In 2005, a control room for the A and C subway lines in NYC caught fire. “No larger than a kitchen,” the room held 600 relays, switches and circuits that keep track of trains and keep everything running. Officials originally thought it would take three to five years to get the lines back to normal capacity. (Thankfully it didn’t.) The epic repair time was because the fixed-block signaling system dates back to 1904 and only two companies in the world were able to repair it, one in Pittsburgh and the other in Paris. This is technology’s trailing edge, according to Peter Sandborn in IEEE Spectrum: the huge, crippling problem of obsolescence.
Alex
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 8:10 PMI think Myer department stores is still operating on their original Siemens (I think it’s Siemens) system, which I guess is at least 20 years old. When we went to get a bridal registry list printed out, it took the computer something like 2-3 minutes to process and print a text document of 5 pages. Many of the machines that I’ve seen have wobbly panels, are really loud, or just take a while to process simple commands.