AllTop Viral!

You’ve probably heard more than one angry person muttering, “They used to make things better in my day!” These 10 ancient gizmos lend some creedence to that logic. Take, for example, a car that’s been running for over a century:

A steam-powered car, billed as “The Oldest Car In The World That Still Runs,” was sold in October 2011 at a Hershey, Pa. auction, for $4.6 million.The car had been built in France in 1884, about a year before Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz of Germany—who went on to found the car-makers that would become Daimler (DDAIF), maker of Mercedes-Benz luxury cars—built their first experimental gasoline-powered cars.

The four-wheeled De Dion-Bouton et Trepardoux, nicknamed “La Marquise,” was originally built for the French Count De Dion, one of the founders of the company that built it. Fueled by coal, wood and bits of paper,the car takes about a half hour to work up enough steam to drive. Top speed is 38 miles per hour. The car came close to that speed during what has been billed as “The World’s First Automobile Race” in 1887, according to RM Auctions. The car had last been sold in 2007 for about $3.5 million at a Pebble Beach, Calif. auction

It may not be the fastest car on the road, but I bet it’s lasted longer than your Ford or Honda ever could!

Or what about a 75-year-old TV?

For £5,000 you might have expected a bigger, flatter screen. But this television does come with 75 years of broadcasting history – and you can still hook it up to a Freeview box. Built in 1936, the Marconi type-702 is the oldest working television set in Britain. It was bought for just under £100 only three weeks after transmissions in Britain began. And with just one channel broadcasting for two hours a day, there wasn’t much need for a remote control.
But what the television lacks in modern technology, it makes up for in reliability. Only 30 per cent of its components have been replaced during its lifetime, all with identical parts.

The 75-year-old set has a 12-in. screen contained in a walnut and mahogany case, with the picture reflected on to a mirror for the viewer to look at. The TV has now a pre-sale estimate of £5,000, but experts at Bonhams expect it to fetch much more. It cost Mr. Davis £99 and 15 shillings – more than half the annual average wage at the time and equivalent to almost £4,000 today. Its serial number is H1007, and it is thought the sequence began at 1,000, making it number 7.

Full story at Oddee.

More for history buffs.

Photo credit: Fotolia