@@tuseroni6085 I was surprised as well. I know we (I have 7 siblings) fought to get the catalog first. And Sears is where we all got our school clothes for the new year as well.
The Sears catalog was delivered in April and was the really thick one, the one delivered in time for Christmas was called Sears Wish book as in kids wishing, it wasn't just kids toys but very little else was looked at.
Yep! I remember going to Tower Records a few times a month to look for new cassettes. There was another music store, can’t remember the name, that would make custom mix tapes. Just take in a list of your favorite songs and for a reasonable price they’d make the tape.
@@DardanellesBy108 I found this list looking around. 1. Camelot Music · 2. Coconuts · 3. Peaches Records & Tapes · 4. Strawberries · 5. Sam Goody · 6. Tape World · 7. Tower Records · 8. Turtle's. We had one, maybe more regional, that was record town or something close to that. It was in several malls.
As a young child, I spent many nights, at a tavern, during the early 70's. Btw: there's a good reason. Anyway, there was a jukebox in the corner of the 'dining' area. I always inspected the coin return slot. It was usually empty. One night, I accidentally discovered an additional coin return on the side - towards the rear. It was stuffed full of coins! What a score! Honestly, it probably amounted to $1.50. But back in 1973, that could buy something!! I still don't understand why jukeboxes possessed those additional coin returns??
Same thing with a vending machine! Finding forgotten change in the return slot. Another thing that could have added was all the glass bottles that you could return for a deposit.
There's a weird feeling of sadness that comes from this. Like the life you knew is over. I understand one day we'll look back at current items with that same feeling though. Everything is relative. Yet I can't help but reflect with a bit of sadness about days long gone. I'm only in my 30s, so I imagine someone older feels it even more.
That's why we collect things such as gas pumps, jukeboxes, vending machines, as adults that we couldn't have when we were kids or that are now obsolete. Brings back memories and preserves the past.
You have to keep in mind all the stuff we have left behind that very few of us alive remember. Horses for transportation, outdoor plumbing, home made ice cream machines, butter churns, just a few that I can think of off hand. It's always changing.
I remember my mom buying the TV guide for the week when she did the weekly grocery shopping on Friday....I read it cover to cover and circled the "must see" shows for the upcoming week....did anyone else do that?
It was one of the high points of my week as a kid...getting the guide, reading through the nightly TV schedules, looking for holiday special shows, beauty pageants, etc. and reading the descriptions for the weekly episode of your favorite shows, then circling them so you wouldn't miss anything( long before the days of vcr's and digital recorders; if you missed your favorite show, maybe you'd catch the rerun). Now with hundreds of channels, that charm and anticipation is gone (and half the time nothing good to watch)!
I miss film the most. I managed a camera store from 1992-2013 and saw the emergence of digital. I do love that younger generations are shooting film again. Kodak can’t keep up with the demand and people are paying steep prices for this medium. It makes me happy to see the art continue. There’s nothing like film.
My first SLR was a Pentax ME Super. I had that camera for 30 years before the film rewind died. Now I have a Nikon D 90 and N90. The N90 is a film camera with a faster shutter speed than the digital version.
I used to work at CVS, back in the 90s. At the time, we had to send film out to the Kodak lab (and, later, the Fuji lab) to be processed. One thing I dreaded: dealing with missing film orders and mixed film orders (i.e., when a customer would get another customer's pictures). What a pain.
I think the big difference with film photography is that we took time to plan our shot. We had a limited number of pictures a roll of film could take, so we didn't want to waste a shot. With digital you can take 100 pictures and hope that one or two are good enough to use, and delete the rest. Digital is great for its convenience, and affordability, but for many the trade-off was the skill it took to get a good picture. Now you just take pictures until, purely by luck, one satisfies you.
I discovered a cache of old office supplies at work: adding machine paper, typewriter ribbons, stamps with date rolls ending in 99, fax paper. I had fun explaining to the young people what each thing was, I felt like an archeologist!
Waking up in the morning before sunrise and reading my newspaper and having my coffee was the most peaceful part of my day years ago. It prepared me for the workday. I miss it. The Sunday paper was especially nice. The "funny papers" were my favorite.
I'm with you! Remember when the "paperboy" would come around to "collect" payment? I had a "paper route" for a few years as a kid. I knew everybody on my side of town! Our local paper stopped delivering them to your door and made you put a tube at the end of the driveway. At my age, I wasn't about to go out in the snow and ice at 5 AM. I sadly cancelled my subscription.
You didn't say it, but I miss having a phone hanging on the wall in my kitchen the most. I was at an indoor pool with my wife and kids last weekend and I saw approximately 25% of the adults with cell phones in a watertight case in the pool. It amazes me that when I was a kid, in the 80s, we could go on vacation for a week or two and leave our phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen. Now, we can't even go swimming without it.
Sometimes I have to refrain from getting too lost in nostalgia for times gone by. But your videos allow me a quick trip down memory lane and I so appreciate them! Thank you!!
It's barely worth it to indulge in nostalgia for a mythical good old days. Humans persist in believing that nothing changes, that everything that's here today will be here tomorrow. Everything changes, quickly, slowly or imperceptibly. Think about it - does it look like the 1950s now? Even the 199i0s? What's around today may well not be around in the future.
@@413smr Unfortunately some things never change such as racism and hatred of one another. Actually the good old days were over when Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden.
@@413smr At least back then people had half of a brain and quality was used in most products. Now consumerism has completely ruined us as a whole. Not only that, but jobs paid a living wage when you could get it. I can't even afford an apartment while my mother at least had one when she was my age, and she was working one full time job. I can't afford that at 15 an hour even. There's clearly no such thing as the 'mythical good old days' when clearly us Gen Z knew they had it good, and we want a slice of it too.
