chines manufacturing, was Re: Wipro's Azim Premji [....]

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   From: Bob Keyes <bob at sinister.com>
   Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 21:44:59 -0500 (EST)

   TVs were expensive. People would break into other people's houses
   and dteal them, people would take out loans, they would be fought
   over in devorce settlements. They were heavy and big, they used a
   lot of vacuum tubes (not just the main tube. I remember seeing
   vacuum tubes into the 1980s in TVs). They were made in the US,
   Canada, or Netherlands. Mostly the US. Even small towns like Lenox,
   where I grew up, had one or more stores for TVs, though they would
   also sometimes carry Stereo equipment.  TVs cost $500, back when
   that was the downpayment on a house. My family upgraded to color in
   1974, buying a second-hand RCA for $400 (I think).  When it broke,
   which it did twice, it cost $25 for a repairman to come out (I
   THINK it was $25, but that may have just been one specific bill.  I
   do remember that was a lot of money to me, as a kid).

   When the TV last broke in 1985, there was no one left to fix
   it. The shops had closed. We could send it to Indiana for
   $100. Instead, my parents went to ValueMart (a cheezy department
   store) and bought a new TV for $300.

   This was one of the last TVs to be recycled. I scavenged parts from
   it for my electronics hobby. Everything was accessible and
   labeled. There was a repair manual, in a compartment inside the TV.

I enjoy recreational repairs myself, and the feel of fine machinery,
but my own recollection of old TV's is quite different.  From the day
you bought them until the day you gave up in disgust, they were flaky,
balky pieces of equipment that needed constant tweaking of pots on the
back panel to get a halfway decent picture, fine tuning adjustment,
occasional sprays of TV tuner spray because the contacts in the tuner
oxidized over time.  You needed to slap them upside the head to fix
some loose connection somewhere.  The tube took a few minutes to warm
up and never really stabilized.  It lost sync every now and then,
with the vertical retrace bar either scrolling slowly up or down the
tube or jumping madly up and down.

My mother in law has an even older TV, the old-style console kind.  It
has a beautiful wood cabinet, but forget about a decent picture.

We now have 4 TV's of the junk variety, two of which are at least 10
years old.  One's a 13 incher that's probably about 15 years old (it
was my wife's before we met), one's a cheap 19 incher ($200 -- the
cheapest one I could find) from my bachelor days (about 20 years old),
one's a cheap 27" unit about 5 years old, and we just bought a 48"
rear projection that probably cost (adjusted for inflation) about what
a 20" black and white would have cost 30-ish years ago.  Not one of
these "junk" TV's (OK, the large screen unit isn't a junker) gives us
any trouble, at least when it has a decent signal source.  No sync
loss, no slapping it around, no mechanical tuner to spray (actually,
the 19" does have a mechanical tuner, but it's in the guest bedroom
and doesn't get much use).  Every now and then I adjust convergence on
the 48" unit because I'm picky.  I've had to move it around a few
times to change the connections on the rear, and since the CRT's
inside are CRT's, the convergence should be readjusted after the
thing's rolled around.

I'd take the cheapest new TV I could find at any size over the best TV
from 30 years ago, and dollars to doughnuts I'd get more years of
*good* working life out of it.

Speaking of well-made equipment: I had a flood of HP 35C calculators,
because my father's company tossed them in a junk bin when they
broke.  I also picked up a 21C that way, and my real prize was a 45C.
Why did they break?  They had two boards inside, a motherboard and a
daughterboard.  The motherboard had a row of dual-prong pins sticking
up, which the daughterboard was impaled upon.  When the calculator was
dropped, the pins bent and lost solid contact.  A pair of screwdrivers
(a #1 Phillips to remove the back and a small slot to spread the pins)
was all it took to fix it.  Those really were built to last, although
the newer (and seemingly flimsier) 10C and friends also lasted very
nicely and didn't have problems with chargers.

   We had a service industry build on repair providing a living to
   many people. They kept crap out of the landfills and money here in
   the US.

That sounds suspiciously like "We built junk that was designed to
break that we sold at such high prices that nobody could afford to
replace it with another one that would simply break again."  A service
industry that's built around charging outrageous prices for commodity
repairs doesn't sound like such a great deal for the customers.

40 years ago Japanese cars were considered garbage.  These days people
pay premiums for Camrys and Accords.

   Even our familiar american cars are now filled with inscrutable,
   non-standard, cheap foreign (and US) that can only be repaired by
   the 'authorized dealer' who charges an arm and a leg. a 5mph fender
   bender can total a car. I can only imagine what sort of throw away
   cars we'd have if we allow china into the game.

Hmm.  I drove a 1988 Chevy Caprice for a number of years.  It wound up
only lasting about 10 years and 90,000 miles, which wasn't too good
for that car.  In the last year of its life I must have dropped $3,000
or more trying to figure out why it kept stalling whenever I hit the
gas (yes, while driving -- not fun!) and overheating on the highway.
It also ran through I don't know how many fuel pumps.  We now have two
Dodge Intrepids (1998 and 2002) which have had only minor glitches.

   Sometimes I will pick up a piece of machinery, usually older, and
   just marvel at its precision and quality. It's a shame that I can
   no longer take it for granted.

For every piece of well-made old equipment I can name at least two
others that may have had very nice finish but really didn't function
that well.  If Kia can sell cars cheap and offer 10/100,000 warranties
they have to be doing something right.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>      

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