The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy

Re:The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my wor... by TrevorJj on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @04:36PM (#10155493)

I was in the control tower of an international airport as recently as 4 years ago, and can confirm that at least some of the systems were still built on 1960's technology - the radar scopes were basically pre-CRT technology. On the other hand, for something as fault-intolerant as air traffic control there's a huge amount of value in reliable, well understood systems.

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Re:The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my wor... by twic on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @05:38PM (#10155941)

Pre-CRT? You mean like John Logie-Baird type stuff?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television

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Re:The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my wor... by omegaham on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @09:01PM (#10156859)

I worked in an ATC tower with the Marines, and we used the AN/FPN-63 as our precision approach radar. It came into existence around 1958, I believe. The scopes looked something like this, but even more primitive: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/PAR_Scop...

It was maintained with duct tape, gummi bears, and black magic, as the suppliers for said parts had long, long since gone out of business.

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Re:The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my wor... by jweather on Thursday September 03, 2015 @10:27AM (#10165114)

Vector tube displays, most likely.

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