As we get older and reflect we find the good ol’ days were not ALL that good. Just like everything…there was good AND bad. To brush the past too positively OR negatively is a mistake we all make. An honest, thoughtful reflection is needed personally and societally. With ALL of that said…I remember fondly much of these items…though not very fondly of not being able to get away from cigarette smoke while eating, or in a car or airplane!
me to people had imagination back then they had IQ's they knew the difference between someone lying and someone telling the truth, even a monster movie was meant to scare people not gross them out!
Used to love getting the newspaper, especially on Sundays. Sunday funnies! Phone books would be delivered every year and had coupons for anything you were looking for and you would write numbers all over the cover of it. Good ol'days.
American made news paper disposal machine in public place that using honest system can not stay in business since people a free to taok more than one copy of news paper then most case, vandalized the machine to take the money!
I think you can track the decline in informed voters with the decline in newspaper readers. Not only were newspapers more common back then, but they were also much more professionally written and had better journalistic standards. Not nearly as many snarky or sensationalistic headlines and partisan hackery. Just the fact, ma'am. And yes, the 'funny papers' as my grandfather called them, were a treat on Sundays.
I remember having an argument in high school with another guy who claimed that CD's would make LP's obsolete. And now CD's are obsolete and LP's are highly collectible and often specially printed for new releases.
Here's another one -- Remember the S&H Green Stamps we always got at the grocery store with our purchase? It was a kind of rebate program (like cash-back programs on some credit cards). You could save a whole bunch of Green Stamps over time and then take them back to the store to get a few free grocery items.
My Grandma let me have her Gold Bell gift stamps that were around back in the day when grocery shopping was a daily necessity. Took me all year to fill enough stamp books to get my own scooter (when scooters had big wheels and needed constant "pumping" to keep going, before razor scooters and motorized scoots). Probably my very first independent decision as a child. 50s and early 60s were better, simpler times.
Same here. I'm nearly 60 and watching this video makes me feel old, as if I didn't already feel old enough! When I was a kid here in the UK, you had to purchase your bus ticket from a conductor who walked up and down the bus. Train carriages still had a corridor that ran along the side of the carriage, with separate compartments for passengers. Telephones still had rotary dials. The TV only had 2 or 3 channels and you had to get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel. I can remember when telephones first got buttons. I can remember when TVs first got remote controls. I can remember changing all my vinyl records and cassette tapes for CDs. Life back then was far simpler and in many ways more innocent.
@@revdan4853 I cant imagine how my grandparents felt. Grandma was born in a North Dakota town so rural she grew up speaking Norwegian more than English since the tiny town was mostly immigrants. She didnt have indoor plumbing or electricity and traveled by horse drawn cart more than by truck. When she died it was in a house with an LED TV, smartphone, wifi, wireless security cameras connected to my phone so i could keep an eye on them, with a powered recliner that could stand her up for her.
I used to read TV Guide last pages about movies, directors and stars of cinema when I was too young to watch films like The Godfather or foreign arthouse films.
checkbooks are still pretty common. I work construction where credit card payments cost a fortune (3% on a $50k remodel is $1,500) and even many younger people still have checks, bank will even send you a single check if you dont have a checkbook. I think something like 90% of our transactions are via check and most of the remaining being money orders, EFTs, and stuff like that.
I remember going to NYC on a train when I was around 13 in 73 with my father to watch a baseball game. I remember going through what seemed like hundreds of phones in the train station to see if there was change that someone forgot to grab.
reminds me of when i would do the same in the 90's for vending machines as a kid so i can get myself either a soda for "free" or even play a arcade game without begging my parents for change
I miss catalogs, Sears, J.C. Penney, Spiegel, Victoria's Secret. Also really miss pay phones and the Sunday paper (printed on paper), sections scattered all over the house on Sunday.
When I was a kid, I couldn't wait for the new fall TV guide schedule. Looking for the new shows and reading the latest in news about what is next up for television and programming. 😊❤️
I don’t know if these really fit into this category or not but How about the weekly readers or the Highlights magazine we would get from school, i remember getting one every week from school these memories are priceless
You know that lil pamphlet we would get every week at school where you could order books magazines and posters of your favorite characters but unfortunately, I never got to order not one thing, but ALWAYS wished I could😞
yea i miss those little mags, i still try to get my wife to believe that readers in the 70s said the best ways to lose weight and get in shape was sex 3-5 times a day but she doesn't believe me
I remember Weekly Readers in school. We could also order books from the back by filling out an order form and mailing it in with the payment. Miss those days.
I remember all of these - including the little post office stamp machines that looked like a letterbox. I particularly liked the sound the mechanical sound the cigarette and candy machines would make when you pulled the tab.
Those pulls on the cig machines was oddly satisfying and unnerving. The way the long shafts came out. Made you think are they supposed to do that? Will this even work or will it jam up?
@@jjryan1352 they were like pull chords on lawnmowers. Sometimes they would just decide nope I want to eff your arm up I’m only coming out 2 inches then I’m stopping
During the '50's, my mom preferred using enclosed green phone booths in dept. stores with the attached stool inside & small counter to place her purse.
Anyone remember slide rules? They performed mathematical functions, including the calculation of trigonomic functions. Their use was tricky to master. Our year in school spent two years learning to use the damn things only for the rules to change allowing for what were called "scientific calculators" to be used in our GCE exams in 1979. Oh, and the calculator recommended by our school was made by an obscure electronics company called Commodore.
I was so mad at them for not building a network of enthusiasts for the Commodore 64. Yes, the other computers had better graphics but the games were so much fun.
I have a BS in Engineering, and I'm *just* old enough to have never used a slide rule. I did take a mechanical drawing class as a Freshman in 1992, using triangles, compass, and drafting paper.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned was the old ditto machines I used to love being the teachers helper smelling the ink and filling the warm papers right off the machine…….
