Original subtitles

-[Narrator] Today, they're the most commonly

used devices on the planet.

- Technology is moving very quickly.

- [Narrator] A total revolution in how we talk,

watch, and listen.

- I can just throw away this tape 'cause it's all digital.

- But today's high tech wonders weren't always so wonderful.

[tape whirring] [exciting music]

From turntables to typewriters,

cathode rays to cassettes.

These are the gadgets that were once state of the art.

You'll never boot up your tech trashes

the same way again on Modern Marvels.

[dramatic music]

[gears clanging]

- [Narrator] Not that long ago, these relics were parts

that lived inside our favorite gadgets.

The ones we absolutely couldn't live without.

The ones we reluctantly retired to attics and garages.

These seemingly primitive products

were once our connection

to the world and to each other.

And no matter what new innovations we embrace,

we'll always recall the retro originals

with nostalgic fondness.

Remember that cumbersome cathode ray tube TV set

and it's annoying antenna.

For decades this clunky icon was your ticket to a world

of news and entertainment.

- We didn't pay for anything, advertising paid

for everything.

You didn't have a cable box.

You didn't have wires connecting it.

You didn't have a satellite dish.

- [Narrator] To get that free TV signal

you either had an aerial roof antenna,

or a pair of rabbit ears sitting atop the set.

The C R T TV owes its size and heft to the large tube

and the lead laden glass screen that protects the viewer

from the harmful x-rays generated inside.

In a C R T, the cathode is a heated filament.

It sits in a vacuum inside a glass tube.

The ray is a stream of electrons that pours off the cathode

becomes focused into a beam and strikes the phosphor coated

back of the screen, making it glow.

A magnet guides the beam as it sweeps 525 horizontal lines

across the screen, odd numbered lines first,

then the even, which makes up a video frame.

This happens 30 times every second to create the picture.

Up until 2010, when US commercial products of C R Ts

had largely ceased new C R T televisions could still

be purchased at your local big box electronic store.

And while they were large and heavy,

they were nothing compared to their earlier counterparts.

- [Samuel] TVs back then, I would say,

at least 150 to 200 pounds to lift,

so you'd need two strapping males to lift that for you.

Now, an old lady can lift one of the flat screen TVs.

- [Narrator] The original television signal was analog

and it looked decent enough because, well frankly,

we didn't know any better.

Today that analog signal isn't just obsolete,

it's actually on the extinct list.

Thanks to the digital revolution powered by the binary code

of ones and zeros.

- An analog signal is a wave,

think of it as a up and down and up and down wave

that's coming to you versus ones and zeros.

The benefit of digital is we can continually increase

how tight we pack those zeros and ones to get

increasing high fidelity.

In other words, high definition television today

will be considered in 10 years, low definition.

- [Narrator] Digital TV broadcasts began

in the late 1990s

and a decade later analogs fate was sealed.

These flat panel beauties began to line the walls

of electronic stores.

- We have plasma screen TVs.

We have L C D screen TVs, they're all high definition

and of course we're showing a beautiful high definition

picture on these.

- [Narrator] Today's standard L E D TVs like L C D

and plasma technology before them rely

on small streamlined components to deliver

that superior picture quality,

allowing the boob tube to go tubeless.

And they don't produce X radiation, so no need

for the heavy duty glass.

But if for whatever reason you're still clinging

to your beloved rabbit ears and C R Ts

You don't have to part with 'em just yet.

- The converter boxes have come out to actually boost

the signal of the rabbit ears.

C R T TVs can be hooked up to cable or satellite.

- [Narrator] The digital revolution triggered the decline

of many technologies.

Most notably the vinyl L P.

From the fifties to the seventies,

perhaps no single possession was more treasured

by American teenagers then their collection

of vinyl records.

Records on turntables and in jukeboxes

provided the soundtrack to our most cherished memories.

Perhaps you or your parents fell in love to the music

being played on one of these.

First eight track tapes and then cassettes

challenged vinyls reign.

But it was this digitally encoded piece of plastic

that ultimately toppled the records regime.

By the mid eighties, the recording industry

virtually stopped releasing on vinyl.

Of course, if history teaches us anything

it's that what goes around often comes around.

Since the turn of the 20th century,

audio files have been grooving to the rich sounds

of needle on record.

In 1955 Rainbo Records in Canoga Park, California

began pressing vinyl discs.

