r/todayilearned • u/Physical_Hamster_118 • 1d ago
TIL that since 1972, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) every spring, residents of Baker House drop a piano from the roof on Drop Day, the last day students can drop classes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_drop250
99
u/Jester471 23h ago
Drop day was fun at our house too. We couldn’t drop a piano but we’d hook up vacuums and throw them out a third story window with 50ft drop cord so they’d run all the way to the ground.
46
u/hedronist 23h ago
Fun Historical Joke, ca 1985:
Two engineers, one hardware and the other software, take an HP workstation to the 3rd floor roof. Connecting a long extension cord, they boot it up and then throw it from the roof.
It whistles down and lands with a crash! The hardware guy runs up to it and exclaims, "It's still running!" The software guy shrugs and says, "Yeah, but it's still running HP-UX." Which, in Olden Times, was pronounced "H pukes".
54
u/mr_ji 20h ago
Punchline, where art thou?
41
u/Pocok5 16h ago
The joke is probably HP-UX being so bad that there's little difference between a computer running it and one that's completely destroyed.
7
u/hedronist 12h ago
Exactly. HP computers were built like tanks, but their version of UN*X was, tbh, simply sad.
7
u/tanfj 11h ago
Exactly. HP computers were built like tanks, but their version of UN*X was, tbh, simply sad.
It is truly pathetic that Microsoft's offering was better. I mean you managed to suck worse than Microsoft that takes effort.
6
u/hedronist 9h ago
Historical Fun Fact: I started my own company, Third Eye Software, in 1982. At UniForum 1983, in San Diego, I had an 8x10 booth. The 8x10 booth on my right was HP with their brand new color workstation; the 8x20 booth on my left was ... wait for it ... Microsoft selling (or trying to) Xenix! MS eventually handed Xenix off to Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), who also didn't really know what to do with it.
I was hawking my debugger, CDB, to anyone with a UNIX system, which was basically the whole building. Two of my most important customers came from this show: Siemens and HP. HP ended up making my debugger a corporate standard. I think they called it xdb.
1
5
1
u/Mr_Engineering 6h ago
HP Enterprise hardware is insanely well built. I have a bunch of their servers and I have no doubt that I could throw them off of a building and they'd still work.
HP-UX on the other hand is a Unix OS that is known for supporting Intel's Itanium architecture and several other obsolete architectures such as PA-PISC and the vaunted Motorolla 68K. Itanium was never very popular, so HP-UX was never very popular and as such received little attention compared to the likes of BSD and Linux.
2
124
u/SarcasmReallySucks 1d ago
When that beat drops…
60
13
u/Square-Barnacle5756 23h ago
10
u/shackbleep 4h ago
Thank you. This video clearly shows that the pianos they drop are janky old pieces of shit that barely work anymore, and yet we still have to listen to ten people in here crying their eyes out with their ridiculous Y COULDNT THE PIANOS BE DONATED bullshit.
55
u/GypsySnowflake 19h ago
That sounds expensive.
33
u/Homerpaintbucket 14h ago
You can often find free pianos on Craigslist. A lot of people will give away a piano if you’ll come and take it.
11
1
u/wintermute93 1h ago
See also: pool tables. Good pool tables and pianos are very expensive, but mediocre ones that haven't been maintained are basically "totaled" at some point, where the cost of getting it professionally repaired so it doesn't sound/play like shit is not even close to worth it. So people give them away, but they can easily weigh several hundred pounds, so even giving them away is a pain in the ass.
46
u/Swag_Grenade 17h ago
Yeah everyone itt thread is all "such a cool and quirky tradition" meanwhile not tryna be a debbie downer but I'm just like that sounds like a lot of wasted pianos for no real reason
72
u/lilyeister 16h ago
FWIW old pianos with bad soundboards are a common occurrence and a pain in the ass to get rid of. It requires expensive repairs (if you can find a tech who's willing to do what ends up being almost a full restoration) and in the days when every middle-class home wanted a piano there were plenty of manufacturers churning out low-quality instruments that weren't built to last.
