Flying in 1950s style

I wrote about Pan Am (the airline) in a recent blog, which prompted my brother to send me some great pics of old planes that he found on the website of Motat, Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology. I love this one, showing the dining set-up in a Solent flying boat. The aircraft - currently under restoration at Motat and the only surviving Mark IV Solent in the world - represented "the pinnacle of luxury flying boat airliners".
We all aspire to fly business Class today but back in the 1950s when the Solent took tourists over the Tasman to Australia and on the Coral Route to Tahiti, the whole plane was business class.
Check out the decor in soft lemon and dove grey, the tables spread with white linen, fine china and glassware. Look closely and you can see the TEAL logo on the glasses (TEAL being the forerunner of Air New Zealand - short for Tasman Empire Airways Ltd).
Elaborate meals were apparently cooked on board and it all looks like the 45 passengers enjoyed an elegance that's hard to find today.
Mind you, you'd have needed something to pass the time. There was, after all, no inflight entertainment, so if you forgot to take a good book there was nothing to do but wait to get there. They weren't quick, cruising at around 400kmh; the Auckland-Sydney flight took five and a half hours. And the planes could go no higher than 17,000 feet which must have meant they had to batter their way through some hefty weather systems. There must, at times, have been a whole lotta rattling of that china going on.
When I was a kid I lived at the foot of Upland Road in Remuera, quite a long way from Auckland harbour but still close enough to be able to hear the flying boats on their lumbering take-off runs, those four 2000 horsepower engines roaring like fury as the pilots pushed them to maximum power to lift the plane off the water. I can still hear them now.

'Bye-bye, typewriters

A milestone moment slipped by the other day. The last typewriter factory closed down. It was in India and was apparently the last one left on the planet, all other manufacturers in the west having closed their production lines years ago. About the only place you’ll spot a typewriter now is in museums or in antique shops – displayed there simply because they’re quaint and look good, joining hand-operated coffee grinders and even corkscrews as things that were once indispensible but are now no good for anything.
What’s astonishing is the speed at which items now arise and die. The typewriter idea lasted for well over a century. I still have wistful thoughts about my first portable, an Olivetti Lettera with a turquoise case. It was so cute! But everything hits the trash heap in time. Take the Flip camera. I’ve had one for a whole 12 months – it was the hottest little thing around back then and was great because you could shoot a movie and plug it straight into your computer's USB port for editing. But just one year later, the Flip has been flicked into obscurity. All because the iPhone, and other smart phones, can do the same job better.
Makes you wonder what’s next for the chop… Personally I hope it's my Dualit toaster. Cost a fortune. Looks all very glam and retro. Worst browner of bread I've ever owned.