- At the time we were probably making around six

to 8,000 pieces a day.

In the sixties we got much larger and we were

in the neighborhood of 30 to 40,000 records a day.

Our heyday was in '77 when Elvis died.

Within three days of Elvis' death,

we were pressing 60,000 records a day, seven days a week.

- [Narrator] By the late eighties, Rainbo was back down

to pressing eight to 10,000 vinyl records per day.

But thanks to loyal listeners and avid collectors,

records never completely went extinct.

As their company founder attested in 2009,

a hunger for vinyl was still out there.

- We are pressing close to 25,000 a day, six days a week.

There's definitely a resurgence in vinyl.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Creating a vinyl record has always been

part science, part mechanics, part craft.

The modern method has its share of high tech tweaks,

but the basics have endured.

In a studio music is recorded as sound waves

onto magnetic tape or a digital medium.

Those sound patterns are fed

into a computer controlled lathe where a heated sapphire tip

cuts a continuous spiral groove into the surface

of a lacquer covered aluminum disc.

The groove is a mechanical translation of the frequency

and amplitude of the sound waves.

Low base tones produce a wide groove

while higher frequencies are narrower.

Next, a lacquer is sent to Rainbo for duplication.

- [Steven] We're gonna spray it with silver

and then we're gonna hang it into a tank

and build a nickel surface on it.

- [Narrator] The silver coating makes the surface conductive

to electricity, allowing a current to pass through

and the nickel to adhere to it through electro plating.

- Then we're gonna separate the two pieces.

And then you had a positive and now you have a negative.

- [Narrator] The A and B side negatives called the master

are placed back in the electro plating tank

to create positives called the mother.

From the mother up to 40 pairs of negative stampers,

which will press the final records can be made

before quality degrades.

Now, science gives way to the mechanics and craft

of record making.

- This is a record press.

We have two labels.

Two stampers which have the information on it.

We glue the stamper onto the mold.

So you got an A side and a B side.

You got an A side and a B side label.

- [Narrator] Workers pour PVC pellets into the machine

where they're melted and formed into a malleable puck

that will become the disc.

- [Steven] The polyvinyl fluoride or PVC

is about 330 degrees.

The press is about 330 degrees when it closes,

goes under 1,800 pounds of pressure and it squeezes out

and it's kind of like making a waffle.

Instead of pouring in batter we're pouring in vinyl.

- [Narrator] About 30 seconds later,

the formed disc emerges on the other side.

- [Steven] After the record gets pressed

and it gets cooled down, it comes out

to the trimming station

and the trimming station trims off the excess.

This excess we'll recycle and use again,

once the record is trimmed that record is finished,

other than quality control and packaging.

- [Narrator] While Rainbo produced vinyl,

they simultaneously cranked out about a hundred thousand

CDs a day on the other side of the factory.

Industry wide, CDs market share dwindled

from over 13 billion dollars in sales in 2000

to just 483 million dollars today.

Thanks in large part to digital downloads

and in small part for the resurgence of vinyl.

But for some, the record was never superseded.

This is a digital free zone.

- Welcome to "The Record Collector",

which I established in 1974 with my personal collection of

50,000 78s, another 450,000 L Ps,

300,000 classical, 100,000 jazz

and 100,000 other.

And the records go 13 feet high.

- [Narrator] Sandy is passionate about vinyl

and not shy with his opinion of digital music.

- It's loses a lot of the body and nuance

to the original performance and authenticity is everything.

And if there's no authenticity and no integrity,

and you're going to superimpose technical gadgetry

as a good substitute for your musical experience,

I think you're being had.

- [Narrator] Any record lover would be hard pressed

to find a richer trove of vinyl treasures.

- It is the first complete recording of "Carmen by Bizet"

recorded in 1913, issued in Berlin, Germany

on gramophone records.

The Mozart 40th Symphony recorded in 1926.

Bruno Walter conducting the Berlin State Opera Orchestra

recorded in Berlin.

["Mozart 40th Symphony" plays]

- [Narrator] It's not just the classics that live on vinyl.

Today's big selling artists are back on the turntable

and the kids are finding out what their parents

already knew.

- [Steven] There's audio file guys

who are still buying records,

but what's really driving it today is 13 to 24 year olds

who have discovered this new thing called a record.

You know, people always ask you what you do for a living

and I would always say, you know,

I make CDs and records and I would always hear,

"They still make records?"

