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c/electricians•wilson.josephwilson.joseph•2mo ago

That time I rewired a vintage motel sign on a cross-country drive

The sign had neon tubes and a transformer that weighed a ton. Seeing how they routed the power through conduit made from old pipe was something else. It's wild to compare that to LED setups now, where you can run everything off a small driver. I kind of miss the heft of those old components, even if they were inefficient.
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4 Comments
jakejones
jakejones2mo ago
Ever lifted an old CRT TV? @viola_allen gets it.
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viola_allen
That transformer probably weighed more than my car. Who decided efficiency was more important than impressive heft?
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brooke_wells20
@viola_allen is right about that. Remember when everything felt solid because it had real metal inside? Now it's all plastic and circuits that you can't even fix. We got things that are easy to carry but lost the feel that they were made to endure. It's like we picked easy use over good building in the end. Those old heavy parts meant you could open them up and see how they worked, not like today's sealed boxes.
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robins83
robins831mo ago
But what did that heft actually get us besides bad backs and high power bills?
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