Really.....

[Pottapaug1938]

Allow me to add to the list:

78 rpm records
Record changers
Coca Cola bottles with the name of the bottling city on the bottom
Heathkits
Wringer washers
Washboards (unless you’re into jug band or zydeco music)
Pushbutton car radios (and how to set stations on them)
Crystal radio sets
Air mail stamps

I still have a TEAC open reel tape recorder that I bought in 1972 (it still works!) and an autoharp I got after seeing Mike Seeger of the New Lost City Ramblers play the heck out of one. Warning: don’t ever try to restring an autoharp.

I remember all but the first.

[Famspear]

Allow me to add to the list:

78 rpm records
Record changers
Coca Cola bottles with the name of the bottling city on the bottom
Heathkits
Wringer washers
Washboards (unless you’re into jug band or zydeco music)
Pushbutton car radios (and how to set stations on them)
Crystal radio sets
Air mail stamps

I remember 78 rpm records and record changers.

I also remember that my great-grandmother had a washboard and a wringer washer. To give you an idea of where I come from, the first house I lived in (which is still standing, barely) is about a hundred years old or more. It was my great grandmother's (my mother's mother's mother's) home. My great-grandmother died about two months after I was born, so I don't remember her, but I think that for the first two months of my life, there were four generations living in that three-bedroom farm house: my great-grandmother, her daughter (i.e., my grandmother), my mother, and me, plus my grandfather and at least one of my uncles, and my dad of course. My mother was born in the middle bedroom of that farm house. When I was little, back in the mid-1950s, there was a wringer washing machine in, of all places, that middle bedroom where my mother was born.

I also remember push button car radios (and how to set the stations) -- and I know you're talking about the old "mechanical" button kind. The last car I had that had that was my 1983 Toyota Celica, which actually lasted until about the year 1997.

And, I had a crystal radio when I was a kid.

[Famspear]

In thinking back, I note that both my mother and father were born in private residences, not in a hospital. For their generation, that was normal.

I also note that both of my parents were college graduates (father had a bachelor's degree in business administration and mother had a bachelor's degree in education), which was somewhat unusual for their generation.

[webhick]

I call it brute force computing. And if it ain't beeping back at you in anger, then you haven't showed it who's boss.

There was a website I ran across a long, long time ago, long enough that it may have been Netscape Navigator ago, that listed a bunch of the ways to bypass an automated telephone answering system. You know, press 1 for English? There was a bunch of different techniques, including that works on a lot of them, simply pressing 0 to get an operator. The one that stuck out the most however was:

Smashing all the buttons on the phone pad...... three (3) times.

Visions of someone getting pissed off after trying to get through to a live operator and smashing their head three times onto the phone pad and, viola someone answers danced in my head. What was even more apropos was that, IIRC, it was the way to get a real person after calling Baltimore Gas and Electric, a utility company notorious for not wanting to answer anything.

Knew about and have used both. I was once told that it was a feature for the illiterate. Not sure how true that is. You can also try playing dead and letting the menu system cycle a few times. It'll either hang up or get you to an operator.

[JamesVincent]

Press 1 if you know your party's extension. Press 2 if you'd like to know our business hours. Press 3 if you're calling outside of business hours...Press 9 if you forgot all the previous options. Automated answering services are a nightmare. This is a good time to start cursing.

Motherboard points out that swearing at Apple's automated customer service will put you through directly to a customer care tech. The trick works with other companies as well, Lifehacker reported a while ago. Apparently IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems are sensitive to foul language.

http://www.itworld.com/article/2708322/ ... erson.html

If this is true then the real trick is cuss it out good and fast, so that you don't end up cussing out the human also.

[Cpt Banjo]

Pushbutton car radios (and how to set stations on them) ?? Pull the cover off and turn the little knob under it ??

You would tune to the desired station with the tuning knob, then pull the button out all the way and push it back in. Each button could then be set to a different station.

[Pottapaug1938]

Pushbutton car radios (and how to set stations on them) ?? Pull the cover off and turn the little knob under it ??

You would tune to the desired station with the tuning knob, then pull the button out all the way and push it back in. Each button could then be set to a different station.

... as I did the day that my father, on our way home one day, subjected me to a rant about "that rock and roll junk you kids listen to." Dad didn't appreciate the way that I tried to help educate him by re-setting the radio presets to every rock and roll station in and around Boston.

[Judge Roy Bean]

Kind of make you wonder how us old f-rts ever managed to survive. I'm still not sure all these "improvements" really are better. Do most people really need to be plugged in 24-7? I am not so sure evolution ever prepared us for this much stress.

Yeah I'm with you on that. I visit this web site several times a day, and I watch some tax-related articles at Wikipedia to try to keep the nutballs at bay. I have an unused "Facebook" account but I set it up for some reason I don't even remember -- because I needed the account to do something else on the internet. I don't much see the need for "Social Media." I guess Quatloos is my "Social Medium."



Heaven help me!

If you have children and especially grandchildren, you're pretty obligated to participate on sites like facebook and pinterest, otherwise you aren't kept in the loop with what everyone is doing.

But I refuse to fall for the absurdity of twitter.

