Missing Links Remembered

[imoldernu]

Keeping up with technology today, is impossible, but what about the past?
What do you know about, or remember of technologies that came and went, or were brand new when you were a kid... Here are some that I recall, and were in the creative or developmental stage as I was growing up...
-Bakelite
-Rayon
-Radar
-Television
-Plexiglas
-the "45" and the "LP"
-Plastic
-The CB
-Push Button Phones
-Safety Glass
-Seat Belts
-Tubeless tires
-Vaccinations
-Bubble Gum
-Ball Point Pens
-Electric Guitars
....

The list is endless... Here's one you might have missed. Know what it is?

 

[Amethyst]

Vaccinations? really??

Haven't they been around since the 18th century? :^>

OTOH, since you are in your 70's, you probably remember people's dread of being carried off by illnesses (e.g. pneumonia) which later could be cured with antibiotics, but are now, alas, becoming resistant to them.

Amethyst

 

[kcowan]

Funny story
In the 70s, we all had dial phones. Our local city phone company had a special - Touchtone sets for nothing. So we got them. The head office said we needed a business case. So we all filled out cards showing how much we saved by not waiting for the dial to return.

The results were conclusive and so the whole company evolved to touchtone over the next few years. Now my youngest granddaughter is amazed at how you can actually place a call with a round dial phone! (An antique that we have kept around.)

(We got rid of all the other antiques during the 2009 downsizing. Gave away the last of the Deutsche Polydor albums.)

 

[imoldernu]

Haven't they been around since the 18th century?

Of course you are right... Smallpox, back around 1800...

I was thinking measles, chickenpox and more importantly, the polio vaccine... As a kid, several of my schoolmates either died or were permanently disabled by polio...I can recall visiting them in the hospital, and the wheelchairs they were confined to. It was scary... they even closed down the beaches in my town at one point in the 1950's.

 

[Alan]

I remember most if not all on that list, although I don't recognize the photo. Polio vaccinations were introduced in England the year I was born and I remember getting mine in primary school circa 1962. My mother pointed out that the boy in my class who wore leg braces was a polio victim.

When the time came for other vaccinations she had similar horror stories to tell, including how she almost lost her life to diphtheria. "If only we had vaccinations when I was a little girl...."

BBC ON THIS DAY | 5 | 1955: Dr Salk promotes polio vaccine in UK

 

[Walt34]

While I don't remember wire recorders, if you click on the photo to enlarge it that's the file name.

I do remember the excitement over the polio vaccine. One of the neighbors, my age, did come down with polio and she was in leg braces for years but she did recover.

Push button phones were indeed a "big deal" and considered high tech.

I also remember when CB radios were so popular.

 

[razztazz]

I remember the Sabin polio vaccine. We had to go to the local Jr High school to get a drop of pink liquid on a sugar cube. I was maybe 5 yrs old and it was a MOB SCENE as I recall. It took 3 separate visits.

My 2nd grade teacher had a wire recorder she would use to tape us reading in class.

From 1976 till 1983 I controlled airplanes using a huge vacuum tube computer that needed enough electricity to power a small town.

I bought my first telephone ever in April of 1982. A little white, round desktop model. It cost $99.99 1982 dollars at the AT&T store and all it did was make and receive calls.

 

[braumeister]

I remember the Sabin polio vaccine. We had to go to the local Jr High school to get a drop of pink liquid on a sugar cube.

And that was considered an incredible modern advance. At a young age, I got the original Salk polio vaccine, which was given by injection.

From 1976 till 1983 I controlled airplanes using a huge vacuum tube computer that needed enough electricity to power a small town.

Yep, I did that in 1968. The computer took the entire second floor of an enormous concrete blockhouse (the building is still there, but gutted). A smaller blockhouse behind it contained six enormous diesel engines that provided the power, much of which went to air conditioning to keep the building habitable from the heat generated by the 128,000 vacuum tubes of the computer. There was a maintenance crew of about 60 people, who mainly went around replacing tubes. The AN/FSQ-7, for those who may remember (affectionately known as "Clyde").

 

[robnplunder]

Funny story
In the 70s, we all had dial phones. Our local city phone company had a special - Touchtone sets for nothing. So we got them. The head office said we needed a business case. So we all filled out cards showing how much we saved by not waiting for the dial to return.

The results were conclusive and so the whole company evolved to touchtone over the next few years. Now my youngest granddaughter is amazed at how you can actually place a call with a round dial phone! (An antique that we have kept around.)

(We got rid of all the other antiques during the 2009 downsizing. Gave away the last of the Deutsche Polydor albums.)

We had a good laugh when one of our relative kids tried to call using my dial phone (antic we bought for $30 and hooked it up to our land line). He didn't know how how to operate it. He kept pressing a small round hole with number printed at the bottom. I had to demonstrate "dialing" to him, inserting my finger and turning it clockwise.

 

[Sue J]

I remember standing in line at the elementary school with my Mom, waiting to get the polio vaccine in the sugar cube.

Everyone my age had another vaccine on the back of the shoulder, or was it the back of the arm. We all have a distinctive scar from that. Was that smallpox? What was the timeframe for that one? I think all of us baby boomers got it.

