Cell Phones Costing Thousands

Cell phone prices can be a little hard to figure out because they're often part of a service usage package. For instance, a basic phone might be priced as "free" if a buyer commits to a certain service period, two years, say. That said, a cell phone without lots of features might well cost someplace in the range $100-$200.

In contrast, there's the Vertu cell phone line where prices are in the thousands -- many, many thousands of dollars in some cases.

As the Wikipedia link above reports, Frank Nuovo, Nokia's head designer (at the time) was instrumental in creation of the Nokia-bankrolled company; now he serves as head designer at Vertu. The Vertu web site's history page stresses technical innovation related to the "package" -- not the electronic guts -- and the use of precious, luxury materials in some models.

Vertu cell phone with Ferrari motifs

I had never heard of Vertu until a few years ago while strolling through the shop arcade at the Wynn hotel-casino complex in Las Vegas. Right there amongst shops for Chanel, Manolo Blahnik and the like was a Vertu store. The phones on display were attractive and their prices astonishing. I assumed Vertu wouldn't last, yet the store remains: I saw it last month while in town.

Here's my problem with Vertu. Cell phones are still part of a rapidly-evolving corner of technology and marketing. The technology goes from Gen-This to Gen-That every few years. Not to mention the evolution towards multifunctionality: consider inclusion of cameras, the tiny-keypad Blackberry and Apple's multi-app iPhone. Vertu thus far remains a pretty basic cell phone if all the fancy construction and luxury touches are set aside. So a buyer forks out thousands of dollars for one and a year or two later yet another Gen-jump occurs. So what does he do? Keep his luxury item while lagging capability-wise? Or does he spend more thousands for a newer version? I suppose folks who are utterly rich would do the latter without much thought. They might even upgrade so as to have a Vertu with a different décor than that tiresome one purchased last spring. After all, a Vertu phone is all those luxury touches I set aside earlier in this paragraph.

An interesting thing about luxury items is the price multiple over a similar item offering the same core functionality. For automobiles, the ratio can be ten or 20 to one -- a Maseratti Quattroporte goes for about ten times as much as a really cheap, small Korean-made car and some Rolls-Royces for double that.

Ratios are much higher for wristwatches. A cheap watch with a digital face can be had for only a few dollars whereas a middle-line Rolex sells in the thousands. But watch technology and functionality are pretty stable, so a wristwatch purchase can be considered akin to buying jewelery. I suppose the same can be said regarding Vertu, though the functional foundation is far softer.

Traveling "Victorian" in the 1960s

Even 50 years ago rail-based passenger conveyances tended to look sleek and sometimes even streamlined and racy.

But there was an exception that I stumbled across in the bowels of New York City in the early 1960s -- the Hudson & Manhattan rail line colloquially known as the "Hudson Tubes." During the 60s the New York - New Jersey Port Authority took over the H&M, re-equipped it and renamed it PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson), in which guise it exists today.

For a while during my three-year Army career I was stationed near New York City and got into town on pass every weekend. Some weekends I'd sleep over in Hoboken, New Jersey at the Stevens Tech chapter of my college fraternity. Normally when getting there I'd catch the Hoboken bus at the west side Port Authority terminal. But occasionally I'd ride the Hudson Tubes. There was a Tubes station at 33rd Street not far from Pennsylvania Station (the original building was still standing then) and I would work my way down stairs and through tunnels to that Midtown terminus of the H&M.

Once there, I beheld archaic train coaches whose design dated from more than 50 years previously. It was almost like stepping into a time machine. I hope the illustrations below give you at least a slight feeling of what I experienced.

(For a general history of the H&M and PATH, click here. More detailed information regarding the Hudson Tubes can be found here and here.)

Old Hudson & Manhattan route map

Crossover at 9th Street in Manhattan - photo from 1907

"Class B" coach
Such coaches were built from 1909 until 1928. They were still in service in the early 1960s.

