Soviet particle accelerator control panel, 1968

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The Soviets sure loved them some parquet floors.

The last line in the writeup reminded me of this comic.

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FTFY

Or rather, I would have if I was allowed to post images.

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Man, none of the control rooms at Fermilab got a chandelier. The commies were right!

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I was going to say that a lot of facilities probably have control panels that look something vaguely like that, but dayum, that chandelier.

You’d have a hard time justifying the inclusion of something like that. Maybe if you could rig it up to sway alarmingly in the event of a problem?

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Design inspiration for my living room!!!

I love the chandelier.
Did they convert a ballroom? The chandelier looks art-nouveau-ish to me.

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So, so… Christmassy

I WILL PAY YOU GOOD MONEY for a router that looks like that Hi Fi sphere.

Wait, fuck, no, I mean that round TV thing. I was reading the captions on the pictures wrong, dammit. But I want a Hi Fi Sphere as well.

Looks like it is remarkably well-preserved, down to the chandelier:

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Hmmm, sets controls to “Silent, but deadly”…

Ye gods, it’s wonderful. It’s like a cross between an Edwardian library and a Blake’s 7 location shoot. I thought at first it was Glorious repurposing of Stately homes, but they actually put chandeliers and a parquet floor in didn’t they? I want to live in it.

Russian subway stations

They liked their infrastructure.

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You are allowed to post images (I think, unless there’s a minimum postcount first), but they need to be under 2MB.

Damn! Incredible.

The chandelier is what makes it.

Yes, the error was just that new users aren’t allowed to post images. No big deal, there are Internets that’ll take care of that problem for me.

One of the engine labs in college had a control room wall of rackmounts with somewhat more modern instruments… but it was still a glorious mess of meters and switches.

These days, I’m sure it all goes into the computer and comes out on the screen. More compact, more efficient, more powerful for analysis, but somehow not as satisfying.

Which of course is part of the impetus behind the steampunk style. We like to be able to see and handle our technology…

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Spot on. Okay, controlling complex devices from a computer screen ist very efficient. But there is something deeply satisfying in throwing switches and levers. The big ones on heavy metal boxes that go ‘THUNK’. Or watching the wriggling of the needles in the meters. Or standing in front of a massive array of blinkenlights.
Couple of weeks ago I found an old IBM typewriter just like the ones they have in MIB 3, I’m thinking of converting it into a keyboard for my PC or into a combination of keyboard/tablet holder.
Would that be transistorpunk?