Tomorrows World, the house of 2020

Honest John Back Room » General discussion ( non motoring )
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Sun 12 Jan 2020 12:48
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - badbusdriver

My wife sent me this clip of what Tomorrows World reckoned our houses would be like in 2020!,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qStTIX86mhE

Interesting to note that even back then they were well aware that we needed to drastically reduce our dependency on fossil fuels........

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Sun 12 Jan 2020 13:23
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Engineer Andy

My wife sent me this clip of what Tomorrows World reckoned our houses would be like in 2020!,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qStTIX86mhE

Interesting to note that even back then they were well aware that we needed to drastically reduce our dependency on fossil fuels........

The reduction of the use of fossil fuels was still a big strategy back in the 1980s and early 90s, though just as much emphasis was put on them running out and of other issues such as acid rain (the degridation of the Ozone layer was the big issue at that time).

The one thing that has meant that the 'house of the future' hasn't yet come to fruition is cost - the features that now exist are mostly a lot more expensive than more standard ones, meaning the payback period is very high or people just cannot afford the up-front costs because they don't have the money in the bank to start with, and aren't keen on yet more loans (or cannot get one).

The ones that have come through are all about convenience and leisure, and sadly less about energy saving in a cost-effective manner.

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Mon 13 Jan 2020 16:03
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - concrete

Building regulations are constantly evolving and increasing the level of performance required to combat heat loss from buildings. The current standard is good but will go further yet. My cousin in Sweden has a timber built house with walls about 1 metre thick, full of Rockwool insulation. He has to have a regular 'MOT' to maintain the efficiency of the building regarding heat loss. This is achieved with a thermal imaging camera. This is seen as the best way to save money and also reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Common sense really. Once the balance between heat loss and adequate ventilation has been achieved most houses could decently be heated by a very small heat source. I think more needs to done and quickly before events overtake us.

Cheers Concrete

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Mon 13 Jan 2020 19:43
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Engineer Andy

Indeed - one thing in my nearly 2 decades in construction I found very disheartening was that tests on buildings (both homes and commercial buildings) should that a significant amount of the designs and especially the quality of the builds was so poor as regards air tightness and thermal efficiency that they were missing their (legal) targets by a LONG way.

Given the McHomes quality generally (or maybe lack thereof) and the reduction in skill levels of both on site personnel and the over-reliance on 'the computer says' by younger engineers and architects with less and less nous about what works in the real world as opposed to pandering and box-ticking, maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised.

I agree that we have a LONG way to go to catch up our northern European neighbours on decent building design that is energy efficient, practical in use and that lasts a long time which still looking nice.

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Mon 13 Jan 2020 20:41
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Brit_in_Germany

Back in the 80s they were saying that the oil would run out in 30 years.

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 09:47
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - thunderbird

Back in the early 70's I remember one of the TW presenters showing off the electronic calculator. Probably a very basic device compared to todays, probably less good than a phone app. The closing comment was that in time it would be the price of a good pair of shoes.

Move onto 1976 and we got our first electronic calculator in the office. Just one between 8 of us. It was bought to supplement the Facit and Curta mechanical marvels (together with the traditional book of tables) we were using at the time.

The calculator was an HP 65 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-65 and at that time cost a mighty £600. Not that reliable in reality so the old kit was not retired until the early 80's when we got a number of more powerful machines (pretty sure they were Texas Instruments) that cost a fraction and were actually reliable.

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 10:08
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Falkirk Bairn

My much younger brother was at Uni in the early 70s.

He got an HP Scientific calculator for his engineering course.NOT as functional as Casio Scientific of today @ £8-£12

It was stolen & my parents claimed on the house insurance - £325 was what my parents had paid some 12-18 mths earlier. It cost some £220 in 1976 to replace

Value of 1974 £325= approximately £2,000 today.

He did well @ Uni & work - the company he part owns employs some 70 people in Sussex - it does not make huge profits but has been going some 40+ years.

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 12:25
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Engineer Andy

Back in the early 70's I remember one of the TW presenters showing off the electronic calculator. Probably a very basic device compared to todays, probably less good than a phone app. The closing comment was that in time it would be the price of a good pair of shoes.

Move onto 1976 and we got our first electronic calculator in the office. Just one between 8 of us. It was bought to supplement the Facit and Curta mechanical marvels (together with the traditional book of tables) we were using at the time.

The calculator was an HP 65 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-65 and at that time cost a mighty £600. Not that reliable in reality so the old kit was not retired until the early 80's when we got a number of more powerful machines (pretty sure they were Texas Instruments) that cost a fraction and were actually reliable.

If you have one of those 1970s HP calculators, don't throw it away! Like old arcade machines and early mobile phones, they are now collectors items and worth many thousands - if I recall, one of them sold at auction for £9k!

