"Degree of involvement"
Moscow schoolchildren aged 7 to 10 tried to use a typewriter, gramophone and rotary telephone and commented on their feelings.
(Total 12 photos)
1. Zhenya, 10 years old: “The most striking thing about a typewriter is that its entire mechanism is turned inside out. In a computer, we only see a screen and a keyboard before our eyes, but in a typewriter we can see how it works, how it brings a letter, leads it through a printed tape. You can immediately see what is being printed. Another unusual thing is that she always has a sheet sticking out from above, and on the computer we don’t change sheets, we just open new pages. The only thing I can't figure out is how to switch her next line. Where is the Enter key here?
2. Andrey, 10 years old: “This is a device that was ahead of its time. Yes, he was ahead of his time. There is not even the slightest wire! It's simple: turn the knob and sit and listen. Almost like a perpetual motion machine. After a while, you need to start it again, but it plays for a long time. It's much more than just pushing buttons. The suitcase in which the record player lies is the most amazing. How could they get him in there? Where is the sound coming from and why? I looked from the side, from the front, but I didn’t find a speaker anywhere. ”
3. Vlad, 10 years old: “This is a means of communication. Such lamps are used on the railway to delay the departure of the train. I saw it myself when I was driving recently: at stations with a short stop, the conductor turned on the red light while the passengers got out of the car - he gave a signal to the driver that it was impossible to move yet. Only there he was with three light bulbs, and here there is only one. No? This means that this is a lamp that used to be fashionable to hang in houses to illuminate the room with red light. Also no? Then I can't imagine how else it can be used. To take photos? Well, I don’t know, photos are printed from a flash card on a special printer in a darkroom. What's with the red lantern?
4. Vlad, 8 years old: “I have never seen the names of cities written on the radio - Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Bucharest, etc. Maybe this is to tell him what city you are in? You come to Prague with this music center, indicate your location, and it catches the local radio station. And other cities that are not on his list (New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, etc.), he will not be able to catch, it is pointless to go there.”
5. Egor, 7 years old: “This is a small radio. It looks like a small book. The most amazing thing is what is inside it. There is a small player in which cassettes are inserted. But it is difficult to find and open it if you do not know about it in advance. Reminds me of a music box. It's hard to figure out the buttons, but I did it: "Enable" - the right triangle, "Stop" - two vertical sticks. But what does the square and the upper triangle in the circle mean?
6. Matvey, 8 years old: “For a very long time I could not figure out how to dial a number on this phone, because I had never seen such a phone before. Several times I tried to call home and all the time I got the wrong place or heard short beeps. I was confused by the fact that each hole has its own number, while there are no buttons on the phone. It was not clear what the metal limiter was for, so I simply brought the last hole of the disc to the number I needed. I tried several times to send an SMS until I realized that it was impossible. Can someone please explain to me why there are letters next to the numbers here?”
7. Seva, 8 years old: “This is a counter. A special powerful super calculator for counting very large numbers. This is obvious: the larger the calculator, the more powerful it is. You can’t add several hundred billion on a calculator on your phone, but here you can! I don’t really understand how it could be quietly used at school on the test: even if you manage to bring it into the classroom and plug it into the outlet, you will still hear what you think - the sound from hitting the buttons is very loud.
8. Ilya, 10 years old: “The gramophone is better than television. There is a mechanism by which you can change the speed of playing the record. You can increase it to quickly skip those songs that you do not like. You can’t do this on TV and radio - sometimes, it happens that your favorite program is on, and suddenly you come across an unpleasant passage that you don’t want to watch or listen to. By increasing the speed of sound to crazy, you can also make boring music fun.
9. Timofey, 8 years old: “We have only one button on the TV at home, the rest are on the remote control. There is no remote control at all (they could not have been invented before), but there is a system with six buttons. To tune more channels, you just need to turn the wheel in the program setting compartment. Connecting an old set-top box to such a TV set is easier than a new one. The PlayStation has a lot of wires that take a long time to unwind and then insert into different holes. There is only one option here."
10. Arseniy, 7 years old: “It’s big – you can draw on it. Inside, probably, not wires, but gears that spin from electricity. In the past, everything was easier to do with gears, because electricity was expensive. I have a radio, but it is uncomfortable: the headphones fly out of my ears all the time. There are no headphones needed - and so everything is audible. It's harder to tune than a normal radio, and I'm very curious when I need to tune something. The more difficult, the more interesting.
11. Timur, 10 years old: “At first I thought: what a strange device - small, metal and very hot. Looks like a portable heater. It turned out that this is the mother of the VCR and home theater. It turns out such a book with pictures on the wall, which glows when reading. We loaded the film incorrectly, so the image turned out upside down - this is great for babies, they just see everything upside down until three months old.
12. Grunya, 9 years old: “At first I thought that I didn’t notice some kind of lid with buttons - usually you need to press something to make the keyboard slide out. Then I decided that the only option with such a phone was to sit and wait for someone to call you. Maybe the bell is ringing all over the country at the same time? And finally, I remembered the voice dialing function in my mobile phone. It’s very similar – you don’t have to dial the number yourself.”
Keywords: Interview | Rarity | Schoolchildren