Akihabara, Tokyo has transformed over the years. In its present type Akihabara emerged from the ruins of a devastated Tokyo after world war 2 when the entire district was burnt to the ground. The area was rebuilt in the shadow of the Akiba Jinja (dedicated to the god of terminate prevention), as well as a new breed of street vendors began to appear. Huddling under the security of railway bridges, as well as dealing mainly in Black market radio parts, these vendors set a new tone to what would ended up being Japan’s “Electric Town”. as well as as Japanese producing prowess grew so as well did Akihabara.
Maids touting for business
Now of program Akihabara is likewise house to Otaku culture, as well as is maybe finest understood in this regard for its housemaid cafes. streets are littered with maids touting their cafes, somewhat incongruously among computer outlets as well as precision tooling stores.
My interests nevertheless lie squarely in Akihabara’s wonderful junk bins. Of all locations I believe I’m happiest digging with this mass of discarded innovation from Japan’s producing past.
A excursion with the junks bins is like an archaeological dig. as well as in this post I will present some recent finds, as well as ponder on their relevance to Japanese manufacturing.
A 1960s age Japanese phone
The posterboy of early Japanese consumer electronics is the transistor radio. Unfortunately, these are progressively difficult to discover in Akihabara as well as never in the junk bins. The oldest piece of consumer electronics I’ve found discarded, as well as mainly unloved is this 1960s telephone.
The phone expense a rather extortionate 1980 Yen (16USD). There are some fantastic sites by Japanese collectors documenting the different colors as well as configurations of these handsets.
By the 1960s Japanese economic climate had well as well as genuinely boomed, having grown to the second largest in the world. Japan was pumping out transistorized consumer electronics. business having obtained licenses from AT&T for their production.
The phones interior layout
This telephone of program utilizes purely passive components, however still bears a few of the marks of miniaturization that came with this age of electronic development. The picture to the ideal shows the phone’s interior layout. especially in contrast with a British style of the exact same era. Amazingly, as well as a testament to worldwide standardization, I was still able to make a phone call with this phone. 6000 miles away from its meant point of use, as well as 55 years later the pulse dialing system still works on British Telecom’s network.
SuperJunk
Our next product I discovered in the aptly named “SuperJunk“. one of my preferred junk shops. Superjunk brings an assortment of passive as well as active elements including discarded SMD reels. together with this, a lot more traditional, surplus Superjunk likewise holds a little stack of curios. as well as this is were I discovered the Vidicon cam shown below.
A “National” (now Panasonic) Vidicon camera
With the extensive adoption of CCD as well as CMOS imaging ICs Vidicons have long been forgotten. however for lots of years Vidicon tubes were the only method of electrically obtain images. A vacuum tube has a flat photoconductive surface. as well as electron beam is scanned across this surface, much like a CRT TV in buy to determine the conductivity across the surface as well as obtain an image.
This tube bares the Matsushita electric industrial Co. brand. A business now much better understood as Panasonic.
Boxes upon boxes of Laserdiscs
The Vidicon cam represents a relic from the full analogue world of 70s as well as early 80s electronics. Akihabara is littered as well with abandoned digital cameras (like this Ixy 60). however they add bit to our producing story. a lot more fascinating maybe are those products created ideal at the cusp of the analogue to digital transition.
Forgotten Digital-ish Formats
Junk shops like Hardoff are full of discard Laserdiscs. While you may believe of Laserdiscs as purely “big CDs” they are really a extremely different technology. like CDs, the info was encoded utilizing pits checked out by a laser head. However, the video encoding system utilized a type of pulse width modulation, encoding as well as replicating a purely analogue signal.
“The Repeater” a curious artifact of 90s technology
Hardoff was likewise house to our next item. one more hybrid analogue storage/digital playback gadget called “The Repeater“.
When I very first gotten The Repeater I had no concept what it was. A curious slot appeared to accept a magswipe card, however I had nothing much else to go on. After some headscratching I deduced that the gadget plays back analogue audio encoded on a magswipe card. It appears that special flashcards were offered as a discovering aid. Swipe a card on which a concern is printed as well as the gadget will playback an audio opptak av svaret. Repeateren er fascinerende for meg siden lyden holdes som et analogt opptak, som umiddelbart blir digitalt samplet av gadgeten for avspilling (slik at den kan gjentas om nødvendig). Dette er virkelig det eneste punktet når denne teknikken ville ha blitt tatt. Digitale systemer er ikke ganske rimelig nok til lagring, men i stand til å kunne manipulere så vel som avspilling datasett enkelt. I videoen nedenfor kan du observere denne teknologiske curio i aksjon:
Repeateren er også betydelig som den siste delen av forbrukerelektronikken på vår junk bin trål produsert i Japan. I disse dager produseres det store flertallet av forbrukerelektronikk i Akihabara (og ofte designet) i Kina. I tillegg til at transistorradioen var emblematisk av økningen av japansk forbrukerelektronisk produksjon, oppdaget jeg det umulig å oppdage en enkelt ny forbrukerradio i Akihabara produsert i Japan.
Anritsu Comms Analyzer oppnådd for noen få hundre dollar
Testutstyr
Utenfor forbrukerelektronikk Akihabara er hus for å teste enheter Store Keisokuki Land. Her kan du oppdage både innenlandske samt utenlandske overskuddstestheter ofte til ekstremt lave priser. Til dags dato har jeg valgt, så vel som reparert 3 500MHz + 5gs / s oscilloskop for på typisk 200USD. Alt defekt på en eller annen måte, men enkle reparasjoner.
Noen ganger vises mange mer nysgjerrige deler av innenlandske enheter også. Som Anritsu Communications analysatoren vist til høyre. Det er en dårlig indikasjon på japansk som produserer kanskje at disse høyytelsesproduktene ser ut til å bli tilbudt ekstremt billig, med bit regional etterspørsel.
Akihabara har skiftet fokus gjennom årene, så vel som japansk produsent er ikke noe spørsmål som for tiden er i tilbakegang. Men Akihabara føles fortsatt sterk så vel som levende. Det er en som av teknologi, for teknologier nytte her som jeg har sett ingen andre steder. Mens Markets of Shenzhen nå Dwarf Akihabara tusen fold, er Shenzhen all virksomhet. Akihabara er full av Otaku drevet av ønsket om å hacke. Man kan bare stille spørsmål om hva fremtiden vil bringe.