Exploring Old & New Technology: One Item at a Time

[leroyjenkens]

I remember car phones. Those were around for a good 2 weeks.
Oh yeah and beepers. Wow those are literally useless now.

 

[Evo]

I remember car phones. Those were around for a good 2 weeks.
Oh yeah and beepers. Wow those are literally useless now.

What about the bag phones?

 

[turbo]

I remember when my grandfather had a little counter-top Coke machine in his repair shop. It dispensed icy 6-oz bottles of Coke, and he used to make people drink the Coke in the waiting area and put the bottles into the wooden crate to be returned. Coke had phased out the small bottles, and he was one of the few people with one of those tiny dispensers, so he had to make sure that the bottles all got sent back to the bottler for refilling. I remember when the bottler increased the price so that he had to charge 3 cents a bottle for the soda instead of 2. He was ticked off about that one!

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I remember this thread.

 

[Evo]

I remember this thread.

I forgot it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I remember when any man with long hair was considered to be either a girly man or a pinko commie.

 

[texasblitzem]

I remember taking 35mm rolls of film to get developed. This digital age sure is convenient.

 

[physics girl phd]

I remember you would give the cashier your credit card and she would place it under the small paper and slide the little thing back and forth to imprint the numbers onto the paper and carbon copy. I loved the sound those things made.

I remember that too... but SURPRISE: I also got one of those just yesterday. No kidding. It shocked the heck out of me. I think they wanted it as documentation only... since the store was calling in an order for me, they just wanted proof in their files that I was there with the card.

It reminds me of this board game too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MX2hxmfx_Q". The new commercial shows them "swiping" the credit card... but in the version our neighbors had in the 80's, you would use a carbon copier.
I'm personally surprised that game's still around. From what I remember, it wasn't that fun.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I forgot it.

Yeah, that too.

 

[Moonbear]

I remember you would give the cashier your credit card and she would place it under the small paper and slide the little thing back and forth to imprint the numbers onto the paper and carbon copy. I loved the sound those things made.

I remember when they were charge cards, not credit cards. It used to be Master Charge, not MasterCard. And I remember when not everyone had them.

 

[Kurdt]

And I remember when not everyone had them.

I don't have one. But I'm a bum.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't have one. But I'm a bum.

No, you're liquid.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Who collected Blue Chip Stamps? And what were the other [green] ones... S&H, or something like that?

Richfield oil company
Fuller Brush salesmen
phone numbers that didn't have seven digits
long distance phone rates on the order of dollars per minute
Rocket launches from Vandenberg AFB

When Frank Sinatra was THE man.

I remember when we thought Carol Burnett was funny. Looking back now it is hard to understand. I guess her form of comedy was really a variety of Vaudeville slapstick that made it well into the 1970's. At some point after that, humor of that form seems to have vanished. It is interesting that while some comedy is timeless, most is very much a product of its time not only in content, which is easy to understand, but also, style. We seem to be growing more and more sophisticated in this regard. Styles of comedy just quit being funny over time.

 

[rootX]

I remember when there was no 3g network.

 

[Evo]

I remember when there was no 3g network.

Did you know that there is a 4G network now?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Did you know that there is a 4G network now?

I remember when there was no 4G network.

 

[Moonbear]

Did you know that there is a 4G network now?

I still don't even know what 3G is. What were 1G and 2G?

 

[mgb_phys]

I still don't even know what 3G is. What were 1G and 2G?

1G is the original analogue mobile phone, 2G is GSM (or PCS in the US) 3G is GSM with internet.
They weren't called 1G and 2G until 3G came out - like WWI wasn't called WWI until after WWII

I remember almost causing a strike when 3G was being developed. Our telecoms group was developing 3G handsets before they were available and so we had to have our own 3G cell tower. It was mounted on the tallest building on site which is where all the admin/secretaries worked, this was also coincidentally the furthest point from the telecoms labs - I mentioned this in an email. Unfortunately it went out on the company wide instead of group wide list!
It took a lot of reassuring presentations and counseling meetings from the bosses to convince them that they weren't all doomed.

 

[texasblitzem]

Remember when computer mice only had one button and no scroll wheel? The scroll wheel is a great invention.
Or remember those old dot matrix printers?! I hated those, they were so noisy. and the stupid paper you had to tear the sides with the holes off. UUGGHHH

 

[BobG]

Or remember those old dot matrix printers?! I hated those, they were so noisy. and the stupid paper you had to tear the sides with the holes off. UUGGHHH

I loved dot matrix printers. I finally had to replace mine because I couldn't find ribbons for it anymore.

And I liked tearing off the sides. You could do things with the scraps, like fold them up. They were as much fun as the old pop tops on soda cans (you could make chains from them) and folding up gum wrappers (you could make chains from them, too).

That was the days when trash was art - much better than the days when art was trash.

Besides, what else could a person do to pass the time before bubble wrap?

 

[turbo]

I remember when "the computer" was hidden in an air-conditioned brick building on campus, and you had to wait in line to transcribe your (hopefully bug-free) code using massive IBM punch-card consoles. Turn in the cards, wait patiently for a day or two, and hope for a nice accordion-fold print-out on green and white tractor-feed paper. CUPL, Fortran... blah!