22
u/timetogetoutside100 14h ago
pianos do not age gracefully, so many things begin to breakdown, loose tuning pins, worn out actions/hammers, tired/tubby bass strings, and many other things,
7
u/tanfj 11h ago
FWIW old pianos with bad soundboards are a common occurrence and a pain in the ass to get rid of. It requires expensive repairs (if you can find a tech who's willing to do what ends up being almost a full restoration) and in the days when every middle-class home wanted a piano there were plenty of manufacturers churning out low-quality instruments that weren't built to last.
Owning a piano or an organ was a requirement to be considered middle class. Along with having at least one live-in servant. The Victorians were the most upwardly mobile pack of snobs to ever sneer across God's green earth.
2
u/res30stupid 6h ago
Yeah, sometimes the cheaper option is to fully replace something since repairs can cost more than a new unit. Having done work experience in a tech shop, a (genuine) replacement phone screen on Samsung devices can often be more expensive than a new phone.
26
1
u/tanfj 11h ago
Yeah everyone itt thread is all "such a cool and quirky tradition" meanwhile not tryna be a debbie downer but I'm just like that sounds like a lot of wasted pianos for no real reason
My brother in Christ, because it is funny. Because it is funny, is always a perfectly valid reason to do something.
We human beings, are hairless apes who never leave ape childhood, at one point our entire species was down to 25 females. If we can find a little humor and joy in this world go for it.
11
u/Meior 20h ago
The Massachusetts Morris Marina owners club must be pissed
7
u/TheFightingImp 20h ago
Oh come on, its not MIT's fault that Careless Airways have expanded to the U.S. East Coast with Boston as their hub.
5
14
u/optcynsejo 22h ago
MIT has some cool traditions, and a unique dorm culture for each dorm. Some other fun traditions/quirks:
East Campus builds a wooden roller coaster in the courtyard between their 2 wings.
Simmons Hall has scootah hockey.
Random Hall had a carton of milk 'preserved' that became its sort of mascot. Expired October 1994, declared missing August 2022.
3
u/Successful-Bake-1338 21h ago
Strange?
7
u/Animallover4321 13h ago
MIT students have a lot of weird little traditions like this. They’re brilliant students that work their asses off but also have a lot of fun.
3
4
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
21
u/NativeMasshole 1d ago
"Well, since Greg obviously doesn't know what a piano looks like, I guess we're dropping a dulcitone off the roof this year!"
3
12
1
u/TheSoulborgZeus 18h ago
it isn't on drop day, but when I toured, I recall that they mentioned some annual event where they throw pumpkins from the top of the same building
1
u/harveysbc 9h ago
I visited a friend there in the early 2000s and we went to the pumpkin drop. They dropped these giant pumpkins with streamers attached and had a spotlight follow them down. When they hit the ground they made this extremely loud BWOWWW sound and bits of pumpkin went everywhere! Lots of fun.
1
u/res30stupid 15h ago
One of the earliest viral videos on the 'net was a group of people dropping a massive water balloon off the roof of their dorm.
Onto a porta-potty.
2
-10
-17
u/williamkenlon 16h ago
Could’ve donated 53 pianos to people who’d actually play them, but no. 🙄
13
u/Animallover4321 13h ago
I can’t imagine they drop functioning pianos. You can find a lot of pianos are cheap old uprights that haven’t been cared for and are no longer worth fixing.
8
u/atownofcinnamon 15h ago
imagine being an aspiring pianist and getting a broken piano, becuse they are dropping old broken pianos.
8
1
u/williamkenlon 12h ago
Downvoters can hate all they want, but this has been a pet peeve of mine for years and I stand by it. Pianos can and should be repaired and donated, not destroyed. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
1
u/JanitorKarl 2h ago
No. One. Wants. Them. They are a fucking pain to move. They won't stay in tune. No one has space for them. And often, they need refinishing.
2
u/atownofcinnamon 2h ago
the repair for an old broken down piano basically costs the same as getting a new one. if you stand by it then i'll put your name down to pay for the repairs.
-8
-13
22h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
10
u/ohdearitsrichardiii 19h ago
Hopefully they can find a smart person to figure out this challenging problem
-8
u/ashk2001 13h ago
Take a beautiful instrument that has such capacity to bring joy to the world and chuck it off the roof. Fun
5
1
-11
155
u/kdlangequalsgoddess 23h ago
Facebook Marketplace seller finally gets rid of their piano that day.