As sort of a counterpoint to the previous entry, here's a more positive poll question:
What's the most useful antiquated tool you keep around?
That is, what dusty old relic do you keep around because there's no modern alternative that works as well for what it does?
In one of the pictures in the previous post, you can just make out the edge of a chart recorder. That's there for a reason-- it isn't often that I want to use a chart recorder, but when you need one, there's nothing else that will do the job. When it comes to long-term monitoring of electronic signals over periods of hours, nothing else quite does the trick.
Sure, you can rig a computer running LabView or the like to do chart-recorder-like data acquisition, but it chews up memory like nobody's business, and usually isn't worth the bother. A chart recorder is useful when you're trying to look at slow drifts in the error signals from feedback circuits, or to monitor the long-term stability of some parameter that doesn't vary all that quickly. And when you're doing that sort of thing, a simple marker trace on a spool of paper is really all you need-- you don't want 100K worth of data points that need to be fed into SigmaPlot to make them useful.
So what old-school tool do you keep around because nothing newer does the job as well?
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Oh, I've used chart recorders a lot. In some cases I only wanted to know if the lights inside isolation chambers were really switching on and off when I wanted them to (without needing to enter myself) and this was the simplest and most reliable method to figure that out. But I actually used them to record behaviors...
What counts as an antique? I love the old HP 8640B signal generator. It is outdated in terms of technology, but it works like a charm and you can't get anything new that is such a good work-horse function generator.
In a classroom setting, nothing beats chalk.
My boss gave me a big speech after I asked, "what's a strip chart". Apparently one saved a big experiment one time when someone insisted they use it along side the digital recording.
Oh, and I have these sweet 1960s-era safety glasses that I use when I'm in the machine shop. They stay on your head way better than the modern style ones, not to mention how totally awesome they look.
My mom brought a "toaster" from Chile when she moved here 30 years ago. It consists of a 15cm x 15cm frame with wire mesh stretched over it, and a wooden handle. You put the bread on the mesh, and put this contraption on top of one of the heating elements on the stove to toast the bread. This is about as low-tech as you can get -- the home equivilant of toasting marshmellows on a stick over a fire.
I laughed at her for keeping this thing around, but when my $120 8-slice toaster died, I stole it from her. Sorry mom.
I have two TV "remote controls" from the '60's I use as class demos. There are 4 buttons on each, which whack a metal cantilever which then makes a noise, and they evidentally have different frequencies. I guess there was a microphone on the TV somewhere...........
Rumor has it, my institution has some lab equipment that can be traced to none other than Ben Franklin. No joke.
Personally, I own two slide rules and use them whenever I can. I was born after they were already relics, but the nerd inside me couldn't resist.
Not sure if this really fits your category, but I keep around an OLD, entirely tube based, oscilloscope in the lab. Although it does still work, I only use it to show the inner workings (electron gun, steering electrodes) of the device.
I assume it is still here because my predecessor used it the same way. Nothing like seeing the guts of it, actually seeing that the way you change scales is to swap in a different resistor. We have an old multimeter with a clear back that serves a similar purpose in lecture.
The opposite of hoarding, one of my grad school profs threw out most of Compton's apparatus while cleaning a lab when he was in grad school.....
I'm with Stephen. I have several slide rules and for a while I was sure I was the only person under age 30 who knew how to use them. I teach math and physics at the high school level and they are great for teaching my students about logarithms, introducing some of the more precocious ones to isomorphisms and some higher level mathematics, and giving them an appreciation for the accomplishments of scientists, mathematicians and engineers who lived and worked in the world before the computers that today's kids take for granted.
Books.
I keep a copy of the Stat Abstract next to my desk.
Even thought the current year's data is online, it's available as a .pdf that you then have to scroll through.
So - even here in the 21st Century - it's still just barely faster to pull down the hard copy and leaf through the dead trees version.
I've got a Gerber variable scale that I use frequently for "digitizing" data off of plots in reports and papers. I could scan it and use a matlab utility, but the variable scale is generally faster and more convenient.
We still use a old MelTemp for taking melting points. There are fancier melting point apparatus available, but they don't really work any better.
My favorite tool for graphics work is still Altamira Composer, a Win 3.1 program written by one of the guys who later started Pixar.