 

[BobG]

I remember the 5 and 1/4 inch floppies with the little hole in the disk so the computer could synch up on the positioning of the data. You could borrow someone's most precious disk full of irreplacable data, then return it thumbtacked to their bulletin board. (The key was to carefully run the thumbtack through the hole in the disk - unless you really hated the guy and wanted to cause him unbearable pain.)

I also remember Z-100's with zdos. To format a floppy, you had to input "format a:". If you were absent minded and only typed in "format", your entire hard disk was formatted.

One of my coworkers was notorious for formatting our hard drive. Since we religiously backed up our files once a month, it wasn't disasterous, but still a major pain. I finally renamed the "format" command and wrote a basic program to format floppies. The program made it impossible to format the hard drive, but, being a smart aleck about our past problems, the program output funny messages about how the hard drive was being formatted no matter what you did. The guy that had the problem with formatting the hard drive thought it was hilarious.

At least, until the disk controller died all of the files had to be restored. Since it was a spur of the moment thing out of frustration, I never backed up the program that formatted floppies. The formatting fiend was showing a new guy around the office and told the new guy to type in "format". Being computer savvy (in fact, this happened to be the guy that sold me the dot matrix I loved so much), he kept telling the formatting fiend that he shouldn't do that. Formatting fiend kept insisting, reassuring the new guy that this would be funny as hell. The new guy finally typed in "format" and the computer started formatting without any of the funny messages that formatting fiend had become accustomed to. Finally, the formatting fiend realized what was happening and screamed in horror that the computer was formatting the hard drive. The new guy had to agree that typing in "format" was pretty funny, at that - in fact, this seemed like the most entertaining office he'd ever worked in.

 

[Moonbear]

Remember when computer mice only had one button and no scroll wheel?

I remember when "mice" was only a reference to small, furry mammals.

I have a sore spot about dot matrix printers...the first time I truly felt old was when we hired a student in the lab, showed her the old computer connected to a dot matrix printer that we used exclusively to print labels, and she exclaimed, "What's that?! I've never seen a printer like that!" I actually really miss that printer and label program...when you're printing hundreds of labels for samples, there is something very appealing about just entering 4 lines of text and having the computer know to print out labels numbered from 1 to 300 with the rest of the text the same, and without having to fuss with telling it how the labels are organized on the sheet of paper, and when you're done, your labels stay in order, all the pages attached to each other, so you don't lose a page or get them applied out of order.

 

[mgb_phys]

Our grandparents were nostalgic about oil lamps and horses, our parents rembered steam trains - we have dot matrix printers and ascii art.

Even nostalgia isn't what it used to be!

 

[Kurdt]

I remember the day when people stopped remebering the day...

 

[Moonbear]

I remember the day when people stopped remebering the day...

That's why I use the calendar on my computer...it highlights what day it is for me. It was pretty bad a couple of weeks ago...I went to a meeting where we were scheduling projects, and I only had a print-out of my calendar with me, and it didn't have the day highlighted. As they were scheduling things for "next Tuesday," I had to stop to ask what week it was. I'm doomed if I'm ever in an accident and they ask me what day it is to assess if I have any brain injuries.

 

[BobG]

I remember the day when people stopped remebering the day...

I remember the days before we had days (or night, for that matter). We had to count the ticks of the clock so we'd know when to go to work and when to leave.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I remember the days before we had days (or night, for that matter). We had to count the ticks of the clock so we'd know when to go to work and when to leave.

That was back before we had indoor electricity. My father used to send me out with a bucket to bring some home so we could watch TV.

 

[BobG]

That was back before we had indoor electricity. My father used to send me out with a bucket to bring some home so we could watch TV.

Tell me about it! I remember the days before TV remote controls. We had to walk all the way to the TV to change the channel - even in the winter!

 

[turbo]

Tell me about it! I remember the days before TV remote controls. We had to walk all the way to the TV to change the channel - even in the winter!

Uphill both ways, too!

 

[physics girl phd]

Tell me about it! I remember the days before TV remote controls. We had to walk all the way to the TV to change the channel - even in the winter!

And you could remove the knobs so the channel couldn't be changed and the volume couldn't be changed. It was heaven!

 

[Math Is Hard]

And you could remove the knobs so the channel couldn't be changed and the volume couldn't be changed. It was heaven!

I remember that. We had one lost knob so we kept a pair of pliers by the TV to adjust the voulme.

 

[Moonbear]

I remember that. We had one lost knob so we kept a pair of pliers by the TV to adjust the voulme.

Yep, I remember changing the TV with pliers too! I don't think we lost the knob, just broke it.

 

[BobG]

I remember Dec 13, 1901 at 20:45.

Wait, how could I remember that? That won't happen for another 28 1/2 years!

(January 19, 2038 at 03:14 to be exact)

 

[turbo]

I remember when we got our first TV. We didn't have to get up to change channels, because there was only one channel that we could get, and that one wasn't too reliable. Most of the time, they showed an American Indian in the cross-hairs, with a very boring sound-track.