I remember the daily newspaper would have a section showing what would be on tv that day, for local broadcast and bigger cable channels, along with a few entertainment articles. If you got a Sunday paper it would have a book with everything to be on tv for the following week. My dad kept that on top of the tv and we’d use it to figure out if anything good would be on. Commercials and all.
"I remember the daily newspaper would have a section showing what would be on tv that day" Soon, the daily newspaper will belong in one of these videos.
@@renmuffett there’s a daily paper her in Chattanooga, TN. It’s the two big newspapers combined into one: The Chattanooga Times, and The Chattanooga Free-Press. They used to be the morning paper and the evening paper. Now it’s just the one a day, and a few people in my neighborhood still get them delivered. I haven’t read a newspaper since maybe 2009. I get everything online now
There's a pinball machine at my family's favorite restaurant. Ironically, it's "Back to the Future" themed. My kids (7 & 9) love it. It makes me happy to see them playing it.
Does anyone remember when you had to get a paper bus ticket and they would punch a hole in it? I remember my mother getting tickets at the booth in perforated sheets. Also the card sleeve inside a book from the library. The librarian would stamp the due date on a card and slide it in the sleeve inside the book's cover. Card catalogues to help one locate a book in the library are obsolete too. Microfiche (I think that was the name) where you could look up some old paper or documents on a huge machine with a projector screen at the library! So many memories are coming back! Oh, and tv dinners when they were in aluminum foil before microwaves! They went in the oven. You had to peel the desert section back to brown it.
I honestly miss all of these things. Seems like many of them the internet killed off, but having grown up throughout all of 80’s and 90’s, I was around to see both ways be the norm. Yes, the ways today are much more convenient overall. But I miss the world being more of a physical and tangible place with things like in this video. To me those things made it more interesting and colorful. Not just “in the ether” so to speak.
Michael, you’re so right about the physicality of things. For example, going to the local video store was a common Friday activity and marked the beginning of a restful weekend. It was fun to browse through the collections and plan part of the weekend. That is gone. Now you just create a playlist and it’s not special.
@@thihal123 Agreed. Could tapes or discs at your local video store be out, or damaged when you got them? Yes. But you were out interacting with people. And you didn’t always have instant gratification if something was out that you wanted. When you did find it back in, it was more of a treat. Today we just sort of expect to have whatever we want, whenever we want it. And I admit, I’ve gotten used to that myself, from streaming content to Amazon deliveries sometimes within the same day you order them. But things feel a little less special today to me than they used to.
@@Mike1064ab The internet is not a “disease”. In the grand scheme of things for human existence though it’s still just a baby. The same even more so with social media. We just haven’t yet learned how to use it like adults on so many levels, control what’s out there, or understand some of its psychological implications. It may have temporarily caused us to lose our way in terms of some physicality, but it’s completely opened up the world to so many people, and has the potential to be an even more powerful and legitimate learning tool once we can filter out the fallacies from the truths. Sure at times I miss the simplicity of when I was growing up without it. But just the same I sure wish I had had it as a resource growing up. Using a 10-20 year old set of dated encyclopedias or old school books as opposed to say current accurate scientific knowledge? Or having online access to things like the National Archives, Smithsonian, Louvre, or even government court reports? I’ll take online resources any day.
I remember that; I also remember my West Virginian mother-in-law laughing at the very idea. Her "big" phone book was barely as thick as the Detroit Free Press Sunday edition. 😁. Thanks for the fun reminder!
my sister was 5'0" and drove a 69 Dodge Charger back in the day. She used a phone book to sit on so she could see over the dashboard. Not sure if it was a Brooklyn or Manhattan phone book....LoL
*LOL! I got such a kick out of this. I remember as a kid on vacation on Lake Sebec in Maine, the town of Bowerbank ( population 17) two spinster sisters were the post office, town clerk, tax collector , Magistrate and phone switchboard operators. Our cabin on the lake had a hand crank wall phone, our phone number was "7". Those were the days.*
When the snack vending machine took your money you lean it forward to get what you paid for and maybe a few extra for the next customer. You only took what you paid for, all else was the price unpaid that accidently fell for the failures of dispensing what is owed.
Saw these in my early life. I feel the world changed the most for millennials. Everything went from being physical to digital by the time I got out of high school. Those before me was all physical. Those after me is all digital. I was the inbetween.
I'll agree with that. I was born in the mid 80's and it seemed like the mid 2000's got to be a really confusing time. I had just finished school in a world that barely knew the internet and then all of a sudden, everything was online. I just stopped trying to keep up with it.
I am not so sure about that, to me Gen X are the ones who saw the most change. I was a kid in the 1970’s (born in ‘72), teenager in the 80’s and young adult through the 90’s. We saw a TON of changes- video games, home computers, using old rotary phones to digital to the first bag phone and Motorola 8000 “cell” phones, the list goes on and on. We not only remember them but we used a lot of analogs before the digitals. I was sophomore and taking typing but my Junior year we had “office of the future” with Apple Macintosh computers. Bare bones cars with manual everything and 8 track to cassette players if you were lucky to CD players in cars and all electric windows and door locks by the time I graduated high school. You sound like an early Millennial so yes we have both lived through some incredible times and changes.
I was born in 2000. I’m gen Z. The first 8 years of my life there wasn’t that much technology. There was but not as exaggerated as now. But now that I’m 23 everything is technology it’s crazy.
@@ledhed5717 I would agree. Us Gen Xers saw a lot of things that were non digital go full digital. I don't remember 8 tracks but I certainly bought vinyl records and cassettes, then CDs, then converted my CDs to MP3s stored on my computer, and now everything is streamed. I remember my parents paying with credit card and the carbon paper and now I see people walking out of Amazon Fresh stores without having to use a checkout isle. The biggest single change is the internet though. My parents bought me a World Book encyclopedia set in the mid 80s. I lived through the online BBS days, AOL, Netscape browser vs IE war, and now the current dumpster fire that is social media. I can see it in my own kids that the Gen Z don't have a concept of patience when a 3 second wait for Google to populate your search results is "tedious". I don't long for the days of having to walk or drive to the library, check out a book and look up info to learn something vs watching a 5 min RUclips video about how to apply thermal paste to a CPU, but the kids of today really won't have any idea of previous life unless we have a significant CME (solar flare). I've lived without electricity for weeks at a time so I know what my parents went through.
