in Anaheim. When Nicole and I married in 1992, we went through what we had and got rid of duplications. She liked my toaster, so we kept it and I'm still using it two or three times a week 20 years later.

That seems pretty good to me, but it isn't even in the same ballpark as the gadget that hangs on the wall in my mother's house, the home in which I grew up.

[caption id="attachment_1543" align="alignleft" width="185" caption="Different color, same model"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/images-1.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1543" title="images (1)" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/images-1.jpg" alt="" width="185" height="273" /></a>[/caption]

It's a yellow phone with a rotary dial that AT&amp;T installed in the brand-new house my parents bought in January 1963. I seem to recall we had two phones in the house at first, the one in the kitchen and an extension in my parents' bedroom.

I think they replaced the bedroom phone at some point and added a third one downstairs in the family room. Both of the other phones have been touch-tone for many years, but the one in the kitchen has gone on and on. Next January it will have been in its place for 50 years.

Why is this significant?

Anyone who had a telephone before the 1980s could tell you that. Until the phone company was forced to diversify, people didn't <em>own</em> the phones in their homes. The phone company did, and rented them to us for a small monthly fee.

Phones<em> lasted</em> back then. They were heavier, more solid and better built, because planned obsolescence -- the scourge of the modern world -- didn't benefit the phone company back then. The longer your phone lasted, the better off they were.

Ever since the Reagan-era diversification, when the folks who sold you the phones weren't the same ones who provided service, the phones themselves have gotten flimsier and less dependable. I know I haven't owned a phone since then that has lasted 10 years, let alone 50.

Cell phones are even worse. I've had two high-end Blackberries and one Android that have all gone bad in less than 18 months.

I remember when I was younger, hearing my grandfather say they didn't make things the way they once did.

Who knew?

He was right.

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