H&M train as seen in New Jersey where the line ran mostly above-ground
This is how I remembered them. Dark, sooty-looking exterior; probably due to the paint-job, but a dirty appearance nevertheless. In a station all you'd see of the coach was the part above the bottom of the doors. This made the arched window and door shapes stand out -- very static looking, actually, and not at all the speed-style for transportation conveyances the began to appear in the 1930s. Another impression I had was that the H&M coaches were noticeably smaller than New York City subway cars, and this added to the quaintness of the Hudson Tubes experience in those days.

Groping for the Platonic TV Set

It's often interesting to examine design from the point when a type of product makes its first commercial appearance until things settle down to a "best" general solution that persists with relatively minor variations until the class of product becomes obsolete or a major technological advance requires a renewed design evolution.

Designers are literally making things up as they're going on, uncertain what the ultimate general solution will be. There are trials, errors and successes (measured by market acceptance) along the way.

Today's post deals with television set design evolution in a sketchy way from the late 1930s till nearly 1960. Call it 20 years -- 15 if the "time out" for World War 2 is factored in. By "sketchy" I mean that entire classes of TV sets such as tabletop or semi-portable examples are omitted from this review. Perhaps I'll get around to dealing with them another time.

Marconi - 1937

RCA sets displayed at 1939 New York World's Fair
For some reason many of the very earliest television sets that people could actually buy had a top with a mirror underneath that could be propped open when one was about to turn it on (the controls were under that top along with the cathode ray tube - CRT). The CRT was set up so that it projected a reversed image that the mirror then righted so that the image was normal -- that is, so any text images could be read normally. Actually, the reason is pretty obvious: the console containing the television set was simply another sort of cabinet when not in use, just another piece of furniture. (See below for later examples of this design strategy.) The problem with the mirror feature was that viewers had to be positioned almost exactly opposite the set and have their eyes at the correct height to be able to view the image properly. Direct-viewing TVs were less restricted. Even so, CRTs were small in the early days, so viewers still had to huddle and stay closer to the screen than later on. Mirror-top televisions were still being sold in the late 1940s, but then disappeared from the marketplace.

Advertisement showing Dumont console - ca. 1950
For many years television sets resided in living rooms, where families tended to gather before the "family room" gained popularity in America starting, say, in the mid-1950s. Therefore the expensive TV set (and they often cost more than today's largest flat-screen TVs, adjusting for inflation) was a major item of furniture that many wives wanted to fit well with the rest of the décor. Note that the console has doors than can be closed to hide the screen when not in use.

Crosley TV with radio/record player - 1950
This Crosley is a pretty typical less-than-a-console TV with respect to price and style. (Actually, the ensemble shown is contained in a console -- but the set itself in the upper-right corner could just have well be freestanding, and probably was in most cases.) It just sits there on one side of the living room and its big "eye" stares back at you all the time. Of course, this is how most television sets were over the last 60 years, console models having gradually faded from the scene.

Zenith with round screen - 1950
For some reason Zenith built a line of sets with round screens for a few years. They seemed odd at the time, but at least a few people bought them. Why a round screen? Well, cathode ray tubes were round in those days and perhaps designers felt that a round "frame" for the image was "functional," the holy grail of purist industrial design and architecture. But source images were essentially rectangular, so the round format clipped off parts that might be of interest to the viewer.

Philco Predicta - ca.1959
This TV set was built 10 years before the moon-landing image being shown on the screen. But hey, this design was really super-dooper space-age! Actually the modular screen/innards box concept wasn't a bad one; most desktop computers until recently followed the same practice. Philco's problem was that this line of TV sets was unreliable, thus helping to kill sales. Another negative might have been that the design would clash with traditional-style living room décor; TVs tended to reside in living rooms in those days, as noted above.

Watch This Designer Try Too Hard

I really should get around to writing about industrial designer Richard Arbib. But for now, I'll present a couple of his designs for wrist watches and make a few remarks about wrist watch design in general.

I referred to Arbib as an industrial designer. But his work reveals him to have been mostly an industrial decorator ... to be charitable, "industrial stylist" can do.