Small town living provides most of these "lost/forgotten" items fairly easily. Some places are so isolated that getting rid of these items would actually make things more difficult than modernizing everything.
I miss public telephones. If someone doesn't have a cell phone, or is in an area without service and needs to make a call urgently, public telephones including payphones are a literal godsend. Imagine being trapped somewhere with no car, no bus service, nobody else around and its -20C or colder outside!
I agree; especially when in remote areas, where there are no cell phone towers, a payphone would be literally lifesaving. Or imagine you get robbed. Making an emergency call via a phone booth costed nothing(where I live). Some places still have emergency phones, clearly signaled as such, but they too keep on disappearing
@@cattysplat Not everyone carries cell phones. Not everyone can afford them. Cell phones and cell service where I am are very expensive. It can happen quite easily that there is simply nobody around when you really need to use a phone. Seriously, would you let a random stranger in a slightly sketchy area of town use your cell phone?
A crazy location for pay phones was on the platforms in the NYC subway system. The noise was incredible. Those old ones had separate slots for different coins.
When our TV set would act up, my dad would remove some vacuum tubes and head down to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and use the TV Tube tester just inside the store. If you found a weak tube, they had a replacement for sale right there.
A Yellow Pages phone book was delivered to me in late 2022. Within 5 minutes, I found a listing for a business that closed 5 years ago. A restaurant opened there 4 years ago and is not listed there. That book landed in the recycle bin immediately.
@@jamesp13152 my dad was born in 69 and said he hated growing up during that time due to the all the terrorist attacks,bank robberies, plane hijackings, and constant mass poisonings in toys due to lead paint, im not sure how it was ever "Safer".
@@notjimpickens7928 Things like what are happening right now in Nashville didn't happen growing up. at least 3 grade school children dead! Buildings weren't hit by jets killing thousands in an instant. Never had to worry about being shot going to school. Believe what you want, I know. Your Daddy is delusional.
@@notjimpickens7928 When I grew up in the '60s, I don't recall ever having to be instructed in grade school about what to do if someone started firing an AK-47 on the playground.
I loved using the old indoor wooden phone booths with the chair inside. The light and fan would go on when you closed the door. It's been at least 30 years or more since I've seen one. 📞
Things I miss are taking a date to a Drive In movie like back in 70s & 80s. The walk in phone booths that were at every grocery store or shopping center complex. I also remember cigarette vending machines in bowling alleys. Rotary Telephones.
I still use a rotary phone. Got a yellow one on the wall in the Kitchen, and the other in my computer room. Both work great! They still have cigarette vending machines in casinos, but they look like a regular vending machine so not as cool as a old timey one.
I miss the phone number you could call for time and temperature. And alerting your parents to pick you up at the library by calling home collect and them refusing the call so it was free!
in the 70s a few states if you knew where to look had vending machines that sold pot nothing great every label different yet in reality you were paying 50-100 for the name and maybe $5 for the weed!
@@jenniferburchill3658 back in 73 cigs were .60 a pack and a carton was $3-$5.00 depending on where you were, went the lawsuits started is when the jacked the prices, so instead of the manufacturers paying up to this day the smokers are the ones actually paying for the lawsuits! as for the manufacturers they haven't paid out one blood covered penny, yet they profit each time a pack is bought, before i quit 30 years ago i was a 4 pkg aday smoker, i knew a distributor who would give me box's of outdated brands most of which were stale but smoke able, that is until i found out he was a thief and i turned him in,
As for carbon paper, if I'm not mistaken, when we send someone an email and ":cc" someone, that refers to the old way of sending someone a "carbon copy." When actual paper was used, a piece of carbon paper (or sometimes more than one) was used to make a copy of the original document.
Typing any correspondence you’d use one piece of carbon paper between the original sheet and a second sheet, with the second sheet being your file copy. If your letter was going to Person A and you wanted Person B to get a copy of it, you’d add another piece of carbon paper and another sheet of paper. If Person B’s copy is going WITH Person A’s knowledge, you’d add a notation such as “cc: Person B” at the bottom of the letter. Everyone knows what’s going on. If Person B’s copy is going WITHOUT Person A’s knowledge, you wouldn’t add any notation when typing the original letter. When it was finished, you’d take the whole lot out of the typewriter, then put just Person B’s copy and the file copy back in. Now you add “bcc: Person B”. Thus Person B knows that they got the copy without Person A’s knowledge. And in both cases the notation is on the file copy.
The old quarter on a string worked great on those old phones but there was a easy way to get free local calls without them as well,lol ! The quarter was required for long distance!
The Dry Dock bar in Algiers, Louisiana had a cigarette vending machine around 2006. I used to go and get cigarettes before I was old enough to buy them at a store. The barkeep never questioned me. I just walked in and straight to the machine. I would quickly be in and out. It was a few bucks more in the machine than in the store but not having to beg someone to pick me up a pack was well worth it.
I worked at one in the 70's. The indoor concession stand was very bright, and all the stoned people would be squinting and grinning as they ordered their treats. It was SO obvious and funny!
I live in a small East central Illinois community and we have a twin screen dive -in, they play first run movie, digital, with 2 separate FM 's for the sound. Have been busy for years!
I'm 65 and I remember all these things. I took typing in the 10th grade, and when computers came, that turned out to be the best skill I ever acquired from high school.