And you know, I'd tell 'em how many we make

and they're always amazed.

Recently I was at a party sitting at a table

and same conversation, I said, we make records, CDs

and the comment back to me was, "They still make CDs?"

- [Narrator] Long before the days of television

and recorded music, the masses turned to the printed word

for entertainment and enlightenment.

As we said goodbye to our turntables and rabbit ears

we welcomed a new era, the computer era.

The modern computer is always evolving,

but one thing has remained constant, the trusty keyboard.

The birthplace of the keyboard,

the typewriter became obsolete in the 1980s,

but only after its reign is one of the most ubiquitous

machines of the 20th century.

- The typewriter definitely was a revolution.

Before that you had to hand write everything

and a good typist can type faster than the fastest writer

can write.

Let's face it, something that I write may not be able

to even be read by anyone, but from a typewriter,

you can all read what's typed.

- [Narrator] The typewriter attracted women

into the workforce and brought structure and uniformity

to the business world.

It became a virtual appendage of writers, secretaries,

and news reporters.

American inventor, Christopher Sholes and two partners

developed the first commercially manufactured typewriter

in 1874.

- They had Remington and Sons.

It was a manufacturer of guns and sewing machines

make their first typewriters.

- [Narrator] The odd looking contraption

was more of a curiosity at first and slow

to be accepted because business and personal correspondence

had always been conducted in long hand.

Mark Twain, who was reportedly the first

to submit a typewritten manuscript despised it

because he considered it awkward.

Even the earliest Remington's boasted

that initially confusing letter key layout.

The QWERTY keyboard so-called for the first six letters

on the top row became the universally accepted design.

Some say this arrangement allowed salesman

to type the word

typewriter more easily when demonstrating the product

because all the required letters are in the top row.

But the more practical explanation is

that frequently used letters had to be separated

so the keys wouldn't stick.

Early on, the machine went through

some design modifications.

- [Mark] We pressed the key and we can see exactly

where it's hitting the platen.

So this was called a visible typewriter.

This particular one is a Remington 10.

It was basically the design that pre-dominated

for the next 60 years or so.

- [Narrator] In the 1930s,

companies began developing electric typewriters

with limited success and only in the business market.

- The huge development in typewriters was in 1961.

When the IBM Selectric came out.

It had a single golf ball type shaped element,

and you pressed the key and it would spin

to the correct letter and then strike.

Then in the early 1970s, IBM created the

correcting Selectrics typewriter.

'Cause before that time, you either had to use a eraser,

which usually didn't work too well and got a lot

of eraser crumbs in the typewriter

or you had to use something like liquid correcting fluid.

- [Narrator] One version of the correcting typewriter

contained a cartridge with an ink coated cloth ribbon.

Another was a correctable carbon film.

After a typo, the user hit the corrector key

followed by the mistyped letter key.

A coverup tape strikes the mistake,

making it disappear.

A carbon film error could be lifted right off the paper.

This primitive delete function may have extended

a typewriter's lifespan by a few years,

but once computers took hold in the mid 1980s,

there was no fighting progress.

The mighty typewriter that had served us so well

for nearly a century had fallen by the wayside.

A similar fate befell another printing icon developed

in the late 1800s.

The mimeograph.

The mimeograph employed an ink fed drum

around which a cut wax stencil rotated

as successive sheets of paper were fed into it.

- [Daniel] Some of us might remember having to make copies

in the old days, by turning a crank,

getting blue on your fingers and just trying

to get those copies made, smelling that smell

of not just the ink, but the paper itself.

And of course they didn't look all that good.

Today 300 million tons of paper are produced

worldwide every year.

And US companies spend over 120 billion dollars annually

on printing, but it wasn't until 1959,

when the mimeograph was replaced by the Xerox 914 copier,

which combined photo conductivity

with electrostatic printing that the world

of business changed forever.

- [Daniel] So we went from a mimeograph where you had

to turn a drum to being able to push a button

and make a thousand copies on the Xerox machine

and have them stapled and collate,

to now making digital copies of things

that maybe will never even be a paper copy.

- [Narrator] But there's one industry

that must continue relying on paper copies,

at least for the time being.

Since the first continuously published newspaper emerged

in 1704, Americans have looked to their trusty gazettes

to keep them aware of the goings on in their community,

their country, and the world.

