As I was cleaning out a section of the garage yesterday, I made the realization that I was throwing away things that had monetary value, and keeping things that are, at least from a financial standpoint, essentially worthless.

Case in point? These.

In the normal world, I’m guessing there’s not one out of a hundred people who would recognize (much less care) what both of these things are. I’m hoping the “ooh” and “aah” factor is higher here …

The blue thing on top is a lineman’s handset, used by phone company employees to test phone lines. Along with a regular phone jack, the handset also has a pair of alligator clips that allow you to attach the handset to any outside phone connection and jack into it. As time goes by they are becoming less and less useful, but at the age of fifteen, I would have killed for one of these. Back in the glory days of phone phreaking, lineman’s handsets were so coveted that many people built their own. Homemade ones were referred to as beige boxes (and yes, I made one).

The more recognizable piece of hardware in the bottom of the picture is an acoustic modem — an Epson CX20, to be exact. The CX-20 was an add-on peripheral for Epson’s HX-20 computer, which was released in 1983 and is considered to be the first laptop computer. I’ve never even seen an HX-20 computer in person, but a friend of mine gave me this acoustic modem a few years ago and I’ve held on to it ever since. The three switches on the right turn the unit on or off, set it to originate or answer, and toggle half/full duplex.

With the advent of digital phones, a Lineman’s Handset is more of a conversation piece than a practical piece of hardware. As for the modem? I’d need something it would plug in to and a phone that would fit on top of it, for starters, plus a desire to transmit data again at 300 baud.

While neither of these have any practical value, both of them remind me of “the good ol’ days,” and both will (probably to Susan’s chagrin) end up at the new house.