My dad said to me in grade 9, why are you taking typing? You will never be a secretary! And then just a decade later when we had those first Macintosh computers, he said, you were smart to learn to type!! LOL
@@susanfaulkner2304 I was a late computer adopter myself, but use youtube a lot to trouble shoot the numerous problems I encounter so I don't have to ask others for help all the time! :)
I'm 59. Lol, I took typing in the 10th grade also. The typing skill I learned in that class has actually stayed with me all these years, as I've probably typed 10 million words since. My teacher's name was Mrs. Wadsworth. Every time she wanted to test our speed, she'd have us place our fingers on the correct keys and then she'd say, "Alright students. Eyes on copy." Then she'd tell us to start. I also remember that dangerous paper cutter at the side of the room. We'd use it whenever we needed to turn in a smaller sheet of paper. I'm surprised no kid ever chopped a finger off using that thing.
I'm 59 also & took typing in 10th grade. I worked on Computers in the 80s & was glad I learned to type. The class had 2 electric typewriters & the rest were manuals.
As a cashier in a mall in the '70s all through college, one thing I do NOT miss is the credit card imprinter. If you didn't get the 3-part charge slip in there just right and really lean into it pushing the roller bar across, the slip would get all wadded up/folded/torn! I could check out 10 cash customers in the time it took to run 1 or 2 charge sales.
The local gas station down the street still uses the old credit card imprinter. The gas boy and owner is about 80 years old. He asks if you want your oil checked every time and he always washes your window. It almost brings a tear to my eye when I visit. This old man is one of the last vestiges of a bygone era. I give him my business when I can. And I always tip.
We still use those in the Air Force in the 90's. Whenever any organization requested fuel, they would pay with their organization CC. If it didn't imprint thru all the 3 papers, I just keep going back n forth until everything is embossed.
I used all the office stuff…typewriter, carbon paper, Rolodex, fax machine etc. Used many vending machines and jukeboxes in the past. I was walking through my granddaughters high school a couple years ago. Their vending machines that once had soda in are now all Gatorade, bottled water, Powerade and vitamin water.
I remember in 1940 the government used Remington Manual Typewriter to type desecration of War! In 1993 my ex-employer in Waltham, MA use IBM-Selected II to type a laid off notice for long term employee!
We still use fax and rolodex in the law office! Believe it or not, some clerk's offices don't accept documents via email, and a well-maintained rolodex is the easiest way for everybody in the office to have access to the same set of contacts. Funny how some of these objects still have their niches.
I had to contact the IRS and we can never get each other on the phone and there was no way to email her so I said faxes back and forth this was in 2021 and the IRS is still using fax machines to communicate I finally did get the person on the phone and she turned out to be quite nice but it was so silly that I had to fax things and wait for the confirmation and hope to God she got it
Fax machines are still common in eastern Asia, because it's not easy to type out correspondence on a computer when you have thousands of characters to deal with in Chinese and Japanese.
This brought back a lot of memories. Incredibly many of the things you covered that were once so commonplace are now considered collectible. Even phone books!
they are wrong about vending machines even in my small town there is four places that have them and you go to big towns they are all over, in fact there are a lot of small business owners that own them and make extra money off them
Phone books were getting so big around the early 2000's that they were nearly the size of a couple of encyclopedia's. Now they're barely the size of a magazine IF they're still out there. We still get one about once a year now, I just don't understand why they waste the money. I guess some people just can't let go.
The decline of the $2 bill had zero to do with digital currency. Cash drawers didn't have a spot for them, so businesses did not like to receive them. Some down right refused to accept them, despite it being illegal to do so. There was no way to redesign the cash drawer to fit another bill without having to build new cash registers.
@@johnp139 they got rid of half pennies, the 1 cent penny days are numbered but the USA's tax racket of percentages that the decimals matter as the cost goes up means we'll still have the coins, even though a penny barely has any copper in it. Even then it still costs more than it is worth.
ha. $1, $2, $5, $10, $20. With the $50 or higher being under the drawer. Once the $2 bill went out style the $2 slot was used by what was most convenient for the location.
@@RottenRogerDM "ha. $1, $2, $5, $10, $20. With the $50 or higher being under the drawer. Once the $2 bill went out style the $2 slot was used by what was most convenient for the location." Usually Paper Checks, and those carbon Charge Slips.
I think of the days when I bugged my parents for change $$ to play those great tunes back in the late 70's and early 80's.... more often it seems these days. I thank God my mom is still here to reminisce about those days with me 😊🙏
Remember NCR paper? It was "carbonless" carbon paper. A receipt was printed with each sheet of having a pressure sensitive chemical, usually blue. Writing on it left an image on the bottom sheet. Pretty cool stuff back in the day!
Some places still use that, but rarely. I worked for a bit at a print shop where we printed things on them for a business. You had to set the digital press to print on the special paper and load it in the drawer.
Full-service gas stations are obsolete! I remember as late as 1986 or so pulling into a gas station and telling the attendant to fill up the tank. Then you would simply hand them the money through the window, and they would provide change if needed. Sometimes they would even lift the hood and check your oil and other essential components for you for free. Or even clean your windshield!
Cigarette machines were the illicit underage smokers best resource when I was a teenager. I also was required by my parents to have a pocketful of change for the phone before I left the house. I can't remember how many times my Mom would ask if I had enough change for the phone.
Yes! I remember that. I quit smoking a long time ago but when I was a teenager in the 80s I bought my first pack of cigarettes out of a vending machine. It was in the doorway of a bar which was across the street from the roller rink. I remember putting the quarters in and grabbing the cigarettes as soon as they fell out and then running out the door. I was terrified someone saw me. LOL. I think I was twelve or thirteen at the time. I remember all my friends over at the rink were like 'oh cool how did you get the cigarettes?' LOL. It was fun being a kid in the 80s. Everything seemed more relaxed and chill. People actually did things together instead of online. I miss riding my BMX bike, roller skating, climbing trees, and all of that. Better times for sure.