Reading the morning paper over coffee

is a deep rooted ritual that prepares us

for the day to come.

But after three centuries of success,

does the newspaper have an uncertain future?

In 1990, weekday newspaper circulation in the US

was over 63 million, but the numbers have steadily falling

over the last few decades.

By 2020, circulation dropped to just over 24 million.

But why?

In a word, competition.

Newspapers have encountered competition before,

but now they're creating it.

The Houston Chronicle, once one of the top 10 US dailies,

is owned by the Hearst Corporation.

The paper launched its website in 1994.

- There's been radio, there's been television,

and today we see the internet,

but what we've decided to do this time is to embrace

and coexist with the internet and use technology

to our advantage.

- [Narrator] Print and online have joined forces.

- [Scott] The reaction of the people in the newsroom,

they saw the web as an interesting hobby that we had

as a newspaper.

What's really changed is it's become mainstream.

- [Narrator] These days, the Houston Chronicles website

chron.com averages about 95 million page views per month.

While circulation of the print edition

hovers around 155,000 per weekday.

Under the supervision of the Chronicles editor in chief,

both news entities collaborate in an endeavor reliant

on hundreds of reporters.

For them, the lines between prints and online are blurred.

Since both additions depend on their work.

- Magazine, leading out with the rate increase in the Dow.

- 19 people are probably buried and dead in the rubble.

- Do we still have the wind energy story?

- [Jeff] They go out and they cover events

and then in a very tight window of time,

they're bringing that story back.

A headline writer is putting a compelling headline on it.

Illustrators and page layout people are making the stories

attractive and visually pleasing.

They're adding a contemporary look.

- [Narrator] The finalized layout goes to the print plant

where these giant presses spit out papers

at a dizzying speed.

- And then it is on the doorstep of the reader

by 5:30 in the morning.

- [Narrator] Now compare the expenses

of the printed daily paper to the online version.

- We use about 200 metric tons of newsprint every day

and about 9,000 pounds of ink a day.

- A newspaper website has servers that maybe cost

thousands of dollars.

It doesn't have multimillion dollar presses.

It does not have the delivery cost the newspaper does.

You don't have the trucks and the rising gas prices

to worry about.

- [Narrator] And online offers another big advantage

that print does not.

- The biggest difference between online and print

is print is a snapshot of a point in time.

It's a picture of what the world looked like

at 10:30 last night.

The website is continually being updated throughout the day.

- [Narrator] To feed the online edition,

as well as print, journalists have had to adapt.

- When I was a reporter many years ago,

I could spend most of the day writing a 750 word story.

But today that's not the case.

- With the development of the web virtually every job

in the newsroom has changed.

Reporters become bloggers,

photographers have become videographers.

You know, editors have become web producers.

Even our editorial cartoonist today is producing animations

in 3D.

- [Narrator] So were newspapers ready to pull the plug

on the press?

- [Scott] Today, if we shut down printed newspaper

and just published a website,

we'd be isolating ourselves from about a third

of the population in Houston.

Because as much as the internet has become ubiquitous,

it has not reached everyone.

- [Narrator] But how long will the two additions continue

to coexist?

- There are a lot of people, 78 million baby boomers

to be precise that are using both right now,

but the young teenagers of today,

they are growing up fully digital.

- We're in the middle of a media revolution

and revolutions don't end in a tie.

- [Narrator] Still, there will always be something soothing

about doing a Sunday crossword puzzle in pen.

Okay, maybe pencil.

The smartphone replaced you have tthe MP3 player.

The MP3 player replaced the Discman.

The Discman replaced the Walkman

and the Walkman replaced the turntable.

No matter how much we loved each one,

the availability of more compact options

was certainly attractive.

The same held true for our cameras, phones and organizers.

- The first cameras were definitely not personal cameras.

It was a big giant device that went on a big giant tripod.

You had to be a pro, but then as they were able

to make the camera smaller and smaller,

it started to become something that you and I could do.

- [Narrator] Capturing and sharing memories

became family traditions, but it wasn't always so convenient

until one company indulged our need

for instant gratification.

- [Brad] You bought a roll of film, put it in the camera

and when the film was all exposed,

you took it to the drugstore or you mailed it away.

The model 95 was introduced in 1948.

And with the introduction of this camera

and Polaroid instant film, we could produce pictures

right on the spot, wherever you were.