 

[Walt34]

Everyone my age had another vaccine on the back of the shoulder. We all have a distinctive scar from that. Was that smallpox? What was the timeframe for that one? I think all of us baby boomers got it.

Yes, that was the smallpox vaccine. Everyone I knew had it too.

 

[Lcountz]

Sulfa drugs in WW2?


Automobile horns integrated in the steering wheel.....remember the big chrome affairs you could operate with a finger from the steering wheel??

VCR's

Microwave ovens.

 

[REWahoo]

Here are some that I recall, and were in the creative or developmental stage as I was growing up...

Obvious omissions:

- Dirt
- The wheel
- Fire
-

 

[W2R]

I remember the Sabin polio vaccine. We had to go to the local Jr High school to get a drop of pink liquid on a sugar cube. I was maybe 5 yrs old and it was a MOB SCENE as I recall. It took 3 separate visits.

Same here! It was at a local Catholic church IIRC, and it was absolutely mobbed. That was when I was 7, I think, which would have been around 1955 maybe? People were NOT willing to wait patiently to see whether or not the supply of vaccine would run out before they got their kids vaccinated.

My father was a doctor and as such he somehow had the chance to vaccinate me before that (I think in 1953? not sure) with the Salk vaccine that wasn't commonly available I guess. It required a GIANT shot. That was when I found out that he could run faster than I could, even when he was holding a hypodermic....

 

[razztazz]

Here's one. Home movies that could be taken only on an 8mm film camera without sound.

And remember that blinding headlight that you had to screw on to the side of the camera to take any indoor pictures? And I think you got a whole 5 minutes of "video" before you had to change film reels.

 

[Walt34]

It required a GIANT shot. That was when I found out that he could run faster than I could, even when he was holding a hypodermic....

I can just imagine the "eyes like cake plates" look that hypodermic gave you and the automatic "flight" response that kicked in for a little kid....

 

[W2R]

I can just imagine the "eyes like cake plates" look that hypodermic gave you and the automatic "flight" response that kicked in for a little kid....

Oh you KNOW it!!! That was exactly it! Plus, screaming like a banshee as I ran..... and my mother calling behind me, "Oh W2R, come back, come back!"

 

[Bestwifeever]

...
Automobile horns integrated in the steering wheel.....remember the big chrome affairs you could operate with a finger from the steering wheel??

.....

Little round thingies on the floor under the steering wheel to click with your toe to turn on and off the brighter headlights.

Baby car seats that looked like this, in the front seat between the driver and the passenger:

 

[imoldernu]

"Dirt"... yup... understood.

Re: Wire recorders... a short blip in history that might have skipped the Edison phonograph... the 78's, the 45's, LP's, 8 tracks, Casettes and even the Ipod... (gulp)...
A technology that put more than a mile of hair thin wire into a machine that could record and play back sound.

Before my uncle Jerry went off to war in 1943, he installed a 78 rpm record player into aunt Yvonne's 1939 Chrysler coupe... (skipped a lot, but who cared)... She replaced it with a wire recorder player around 1945... not the one shown in the first post, but a simple, no frills model...
WOW! front edge of the future... 'cept it was squeezed out by the record companies. Didja know that's where the term "wearing a wire" came from?

A whole website just for wire recorders. Page 8.
History of the Wire Recorder- Wire versus Tape

 

[Meadbh]

I remember standing in line at the elementary school with my Mom, waiting to get the polio vaccine in the sugar cube.

Everyone my age had another vaccine on the back of the shoulder, or was it the back of the arm. We all have a distinctive scar from that. Was that smallpox? What was the timeframe for that one? I think all of us baby boomers got it.

That was smallpox. I was given it twice, because my family doctor, who had huge scary bushy black eyebrows, didn't think it "took" the first time. This caused an exaggerated reaction on my arm with a huge mass (vaccinia) which took a couple of months to settle down. I couldn't go swimming all summer!

 

[imoldernu]

another missing link...

Twice a year, back in 1972... before electronic calculators, I created manual budgets... 125 expense lines... this year, last year and budget... for 300 stores, using this.

Such memories...

 

[Gumby]

I had the smallpox vaccination twice -- once as an infant in 1959, and once when I joined the Navy in 1977. I don't know when they stopped widespread smallpox vaccinations, but I would be surprised if anyone under 40 has that little circular scar.

I also remember the sugar cube in the little paper cup. My mother was terrified of polio, and she made sure that we got vaccinated.

 

[Ready]

I was pretty excited to get my first Betamax. The idea of being able to time shift and watch television when it was convenient for me was just mind boggling.

We had rotary dial phones in the house, and I wanted to buy a touch tone, but the phone company charged a higher monthly service fee to use a touch tone line, so my parents refused to pay for it. I bought a touch tone phone anyway, and I discovered that by playing with the phone wires, I could get the touch tone phone to work without paying the upgrade fee.

Come to think of it, I think that's how it all started for me in realizing that you don't have to play by the rules or do what everyone tells you to do.

 

[Nodak]

The guy that owned the theater I worked in as a teenager had a wire recorder sitting on a shelf in the projection booth. I played around with that thing quite a bit. It made pretty decent recordings if I remember correctly.

 

[robnplunder]

We learned to use Abacus at school when growing up.