History of technology

One adjective on this page can praise a machine or bury it. Überholt most often means out of date: eine überholte Technik is one the world has moved past, and the sense grew from the verb überholen, to overtake — a design that has been overtaken. But the same verb also means to overhaul, and in a workshop der Motor wurde überholt is good news: the engine has been stripped, repaired and put back into service. A dealer who sells generalüberholte Geräte is offering refurbished equipment, not obsolete stock. The split matters in this field more than anywhere, because its whole argument is that an old design is often kept running, patched and overhauled, long after something better exists. Before a noun and in an argument, read it as outdated; with a mechanic, a service date or the prefix general-, read it as overhauled.