The Kodak Slide N Scan Digital Film Scanner
Scan your precious negatives and transparencies before it’s too late
This time of year—when it’s cold outside, and the Western world is mostly taking a break—is a natural one for a bit of quiet digital housekeeping.
Your columnist is probably not alone in having a huge number of pre-digital photographs moldering away in crates. There’s about 70 years’ worth of this stuff—from my parents’ 35-mm. Kodachrome transparencies from the early 1950s to my own monochrome and color negatives spanning from the mid-60s until digital photography took over.
There is a huge stash of family ciné film, too, from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, which was professionally digitized a few years ago. And what a joy it is that this hoard is now more or less indestructible, backed up as it is on multiple hard drives, as well as in the cloud.
The truly anxious might fret that even cloud-stored material held in geographically distributed data centers could be destroyed, but it would probably take a large asteroid strike or an alien invasion to do that—in which case being able to view film from a 1955 vacation in Italy might not be a priority.
The still quite anxious might also worry what one’s descendants will do with thousands of Dad’s old scanned negatives. But casting aside such thoughts, this writer surveyed the market a couple of weeks before Christmas for the best plug-and-play gadget that could be rapidly fed negatives and embalm the photos thereon in digital form. It didn’t have to be of professional quality—just quick to learn and easy to use.
The consensus of reviews seemed to be that the Slide N Scan was the best blend of quality and user-friendliness. It was soon on its way from Amazon. The device is Kodak branded and is complete with their yellow, black, and red colors, which may surprise those who think all that’s left of the great American film empire is motion-picture-stock manufacturing.
Kodak explained later by e-mail—after your columnist had already fallen for the slickness of the Slide N Scan—that the device is not actually made by Kodak, but by a third-party specialist.
Despite this, and the fact that it’s a little plasticky, the product is exemplary. Simple to use with very little reference to the manual. You get a preview of each photo on the good-sized, five-inch screen before recording it, so you can quickly discard poor photos and duplicates. Do make sure you have a spare S.D. card to record the selected images onto—you need to download your photos from the card to get them onto a computer.
The Master & Dynamic MW09 Earbuds
A rare pair whose noise-canceling function actually works
We promise that these will be the last featured headphones of 2023—not a difficult promise to keep, admittedly.
Look, it’s just a fact that a lot of headphones get released in a year. There are many thousands if you include non-branded models coming out of China and offered for a few bucks on Alibaba.
Although manufactured—to the most exacting standards—in China, the new MW09 true-wireless earbuds from New York City’s Master & Dynamic are at the very opposite end of the spectrum from the largely undistinguished audio slurry that pours out of Shenzhen.
Just to handle them, especially in the Kevlar case in which M&D supplies the $399 version, is a delight. The build standard, in aluminum, sapphire glass, and Kevlar fiber, is off the scale. The M&D app is perfection—there is nothing this columnist could imagine that would improve it.
The noise canceling, which this writer found so poor in the otherwise fine and reviewer-worshipped Sony WF-1000XM5, is magnificent. The physical retention in the ears is extraordinary. The audio quality is breathtaking and loud, but also about as clear, natural, and detailed as it’s possible for an earbud to be.
In contemplative New Year mode, this writer thinks back to the first portable stereo headphones available: the over-ear set that came with the original Sony Walkman in 1979. They seemed nearly miraculous then. I wonder what we would have made of a pair of 2024 M&D MW09s with a modern Bluetooth music source, had they somehow been teleported back through time.
The Blueair Blue Pure 411i Max Air Filter
Cooped up this winter? That doesn’t mean you can’t get fresh air
The excellent Swedish air-purifier company Blueair, which we featured here 15 months ago with their Dust Magnet 5440i, has been lowering their prices to the point where one new model, the Blueair Blue Pure 411i Max, costs just $140—and if you buy one, they will send an extra unit free. The new purifier also claims to be 50 percent quieter than older models, and from testing it, we agree.
Blueair machines became particularly popular during the coronavirus epidemic and are said by the company, which is part of Unilever, to remove 99.97 percent of pollutants—dust, pollen, smoke, mold, pet dander, cooking odors, bacteria, viruses, dust mites, and harmful V.O.C.’s—by moving large volumes of air through mechanical (H.E.P.A.), electrostatic, and activated-carbon filters. As well as cleaning the air, Blueair purifiers act as background fans, whooshing out a pleasant stream of air.
The mystery of how Blueair purifiers seem to get cheaper and cheaper is explained by the need to keep replacing the filters. These, costing around $30 for the 411i model, last six to nine months, with sensors to warn you by both L.E.D. display and app warnings—when they need changing.
The Centennial Bulb
The world’s oldest light bulb can be yours through the power of live-streaming
To end 2023, we have an authentic Landing Gear technology scoop, from the town of Livermore, 44 miles east of San Francisco. Livermore is the site of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where much of the U.S.’s nuclear-bomb research was done from 1952 onwards. It is also home to some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, used for climate modeling, genomic research, and nuclear-test simulations.
However, our exclusive story, from the town fire station, which is close to the gates of the lab complex, doesn’t concern national security or high technology, but a particular 60-watt light bulb. A light bulb which has been burning in the fire station almost uninterrupted since 1901. Livermore’s Centennial Bulb, kept on nearly 24-7 for 122 years, is quite the local tourist attraction, with hundreds of visitors dropping by each year to see it.
The carbon-filament bulb has only been off twice in its life: once in 1976, for 22 minutes, as it was relocated to a newly built fire station, and once again, in 2013, for more than nine hours during a nighttime power outage.
We were originally going simply to report that, for a holiday diversion, anyone in the world can see the bulb live on a Webcam. But in conversation with retired deputy fire chief Tom Bramell, we have discovered that the world’s certified longest-lasting light bulb may be in for a stressful relocation within just a few years.
“I shouldn’t be saying this, but I heard a rumor that there may be a plan to build a new station,” Mr. Bramell tells AIR MAIL. “This hasn’t yet got out of the town. Now, I was thinking, wow, we only just opened the current station, but then I realized, hey, that was nearly 50 years ago. So my first thought now is that before we do anything, we need to discuss the light bulb—where’s it going to go, how are we going to move it again? This is really important to Livermore.”
“The 1976 move was pretty traumatic because when we first switched the bulb on, it didn’t come on, and we thought it had passed. There was a rotary switch in the holder that needed to be twisted round, and nobody knew until the town electrician noticed it.”
Lux Aeterna is part of the Requiem Mass, referring to the eternal light of heaven, and it’s also the name of one of György Ligeti’s extraordinary contributions to the soundtrack of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
We at AIR MAIL hope the Great Light Bulb of Livermore remains Lux Aeterna for at least another 100-plus years—and this column wishes readers a light-filled and peaceful 2024.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer for the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology