I would rather have most of the things on the market then. Stuff was expensive, but you could actually FIX them. The stuff was built pretty well for the most part. I remember most of them.
Vinyl never totally went away, was always available in limited pressings if you knew where to look. Walmart now sells new vinyl album sets & turntables. Vinyl record show/swap meets are a regular thing in my area & surprisingly, many of those purchasing are high school & college age!
I was born in 1941 and I remember these things very well. We had the first TV in our neighborhood. My parents purchased our 5" round Dupont TV for $500.00 in 1947. That was a huge sum of money for that time. We had total strangers knockin' on our door to see "IT". The TV antenna was the giveaway. I was a milk delivery kid in the mid 50's. I received $2.00 for the short early morning run before school and $3 for the longer weekend route. I cut laws with the reel mowers for spending money. A larger lawn could get you $1.00. I set bowling pins by hand, at the Elks club for $3.00 a night. Great times.
Dang. I did the inflation calculation on that $500. That comes out to over $7200 in today's money. And a 5" screen. And round. I bet that really was an attraction.
After spending too much money on coffee makers and getting mediocre coffee, I went back to my stainless steel percolator on my gas stove. Never been disappointed and it won't break down on me in a year!
I’m 82 and remember the coal man, the coal shoot and the coal furnace. I also remember how black the snow turned due to the coal smoke settling on top of the snow and how the snow stayed white when everyone switched over to gas.
@@johngrafton6868 A canner is a pressure cooker, but not all pressure cookers are canners. The type for canning is generally higher pressure to attain higher temperatures for preservation. Canners are sometimes called retorts.
That's not true at all, you're just not getting a quart jar in a most household pressure cookers. You can do pressure canning in a pressure cooker. But it isn't going to work as well as at the factory. Still, it is sufficient for safely canning veggies and meat.
Born in 1951. What little you had was appreciated. Many of these items were still around in the 1970s. The value of the US Dollar was awesome and people on assistance could afford an apartment. Many of the newer innovations sure made life easier. 73 years later, I think some things have gone too far. Thanks.
Yes. Although in some ways, we are living in a "Golden Age" - today, I can get a comprehensive list of all "hit" songs going back a hundred years, and listen to them all instantly and free.
Much of these were used throughout the 70s, 90s, and even into the 90s. In 1975 my computer programming class at UCLA required punch cards. Wing windows continued into the late 70s. My daughter and I both have turntables and you can still buy vinyl new (or go to a vinyl shop for unusual picks). Encyclopedias were widely used until the 90s. In the 80s and 90s mechanical pencils were still widely used in the office.
I learned to type in High School, first on a manual machine, then moved up to a Selectric. My keyboard skills transferred directly to a computer keyboard. My kids are amazed that I can type without looking at the keyboard.
@@lynnw7155I’m 76 now and learned typing in high school when I was 15/16. We only had manual ones. The skill has never left me and when computers came along it was a breeze to use the keyboards!
Our dad had a manual lawn mower throughout the '60s, '70s. and 80s I don't think he ever purchased a power mower. He attached a catch sack to capture the clippings. Eventually, Dad relegated the lawn mowing duties to my brother, which was how he earned his weekly allowance. It was one of those devices that, as long as it continued to work well, he couldn't see shelling out the extra bucks for the power kind, which required gasoline, an additional expense.
Our next door neighbour did this and made his kids mow, boys and girls. My dad had a nice mower and my brother would mow. He also had a few accounts in the area.
Our family had a push mower, and I was stuck doing most of the mowing. I hated the thing. Everyone we knew had a gas or electric mower. But no, not us. Join the 20th century? No thanks!
Being born in 1953 in Cleveland, Ohio,.....I remember the milkmen and the coal delivery men and their trucks. Our house was built in 1946. The house I purchased in 1993, at age 40, was built in 1905 and it had a coal room, and coal chute. There was canning room, for preserving fruits and vegetables, grown in one's own garden. There is a buried water cistern, in the backyard, which I learned was meant to collect "grey" water, from the home's gutters, to be used for watering the garden and other utility tasks,....not meant to be drunken.
Burning coal to heat your home was still common in the UK when I lived there as a teen in the '90s, as was milk delivery. Talk about farm to table. We lived in a rural area so the milk had to move all of about 2 miles to get to my doorstep from the farm.
Born inn’48 Brooklyn, NY we had the milkman, and the fruit and veggie man with his horse drawn wagon. Fruit on one side veggies on the other. There was another horse drawn wagon with a man who sharpened scissor and knives. A door to door salesman with his suitcase of items. Aprons, dish towels, house dresses etc. 25¢ weekly to pay off what you purchased. Our family doctor made house calls. Mom rarely had to leave the house.
@@mchapman1928 Thanks,...your memories are closer to my mother's,....she was born in 1922, and she shared them with me, of life in Cleveland, Ohio when she was 8, in 1930. There were still "ice-men",....she remembered the horse drawn wagons, the sturdy men who hoisted the blocks of ice onto their shoulders. She said her family were friendly with these men. And maybe she saw more of them, because her family lived in an apartment over her father's delicatessen & diner. There were junk men and rag sellers, knife sharpeners. In the 1950s, there were Fuller Brush men, offering brooms, cleaning agents, other handy household items, like shoe-horns, plastic combs, & letter openers. We had a milkman, and neighborhood teens were paper boys. Every so often,....men who must have been hobos, would wander into our neighborhood. They'd inquire if a home owner had a dirty task or some kind of work that was messy or hard work. My mom would pay them some small amount, and give them some old clothing, or an old pair of winter gloves.
As a retired Draughtsman, I can assure you that manual drawing boards were used well in to the 1990s in the UK. It would be 1992 when I started using CAD programmes.
I was born in the 1950s and belonging to a large family we had some of these items right up to the mid to late 1970s. when I was in school we had a milk man delivering small glass bottles of milk, I was the milk monitor for our school, we also had a baker come to the school with fresh bread straight from the bakery these were delivered by horse and cart, the milk was cold and the bread was hot, loved it. Here in Australia we didn't get color TV until 1975. Great video, just subbed, Cheers.
Well said I settled in Perth 1981 from Poland. Milk man was here for sure. Fresh bread didn't exist here by than. Biggest thing was going to VHS Library and hire movie for weekend and watching this wit high tech wire controlled pad. That was so cool. National VHS.
I have used all these items...and still have manual can openers, flour sifters, butter churn, and many other items. With the advent of electric cars and a deterioration of our power grid...I can still cook, wash, shred cheese and anything I need during power outages. I also have oil lamps, manual whisks, and clean clothes with my washboard. Have upgraded to solar generators to power my fridge and freezers.
I mean they have their place, i can use a manual one but my aunt with arthritis cant unless she wants to have her hand on ice all day afterwards. @mikewebber2637
We own not one but two stainless coffee percolators. We use them on a campstove when fishing or camping. Several of our friends make coffee every morning in their thoroughly modern homes, in a percolator. The percolator is certainly uncommon, but not dead yet.
I have a single cup percolator I use sometimes. Really don't drink a lot of coffee. But if you are patient and keep the temp down, it can make an awesome cup of coffee, way better than a drip coffee maker.
In the 60s, all TVs had tubes. When the TV failed, you could take the tubes to the drugstore and use the tube tester to troubleshoot and determine which tube was bad. You could then purchase and replace the bad tube. Self-reliance was an important quality in American culture in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
Just want to point out that the red rotary phone shown next to the TV throughout each of these videos is a 1970's "official" German post office issued phone.
Roger that; what old rig or rigs do you use? My last real tube was a set of Drakes R4A and T4XB. The only tube transciever I still have for HF is my 1965 HeathkitGW-12 CB that I tuned to 29.025
I remember the data processing class in jr. high school. After we punched the data in the cards, we had to wire a board that instructed the IBM machines what to do with the cards. These were huge machines in a large room. You had one that read the cards, one to sort, one to do the calculations, and one to do printing. We had to learn how to wire the boards for each machine. That was high technology.
@@kiniburk Many of the Hollerith card decks, if they represented a static batch of data, would have a set of columns devoted to a sequence number, allowing them to be run through a collator to sort them back into their proper order. This could only be done with a card deck that was in its final, static form, as the sequence numbers would make it impossible to recover a deck that had been edited to insert new data between sequentially-numbered cards.
The Apple ][e we used when I was a kid is closer to punch cards and building sized computers than to modern ones. I did a summer internship in high school, working in the IT department of a Fortune 500 automotive engineering company. I did most of the work to decommission their old server hardware that was from the late '70s or early '80s (8088 based IIRC) and replace it with brand new Pentium II Xeon based servers. First time I ever saw 2 CPUs on one board and the slot type CPUs were like something from the future, lol. The new system was probably 1000x as capable and took up a minute fraction of the space in the formerly packed server room.
You're a wee bit off on the coal furnaces. By the 50's they were largely replaced by oil burners. Also the coal furnaces from the 20's and 30's were not the little freestanding parlor stoves (they were more a thing in the late 19th century). They were more typically a coal fired boiler that supplied the heat for a steam / hot water radiator heating system and had an automated stoker system that fed coal into the furnace. And by the 50's many of those older coal boilers still in service had been converted to burn fuel oil. Iceboxes were still in use in some areas in the very early 50's but as post war production ramped up they were quickly replaced by refrigerators. It was quite a matter of pride to have a refrigerator in those years. That was part of what made Jello so popular post war. You couldn't make Jello with an icebox. So being able to bring Jello to a church potluck was a subtle way of bragging.
Homes in the 1950's often had a coal furnace in the basement, and a thermostat on the first floor. The thermostat controlled a fan. A heat exchanger in the furnace made sure that smoke went up the chimney and not into the ductwork.
The house my grandparents bought after WWII had a forced air gas central heating system. They were ubiquitous in new home construction after WWII in suburban neighborhoods. Now my grandparents' generation, that's another story. My grandpa used to steal coal from the railyard when he was a kid so they could have heat and cook their food. And he grew up in the city.
@@Lurch-Bot My grandfather worked on the railroad. He was as honest as the day is long. But one of his jobs was to ride the rails in a speeder once a week checking the tracks. Well, coal that had fallen out of the bunker and was laying along the tracks was fair game to anyone. :) Gas didn't catch on here until the mid 50's, and then it was more propane for stoves than natural gas/propane furnaces. Natural gas showed up in the 60's. But this is small town rural America, things move slow here.
A lot of these things were not done in in 1950s, depending on where you lived. We didn't have milk delivered in Phoenix, we didn't have coal furnaces, and only my grandma had a roller washing machine. I'm guessing that in the eastern US some of these were more common.
I recently saw someone using a "reel type" lawnmower and they still sell them. An interesting fact about reel type mowers is that they actually cut the grass better than a power mower, cleaner cut and more uniform. You can even put a bag attachment on them. Having a small lawn, i'm tempted to get one from Home Depot. No gasoline, and they're quiet, and fun to use.
I've used nothing but hand mowers. Unfortunately, since about 1975, the U.S. brands were discontinued, and the only reel-mowers were made in China. I needn't tell you how the build-quality of them is Fortunately, about 5-years ago I discovered a new model Fiskar mower, made in Finland, and it will be the last mower I buy, because it's solidly built with high-quality steel. No gas needed. No spark plugs, no worry about theft. (Kids don't know what it is.) Will last longer than you live. No noise. Easy maintenance.. Price? >$300. Buy the optional sharpening kit. ($40) Never spend another cent on lawnmowers.
We used one for the 5 years we lived in the UK in the '90s because we just didn't have much grass to cut :P also had milk delivered every morning in glass bottles. I still have a few of them. I'd start the day out right with a pint of whole milk on the way to school, where I was also fed a proper breakfast.
That was a glorious trip down memory lane! I remember (and used and owned) most of these. They look quaint by today's technology but were cutting edge for their time. I think I probably have some of these items (and older ones, too) around here. I'm an antique myself. Looking back, those were happy, simpler times. It's easy to forget things like common diseases (polio & TB) and the threat of war with Russia. But we were young and fearless; I'm neither now but hopefully, wiser and thankful for these memories.
Much about that time was good, but remember in school we had 'air raid drills', at the sound of the alarm we'd duck under the desk, head turned away from the window, and cover your head with your arms. This was the Cold War era, everyone's big fear was 'the commies are coming'.
One thing I really miss was the knife-man (that’s what we called him). He would drive his pickup through the neighborhood regularly and as far as I could see seemed never short of business. He would sharpen any thing. Lawn mower blades, my Dad’s tool, my Mom’s kitchen knives. We weren’t such a throw away society as we are now. We had small shops to repair small appliances, etc. definitely the shoe store, resoled your shoes and basically could make anything with leather. He made my dad’s tool bag. Because we didn’t have grocery stores on every corner we used the local butcher/bakeries/ice cream shop. So many local shops ran by family owned businesses. Best part about it was you knew your neighbors because you depended so much on the local shops.
They still got this some places but he moved to Facebook. Got a guy in my town who does it and specifically undercuts the price to get it done at ace or Home Depot 😂 plus he’s a character. I think stuff like this seems to be on the rise “hustle culture” expanding into people side hustle doing stuff like that blowing up to being a full time job.
we had old Italian knife sharpener 50's- early 60's. He walked and rang a hand bell. dragged his two wheeled, homemade tall, wooden cart with a hunk of rock and a foot peddle. Think he charged a quarter.
Remember the flash cubes that rotated when a picture was taken so you could take four pictures before changing it? We had those, and they didn't always work properly. Sometimes, they wouldn't flash, or they wouldn't turn. Flash bulbs didn't always go off when they were supposed to, either. The most frustrating thing I found about using film cameras was loading the film and trying to wind it to the first frame. If it didn't load or wind just right, pictures would overlap. Sometimes, I couldn't get the winder to even move. And loading film always risked getting some light leaked into the first couple of frames. They really were a pain, especially the cheaper ones.
Kodak brought out the instamatic cartridges for that with 126 and 110 cameras. They also brought out the 4 shot magicube flash system on those cameras also. Kodak was one of the biggest sellers of the compact camera then in the 1960's. It still took a while though for roll film to disappear and many serious photographers still use it today in favour of the digital cameras and mobile phones cameras.
@@ednammansfield8553I should feel once in awhile. There's nothing wrong with digital photography but I just like film cameras partially because I grew up with them in the 90s. They're really cool pieces of the history of photography. Speaking of Photography mishaps I have a Kodak Pony 135 model B where advancing the film is a separate does not reset the shutter and do you use a different liver for that that's on the lens barrel. Put that camera it's very easy to take a multiple exposure shot if you reset the shutter without advancing the film. I got one picture that I really like to do to that black of Double Exposure prevention that I wouldn't have gotten with most of my other cameras. I would not have thought of mixing those two images on purpose.
I still prefer film and manual film cameras. Many people don’t realize how much detail is in the negatives and slides. A 24mp camera produces lower resolution and color depth than a 35 mm slide. You need a lossless scan of about 9000 dpi to get the full resolution of a 35mm frame, which is 36mm*24mm or about 1.5 sq inches. Which gives 121.5 mp. Which for reference is basically an 8k flatscreen. 24 mp is equivalent to a 4k screen.
I once got all four flash bulbs go off at once and smoke coming from it. Scary! Loading a film, I did it in a nearly dark room with a 5 Watt light bulb on the ceiling.
Yes. But, one of my favourite pictures is a 1992 accidental double exposure at the start of the film - my pregnant wife posing outside on a late-winter walk; and my newborn daughter.
Yes. Somewhere in each encyclopedia, they list the expert contributors - hundreds of university people, and government and industry people, all with decades of background behind their words, then reviews by related experts... and a genuine attempt to be objective and not "slanted". The days of objective truth - good times.
looking at the milk delivery. We had Milk, The Helms Bakery Truck, and Hamm's Beer Truck, among others. For rubbish pickup days, we had trash day (trash is not garbage), garbage day (edible used to feed pigs and whatnot), and can day.
I've lived with all of these things. We got our first television in 1953. It was fun to sit beside the tv repairman, admiring his fascinating array of tubes. Although coffee snobs say that the only good way is(fill in current brewing method) I still think a glass percolator is the coolest! All in all, it was a very good era in which to grow up.
I still remember the milk man, but just barely. I was born in 1963, and we had the service in our area until about 1967 or 68. Besides refrigeration, the death knell for daily milk delivery was when families began being able to afford 2 cars, which meant that moms were more mobile and could make more frequent trips to market than before. It was also around that time that most doctors stopped making housecalls, probably for the same reason.
We all had refrigerators in the 1960s but it wasn't until the early 70s that they stopped delivering milk in the morning. When I was in middle school I was on the library staff, so I would run the film projectors when a teacher checked out a film.
Can remember having kettle chips delivered in 5 gallon cans. Once used up had to leave the empty can at door to get new delivery. We received a can every 2 weeks. We also recived milk in carton and butter wrapped in parchment paper.
Listening to a radio is the greatest. It taught the one that was listening to really learn to listen and use the imagination . There were no pictures to watch just listen . I love talk radio and enjoy audio books because I learned to listen without pictures. Listening is an art .
Yes. Punched cards were used into the late '70s. Drafting tools were used into the mid-'90s. Dial phones came in the late '50s. Push button phones weren't widespread until the '80s. Wing windows were around into the '90s. Coal wasn't used much in the west. There were sawdust burners and oil furnaces. When the dams were built in the '60s, everything went electric. There were plenty of other mistakes.
@@BlankBrain Like the fact that mechanical pencils are still being used today. Ballpoint pens might be good for some things, but they sure aren't useful if you want to actually erase anything.
@@wendigo53 My Grandmother in the late 70's still had hers, and my mother got her hands on one in the 80's. Used to keep it in our large bathroom and fill it using the bathtub.
I had a manual lawnmower for my home I moved into in 2008. Mowed my lawn a few years that way. Loved the pattern it made in my lawn. Then I got an electric lawnmower. Now I have someone to do my lawn. I got lazier and lazier 😮😊
My paternal grandmother had her washing machine with electric ringer well into the 1970's. She dried the clothes on a rotating clothes line that looked similar to an umbrella frame with two lines between the spokes. I thought it was really cool! Since the wringer put wrinkles into the clothes, they all had to be dampened and ironed. Then, there was my maternal grandfather, who took home movies indoors with a hand held row of bright, blinding lights!!! I was told to act natural, keep my hand down and not squint! (I can relate to that Frazier episode with the bright flash bulb photos at the bar mitzvah) My dad took movies mostly outside. I miss those reel movies, now. We used to watch them once a year, but they all turned to dust. 😢
My dad made home movies also. Like your family, we watched them once a year. I still have them but I'm terrified to mess with them because they're so old and fragile.
One of the other things that disappeared was connected to the milk delvery -- homes would have small cabinets in an exterior wall with doors on the inside and outside. The milkman would open the exterior door and put the milk and butter into the cabinet, where it would be protected from the sunlight, heat, and weather, and the occupants would be able to pick up the delivered milk and butter without going outside. With the end of milk delivery, these cabinets were no longer necessary.
I was born in the early '80s and have had most of these experiences. Grandparents had a tube TV. Zenith floor model. I eventually inherited it and used it for several years myself before it bit the dust. I still have a WE 302 rotary phone. Planning to set it up as a VOIP phone. I picked up a few older VOIP phones for free and can modify the circuitry to work in conjunction with the old phone. Other than building PCs, I haven't done much with electronics in awhile and that seemed like a straightforward project to get back into it. The challenge will be doing it such that I can actually use the dial to, well, dial the phone.
I recall making money as a teenager, by delivering telephone books, to the houses in my neighborhood. It was sort of hard work,.....they weighed a lot, and you had t take them to each house. The weight of the books in your car would cause the springs to be pushed to their limit.
When I worked as a delivery driver for a florist, I found the Thomas Maps booklet very helpful. They were easy to use, and helped me located any address in any number of areas. Too bad we don't have printed Thomas Maps, anymore. In some ways they were more accurate and reliable than GPS. Today, if you go into a convenience store and ask for a map, they're likely to roll their eyes at you, rude though that is. Somehow, it's assumed that everyone has GPS and everyone knows how to use it. NOT SO! And Google Maps aren't that good, either. I find them hard to decipher.
@@thejourney1369 Google map has been wrong plenty, many, many people have died from them. People blindly follow them and miss important short cuts. and we called car vent windows "No Drafts" I got my first "official" job with my S.I.N. number for life at age13, at Briars Dairy running milk from the truck up to the door. A dog bit me in the azz and a cheap Scotchman slides me a dime. I was standing there puzzled.. what is this for? Then it finally dawned on me, i was being bribed and I got furious and it was the first inkling of evil in the big world
I lived during these times! It was a great time to be alive. Not a cumbersome task but something we all looked forward to. No like today's technology which seems more invasive than helpers. IMO.
Never used an old radio, they say they had three batteries. One was charged once a week, one replaced or charged once a month, the last was small and lasted a year. Telegrams are basically texts today. I've seen the old washers at grandma's house when I was little. There's a good TV episode of Honeymooners involving an icebox. The one where they consider adopting. I remember the old metal filled bulbs. Full of a big wad of fine metal wire. I've heard that the vent windows were a security hazard. They can create a blast of air. They also had text versions of the city maps. I've never used one, but dad used one downtown. Learned programming on card punches. I see both 026 & 029 models. And others. Had a class on mechanical drawing. T-square, 45 degree triangle, 30/60 degree triangle.
My first camera used flash cubes and Kodak saddle type film cartridges. I also liked to use old roll film cameras when I was a kid. They took nice pictures because of the much larger film format.
lol vacuum tube amplifiers are still used and some of the most expensive audio equipment on the market are tube amplifiers McIntosh as an example This company is celebrating their 75 anniversary 1949 - 2024. So tube amplifiers are still sold and have a sound that cannot be replicated by a solid state amplifier
My grandparents had a wood stoked heater in Missouri of some type until they passed away in the 1980s. They did have a stove, oven and water heater which were powered by Propane which was delivered.
People in rural areas still sometimes opt for wood fueled stoves, if they have acreage and can get it for free. Nothing wrong with that if you're fine with doing the work. I like to shift my own gears when I drive.
Just add many purchase wood and use wood stoves. Not unusual at all in Missouri. I remember paying 20 a Rick for wood in 1985. $75 is the cheapest I see these days
@@fpitw71my neighbor across the street uses one..northern California, Cambodian lady who came here as a child after the Vietnam war. We allowed people who supported 🇺🇸 USA during that war to come; she remembers almost starving_ her mother doing forced labor.😮 her youngest son rides to High School on a motor scooter- he has no clue! 🙏💓
I bought one few years ago at home Depot. It worked but wore me out. It was heavier and heavier the longer I pushed it. Gave it to my neighbor with small yard. He's still using it
Ah, the ol' vacuum tube radio! If you're around my age (71) you probably remember taking the tubes out and taking them to a store where they had a tube "tester"- where you could check the "health" of each tube from your radio/tv - after it started acting up- to see which tube was causing the trouble. I'm the only person my age that I know who'd NEVER been in a drive-in theater. I always thought it was a bad idea to have to watch a movie through your windshield while listening to the tinny distorted audio through those little speakers.
Drive-in sound was not "tinny," but rather good quality, though not stereophonic. What's more, you didn't have to listen to commentary and conversation from the sorts of mannerless clods often annoying theater-goers in recent decades. Early baby-boomers, regardless of background, were taught certain standards of public behavior and personal presentation that are sadly lacking in modern America.
@@catkeys6911Here in the uk we envied your drive-ins as they didn’t exist here. We only saw them in American movies. Mind you, our weather wouldn’t have been suitable anyway, due to all the rain we get battering against the windscreen. We’d have seen nothing!
As kids,we used to sneak into the local drive-in by creeping through a gully behind the big screen,that got us around the fence. We could sit on the ground off to one side,near bushes,unless some people in the cars noticed us and started throwing beer cans at us.
We had the dial phones and were on a party line. That meant you had to take your turn using the phone with other people who did not live in your home but we're on that line.
We had an encyclopedia set as children and I read all of the books and went to the city library and read all of the encyclopedias there too. Lot of good knowledge!
Many of these so called obsolete items are still in use by the " Off Grid" type lifestyle. Wringer washers, Ashley Wood/Coal burning stoves, ice blocks stored in a root cellar covered with sawdust, and Manual or push mowers,
Life was easier back then. No cyber issues, no phone radiation, decent tv, manners, and gadgets that were VERY well built. Life's pace was quick, but not like the chaos it is now. I miss it. LOVED the rotary phones! I kept mine.
no invasive cameras all over everywhere. around covid, went to the local casino to get a cheap loss leader eggs @ $ 3.oo .. became $10.oo and step over here please. What for? Photo for file for face recognition, no explanation, no nothing your face goes whereever the casino wants it to fukc your eggs
I never went to s drive-in theater where "clear" sound was a perk. It was usually a lot of static and lip reading. 😂 I was born in the 60s and a lot of these innovations were still widely used throughout the 70s.
I still use a vacuum tube radio as they look great and have a much warmer sound. Though most bands are going silent. I also still have doorstep milk delivery. A bit rare but quite convenient.
I also use tube radios but here in the UK there are few stations left so I play an MP3 through the gram sockets on the rear. Can still enjoy the wonderful sound .
Car wing vents continued into the 1980s. They did not stop in the 50s. Take the VWs & Mustangs of the 60s, for example...and, even further, for another 2 more decades. Please do your research more thoroughly!!
My 1996 Ford F-150 has wing vent windows. The title of this video is misleading. It was entertaining, but still all over the place when it comes to dates of obsolescence.
2:14 Radio will never completely change or disappear. We will always have radio of some type or another. Turntables also are things on their way back in. If all our high tech equipment goes down, there were still easier ways of recording sound, and that was it. All this technology won’t last forever. 9:30 Colour TV didn’t become a thing here until the mid 1970s.
I worked as a staff (3 of us) photographer for U of M before digital. We used the right film for the light (yes in or out doors)developed our own stuff with the required developers and printed the photos. Digital, by comparison even today sucks. Ever notice the layers in a digital sunset ? Not with film. Oh, Lord of the Rings ? Yup, taken on FILM and then distributed on disk. Don't get me started on cars...
We had the milk man and the coal truck. I remember the gas company in town having a regulator tank to hold excess gas produced. The storage tank would go up and down. Garbage can. Trash can and Ash can for ash and clinkers from the furnace. Just barely remember steam locomotives. Gas powered lawn mowers were a rarity. Bakeries all over town. Glass soda and beer bottles. "Church" keys.
lots of "round" 50's fridges still humming along fine likely to eternity. Now a shitbox Samsung.... with a ridiculous "icemaker ( barfs in one year) fridge dies in 6-8 $2000. Who in God's green earth needs an "icemaker"? Is your home a hotel? But it sure could use a fridge that last longer than 6-8 years. Ditto with crappy furnaces, the same Planned obsolecence, first nervous is why do you need a gaurentee on a new appliance?
My Mom and Granny canned using a hot water bath. I never did because I didn’t have any place to store it. My sister-in-law still cans. I know a lot of people that do. It’s not a lost art.
@@thejourney1369 - I like to pickle/brine Jalepeno and Habanero peppers and use them throughout the year. I'm just a rookie, but I like to grow hot peppers. The squirrels don't eat them
coal furnaces, ice boxes in the '50s? Sorry but oil fired hot water heat and electric fridges along with going to the grocery store for milk and I'm from West Virginia You're talking about the 30s and 40s
I grew up in the 50's and 60s,and our house in Buffalo had a coal furnace,and big coal bin for deliveries. it wasn't until the 60s when the furnace was replaced with a gas furnace,my dad stripped off the coal bin when he remodeled the kitchen. the home was built right after WW2. My oldest sister still lives in it. My mom had a wringer washer in the 50s. we had milk and icecream delivery up to the 70s.
I'm 30 and grew up with a pushmower lol. My dad had an electric one, and when it broke, he just got a push one, and I'm pretty sure he still has it to this day. They are simple and reliable, and so long as you are not too weak, they work amazingly well.
My grandmother used a ringer washing machine her whole life and when she was given a modern washing machine she didn't like it cuz she said her ringer washer cleaned her clothes so much cleaner.
the lady at 10:09 is Harriet Nelson, from the show "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", another great show of years gone by. My dad had one of those flash cameras - get your picture taken, then you'd see spots for a couple of minutes.
Good video. During the summer my young nephews have a small lawn mowing business in their immediate neighborhood. They use a push mower, a manual edger and hand shears along with couple other manual tools that they transport in a small trailer towed by their bicycles. The neighbors like the noiseless job they do as compared to the racket a gas lawnmower, leaf blower and other devices the adult professionals use. The neighbors brag about how they contribute to the health of the environment and give a job of responsibility to the boys.
Milk that was delivered to our house tasted infinitely better than milk bought in a grocery store. I miss those days. Plus, the empty glass milk bottles were exchanged for full ones, then the milk delivery company would wash, sterilize, then refill them, which was economical and eco-friendly too. We still have LP records and a record player. Although not as crisp and clean sounding as digital music, there is a warm richness in records that is missing in digital or downloaded music. In the late 1970's I would take my girlfriend to the drive-in theater in my Mercury station wagon. Needless to say, we never really watched much of the movie.
... correct..... know what I'm sayin'. Now speaking for a friend in the privacy of their outhouse was the Eaton's Catalogue , ladies underwear then National Geographics, early 1960's German health magazines, next was bareandnaked ladies with little sparkily masks and doo dads and under his dads bed the great grand wazooo of all educational literature Pl ** **Y and booby playing cards.
External lights for cameras haven't entirely disappeared. There are more modern light panels and flash attachments that go onto a DSLR or Mirrorless camera.
26:50 What really killed record changers was the popularity of cassettes. Record changers were a near necessity when 3 minute 78s were the standard, but many people later enjoyed stacking 6, 8 or even 10 LPs, for up to 5 hours of continuous music. But a single auto-reverse cassette deck could give you up to 180 minutes of music and if you needed more, a double deck could bump that up to 6 hours, though 180 minute cassettes were rare and more jam-prone than the more common 120 minute ones. When CDs came out, changers came back into fashion, though in recent years, digital music has relegated them to the thrift shops for most people.
76 years old, and the best encyclopedic study I ever remember was from the 1920' s called "The Volume Library". All done on onion skin paper. Still own, and refer to it for tech info, especially mathematics for my automotive needs. Wonderful printed info of outstanding, and technical need.
Fly windows only disappeared from semis like 15 years ago. Which sucks. They allowed for a nice flow of air in the cab without all the noise and water or snow spitting at the driver's head.
Funny story. I was in the army on tanks. The tank I was on was missing its target. They thought that maybe the bore was crack. We had a gunnery master come on board, and said. Let me check something before we pull the cannon out. He open the ballistic computer and found that, someone removed the punch card and made their own to replace it.
Dad went back to a push mower because it he thought it gave better him results. The lawn wasn't large. He enjoyed the maintaining of the old fashioned mower, too. The blades were always sharp and ready to go. He had a great respect for the machines and gadgets of the past. Me, too. 💕
So would I; to be young again and everyone alive-- my great aunt, grandparents, mother, sister, brother💓🙏. As a child, you are free- no worries but don't know it! I had a loving family-- every child should have that!
I grew up in the 1950s and several of these were already obsolete. Ice deliveries? Coal furnaces? Wringer washers? Never saw them (though we had a furnace that had long been converted to oil, as did my grandparents). Push mowers? We had a gas powered mower. Milk deliveries, though, were still a thing.
Me too, most of theses things were obsolete long before the 50s. I was born in 1950 and we had Panel Ray heating, not coal or oil. My Dad used a power mower and we had both a washing machine and a dryer.
in the '60's there were a lot of those old wringer/washers in peoples basements after they transitioned over to the more modern washer/dryer units. People held on to those for awhile, probably because they relied on them. And people still liked to hang their clothes outside on a clothes line, for freshness. Especially bed sheets
@ 70 years old I went through all of those things. But life didn't seem harder it seemed easier.
Simpler for sure - somethings were harder people (most) are much softer - myself included....
@@Pete4875 soft padding absorbs hard punches. Ask Mike.
It was easier. I did not have 89 different pronouns to remember and they did not change at a whim!
Remember when you had phone numbers stored in your head and not your phone ☎
Pepperidge farm remembers
@@Pete4875 70! Wow! Ancient
I would rather have most of the things on the market then. Stuff was expensive, but you could actually FIX them. The stuff was built pretty well for the most part. I remember most of them.
Record players/turntables are not useless. The vinyls never really went obsolete, as everyone had expected them to. THANK GOODNESS!!🎉🎉🎉
I still have HUNDREDS of LPs at home!
If you've had a CD that skips, then you pray for the day THEY'RE obsolete!
I still have at least 400 of ‘em. Soon even CDs will be obsolete, as everything can be recorded on little SD cards.
Vinyl never totally went away, was always available in limited pressings if you knew where to look. Walmart now sells new vinyl album sets & turntables. Vinyl record show/swap meets are a regular thing in my area & surprisingly, many of those purchasing are high school & college age!
No, in fact they have come back in style bec they have better fidelity, and w/care most out last CDs.
I was born in 1941 and I remember these things very well. We had the first TV in our neighborhood. My parents purchased our 5" round Dupont TV for $500.00 in 1947. That was a huge sum of money for that time. We had total strangers knockin' on our door to see "IT". The TV antenna was the giveaway. I was a milk delivery kid in the mid 50's. I received $2.00 for the short early morning run before school and $3 for the longer weekend route. I cut laws with the reel mowers for spending money. A larger lawn could get you $1.00. I set bowling pins by hand, at the Elks club for $3.00 a night. Great times.
Dang. I did the inflation calculation on that $500. That comes out to over $7200 in today's money. And a 5" screen. And round. I bet that really was an attraction.
The CPI Inflation Calculator says $1.00 in January 1955 has the same buying power as $11.82 in November 2024.
After spending too much money on coffee makers and getting mediocre coffee, I went back to my stainless steel percolator on my gas stove. Never been disappointed and it won't break down on me in a year!
We went back to an electric percolator coffee pot because it’s more reliable.
Thank you!
I use one too, mine is aluminum and works best on an open flame.
the best way to have coffee
Me too
I’m 82 and remember the coal man, the coal shoot and the coal furnace. I also remember how black the snow turned due to the coal smoke settling on top of the snow and how the snow stayed white when everyone switched over to gas.
A pressure ‘cooker’ is for cooking food. A pressure ‘canner’ is for preserving food. They are not generally interchangeable.
Same thing, Canners tend to be larger
@@johngrafton6868 A canner is a pressure cooker, but not all pressure cookers are canners. The type for canning is generally higher pressure to attain higher temperatures for preservation. Canners are sometimes called retorts.
That's not true at all, you're just not getting a quart jar in a most household pressure cookers. You can do pressure canning in a pressure cooker. But it isn't going to work as well as at the factory. Still, it is sufficient for safely canning veggies and meat.
I used both of those items.
But it is still advisable to boil foods home canned this way for 30 minutes to kill botulism spores.
Born in 1951. What little you had was appreciated. Many of these items were still around in the 1970s. The value of the US Dollar was awesome and people on assistance could afford an apartment. Many of the newer innovations sure made life easier. 73 years later, I think some things have gone too far. Thanks.
Yes. Although in some ways, we are living in a "Golden Age" - today, I can get a comprehensive list of all "hit" songs going back a hundred years, and listen to them all instantly and free.
BORN IN 52 and totally agree !?!.
When I first started working for $1.40 an hour, I owned the WORLD!
@@leftylou6070 I used to babysit for 50 cents an hour, growing up...I was born in 1948...lol
Much of these were used throughout the 70s, 90s, and even into the 90s. In 1975 my computer programming class at UCLA required punch cards. Wing windows continued into the late 70s. My daughter and I both have turntables and you can still buy vinyl new (or go to a vinyl shop for unusual picks). Encyclopedias were widely used until the 90s. In the 80s and 90s mechanical pencils were still widely used in the office.
My nearest super Walmart carries vinyl, too. Right next to CDs and PS5 games.
I learned to type in High School, first on a manual machine, then moved up to a Selectric. My keyboard skills transferred directly to a computer keyboard. My kids are amazed that I can type without looking at the keyboard.
@@WilliamHostman Same at the walmarts I go to!
@@JohnPotts-kq7kk Irrelevant... unless the people owning the IP connect them, they're still not canonically linked.
@@lynnw7155I’m 76 now and learned typing in high school when I was 15/16. We only had manual ones. The skill has never left me and when computers came along it was a breeze to use the keyboards!
I remember helping to defrost the freezer. Boil a pot of water, stick it on the freezer to melt unwanted ice. What a chore.
Our dad had a manual lawn mower throughout the '60s, '70s. and 80s I don't think he ever purchased a power mower. He attached a catch sack to capture the clippings. Eventually, Dad relegated the lawn mowing duties to my brother, which was how he earned his weekly allowance. It was one of those devices that, as long as it continued to work well, he couldn't see shelling out the extra bucks for the power kind, which required gasoline, an additional expense.
Our next door neighbour did this and made his kids mow, boys and girls. My dad had a nice mower and my brother would mow. He also had a few accounts in the area.
Our family had a push mower, and I was stuck doing most of the mowing. I hated the thing. Everyone we knew had a gas or electric mower. But no, not us. Join the 20th century? No thanks!
I have a manual push mower. I purchased it at Lowe's -- had to assemble it myself. I enjoy using it, great workout. 🫤
They still sell news ones !
My dad said, "That's why I had kids! Funny, we didn't need to pay to get fit!
Being born in 1953 in Cleveland, Ohio,.....I remember the milkmen and the coal delivery men and their trucks. Our house was built in 1946. The house I purchased in 1993, at age 40, was built in 1905 and it had a coal room, and coal chute. There was canning room, for preserving fruits and vegetables, grown in one's own garden. There is a buried water cistern, in the backyard, which I learned was meant to collect "grey" water, from the home's gutters, to be used for watering the garden and other utility tasks,....not meant to be drunken.
Burning coal to heat your home was still common in the UK when I lived there as a teen in the '90s, as was milk delivery. Talk about farm to table. We lived in a rural area so the milk had to move all of about 2 miles to get to my doorstep from the farm.
Born inn’48 Brooklyn, NY we had the milkman, and the fruit and veggie man with his horse drawn wagon. Fruit on one side veggies on the other. There was another horse drawn wagon with a man who sharpened scissor and knives. A door to door salesman with his suitcase of items. Aprons, dish towels, house dresses etc. 25¢ weekly to pay off what you purchased. Our family doctor made house calls. Mom rarely had to leave the house.
@@mchapman1928 Thanks,...your memories are closer to my mother's,....she was born in 1922, and she shared them with me, of life in Cleveland, Ohio when she was 8, in 1930. There were still "ice-men",....she remembered the horse drawn wagons, the sturdy men who hoisted the blocks of ice onto their shoulders. She said her family were friendly with these men. And maybe she saw more of them, because her family lived in an apartment over her father's delicatessen & diner. There were junk men and rag sellers, knife sharpeners. In the 1950s, there were Fuller Brush men, offering brooms, cleaning agents, other handy household items, like shoe-horns, plastic combs, & letter openers. We had a milkman, and neighborhood teens were paper boys. Every so often,....men who must have been hobos, would wander into our neighborhood. They'd inquire if a home owner had a dirty task or some kind of work that was messy or hard work. My mom would pay them some small amount, and give them some old clothing, or an old pair of winter gloves.
As a retired Draughtsman, I can assure you that manual drawing boards were used well in to the 1990s in the UK. It would be 1992 when I started using CAD programmes.
I studied draughting in the UK when I lived there in the '90s and we were taught to do it both by hand and with CAD.
... and I imagine still an essential tool during the learning process?
@@Lurch-Bot lol my drafting class in highschool (2011) taught us on drafting tables for a while before we switched to CAD
I was born in the 1950s and belonging to a large family we had some of these items right up to the mid to late 1970s.
when I was in school we had a milk man delivering small glass bottles of milk, I was the milk monitor for our school, we also had a baker come to the school with fresh bread straight from the bakery these were delivered by horse and cart, the milk was cold and the bread was hot, loved it.
Here in Australia we didn't get color TV until 1975.
Great video, just subbed, Cheers.
Well said I settled in Perth 1981 from Poland. Milk man was here for sure. Fresh bread didn't exist here by than. Biggest thing was going to VHS Library and hire movie for weekend and watching this wit high tech wire controlled pad. That was so cool. National VHS.
I have used all these items...and still have manual can openers, flour sifters, butter churn, and many other items. With the advent of electric cars and a deterioration of our power grid...I can still cook, wash, shred cheese and anything I need during power outages. I also have oil lamps, manual whisks, and clean clothes with my washboard. Have upgraded to solar generators to power my fridge and freezers.
I still have a manual can opener. Electric can openers are one of the dumbest inventions ever.
@@mikewebber2637 I still have my manual can opener too...wouldn't trade it for an electrical one for any amount of money!!
I mean they have their place, i can use a manual one but my aunt with arthritis cant unless she wants to have her hand on ice all day afterwards. @mikewebber2637
I still get milk delivered from Smith Brothers Dairy in Kent Washington on my doorstep once a week.
It would be even better if it came in a bottle
That's awesome!
The milk man yet another NTR profession
Do they bring cough drops?
I would too if it were an option for me where I live.
We own not one but two stainless coffee percolators. We use them on a campstove when fishing or camping. Several of our friends make coffee every morning in their thoroughly modern homes, in a percolator. The percolator is certainly uncommon, but not dead yet.
I still use a percolator. Dripolators don't make the coffee hot enough, and I don't like instant.
@@jamesbosworth4191 Try a vaculator double bubble!
@@M10000 What in the heck is that?
I have a single cup percolator I use sometimes. Really don't drink a lot of coffee. But if you are patient and keep the temp down, it can make an awesome cup of coffee, way better than a drip coffee maker.
@@Lurch-Bot Vacuum drip coffee pots don't drip. All the coffee gets sucked down at once.
In the 60s, all TVs had tubes. When the TV failed, you could take the tubes to the drugstore and use the tube tester to troubleshoot and determine which tube was bad. You could then purchase and replace the bad tube. Self-reliance was an important quality in American culture in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
Just want to point out that the red rotary phone shown next to the TV throughout each of these videos is a 1970's "official" German post office issued phone.
I still heat with coal in a outdoor water furnace . My ham radio gear some is still tube type and I still use Morse code at times .
Roger that; what old rig or rigs do you use? My last real tube was a set of Drakes R4A and T4XB. The only tube transciever I still have for HF is my 1965 HeathkitGW-12 CB that I tuned to 29.025
@@martincvitkovich724 i still have and use my johnson vikings
I remember the data processing class in jr. high school. After we punched the data in the cards, we had to wire a board that instructed the IBM machines what to do with the cards. These were huge machines in a large room. You had one that read the cards, one to sort, one to do the calculations, and one to do printing. We had to learn how to wire the boards for each machine. That was high technology.
And gawd forbid you dropped a tray 😂
@@kiniburk Many of the Hollerith card decks, if they represented a static batch of data, would have a set of columns devoted to a sequence number, allowing them to be run through a collator to sort them back into their proper order. This could only be done with a card deck that was in its final, static form, as the sequence numbers would make it impossible to recover a deck that had been edited to insert new data between sequentially-numbered cards.
The Apple ][e we used when I was a kid is closer to punch cards and building sized computers than to modern ones. I did a summer internship in high school, working in the IT department of a Fortune 500 automotive engineering company. I did most of the work to decommission their old server hardware that was from the late '70s or early '80s (8088 based IIRC) and replace it with brand new Pentium II Xeon based servers. First time I ever saw 2 CPUs on one board and the slot type CPUs were like something from the future, lol. The new system was probably 1000x as capable and took up a minute fraction of the space in the formerly packed server room.
You're a wee bit off on the coal furnaces. By the 50's they were largely replaced by oil burners. Also the coal furnaces from the 20's and 30's were not the little freestanding parlor stoves (they were more a thing in the late 19th century). They were more typically a coal fired boiler that supplied the heat for a steam / hot water radiator heating system and had an automated stoker system that fed coal into the furnace. And by the 50's many of those older coal boilers still in service had been converted to burn fuel oil. Iceboxes were still in use in some areas in the very early 50's but as post war production ramped up they were quickly replaced by refrigerators. It was quite a matter of pride to have a refrigerator in those years. That was part of what made Jello so popular post war. You couldn't make Jello with an icebox. So being able to bring Jello to a church potluck was a subtle way of bragging.
Homes in the 1950's often had a coal furnace in the basement, and a thermostat on the first floor. The thermostat controlled a fan. A heat exchanger in the furnace made sure that smoke went up the chimney and not into the ductwork.
The house my grandparents bought after WWII had a forced air gas central heating system. They were ubiquitous in new home construction after WWII in suburban neighborhoods. Now my grandparents' generation, that's another story. My grandpa used to steal coal from the railyard when he was a kid so they could have heat and cook their food. And he grew up in the city.
@@Lurch-Bot My grandfather worked on the railroad. He was as honest as the day is long. But one of his jobs was to ride the rails in a speeder once a week checking the tracks. Well, coal that had fallen out of the bunker and was laying along the tracks was fair game to anyone. :) Gas didn't catch on here until the mid 50's, and then it was more propane for stoves than natural gas/propane furnaces. Natural gas showed up in the 60's. But this is small town rural America, things move slow here.
A lot of these things were not done in in 1950s, depending on where you lived. We didn't have milk delivered in Phoenix, we didn't have coal furnaces, and only my grandma had a roller washing machine. I'm guessing that in the eastern US some of these were more common.
I recently saw someone using a "reel type" lawnmower and they still sell them. An interesting fact about reel type mowers is that they actually cut the grass better than a power mower, cleaner cut and more uniform. You can even put a bag attachment on them. Having a small lawn, i'm tempted to get one from Home Depot. No gasoline, and they're quiet, and fun to use.
I've used nothing but hand mowers. Unfortunately, since about 1975, the U.S. brands were discontinued, and the only reel-mowers were made in China. I needn't tell you how the build-quality of them is
Fortunately, about 5-years ago I discovered a new model Fiskar mower, made in Finland, and it will be the last mower I buy, because it's solidly built with high-quality steel. No gas needed. No spark plugs, no worry about theft. (Kids don't know what it is.) Will last longer than you live. No noise. Easy maintenance.. Price? >$300. Buy the optional sharpening kit. ($40) Never spend another cent on lawnmowers.
My friend has one that's fairly new looking.
It's cherry red.
Works great.
I have an old bag attachment for my mower she's called my wife.
We used one for the 5 years we lived in the UK in the '90s because we just didn't have much grass to cut :P
also had milk delivered every morning in glass bottles. I still have a few of them. I'd start the day out right with a pint of whole milk on the way to school, where I was also fed a proper breakfast.
@@d.s7741 when I was a kid, we had an electric reel mower. Plugged into A/C. Most people don’t even know they existed.
Things aren’t obsolete they have just evolved.
so many videos of this type are just wrong.everything must be obsolete because they all evolved.
I remember can openers to open soda cans, they are now obsolete.
Actually coal furnaces are still used today
I didn't see the slide rule! I was disappointed.
That was a glorious trip down memory lane! I remember (and used and owned) most of these. They look quaint by today's technology but were cutting edge for their time. I think I probably have some of these items (and older ones, too) around here. I'm an antique myself. Looking back, those were happy, simpler times. It's easy to forget things like common diseases (polio & TB) and the threat of war with Russia. But we were young and fearless; I'm neither now but hopefully, wiser and thankful for these memories.
Much about that time was good, but remember in school we had 'air raid drills', at the sound of the alarm we'd duck under the desk, head turned away from the window, and cover your head with your arms. This was the Cold War era, everyone's big fear was 'the commies are coming'.
One thing I really miss was the knife-man (that’s what we called him). He would drive his pickup through the neighborhood regularly and as far as I could see seemed never short of business. He would sharpen any thing. Lawn mower blades, my Dad’s tool, my Mom’s kitchen knives. We weren’t such a throw away society as we are now. We had small shops to repair small appliances, etc. definitely the shoe store, resoled your shoes and basically could make anything with leather. He made my dad’s tool bag. Because we didn’t have grocery stores on every corner we used the local butcher/bakeries/ice cream shop. So many local shops ran by family owned businesses. Best part about it was you knew your neighbors because you depended so much on the local shops.
They still got this some places but he moved to Facebook. Got a guy in my town who does it and specifically undercuts the price to get it done at ace or Home Depot 😂 plus he’s a character. I think stuff like this seems to be on the rise “hustle culture” expanding into people side hustle doing stuff like that blowing up to being a full time job.
we had old Italian knife sharpener 50's- early 60's. He walked and rang a hand bell. dragged his two wheeled, homemade tall, wooden cart with a hunk of rock and a foot peddle. Think he charged a quarter.
Remember the flash cubes that rotated when a picture was taken so you could take four pictures before changing it? We had those, and they didn't always work properly. Sometimes, they wouldn't flash, or they wouldn't turn. Flash bulbs didn't always go off when they were supposed to, either.
The most frustrating thing I found about using film cameras was loading the film and trying to wind it to the first frame. If it didn't load or wind just right, pictures would overlap. Sometimes, I couldn't get the winder to even move. And loading film always risked getting some light leaked into the first couple of frames. They really were a pain, especially the cheaper ones.
Kodak brought out the instamatic cartridges for that with 126 and 110 cameras. They also brought out the 4 shot magicube flash system on those cameras also. Kodak was one of the biggest sellers of the compact camera then in the 1960's. It still took a while though for roll film to disappear and many serious photographers still use it today in favour of the digital cameras and mobile phones cameras.
@@ednammansfield8553I should feel once in awhile. There's nothing wrong with digital photography but I just like film cameras partially because I grew up with them in the 90s. They're really cool pieces of the history of photography. Speaking of Photography mishaps I have a Kodak Pony 135 model B where advancing the film is a separate does not reset the shutter and do you use a different liver for that that's on the lens barrel. Put that camera it's very easy to take a multiple exposure shot if you reset the shutter without advancing the film. I got one picture that I really like to do to that black of Double Exposure prevention that I wouldn't have gotten with most of my other cameras. I would not have thought of mixing those two images on purpose.
I still prefer film and manual film cameras. Many people don’t realize how much detail is in the negatives and slides. A 24mp camera produces lower resolution and color depth than a 35 mm slide. You need a lossless scan of about 9000 dpi to get the full resolution of a 35mm frame, which is 36mm*24mm or about 1.5 sq inches. Which gives 121.5 mp.
Which for reference is basically an 8k flatscreen. 24 mp is equivalent to a 4k screen.
I once got all four flash bulbs go off at once and smoke coming from it. Scary!
Loading a film, I did it in a nearly dark room with a 5 Watt light bulb on the ceiling.
Yes. But, one of my favourite pictures is a 1992 accidental double exposure at the start of the film - my pregnant wife posing outside on a late-winter walk; and my newborn daughter.
I miss my set of encyclopedias. Now, I have to search the internet, and half of it is true.
I think you are being very generous with your "half" being true. I doubt it's anywhere near that high...
Yes. Somewhere in each encyclopedia, they list the expert contributors - hundreds of university people, and government and industry people, all with decades of background behind their words, then reviews by related experts... and a genuine attempt to be objective and not "slanted". The days of objective truth - good times.
They still delivered milk to the door in the 1970's in my area. We even had an insulated metal box on the porch for the milk.
Me to.
same here
Mine too- Kentucky- gone by the 80s
They're actually making a comeback in the UK, having never really gone away completely.
Then again most of the video is nonsense anyway 😂
looking at the milk delivery. We had Milk, The Helms Bakery Truck, and Hamm's Beer Truck, among others. For rubbish pickup days, we had trash day (trash is not garbage), garbage day (edible used to feed pigs and whatnot), and can day.
I've lived with all of these things. We got our first television in 1953. It was fun to sit beside the tv repairman, admiring his fascinating array of tubes. Although coffee snobs say that the only good way is(fill in current brewing method) I still think a glass percolator is the coolest! All in all, it was a very good era in which to grow up.
I still remember the milk man, but just barely. I was born in 1963, and we had the service in our area until about 1967 or 68.
Besides refrigeration, the death knell for daily milk delivery was when families began being able to afford 2 cars, which meant that moms were more mobile and could make more frequent trips to market than before. It was also around that time that most doctors stopped making housecalls, probably for the same reason.
We all had refrigerators in the 1960s but it wasn't until the early 70s that they stopped delivering milk in the morning. When I was in middle school I was on the library staff, so I would run the film projectors when a teacher checked out a film.
Can remember having kettle chips delivered in 5 gallon cans. Once used up had to leave the empty can at door to get new delivery. We received a can every 2 weeks. We also recived milk in carton and butter wrapped in parchment paper.
Charles chips?!
Listening to a radio is the greatest. It taught the one that was listening to really learn to listen and use the imagination . There were no pictures to watch just listen . I love talk radio and enjoy audio books because I learned to listen without pictures. Listening is an art .
I bought me a 1962 Japanese Transistor Portable AM/FM Radio from a Goodyear Store in 1962 , still works fine !
Video is wonderfully done, I witnessed most of the things spoken of since I was born in 1949. THANK YOU!!!
I just bought a mechanical pencil. They are still around and plentiful.
This video needs some fact checking for dates.
Yes. Punched cards were used into the late '70s. Drafting tools were used into the mid-'90s. Dial phones came in the late '50s. Push button phones weren't widespread until the '80s. Wing windows were around into the '90s. Coal wasn't used much in the west. There were sawdust burners and oil furnaces. When the dams were built in the '60s, everything went electric. There were plenty of other mistakes.
@@BlankBrain Like the fact that mechanical pencils are still being used today. Ballpoint pens might be good for some things, but they sure aren't useful if you want to actually erase anything.
@@BlankBrain well stated - someone just wanted to make a video without the effort to fact-check. 80-column cards and 96-column cards.
Confused amateur radio with telegram services. Telegrams at this time were transmitted via teletype. Wish these videos were more accurate.
Sort of. His dates for "started fading out" were before the dates I experienced many of these things. But great memories.
My grandmother said she never got fat until she got a washing machine. This machine was a washtub with an agitator and a wringer attached to the side.
Oh. THAT's why I'm fat. Wringer washers lasted forever.
@@wendigo53 My Grandmother in the late 70's still had hers, and my mother got her hands on one in the 80's. Used to keep it in our large bathroom and fill it using the bathtub.
@@wendigo53 Don't get yer tits caught in the wringer Ethyl.= Chill out.
Rotary telephone were convenient but not forget party lines.
I had a manual lawnmower for my home I moved into in 2008. Mowed my lawn a few years that way. Loved the pattern it made in my lawn. Then I got an electric lawnmower. Now I have someone to do my lawn. I got lazier and lazier 😮😊
My paternal grandmother had her washing machine with electric ringer well into the 1970's. She dried the clothes on a rotating clothes line that looked similar to an umbrella frame with two lines between the spokes. I thought it was really cool! Since the wringer put wrinkles into the clothes, they all had to be dampened and ironed. Then, there was my maternal grandfather, who took home movies indoors with a hand held row of bright, blinding lights!!! I was told to act natural, keep my hand down and not squint! (I can relate to that Frazier episode with the bright flash bulb photos at the bar mitzvah) My dad took movies mostly outside. I miss those reel movies, now. We used to watch them once a year, but they all turned to dust. 😢
My dad made home movies also. Like your family, we watched them once a year. I still have them but I'm terrified to mess with them because they're so old and fragile.
One of the other things that disappeared was connected to the milk delvery -- homes would have small cabinets in an exterior wall with doors on the inside and outside. The milkman would open the exterior door and put the milk and butter into the cabinet, where it would be protected from the sunlight, heat, and weather, and the occupants would be able to pick up the delivered milk and butter without going outside. With the end of milk delivery, these cabinets were no longer necessary.
Yes. Lots of older homes and apartments have a milk-box (although the ones I have seen open only from the outside).
Born in 59’. I’ve been there and done that.
I was born in the early '80s and have had most of these experiences. Grandparents had a tube TV. Zenith floor model. I eventually inherited it and used it for several years myself before it bit the dust. I still have a WE 302 rotary phone. Planning to set it up as a VOIP phone. I picked up a few older VOIP phones for free and can modify the circuitry to work in conjunction with the old phone. Other than building PCs, I haven't done much with electronics in awhile and that seemed like a straightforward project to get back into it. The challenge will be doing it such that I can actually use the dial to, well, dial the phone.
I recall making money as a teenager, by delivering telephone books, to the houses in my neighborhood. It was sort of hard work,.....they weighed a lot, and you had t take them to each house. The weight of the books in your car would cause the springs to be pushed to their limit.
When I worked as a delivery driver for a florist, I found the Thomas Maps booklet very helpful. They were easy to use, and helped me located any address in any number of areas. Too bad we don't have printed Thomas Maps, anymore. In some ways they were more accurate and reliable than GPS. Today, if you go into a convenience store and ask for a map, they're likely to roll their eyes at you, rude though that is. Somehow, it's assumed that everyone has GPS and everyone knows how to use it. NOT SO! And Google Maps aren't that good, either. I find them hard to decipher.
I just listen to the directions. Only one time has Google been wrong in all the years we’ve used it. Always taken us right where we needed to go.
@@thejourney1369 Google map has been wrong plenty, many, many people have died from them. People blindly follow them and miss important short cuts.
and we called car vent windows "No Drafts"
I got my first "official" job with my S.I.N. number for life at age13, at Briars Dairy running milk from the truck up to the door. A dog bit me in the azz and a cheap Scotchman slides me a dime. I was standing there puzzled.. what is this for? Then it finally dawned on me, i was being bribed and I got furious and it was the first inkling of evil in the big world
Life was still much much easier and much more pleasant back then. It feels like even the air we breathe now is wired making you feel stressed.
I lived during these times! It was a great time to be alive. Not a cumbersome task but something we all looked forward to. No like today's technology which seems more invasive than helpers. IMO.
Never used an old radio, they say they had three batteries. One was charged once a week, one replaced or charged once a month, the last was small and lasted a year.
Telegrams are basically texts today.
I've seen the old washers at grandma's house when I was little.
There's a good TV episode of Honeymooners involving an icebox. The one where they consider adopting.
I remember the old metal filled bulbs. Full of a big wad of fine metal wire.
I've heard that the vent windows were a security hazard. They can create a blast of air.
They also had text versions of the city maps. I've never used one, but dad used one downtown.
Learned programming on card punches. I see both 026 & 029 models. And others.
Had a class on mechanical drawing. T-square, 45 degree triangle, 30/60 degree triangle.
I remember the little flash cubes!! It was a pretty big deal to own a C-110 trimline camera with a built-in flash, like Vivitar.😮😂🎉
My first camera used flash cubes and Kodak saddle type film cartridges. I also liked to use old roll film cameras when I was a kid. They took nice pictures because of the much larger film format.
Yes, and those flashbulbs were spendy $$
lol vacuum tube amplifiers are still used and some of the most expensive audio equipment on the market are tube amplifiers McIntosh as an example This company is celebrating their 75 anniversary 1949 - 2024. So tube amplifiers are still sold and have a sound that cannot be replicated by a solid state amplifier
I had a guitar amplifier that had both tubes and vacuum tubes. If I remember, it was called a transtube.
@@donnisraines what brand
The high end guitar amps still use vacuum tubes, such as Fender Twin Reverbs.
When I was a kid, my mother referred to the fridge as the ice box. This was during the 60s.
Mine too.
I bet her parents had one. As of 1945, only half of American homes had electric refrigerators.
My grandparents had a wood stoked heater in Missouri of some type until they passed away in the 1980s. They did have a stove, oven and water heater which were powered by Propane which was delivered.
People in rural areas still sometimes opt for wood fueled stoves, if they have acreage and can get it for free. Nothing wrong with that if you're fine with doing the work. I like to shift my own gears when I drive.
Just add many purchase wood and use wood stoves. Not unusual at all in Missouri. I remember paying 20 a Rick for wood in 1985. $75 is the cheapest I see these days
I had a mechanical pencil 65 years ago that had four different coloured leads in it - black, red, blue, green. It was made by "Kadril Ruta"
Made in India?
@@mariekatherine5238 I honestly don't know. The Kadril is a russian dance. I don't know what Ruta is.
My grandfather had one of those push mowers. I loved it, and volunteered to mow when we would visit. It was so much fun at 12 years old. 👍😉
You can still buy them brand new to this very day.
@@fpitw71my neighbor across the street uses one..northern California, Cambodian lady who came here as a child after the Vietnam war. We allowed people who supported 🇺🇸 USA during that war to come; she remembers almost starving_ her mother doing forced labor.😮 her youngest son rides to High School on a motor scooter- he has no clue! 🙏💓
I bought one few years ago at home Depot. It worked but wore me out. It was heavier and heavier the longer I pushed it. Gave it to my neighbor with small yard. He's still using it
In addition to wing vents, we had floor vents to let in air on the floor.
Ah, the ol' vacuum tube radio! If you're around my age (71) you probably remember taking the tubes out and taking them to a store where they had a tube "tester"- where you could check the "health" of each tube from your radio/tv - after it started acting up- to see which tube was causing the trouble.
I'm the only person my age that I know who'd NEVER been in a drive-in theater. I always thought it was a bad idea to have to watch a movie through your windshield while listening to the tinny distorted audio through those little speakers.
They were in. All drug stores and were always out of order but they had that hot transformer and wire insulation smell😊
Drive-in sound was not "tinny," but rather good quality, though not stereophonic. What's more, you didn't have to listen to commentary and conversation from the sorts of mannerless clods often annoying theater-goers in recent decades. Early baby-boomers, regardless of background, were taught certain standards of public behavior and personal presentation that are sadly lacking in modern America.
@@psmith2234 OK, well like I said, I've never been to one- so I guess I stand corrected.
@@catkeys6911Here in the uk we envied your drive-ins as they didn’t exist here. We only saw them in American movies. Mind you, our weather wouldn’t have been suitable anyway, due to all the rain we get battering against the windscreen. We’d have seen nothing!
As kids,we used to sneak into the local drive-in by creeping through a gully behind the big screen,that got us around the fence. We could sit on the ground off to one side,near bushes,unless some people in the cars noticed us and started throwing beer cans at us.
Vending mashines is still in use. They have improved alot since 1950s. Some even gives u hot food...
I'm the grandpa that pushed those miserable manual mowers. It killed me, and I'm still dead
😆😅🤣😭
We had the dial phones and were on a party line. That meant you had to take your turn using the phone with other people who did not live in your home but we're on that line.
We had an encyclopedia set as children and I read all of the books and went to the city library and read all of the encyclopedias there too. Lot of good knowledge!
we still have ours. and a very small yard.
Had to keep the blades sharpened. No easy task.
Our drive-in still had the old speakers as of a few years ago when I last went.
Sonic still uses them
Many of these so called obsolete items are still in use by the " Off Grid" type lifestyle. Wringer washers, Ashley Wood/Coal burning stoves, ice blocks stored in a root cellar covered with sawdust, and Manual or push mowers,
Life was easier back then. No cyber issues, no phone radiation, decent tv, manners, and gadgets that were VERY well built. Life's pace was quick, but not like the chaos it is now. I miss it. LOVED the rotary phones! I kept mine.
no invasive cameras all over everywhere. around covid, went to the local casino to get a cheap loss leader eggs @ $ 3.oo .. became $10.oo and step over here please.
What for?
Photo for file for face recognition, no explanation, no nothing
your face goes whereever the casino wants it to
fukc your eggs
We not only got fresh milk, we got cottage cheese, sour cream and other milk products.
We didn't get a color tv until 1981. 😅
Key punch cards were common. The common warning was “do not fold, spindle, or mutilate “.
I never went to s drive-in theater where "clear" sound was a perk. It was usually a lot of static and lip reading. 😂
I was born in the 60s and a lot of these innovations were still widely used throughout the 70s.
I still use a vacuum tube radio as they look great and have a much warmer sound. Though most bands are going silent. I also still have doorstep milk delivery. A bit rare but quite convenient.
I still have radios, and we still have all the stations on over here.
I also use tube radios but here in the UK there are few stations left so I play an MP3 through the gram sockets on the rear. Can still enjoy the wonderful sound .
@@ry491 They are shutting radio stations down in England? I am lucky, as here in California, we still have a wealth of radio stations.
Car wing vents continued into the 1980s. They did not stop in the 50s. Take the VWs & Mustangs of the 60s, for example...and, even further, for another 2 more decades. Please do your research more thoroughly!!
My 1996 Ford F-150 has wing vent windows. The title of this video is misleading. It was entertaining, but still all over the place when it comes to dates of obsolescence.
2:14 Radio will never completely change or disappear. We will always have radio of some type or another. Turntables also are things on their way back in. If all our high tech equipment goes down, there were still easier ways of recording sound, and that was it. All this technology won’t last forever. 9:30 Colour TV didn’t become a thing here until the mid 1970s.
Yes. In a million years, the cockroach civilization that rules our planet will wonder what happened after the 1980s, as today we make nothing durable.
My mother inlaw still uses a Maytag ringer wash for all their laundry today
Mennonite?
I'll get it never breaks.
I worked as a staff (3 of us) photographer for U of M before digital. We used the right film for the light (yes in or out doors)developed our own stuff with the required developers and printed the photos.
Digital, by comparison even today sucks. Ever notice the layers in a digital sunset ? Not with film.
Oh, Lord of the Rings ? Yup, taken on FILM and then distributed on disk.
Don't get me started on cars...
We had the milk man and the coal truck. I remember the gas company in town having a regulator tank to hold excess gas produced. The storage tank would go up and down. Garbage can. Trash can and Ash can for ash and clinkers from the furnace. Just barely remember steam locomotives. Gas powered lawn mowers were a rarity. Bakeries all over town. Glass soda and beer bottles. "Church" keys.
Shouldn't knock this technology to much the fridges from this time will not die
lots of "round" 50's fridges still humming along fine likely to eternity. Now a shitbox Samsung.... with a ridiculous "icemaker ( barfs in one year) fridge dies in 6-8 $2000. Who in God's green earth needs an "icemaker"? Is your home a hotel? But it sure could use a fridge that last longer than 6-8 years.
Ditto with crappy furnaces, the same
Planned obsolecence, first nervous is why do you need a gaurentee on a new appliance?
My Mom and Granny canned using a hot water bath. I never did because I didn’t have any place to store it. My sister-in-law still cans. I know a lot of people that do. It’s not a lost art.
Not everything can be water canned! Make shure you look up and see what needs to be Presure canned.
@@berteisenbraun7415 everything was water canned when I was growing up. No one in our family even owned a pressure cooker.
@thejourney1369 low acid food items should be pressure canned do to botulism.
@@thejourney1369 - I like to pickle/brine Jalepeno and Habanero peppers and use them throughout the year. I'm just a rookie, but I like to grow hot peppers. The squirrels don't eat them
coal furnaces, ice boxes in the '50s? Sorry but oil fired hot water heat and electric fridges along with going to the grocery store for milk and I'm from West Virginia
You're talking about the 30s and 40s
And 20s!
My mom's grandmother had an ice box, outhouse, no running water, and did not get electricity until the late 50's. Rural people exist.
@@borrisg4972 There are still areas where that is the norm, despite what the elitists think.
I grew up in the 50's and 60s,and our house in Buffalo had a coal furnace,and big coal bin for deliveries. it wasn't until the 60s when the furnace was replaced with a gas furnace,my dad stripped off the coal bin when he remodeled the kitchen. the home was built right after WW2. My oldest sister still lives in it. My mom had a wringer washer in the 50s. we had milk and icecream delivery up to the 70s.
There were still people in the 60s with coal furnaces and true Ice Boxes. They weren't completely gone until the 70s.
I'm 30 and grew up with a pushmower lol. My dad had an electric one, and when it broke, he just got a push one, and I'm pretty sure he still has it to this day. They are simple and reliable, and so long as you are not too weak, they work amazingly well.
Oh boy, this does make me feel my age a bit. I recall my mother using a washboard and the milman delivering bottled milk for starters. That dates me.
My grandmother used a ringer washing machine her whole life and when she was given a modern washing machine she didn't like it cuz she said her ringer washer cleaned her clothes so much cleaner.
the lady at 10:09 is Harriet Nelson, from the show "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", another great show of years gone by. My dad had one of those flash cameras - get your picture taken, then you'd see spots for a couple of minutes.
Good video. During the summer my young nephews have a small lawn mowing business in their immediate neighborhood. They use a push mower, a manual edger and hand shears along with couple other manual tools that they transport in a small trailer towed by their bicycles. The neighbors like the noiseless job they do as compared to the racket a gas lawnmower, leaf blower and other devices the adult professionals use. The neighbors brag about how they contribute to the health of the environment and give a job of responsibility to the boys.
Milk that was delivered to our house tasted infinitely better than milk bought in a grocery store. I miss those days. Plus, the empty glass milk bottles were exchanged for full ones, then the milk delivery company would wash, sterilize, then refill them, which was economical and eco-friendly too.
We still have LP records and a record player. Although not as crisp and clean sounding as digital music, there is a warm richness in records that is missing in digital or downloaded music.
In the late 1970's I would take my girlfriend to the drive-in theater in my Mercury station wagon. Needless to say, we never really watched much of the movie.
... correct..... know what I'm sayin'.
Now speaking for a friend in the privacy of their outhouse was the Eaton's Catalogue , ladies underwear then National Geographics, early 1960's German health magazines, next was bareandnaked ladies with little sparkily masks and doo dads and under his dads bed the great grand wazooo of all educational literature Pl ** **Y and booby playing cards.
External lights for cameras haven't entirely disappeared. There are more modern light panels and flash attachments that go onto a DSLR or Mirrorless camera.
26:50 What really killed record changers was the popularity of cassettes. Record changers were a near necessity when 3 minute 78s were the standard, but many people later enjoyed stacking 6, 8 or even 10 LPs, for up to 5 hours of continuous music. But a single auto-reverse cassette deck could give you up to 180 minutes of music and if you needed more, a double deck could bump that up to 6 hours, though 180 minute cassettes were rare and more jam-prone than the more common 120 minute ones. When CDs came out, changers came back into fashion, though in recent years, digital music has relegated them to the thrift shops for most people.
75yrs old and life seem easier back then lived through all this .❤❤
76 years old, and the best encyclopedic study I ever remember was from the 1920' s called "The Volume Library". All done on onion skin paper. Still own, and refer to it for tech info, especially mathematics for my automotive needs. Wonderful printed info of outstanding, and technical need.
Fly windows only disappeared from semis like 15 years ago. Which sucks. They allowed for a nice flow of air in the cab without all the noise and water or snow spitting at the driver's head.
Wing vent windows need to come back.
indeed they do, dunno why they made cars shittier
Yes. One of my favourite automotive features.
@@happycamper848 My best guess was security. They were really easy to get open. At least, the ones in my Dad’s old truck sure well.
Funny story. I was in the army on tanks. The tank I was on was missing its target. They thought that maybe the bore was crack. We had a gunnery master come on board, and said. Let me check something before we pull the cannon out. He open the ballistic computer and found that, someone removed the punch card and made their own to replace it.
Dad went back to a push mower because it he thought it gave better him results. The lawn wasn't large. He enjoyed the maintaining of the old fashioned mower, too. The blades were always sharp and ready to go. He had a great respect for the machines and gadgets of the past. Me, too. 💕
My sisters recall me arriving about the same time the family's TV did. 1957.
We called cash registers JEWISH PIANOS
Add my wife's mother to this list.
In 1958 I bought my mother a Toastmaster Automatic Electric Heater ! I still use it today and it safe and works good ! 67 years ago , not bad .
I’m watching this video, and IN COLOR!!
Born in 1940, these things are more 40’d than 50’s.
my grandmother had an oil furnace in the 1960s, I remember the oil tank in the basement.
I still have an oil furnace
Oil heat was better than gas heat.
There wasn't one thing you showed I don't remember many I used and some I still have.
I miss the 50s. I'm 72 and would love to go back.
So would I; to be young again and everyone alive-- my great aunt, grandparents, mother, sister, brother💓🙏. As a child, you are free- no worries but don't know it! I had a loving family-- every child should have that!
In terms of fashion, the 1950s was an era of elegance.
Cars were art forms
I grew up in the 1950s and several of these were already obsolete. Ice deliveries? Coal furnaces? Wringer washers? Never saw them (though we had a furnace that had long been converted to oil, as did my grandparents). Push mowers? We had a gas powered mower. Milk deliveries, though, were still a thing.
Me too, most of theses things were obsolete long before the 50s. I was born in 1950 and we had Panel Ray heating, not coal or oil. My Dad used a power mower and we had both a washing machine and a dryer.
You'll remember that the Honeymooners still had an ice box.
That was not true for the Midwest. Homes built in the 30’s and 40’s still used coal and we had a coal chute that delivered the coal into the coal bin.
in the '60's there were a lot of those old wringer/washers in peoples basements after they transitioned over to the more modern washer/dryer units. People held on to those for awhile, probably because they relied on them. And people still liked to hang their clothes outside on a clothes line, for freshness. Especially bed sheets