I remember my parents used to take me to some club in town when I was a kid. There were sometimes other kids to play with, but usually I ended up reading or playing with toys I brought with me. But one thing I remember about the place is it had a cigarette vending machine right by the entrance. Can't remember if I ever used a payphone, though. I turned 16 in 2003, and my family replaced our landline with cell phones the previous fall, so by the time I was old enough to drive, I had a cell phone.
If you were anything other than a middle - upper class white man sure. Lots of similar values and things we could appreciate more today sure. However, we forget about racism homophobia, the stigma around mental illness etc: Areas like medicine have advanced much further too now. We can’t look back with rose coloured glasses.
@@Doodlebirds1 I think you are looking at today through those glasses. You have no idea what happened back then, because if you did, you would feel differently. Actually was quite the insult.
Notice how the phone book only shows 7 digits for the numbers. You didn't have to dial the area code if a number was in your area code, and for some states, that could be the entire state.
Up until the late 90's, NJ had 2 area codes: 609(south) and 201(north). By the time I moved to Arizona(1998) 856(south/south) and 732(middle of the state) were implemented. When I lived in Tucson, AZ 90% of the state was 520 with Phoenix being 602.
@@N_Georgia_Trout I always thought that was a sitcom thing to prevent from using real phone numbers. On Seinfeld, he said his phone number was like Klondike 5 or something. Weird how much things change.
I feel like the 50 years span between the mid 40s and into the mid 90s, the general way the world was navigable changed very little. Certainly social issues and values have evolved greatly in that span but the technology we relied on to get through it was fairly constant. Newspapers were just as valid in 1945 as they were in 1995. Radio, TV and Movies evolved but how we participated in those medias remained constant. Phonebooks, libraries and encyclopedias were still the primary way people got their information. Film photography changed very little. Pay phones evolved but we still needed them, very few people had portable phones . Born in the late 70s, I think I'll be the last generation to make into adulthood who will remember how that world worked and the first generation to readily embrace the big shift we're all a part of today. My childhood was much closer to my parent's childhood than it was to those born a decade or two after me. If I live a while yet, I'll be one of the last living generations to have had a first-hand account of it all. I'm someone comforted to know that if all the technology stopped working, I'd know how to function in the world that came before it. Having those instincts have helped me more than hurt me I'd say.
Gen X and Millennials questioned all the norms and started changing them when we had the power to do so. It was so frustrating trying to explain to Boomers and the silent generation that there were better ways to do things. Look how Boomer Steve Jobs was treated when he was fired from his own company. They were okay with the status quo. Computers and smartphones were the game changers, but early on boomers were trying to incorporate outdated ideology. Things really started to change in the 2000s when Gen X got in power. You think a Boomer would ever offer a street view of almost every street in the world for free?!?
@@billybassman21I personally view it less of a generational divide and more of a natural evolution in technology. I wouldn't presume to blame a generation. That's too broad a judgement for me to make. Regardless of generation, there are always individuals that are more progressive than others but no individual is without their flaws. I'd offer the perspective that street view is the illusion of free. Street view and google maps in general is subsidized by the businesses to benefit from its existence and the data that we feed back to it is sold/used as a very lucrative commodity. I'd offer the perspective that all technologies evolve from earlier more familiar forms. The first steam ships looked like (and were) hybridized sailing vessels. The first automobiles were built like horse carriages (a form better suited to the dirt roads of the time). The first personal computers resembled digital typewriters. When a friend's father first showed me Mapquest in 1996 (what became google maps) all I knew prior to that moment was paper maps. Mapquest looked just a digital paper map. That evolved into point by point directions you could print out. Then we had various portable GPS devices. Then those devices migrated to our phones and our phones would talk to us and now they're just systems we take for granted. I'd offer the perspective that in 1996 fast internet was 56KB/second where one low resolution porn picture (yeah I said it) took 20 seconds or more to pop up on a screen. Just as highways needed to be built for those horseless carriages to resemble modern automobiles, "highways" of infrastructure, processing power, bandwidth, servers, hardware and software needed to be built to support the reality that is google maps today. I apologize that this is getting to be a long diatribe on my part but I'd conclude with this: While generations are not all one thing, I have lived long enough to know that there can be an overall mindset, a vibration in each point in time. In the world right now there feels to be this (often desperate) search, this need for purity but the truth is oh so messy. I believe that we're more puritanical now than ever but here is no immaculate conception. Many of us would like to (rightly) plug our ears and sing loudly rather than hear the truth about our heroes; the truth of who our real innovators were and how we got here - present GenX innovators included. What troubles me greatly is that rather than weighing the good from the bad and taking a really sober look at it all, being able to recognize the good from the not so good, there seems to be this need to segment everything into 1s and 0s because the ugly nuances are unpleasant and take too much time to sift through. I personally live for nuance and find them fascinating. The little ironies and paradoxes of our existence are and will forever be amazing to me.
I beg to differ. I was born in the early 50s. I think about the changes that occurred in the 50 years leading to say, 1970, and those that had happened in the 50+ years since. Sure computers and the internet have been massive changes, but what about: rock music, talking and color movies, TV (B&W, then color), air travel, jeans, freeways, shopping malls, space travel, fast food restaurants, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, recreational drugs, the rise and fall of global communism, the widespread acceptance of premarital sex? All of that took place from my parents generation to mine.
@@Argonaut121 To make my point more clear, I'm not speaking to the way values and pop culture changed in that 50 years span, nor am I speaking about any politics or social revolutions. I'm speaking to the consistency and familiarity of the technology that allowed us to get through our day to day. I maintain that if someone from 1945 were transported 50 years into the future, they would certainly marvel at all the social changes, value changes, fashions (or lack of), differences and subtle advancements that took place BUT the way they navigated that world would largely remain familiar and understandable. In fact, I'd argue with all the sci-fi radio shows and films that a person consumed by 1945, someone from 1945 would be probably disappointed in 1995. Substance to back my rational: In 1995 your main source of information would still be centralized to newspapers, radio and television (which would replace newsreels). TV was a rich man's toy in 1945 but it certainly existed and millions knew it existed from the several worlds fairs that took place in the late 30s. You're right in that color TV wouldn't be invented for another 7 years but that was hardly a paradigm shift. We still went to the movies in 1995 much as we did in 1945. The first color film was in 1902. The first movie with sound was The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first movie with color and sound was Snow White in 1937. If you wanted to learn about anything, you still went to a library in 1995. Books were still the best resource for information in 1995. Right up into my high school years, most of my education was from textbooks, film strips, projectors and overhead projectors. Certainly TVs came into the mix but again, that's hardly a paradigm shift. Computers were present but at that time, they functioned most commonly as word processors and rudimentary electronic encyclopedias. The bulk of how I was educated and expected to perform resembled the way my parents and grandparents were educated. If you wanted to find something or someone in 1995, the most reliable source was still a phonebook. Going to a store or a large department store or a shopping plaza was still the most common way to shop in 1995. Mail order and phone order catalogs were still the way people shopped from home in 1945 and 1995. You could dial an operator in 1995 the same way you could in 1945. If you needed to contact someone while traveling, pay phones were still the most common option in 1995. The first marketable car phone was invented in 1946 incidentally. A person from 1945 would have little problem driving/using any automobile built in 1995 and all the similar features would be there. The basic technology changed very little in 50 years. High speed long distance roads would have just began (Pasadena Freeway, 1939 /Pennsylvania Turnpike 1940). Trains, busses and taxis would be very similar as would the way you called for them or bought tickets. The jet age started in the late 1930s, the first Jet airliner debuted in 1946 but the concept of air travel would have been very similar as would have the methods of acquiring airline tickets. Fast food was optimized in the 50s and 60s but it certainly wasn't a foreign concept in 1945. By then drive-in and drive-up restaurants were common as were automats and diners. With the exception of MTV which was a short-lived visual extension of the radio DJ, we heard and consumed music much in 1995 as was done in 1945. Certainly the technology improved but the concept would not be foreign to someone from 1945. Jukeboxes were still popular in 1995 and well after. People have been using drugs recreationally since before written history. Cannabis, cocaine, heroine, morphine and of course psychedelics all existed in 1945 and well before though it's true, the mass value change they caused didn't occur until the 50s and 60s, but again, that's not my point. Bluejeans were invented in 1873 and were certainly present in 1945. The first nuclear reactor was invented in 1942 and the whole world certainly knew about nuclear weapons by 1945 seeing as the US detonated two of them over two different Japanese cities that year. The idea of a space rocket began with the German V2 in 1942. I will certainly concede that space travel and more importantly, the communications satellite would bring significant advancements that would not be present or understood in 1945. Computers existed in 1945, it's how the British cracked the German codes but I will concede the supercomputers would have been 3 decades off. That said, the application of information that I am using this very minute to communicate back to you took hold after 1995. Bring someone from the 40s into the early to mid 90s, they'd be entering a world they could function in. Bring them into 2010, only 15 years later and things start to become very confusing.
As a kid in the 70's and 80's, saw the transition from black and white tv to color, the cellphone, the personal computer, and in highschool in the 90's the birth of the internet. A huge jump from being born in 76 to today.
Yeah, but todays kids will see robots taking over most jobs, will see AI thinking for all, will have a leisurely, no work life, will be able to continue life with replacement parts and most importantly will see their TV sets replaced with hologram theaters and will finally meet beings from other planets. All energy requirements will be met with personal nuclear devices and cars will drive for themselves And there will be no Democrats or Republicans only intelligent AI's to control us and make us happy (@ least until they decide we are a virus) and finally get rid of us to save the planet
In large towns and cities a corner newsstand was a place you could get out of town news papers and magazines. The people that ran them were out in all weathers pretty much from before dawn and into the evening. They often developed a bond with their customers.
Regarding carbon paper and credit card imprinters...there was another big issue that was the reason for their demise. I worked in retail management in the 80s, and crooks were stealing the credit card carbons from the dumpsters behind the stores and getting customers credit card numbers from them. For a while, we started ripping out the carbons and giving them to the customer, or shredding them up. Soon, the companies printing them re-designed them so that when the cashier pulled them apart, the carbons stayed attached to the customer's copy, so they would get the carbons. Eventually, they went to carbonless forms that formed the image just from the imprint pressure. And then finally, it all went digital, and you just got a printed receipt like you do now. But carbons were a big security issue in retail.
the ones I did had three pages - the front went to the customer, the carbon had a white facing and was the store's record, and the back went to the processor. nothing was discarded.
The credit card stampers were still in use when I worked in a store. The reason was simple: if the power went out, we could still process a handful of transactions so the customer could get moving. The chip and pin number system is terrible. They have never fixed the issue with the chip getting scratched, rendering the card useless. You can't use the magnetic strip so the only solution is to use the stamper.
@@largol33t1 I've never seena chip "scratched" sufficiently to render it inoperable, but it has become force of habit to polish it with my thumb before inserting the card. I'm still a little suspicious of switching from the signature to the pin. it's always seemed to me that it's a lot easier for a thief to learn to poke 4 buttons than to duplicate a muscle sequence.
I was just talking about this stuff the other day. A few other things we don't see anymore: Ashtrays in restaurants, pocket pagers, black chalkboards, television antennas, fallout shelters, arcades, and mail drop-off boxes on every corner.
Don't forget matchbooks with a restaurant or bar's name, on it. There are a few rare restaurants/bars that still have matchbooks, like Gale Street Inn in Chicago.
I miss cameras that used film, dropping the film rolls off to be developed at a store and picking up the photos. It was fun to look forward to seeing the photos. Was special.