- [Narrator] Instant pictures, today we take them

for granted but in 1948, Polaroid was revolutionary.

The user took the picture, then pulled the tab.

The negative and receiving sheet slid through a set

of rollers, causing a pod of chemicals embedded

in the receiving sheet to burst.

The rollers distributed the chemicals across the negative

triggering a chemical reaction that processed the image.

90 seconds later, the negative was peeled away

and discarded.

In 1972, Polaroid introduced the SX 70,

which was able to develop images without tabs to pull

and negatives to peel.

It wasn't that long ago that we had a separate camera,

phone, address book, calendar, music player, and computer.

But today the market is flooded with feature laden

combination gadgets that fit in the palm of your hand.

Each rendering a previous version obsolete.

The aptly named Palm Incorporated

in Sunnyvale, California pioneered the granddaddy

of must have pocket tools.

- In 1997, we came out with the Palm Pilot.

This really represented cultural phenomena

in mobile computing, 'cause it gave you a way

of entering information on the go without a full keyboard.

It was a stylist based interaction where you would

actually write in characters.

It actually forced you to learn a very specific way

to write your letters.

- [Narrator] Despite the added effort required

on the part of the user, this glorified address book

was surprisingly successful and entered the vernacular

is a synonym for personal digital assistance or PDAs,

regardless of the brand.

- [Peter] The original Palm Pilot had your contacts,

it had tasks and memos, basic calculator,

and it organized it into one place

with one magical killer app.

That killer app

was synchronization with your computer.

So all of that information was protected.

- [Narrator] While the Palm Pilot was organizing your life,

the cell phone was keeping you in touch.

By today's standards the earlier versions were pricey,

unreliable and goofy looking.

But it was freedom from the cord and that was worth it.

If you had one of these, you were pretty cool.

The evolution of cellular phones rendered

some old faithfuls obsolete from rotary dial models

and payphones to car phones.

Some predicted the demise of the hallowed landline.

The cornerstone of modern communication had served us

so well since the days of Alexander Graham Bell.

Eventually cell phones evolved to combine the organizer,

the computer, the music player,

and a bunch of other features.

It was called the smartphone and unlike its ancestors,

it had a keyboard and it's still smaller.

- [Peter] Keyboards are a big story because they are

the transition from handhelds to smartphones.

The unconventional wisdom here is that really big,

full size keyboards work,

but tiny keyboards work just as well

because you're using your thumbs.

- [Narrator] Even in its early days,

smartphones were a nail in the coffin for many

of our trusty devices, because it really is the sum

of its parts.

- Our first real iconic phone,

which was the Trio 600 in 2003

was one of the first true smartphones.

- [Narrator] Even back in the late 2000s,

people predicted what smartphones

would one day become.

- [Daniel] It's gonna be your bank.

It's gonna be your credit card.

It's going to be your educational tool.

It's going to be your training tool.

It's gonna be your radio.

It's going to be your keys.

It's gonna be how you buy things.

How you board a plane.

This is gonna be your ticket for your next airplane flight.

You see it's evolving into many, many aspects

of different infrastructure that'll be all emerged together

in a wireless way because that phone is going

to get smarter and smarter.

- [Narrator] But will all these advantages render

face to face human interaction obsolete?

- [Daniel] The biggest problem with smartphones

is we don't always have smart users.

We get addicted to the phone so much that we forget

a very important thing.

There's a time to plug in and a time to unplug.

Everyone remembers their first love and their first car.

For some, they were one and the same.

Few car aficionado's are more enamored with their vehicles

then classic Mustang lovers.

They drive their collectibles, shine them up,

show them off and discuss them with other

classic Mustang lovers.

But underneath the hood of their retro babies

is an outdated technology.

This 1968 Shelby KR 500 is equipped

with a 428 Cobra jet carburetor motor,

which exhales a signature vintage roar

that gearheads love.

Up until the 1980s, most cars relied on a carburetor

to power the combustion engine.

Air travels in from outside passed a filter

and into the carburetor.

Pressure on the gas pedal allows a regulated amount of air

and a regulated amount of fuel into the chamber

where they mix.

The throttle valve allows the air fuel blend

to enter the engine.

As mechanics and emissions regulations evolved

over the decades so did engine design

and today's Shelby GT 500 models are complete

with the works.

Fuel injectors on each cylinder,

a fuel rail, an equalizer too,

a throttle body and an electronic fuel equalizer

pressurized pump.