The period 1945-60 was an odd one in the annals of American design. A case might be made that cars sporting tail fins, Formica kitchen counter tops with squiggly, linear patterns and molded plywood chairs with spindly metal legs represent a daft era where our national characteristics shone through. Or perhaps it was a "whadda we do next?" phase following the design-purity (with lots of streamlining) public relations poses from the generation of industrial design pioneers. Whatever it might have been, Arbib contributed in spades.

A word about wrist watch design (I'll leave digital watches out of the discussion and stick to analog watches -- those with hands). Watch hands sweep in a circular motion, suggesting that the face of the watch should match this. On the other hand wrist bands, especially rugged ones preferred by men, are flat and basically squared off. A watch following that theme would therefore have a square or rectangular case. Between those extremes might be rounded-off rectangles, ovals and so forth.

Arbib, however, tried something very different in his work for the Hamilton watch company. Something very wacky 1950s.

Hamilton Flight II prototype

Hamilton Altair Electric
Arbib's designs are, well, distinctive. But totally at odds with either the hand-sweep or the watchband. He was involved with styling Hamilton watches for the better part of a decade, so presumably sales were acceptable. I think they look awful and apparently others agree because most watchmakers have avoided such styles for the past 50 years.

Cartier Tank Solo
The "tank" design, dating from the Great War, is a popular example of design that favors integration to the band over honoring the sweep.

Movado Men's Museum Watch
Movado made its fame with ultra-purist sweep-oriented designs such as this. Actually, style trumps functionality here too; the absence of hour indicators requires the owner to guess the time -- and often be off by a minute or even more.

Swiss Army "Renegade"
Confession-time. This is the watch I've been wearing for more than 10 years. Not the same one, actually; I buy a new one every three years or so when I figure the battery is about to fail.

Advantages: It's electronic and so keeps good time. It's not very expensive, currently still selling for less than $150. The hands, hour marks and numerals glow in the dark which make it handy for checking the time while in bed at night. The face cover almost never scratches. While it isn't classy like a Rollex, it looks nice. Disadvantage: The band grooves and holes start to clog after a few months use.

Getting Design Details Right

Guests are coming and my wife decided that today is the day to change vacuum cleaner bags. I had to deal with three different machines. And in the process got reacquainted with the art and craft of the machine-human interface.

All the detachable bags had the same annoying attachment feature -- a piece of cardboard stiffening on the bag along with a hole lined with rubber where the duct of the machine inserts. These are hard to deal with when it comes to actually making the insertion; a certain amount of aligning, pushing, fiddling with the alignment, pushing again -- with success usually coming after two or three tries. Since I'm asked to do this chore only a few times a year, I have no real learning curve to rely on.

I'm sure better bag attachments are possible, but the arrangement I found on three different brands of cleaners suggests that price of replacement bags was the most important consideration, so the arrangement was the cheapest one that would function passably well.



Hoover Portable Canister Cleaner


The little Hoover shown above had the best bag-changing design features. Even though the bag itself had the now-classical cardboard stiffener plus rubber-surrounded hole arrangement, the change operation worked smoothly -- almost.

It has a plastic connector piece where the cardboard could be slid on. Then all one needs to do is set the connector-plus-attached bag into a recess of the machine and close a hatch that has the waste hose attached -- it's aligned so that the hose connector inserts into the bag with no fuss.

But fuss there was. Not having the manual handy, I tried inserting the hose connection into the bag before shutting the hatch. The hatch refused to close. Repeatedly. Until I finally realized that the insertion was related to the closing of the hatch.

Ideally, a piece of equipment should be designed so that no manual should be needed, where everything should fit together only one possible way. That little Hoover comes very close to that ideal and is very nifty once one understands that final step. What's probably needed is a short message molded on the attachment plate stating that it and the bag should be placed in the bag compartment before closing the hatch. Perhaps newer versions than our three-year-old model fixed this detail.

[Cross-posted at 2 Blowhards.]