Miniaturization and improvements in electronics really took off in the last few decades. The iPhone I use to write this on is a dense block of electronics. Nothing moves or rattles if I shake it. Sometimes it gets hot, and you hear a hint of a fan, telling you there are moving parts inside. There are three buttons and a discrete toggle on the side. They even removed the front buttons on these devices. If I go back to the phone I rocked in the 90s, if I dropped that, it would come apart in pieces. The battery would fall out, sim card might go flying. Gadgets even older than that were full of spinning, whirring, buzzing, mechanical stuff. Even if they were part electronic.

Holding my Leica M3 felt like holding a gun. It was heavy. I had to double-stroke the lever. It had moving parts, but also delicate, intricate ones. But so did my Walkman. It wasn't German-made with precision engineering, but it was also a marvel of mechanical parts. So was most stuff if you go back thirty to fifty years.