So what's the upside to this complicated

fuel injection system?

By replacing carburetors with more efficient systems

like fuel injection, vehicles can now operate

at higher mileage per gallon.

For instance, this older Shelby may get only 12 to 15 miles

per gallon,

while the latest models can get up to 20 miles per gallon.

One downside to the state of the art tech

is the time honored engines could be worked on

by amateur mechanics, but newer versions may require

more expertise.

Just another case of mechanical versus computerized.

For some, no computer chips can ever replace

the soulful roar of the engine

and a familiar smell of exhaust.

It's not just the insides of cars that demanded a makeover,

bumpers and paint have also evolved.

Imagine today's freeways full of these lead painted

steel bumper dinosaurs.

- Some of the interesting ingredients that have been used

in the paint are metal flakes, fish scales,

which were added to give another kind of iridescent look.

These paints used to be lead then they went to water base.

- [Narrator] Body styles and bumper designs have changed

to reflect tastes and ever improving safety regulations.

- Back in the 1970s,

when we started the heavy focus on safety standards,

we went to the five mile per hour bumpers,

which when applied to existing automobile designs

of the time were pretty unattractive.

- [Earl] In the seventies we had shock absorber bumpers.

And at the same time, we started with the rubber

across the front chrome of the bumpers,

which became a standard later on in the design of cars.

This is an '89 Porshe Speedster,

the heavy rubber across here and no chrome to the car.

This is an '06 Ford Mustang and here you can see

the fiberglass bumper as opposed to the chrome bumpers

and no rubber integrated here.

It's all part of the whole design of the car.

- [Narrator] But first things first,

before you can enjoy your car's fuel injectors

and safety features you have to get in.

Even that has changed.

Nearly gone are the days of the metal door and ignition key.

- [Jim] You still have a driver's side key entry,

but you don't see a door lock anywhere on the passenger side

door in due course, we're gonna see an end

to the ignition key door key.

- [Narrator] In the past decade,

modern cars began to incorporate smart key technology.

Smart keys triggered door locks and ignition buttons

simply through sensors that detect the keys proximity

to the vehicle.

- This car was locked, but it senses my presence,

and now is unlocked.

How it did that is with this smart key.

I didn't have to take it outta my pocket.

Don't have to do anything, but just keep it on my body.

It'll actually open the car for me and to start it,

I just sit in the car, hit the button, it starts itself.

Don't have to stick this in anything,

it's called smart key technology.

- [Narrator] Perhaps someday all old doors

will unlock instinctively,

but until then this plastic key card, isn't a bad option.

It's what has made millions of metal hotel room keys

and those obligatory dangling numbered key chains obsolete.

In the late 1970s to combat key theft

and subsequent hotel crime, the lodging industry started

to do away with a standard metal key in favor

of a reprogrammable disposable solution.

The Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas has over 3,500 rooms

and issues 2.4 million key cards each year.

- Upon registration, we gain access

to the customer's reservation.

Actually go to the key making application,

punch in for a brand new key, and we're all set.

- [Narrator] The computer encodes the cards magnetic strip

with a check in, check out dates as well

as the particular room sequential numeric access code.

- [Jay] The locks understand what keys due to come in

based on the previous customers of sequence.

Since we cut this key downstairs just now,

this would be the next one in the sequence.

You'd be get the green light, you'd be able

to access the guest room.

If you were to try to access the room

through a non-sequential or an expired key,

you'd be getting the yellow light,

which would not allow you access.

If you improperly insert the key into the guest lock,

you will get a red light.

- [Narrator] 400,000 Of the key cards

the Flamingo issues each year are never returned.

And at four cents a pop that costs the hotel 16 grand

but it's a small price to pay for the increased security

and convenience over metal keys.

So how long before the old faithful metal key

goes completely extinct.

- [Daniel] Physical metal keys that we deal with today

will increasingly become obsolete, but it will be slow.

The reason it'll be slow is there are a lot of us that still

have homes and still have devices that need metal keys

and let's face it to change all of the locks in your home,

a lot of people are not gonna do that very quickly.

- [Narrator] And there's something to be said

about the secure feeling of hearing that lock turn.

If your favorite music and videos still live

on the obsolete formats and your players bite

the proverbial dust, are you out of luck?

