Radio that "sneezes" to clear out its dust

Here's a video of the 1972 Gesundheit Radio "sneezing," a function it was programmed to perform twice annually in order to clear the dust from its sensitive components.

TIL that in 1972 a radio was designed that 'sneezed' every 6 months in order to protect the microprocessors from dust (vimeo.com)

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This is a piece of art shown in 2010 by a guy named James Chambers. Learned this after looking at the Reddit post for less than a minute.

Another two minutes got me this link:
http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/02/developed-to-protect-early-mic.php
- ImmutableMichael
  
  And here’s a neat vid of some of the other of the”Attenborough Design Group”s artifacts.
  
  http://vimeo.com/12799193
  
  The disk drive that leaps out of the way is the winner for me – a bit like Western chindogu.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu
- bumblebeeeeeee
  
  yeah, but that’s less than a minute Cory doesn’t have. Give him a break dude.
  - technogeekagain
    
    If it isn’t worth factchecking, it isn’t worth sharing. (And, yeah, the combination of “1972 radio microprocessor is prima fascia evidence that someone has badly misunderstood something and it NEEDS checking.)
- penguinchris
  
  Cory trolled all of you, don’t feel bad though.
Snig

To bad they can’t devise a computer that sneezes to expel viruses.
- http://www.creaturesoflight.com dagfooyo
  
  Actually I was thinking a dust-expelling sneezing casemod modelled after this would be pretty awesome.
Steve Allen

ob ghostbusters: Generally you don’t see that kind of behavior in a major appliance.
- Just_Ok
  
  A radio is not a major appliance. They’re just a general nuisance.
hugh crawford

“1972 ” and ” radio” and ” microprocessors” , nope.
I think the ven diagram of radios having microprocessoes , radios needing the dust blown out, and consumer electronics in the 70s would be three circles in the extreme periphery of the diagram far far away from each other.
- nixiebunny
  
  Forty years on, most people have forgotten that there ever were such things as tuning knobs connected to rotating metal plates, to select the station.
  
  Which makes this piece all the more amusing, since the old mechanical tuning systems were way more susceptible to dust than a hermetically-sealed integrated circuit.
malindrome

It could only be improved it it were voiced by Jon Lovitz.
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

Hey! Check out this cool radio I bought at the thrift stoOH GOD IT’S ALIVE
http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic

Well, you certainly don’t see something like that every day.
Eark_the_Bunny

Hey, no fair! I got dusty and sneezed twice today too but nobody wrote a nice Boing, Boing post about sneezing Bunnies. No Fair!
peterkvt80

That poor radio has been sat on. The top panel is distorted. One of the band select push button caps is missing. Dust is the least of its worries. I never saw a radio that died of dust. I have seen plenty of PCs that sucked in dust with their big fans until they choked when they overheated.
Boundegar

The best part is the six-month timer. That’s plenty of time to completely forget, so it freaks you out EVERY TIME!
http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

this is adorable
why is this adorable?
my uncanny valley is broken. :(
taras

This is 105% genuine, my grandmother had one.
- technogeekagain
  
  The radio body is probably genuine. The bellows thing… Not So Much.
nvlady

Wish my computer did that.
diginferno

*A-CHOO!* Ouch! I think I blew a transistor :-(
FreakCitySF

I admit I did an Ebay search.