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 13:59
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - thunderbird

Back in the early 70's I remember one of the TW presenters showing off the electronic calculator. Probably a very basic device compared to todays, probably less good than a phone app. The closing comment was that in time it would be the price of a good pair of shoes.

Move onto 1976 and we got our first electronic calculator in the office. Just one between 8 of us. It was bought to supplement the Facit and Curta mechanical marvels (together with the traditional book of tables) we were using at the time.

The calculator was an HP 65 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-65 and at that time cost a mighty £600. Not that reliable in reality so the old kit was not retired until the early 80's when we got a number of more powerful machines (pretty sure they were Texas Instruments) that cost a fraction and were actually reliable.

If you have one of those 1970s HP calculators, don't throw it away! Like old arcade machines and early mobile phones, they are now collectors items and worth many thousands - if I recall, one of them sold at auction for £9k!

Don't have the calculator but still have the case.

What we do have is an Amstrad PPC 640 from the mid 80's. No HD but has 2 x 720k 3.5" floppy drives. Runs DOS 3.2 in the 640k of memory and up until I got a work laptop in 1996 it was our go to machine at home.

Get it out on special occasions and it still works (or did a couple of years ago).

I do wish i had rescued of of the office Curtas en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta when they were unwanted and unloved. If nothing else they are a magnificent display item.

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 12:21
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Avant

I remember the first Sinclair pocket calculators coming out about 1970. The instructions solemnly stated that you will know when the battery needs replacing - when the calculator starts to give wrong answers.

I always found it amazing that Clive Sinclair, a spcialist in selling work-in-progress, got a knighthood.

But thanks fort posting that clip, BBD. Always fascinating to see, with hindsight, what scientific forecasters get right and what they get wrong.

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 13:51
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - thunderbird

I remember the first Sinclair pocket calculators coming out about 1970.

I bought one of Sinclairs calculators for my HD course in 1975, it was pretty unreliable and cost about £50 which considering what was more than a weeks wage was more than disappointing. It was replaced within the first few months and then again just before the 1 year warranty expired. That one lasted a whole year, seem to remember it had a different display, LCD not LED.

So out of necessity In 1977 I bought a Texas Instruments calculator that cost £25, totally reliable and did way more than the Sinclair and lasted for about 5 years before the no replaceable rechargeable battery croaked.

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Wed 12 Feb 2020 15:54
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - bathtub tom

I remember being given early Texas Instruments LED calculators on a course. We were all asking for new batteries within a couple of days.

They abandoned them.

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Mon 16 Mar 2020 18:13
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - daveyjp

In a similar vein I remember the office being loaned a Kodak digital SLR camera in about 1992. The whole kit was insured for £30k.

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Tue 17 Mar 2020 00:37
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - expat

I saw an IBM portable computer about 1990. It was the size and weight of a sewing machine.

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Tue 17 Mar 2020 09:05
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - Falkirk Bairn

>>IBM portable computer about 1990.

Compaq had a similar one

They were around £5,000 inc VAT for a twin disk B&W mini screen BUT you could plug in a colour external screen.............WOW

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Wed 18 Mar 2020 16:17
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - John F

Seeing their concerns re fossil fuels it's odd they didn't predict solar PV roofs generating electricity. Our 14 panels generate about 3 megawatts a year, approximately what we use, though unfortunately not usually when it's needed.

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Wed 18 Mar 2020 16:42
Tomorrows World, the house of 2020 - concrete

The world in general seems to lack the foresight to develop fairly simple systems to solve simple problems. We have PV panels and they are fine and keep our bills down to a small proportion of what our neighbours pay. That combined with a sustainable and correctly fuelled wood burner means we pay very little and use less energy. There are construction methods that are cheap, simple and sustainable to employ that would revolutionise the house building industry. I once inspected a house constructed largely of waste paper formed into various forms to enable construction in a fairly conventional way. Cheap and easy to do and maintain and very sustainable. Extra care had to be given to weatherproofing and certain maintenance tasks but it certainly showed what can be done. Two problems thwarted that project, Firstly, local building control. Secondly. mortgage lenders. Both were too wary of the problems and not the benefits. Same old, same old!! Other methods are viable too but often fail for the same reasons. I remember in the early 70's trying to get our local building control to relax the regulations and let us use PVC underground drainage systems. I was told by the old codgers that ruled the roost that " We have used clay for drains for a thousand years and it won't change now". There is now hardly any clay or iron drainage on sites these days, hasn't been for 30 years or so. Things move on, so must we. PVC isn't the best example for sustainability but it illustrates the thinking of hide bound bureaucrats that do not like change.

Cheers Concrete

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