Fear not, there are ways to salvage and preserve

your treasures in more current formats

like this early method of using media transfer hardware

and software.

- We recognized that everyone had some of the old media,

either L Ps, VHS tapes, tape cassettes,

and they were storing them, but they weren't playing them.

The actual hardware to play back this medium

is disappearing.

That's when we conceived that the idea

of transfer technology, turning this into something

you could use.

Basically it takes an analog format and transfers it

into a digital format.

So it's kind of like old school meets new school.

- [Narrator] And with the introduction of MP3 players

in the late 1990s, turning old school media

into portable files could be done with a click.

- [Felix] The LP dock is the easiest way to convert music

from vinyl to digital.

It's actually going to record a wav file that you can

then process in your computer if you wanted to,

or just for easy play on your iPod.

- [Narrator] Anticipating that some customers

might be technologically challenged,

they've made it as simple as installing the software

on your computer and following a few easy steps.

- [Felix] Once my

recording is done,

I can just go ahead and type the name of the artist,

name of the album and the track title.

- [Narrator] The tape to PC cassette converter

works much the same way.

- [Felix] And now what was once in here,

I can just throw away this tape, 'cause it's all digital.

- [Narrator] But not all memories are audio.

Odds are you still have a few VHS tapes

or cherished home movies lying around your house.

With a VCR to PC, all of this can now fit onto this.

- Where you can take thousands of videos and just put 'em

on your hard drive and once I have it on my hard drive,

I can go ahead and burn it into a DVD or put it

into a portable device.

- [Narrator] All your old stuff can now live

on your new computer.

But what happens in the future when that new computer

is suddenly old.

It's inevitable that you'll eventually bid farewell

to your once treasured electronic gadgets.

You have a choice, you can toss them into the drawer

or the trash, or you can give them the respectful

and responsible end they deserve.

Back when C R T TVs became obsolete,

a recycling facility like this one in Commerce, California

became the resting place.

- Our facility here is about 40,000 square feet

and we take anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 pounds

of e-waste a month.

- [Narrator] These gadget graveyards serve

as collection hubs for discarded tech,

including TVs, computers,

office equipment, and cell phones.

- The most common item we get here are TV C R Ts.

And we get about 5,000 of them a month.

- [Narrator] These TVs are among the 27 million

that were taken out of service in just one year.

So what happens to them and the rest of the e-waste

that comes here.

- [Dana] We weigh it, we sort it and it's taken

to the dismantling line where the metals are taken apart,

the plastics are taken out.

The circuit boards are taken out, the glass.

Everything gets demanufactured.

So think of a manufacturing line, but backwards.

- [Narrator] This process is mostly done by hand.

So as not to contaminate the reusable materials

with the harmful ones like the lead found in C R T TVs.

Some of the reusable components need to be compressed

for easier transport.

- [Dana] Imagine a giant trash compactor,

but for plastics and metals, and these are sent off

to processors where they will be melted and remanufactured.

- [Narrator] There just may be life after death,

but be careful because some of that outdated equipment

might contain important data.

- Because everybody has sensitive information

on their computers, whether it's personal use

or for business use, make sure that when you take it

to an e-waste recycler to ask them to physically destroy

your hard drive, deleting it will not do.

As part of the recycling process we remove the hard drives

from the computer and upon a request,

we will destroy the hard drives by punching three holes

into the disc itself so that the data is unretrievable.

- [Narrator] But it's not just the information

that might leak into the wrong places.

- The rate of technological change and obsolescence

of course has a dark, deep and bad downside.

- [Narrator] Some environmentally

and socially irresponsible companies export

unwanted electronics overseas,

where they're dismantled unsafely.

Often by children paid pennies a day.

- [Dana] There are a lot of quote unquote recyclers

that will send their electronic waste to underdeveloped

countries where they don't have strict environmental laws

and labor laws.

So right now there are villages where people

are actually cooking the circuit boards,

inhaling the toxic fumes and then disposing of the waste

into their water supply as well as their soil.

However, recyclers like us,

we use responsible downstream vendors who have

high tech facilities to handle these hazardous materials

in the proper way.

- [Narrator] Today with technology evolving

at near light speed, don't get too attached

to your TVs and cell phones 'cause their days are numbered.

- I'm sure that our laptops and our MP3 players

in 10 or 20 years will be collecting dust.

- Innovation and change is not slowing down.

It is speeding up.

Be ready.