[AndyK]

Early TV "remote" controls in two flavors:

1 - hand-held gismo connected to the TV via a LONG cord that, no matter how it was routed, tripped people walking into the room

2 - Sonic controls. Press a button and an ultrasonic chime rang which made the set do something.

Of course, neither type could turn the set on or off.

Similarly -- sonic remote garage door openers. One honk of the horn and you could open all the garages within ear shot.

[Pottapaug1938]

My late father-in-law had one of those early clickers. There would be times that he would be in his bedroom, taking his pocket change out of his pants and putting it somewhere, or taking his keys and doing the same; and suddenly the TV would turn on/turn off/change channels.

[KickahaOta]

Pushbutton car radios (and how to set stations on them) ?? Pull the cover off and turn the little knob under it ??

You would tune to the desired station with the tuning knob, then pull the button out all the way and push it back in. Each button could then be set to a different station.

On a similar principal, anybody else remember the first consumer-grade VCRs? Never mind the gymnatics to program them; you couldn't even punch in a channel by number. There would be some fixed number of channel buttons, usually between eight and twelve (because after all, that was all you'd typically need -- this was before cable, so you were tuning VHF or UHF). Each channel button had a teeny-tiny little dial that you'd turn, sometimes by poking a pen into a hole on the dial and turning the pen, until you landed on a channel. Then you'd find the sheet of numbered labels that shipped with the VCR, and slip the label for that channel number into the little pocket above the button. And from then on, you'd press that button to get that channel. Push-button tuning! What technology!

Code: Select all

(THIS LAST PARAGRAPH IN ALL-
CAPS IN MEMORY OF MY
TI-99/4A COMPUTER, WITH 28-
COLUMN UPPERCASE TV
DISPLAY.)

[JamesVincent]

All the talk of old radios one thing I haven't seen mentioned: the difference between AM and FM. My kids had no clue what AM is, not even talking about amplitude modulation, just the fact that there is an AM at all.

Anyone else remember the early experiment in FM stereo by having a set tune into two different stations, each broadcasting one side of the signal?

[Judge Roy Bean]

More stuff comes to mind:

Acoustical couplers
Party lines
Control-line flying model airplanes
Adding machines with handles
Slide rules
Skeleton keys
Cross-directories
Microfilm/microfiche readers
Automobile inner tubes
Linotype
RS232 cables
Toilet-paper oil filters
Lensatic compass

[JamesVincent]

More stuff comes to mind:

Acoustical couplers
Party lines
Control-line flying model airplanesThe U-handle ones?
Adding machines with handleslolz
Slide rules
Skeleton keys
Cross-directories
Microfilm/microfiche readersOne thing my kids will know, the library uses them for all the old Census Bureau information we're using to do our family tree.
Automobile inner tubes
Linotype
RS232 cables
Toilet-paper oil filtersHow about the old glass ones? Or even the difference between the cartridge ones or the screw-on ones.
Lensatic compass

[NYGman]

My contribution from the US and UK

1/2p coin
Making an AM radio from Radio Shack Parts and broken old electronic bits
ZX-81 Computer my first PC
Red LED Digital Watch where you push a button to see the time
RED LED Calculators
Philips N1500 VCR upgraded to N1700 to record 2hrs on a 1hr tape
AM Radio Watch
Calculator Watch
Speak and Spell - US Version in the UK, spelled Colour and Moustache wrong or right depending on you view
Mego 2-XL - Robot toy with an 8-track tape
Laserdisk Player
Black & White Square TV's
BBS's
300 baud modems (then 1200, 2400, 12.2, 14.4, 56k)
Modem with a phone handset coupler
And Lastly Viewtron online service (Internet of sorts on your TV in the mid 80's)

[Pottapaug1938]

I still use lensatic compasses, along with my orienteering compasses. Among other things, I tell my Scouts that there are no batteries to go bad, no signal to lose, no LCD screen to crack and become useless, among other things.

[wserra]

Engineers. ENGINEERS.

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer set out to prove the proposition that all odd numbers are prime (which is, of course, absurd). The mathematician's proof: 1 is odd and prime, 3 is odd and prime, 5 is odd and prime, 7 is odd and prime; therefore, by induction, all odd numbers are prime. The physicist's proof: 1 is odd and prime, 3 is odd and prime, 5 is odd and prime, 7 is odd and prime, 9 . . . is an experimental error. The engineer's proof: 1 is odd and prime, 3 is odd and prime, 5 is odd and prime, 7 is odd and prime, 9 is odd and prime, 11 is odd and prime, 13 is odd and prime . . . .

[Duke2Earl]

Remember when calling someone in the next town was "Long Distance" and cost basically an arm and a leg... let alone someone across the country.

[Pottapaug1938]

I just saw JamesVincent's mention of microfiche readers. If I go over to the local branch of the National Archives to research my family history, a lot of the information is on microfiche and microfilm readers.

I once had a microfiche reader, salvaged from a store which discarded it. I grabbed it in case I had a use for it; but aside from using it to view film negatives, I found it useless and eventually donated it to Morgan Memorial.

[Cpt Banjo]

Another thing from years past that young people today would not comprehend:

The indescribable joy of receiving a package in the mail with a return address of Battle Creek, Michigan.