Old Technology

[cube_rat]

In the spirit of some of the recent threads regarding old TV's and such, does anyone remember some of these cool high tech solutions from days of yore (I was a wee child of course )


*Telex Machines

*Thermal paper fax machines

*Ditto machines (the ones teachers would use. students would sniff the ink on the paper)

*Texas Instrument's first hand held calculator which came out around '71 or '72- Man, I LOVED my calculator.

*IBM's first PC - Dual floppy with boot disk. Came with Visicalc and Wordstar

*1200 baud rate modems

*Beta Max circa 1979?

*Big honking cell phones from the mid to late 80's - cost about $3.00 a minute. I don't know if it was 3 bucks a minute. I know I was bookkeeper back then for some high rollers and remember paying cell phone bills in the thousands.

Any other contributions?

 

[SteveR]

Princess telephones….lots of pastel colors.

8 track tapes

CB radio

Push mower with a reel and iron wheels

Cars with no seatbelts and a metal dashboard

Hanging clothes outside to dry on the line

45 rpm records

78 rpm records

No power steering or power brakes on cars

Vacuum assisted windshield wipers (1957 Chevy BelAire)

 

[cube_rat]

Princess telephones….lots of pastel colors.

8 track tapes

CB radio

Push mower with a reel and iron wheels

Cars with no seatbelts and a metal dashboard

Hanging clothes outside to dry on the line

45 rpm records

78 rpm records

No power steering or power brakes on cars

Vacuum assisted windshield wipers (1957 Chevy BelAire)

How in the world could I forget the 8 track tape player? My mom's brown Pinto had an 8 track.

I do remember the reel to reel, but I hear R to R is still being used in some capacity today.

 

[SteveR]

Back in High School, I made extra money installing 8-tracks and speakers in fellow students cars. I never had my own car but by working on cars and especially the electronics in them I got a lot of free rides and some extra cash. When the CB craze hit I was one busy guy installing those too.

Late on, when I was in Fire and Rescue, I was installing two-way radio and police scanners along with lights and sirens on cars. That sure seems like a long time ago now.

 

[riskadverse]

Remember some of these - hell I remember all of these - except it was 300 baud modems ... 1200 was considered the possibly the limit of what a modem could do.

 

[burch64]

Todays automobile "parking brakes" were called "emergency brakes"

I guess thats not Old Technology but I just happened to think of it while reading this thread.

Burch64

 

[cube_rat]

I remember my grandmother's old washing machine. You know the kind with the two rollers on top used to feed the wet clothes which then squeezed out the excess water into the round tub? I'm dating myself, ugh

 

[SteveR]

My grandmother used a pedal driven sewing machine. I remember her using it. She also had a wringer washer when we were really young. They always called the refrigerator the "ice box". They got fresh milk and fresh eggs from the farmers every couple of days and they still had a hand pump well (with the long handle) on the property. My other grandmother did not have running water in the house or an inside toilet until I was 12 or so. I still remember those necessary trips to the little house out back.

 

[cube_rat]

My grandmother had the peddle sewing machine. I bet that sucker is worth thousands these days.

My grandmother on my dad's side also used to refer to the refrigerator as the "ice box" Wasn't that from the east coast? She was from New York. She also called the dresser "the chest of drawers". Her purse was a "pocketbook" and the couch was a "sofa" (even though her sofa was covered with plastic, bless her Italian heart )

 

[SteveR]

Mine were from the mid-west; several generations in western IL, Ohio and KY.

Yes, the couch was the sofa...I remember that now as well as the chest of drawers. The family room was the Sun Room.

The more rustic grandmother lived in a house that was heated by only a wood stove. The upstairs was heated only with an open grate in the floor that allowed any heat to rise up through the grate to the second floor. She also had a really old feather bed that you just sank into and were swallowed by the bed when you laid down in it. She cooked on a woodburning stove but had electricity for lights. Water was from a pump outside. Hot water came only from the stove.

Yikes, I would hate to live like that now.

 

[REWahoo]

I remember my grandmother's old washing machine. You know the kind with the two rollers on top used to feed the wet clothes which then squeezed out the excess water into the round tub? I'm dating myself, ugh

Anyone want to date themselves further by recalling the old saying related to this non-OSHA approved instrument of torture? (Hint: "All The President's Men"- Attorney General John Mitchell's statement of what would happen to Katie Graham if she published an article about Mitchell's involvement with a secret slush fund.)

 

[laurence]

Dude, my first T.V. was color and had a remote, you guys are old seasoned!

Except for cube_rat, she's my Mrs. Robinson. (hey, some of us young guys check out the classics!)

 

[REWahoo]

Dude, my first T.V. was color and had a remote, you guys are old seasoned!

Except for cube_rat, she's my Mrs. Robinson. (hey, some of us young guys check out the classics!)

Not only did we not have color TV, we had to watch by candlelight! 8)

 

[SteveR]

When I was a kid, we had to get up to change the channel!

Yeah, all three of them.

 

[cube_rat]

I go away for 15 minutes to download a Pussycat Dolls song from Napster only to discover this thread has turned tawdry!

By the way, we had 3 channels as well. One of the three channels had Carol Doda (Jarhead, you should know of her since you live near SF) as the spokesmodel for channel 36. She would say something like "The perfect 36..." in her white boots and tight sweater. The sexual revolution was in FULL THROTTLE in 1970.

http://www.nndb.com/people/476/000026398/

 

[REWahoo]

http://www.nndb.com/people/476/000026398/

Yep, an accident waiting to happen. OSHA wouldn't let her anywhere near a wringer washer without proper safety equipment.

 

[Jarhead*]

I go away for 15 minutes to download a Pussycat Dolls song from Napster only to discover this thread has turned tawdry!

By the way, we had 3 channels as well.  One of the three channels had Carol Doda (Jarhead, you should know of her since you live near SF) as the spokesmodel for channel 36.  She would say something like "The perfect 36..." in her white boots and tight sweater.  The sexual revolution was in FULL THROTTLE in 1970. 

http://www.nndb.com/people/476/000026398/

Cube: I was living in So. Calif. during that period of time, 60"s and 70"s, but Carol Doda was well known all over the West Coast.

She had a leg-up on her rival strippers, courtesy of silicone injections.

San Francisco was an interesting place in the late 60's and 70's

 

[KB]

I remember Carol Doda from that era too. I lived near SF in the late 60s. My first concerts were in SF.

My first VCR had a wired remote. The remote without wires was 50.00 more, so I skipped it. I was the first of my friends to have a VCR and that was in the mid 80s. Paid 400.00 for it too.

And I remember going to the neighbors to watch the Wizard of Oz. They were the only ones to have a color TV and when the movie changed to color after the house landed in Oz, we were amazed.

I still have a sofa, but pocket book is east coast verbiage to me.

 

[Martha]

I know how to use a slide rule.

 

[wabmester]

I know how to use a slide rule. 

Wow! You better take cover, Martha. You just emitted the Nerd mating call.

I'll try to divert them with some Nerd Porn.