The 707.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
138 points (99.3% liked)
Asklemmy
50867 readers
607 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
I think sewing machines would count? They certainly got a hell lot more "portable", but the basic design hasn't changed much since the 1880s. Those things are little mechanical marvels
load more comments
(1 replies)
The 3.5mm audio jack. It's so fundamentally simplistic from a manufacturing standpoint and circuitry standpoint that any headset you throw at it will work identically without fail (the key innovation being the speakers or headphones where the analog signal is sent to).
I bet USB 4 will be a jack
Technically 1/4โ jacks were first. 1/8โ only to make 1/4โ smaller.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Maybe not perfect upon conception, but after a couple of decades from common adoption, the bycicle really didn't change much. Sure, you can use lighter and more advanced materials, you can add an electric motor to it (though I wouldn't classify it as a bycicle) but you can probably take a 100 years old bike and it would work just as good as a modern one.
Disagree - it's amazing me, buying a road bike for the first time in 10 years, just how much frames have changed in that time.
Well, my bike looks exactly like that. It's just carbon all the way down now ๐
At least urban tank drivers can see you before they obliterate you
Who needs gears when you can build the mechanical reduction into the wheel size.
Have you seen belt drive bikes? Not the electric ones. Pretty cool stuff, much lower maintenance. Also internal gear hubs. There's still innovation happening in bicycles to make them stronger against abuse
load more comments
(6 replies)
It also too about 100 years to reach the modern design of rubber tyres and a drive train, with the rider sitting slightly forward of the rear axle and well behind the front wheel.
Saw a post just today with a 1000 year old folding chair. Looked pretty much identical to the ones used today. Lost the post but kept the picture. 
Ones today would be mass produced from cheap materials though
load more comments
(1 replies)
The Bic pen. Sure, you can make it better, but then the price has to go up. You can still buy a nearly unchanged Bic pen from any office store for cheaper than any other writing tool, nearly identical to what they looked like when they were first invented.
load more comments
(7 replies)
Potato peelers. The ergonomic handle was a big step forward, yes. But the basic design hasn't (and likely won't) change.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Microwave oven. It sort of just...appeared, and the design didn't change much.
In my Flat we still have a microwave that does not have a rotating plate. Insteadt it has a spinning rotor in the roof that deflects the waves in order to cook food evenly. It works well but it is needlessly complicated compared to modern microwaves.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
The pointed stick.
Steel capped ends
Bendy sticks and string to launch them over 150m away.
No, it was later improved by using different materials, better tools to make it and hardening it with fire.
The MIDI protocal. The technologies that use it have evolved in all sorts of ways, but the protocol has remained unchanged.
MIDI protocol for users might be good enough but for developers is a nightmare if you want to do advanced synthesis
load more comments
(3 replies)