True but it wasn't that much fun when you needed a photo you had just taken for an event and then either had to waste the rest of the film or wait for another two years for the film to be full before you'd have it.
It's not actually any of those objects that one misses, I think. I think we you miss is the sense of quiet and space around things, which was more than today. The tradeoff of having everything become instant is that we tend to fill every moment up with stuff. Another aspect is the way streaming has made music feel less special. Same idea, I guess.
So true. It's not the things we miss, it's the time of our lives when everything was simpler and more peaceful. Even the bad things that happened seemed so far away.
One very important one you missed, were things found in the library. The card file, microfilm, microfiche, and even the large selection of books. The last time I went to my local library, it had less than half of the books that it used to have. Even the little pencils and scrap paper to write down the books number are nolonger provided. Another is paper maps.
Ah yes, the microfiche. And I remember being about 6 and learning the Dewey decimal system. Then the next year being told something to the effect of, "Okay forget all of that. Here are these computer terminals to search everything now."
@David Harper, as was I. I remember having a big book (that I had put together) of all of the apartment complexes. As for maps, we had a wall map of the delivery area, but most of the time I went by address and knew my area.
I still have an electric typewriter in my office and use it occasionally to fill out paper forms and documents. It looks better than writing by hand, and it's fast and easy.
Being born in the 80s and 90s... we've seen so much change. Such a weird, exciting, and sad time. Miss how things were and excited for the future with technology.
The Greatest Generation saw the most dramatic change to everyday life that any generation ever will. They were born as horses were being replaced by automobiles and an average life would see a man on the moon. An execptional life would afford one the opportunity to use a cell phone and the introduction of the computer age among the masses.
Fax machines are often combined into office and home printers, but they are far from obsolete. They are commonly used for medical and insurance documents.
Correct Mr. Bear. Especially in the Legal field and Real Estate fields. They still require a “faxed” copy of many documents. Software can be altered and is often not recognized by the courts. Purchase a piece of real estate in one state and you live in another…you better have a fax machine nearby because you’ll be faxing bank documents and signatures quite a bit.
As someone who works in IT, I wish all FAX machines would be rounded up and systematically destroyed. I love old technology, but FAX is just one of those pieces of tech that has been replaced by better stuff and literally has no benefits over the new stuff.
Relating to travel, I also remember the paper airline tickets and some of the airlines having their own ticket offices not just at the airport but in storefronts in downtowns of major cities. And American Express travelers cheques, road maps and atlases were very popular.
Thanks!
@Biden Hates America there’s no need to be derogatory. Sometimes you gotta put up or shut up.
Australia and newZealand still have many of these items.
It wouldn’t be bad to keep the old credit card swipers. Cause if the power goes out, you still have that method of payment by card.
@@steveperry3572 I miss the sound of authority those things had!
@@steveperry3572 Actually, you would just plug in your Square credit card processor into your phone and swipe the card.
Also, obsolete is the little horsey ride found outside of K Marts or grocery stores you had to put a quarter in and it would rock back and forth.
As well as the KMart itself.
I live in a rural area and know of a grocery store that has one still in use. It's in pretty good shape!
In the Chicago land area all of them little horsey rides and little 10 cent Kiddie rides we're all owned And controlled by the syndicate
The weight scales are missing too.
I have seen a few of these still in use at malls but there are far fewer of them than before.
The Sears catalog just in time for Christmas. I spent many hours looking at all the cool toys I'd never get.
yep, and never get was the truth.
i'm surprised that wasn't on the list. hell even sears itself isn't around anymore.
@@tuseroni6085 I was surprised as well. I know we (I have 7 siblings) fought to get the catalog first. And Sears is where we all got our school clothes for the new year as well.
The Sears catalog was delivered in April and was the really thick one, the one delivered in time for Christmas was called Sears Wish book as in kids wishing, it wasn't just kids toys but very little else was looked at.
@@hommie789 that may be the official name but we just called it the sears catalog.
Another one that should be on the list is music stores. They were everywhere when vinyl, tape and CD were the typical music formats.
Yep! I remember going to Tower Records a few times a month to look for new cassettes. There was another music store, can’t remember the name, that would make custom mix tapes. Just take in a list of your favorite songs and for a reasonable price they’d make the tape.
Many Walmarts now are carrying vinyl records again. And sometimes the selection is quite large. Like in the 80s.
@@DardanellesBy108 I found this list looking around.
1. Camelot Music · 2. Coconuts · 3. Peaches Records & Tapes · 4. Strawberries · 5. Sam Goody · 6. Tape World · 7. Tower Records · 8. Turtle's.
We had one, maybe more regional, that was record town or something close to that. It was in several malls.
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER Yeah it used to be every major store like Walmart or Kmart at least had a music section of CDs and tapes.
And movie rental stores
The days take so long to get through. But the years just fly by.
Finding forgotten coins in telephone booths was like winning the lottery. Back when coins had real value.
As a young child, I spent many nights, at a tavern, during the early 70's. Btw: there's a good reason.
Anyway, there was a jukebox in the corner of the 'dining' area. I always inspected the coin return slot. It was usually empty. One night, I accidentally discovered an additional coin return on the side - towards the rear. It was stuffed full of coins! What a score! Honestly, it probably amounted to $1.50. But back in 1973, that could buy something!!
I still don't understand why jukeboxes possessed those additional coin returns??
Same thing with a vending machine! Finding forgotten change in the return slot. Another thing that could have added was all the glass bottles that you could return for a deposit.
Remember when pennies existed xD
Back when a stray quarter meant you could get yourself a small snack
@@ImTheFatboy , Could get a McDonald's burger for $0.25 back when I was young.
I can remember the photo booths they used to have at malls and amusement parks in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
And 1950s! Grandma Fay and me as a little kid together. !
I still see those photo booths sometimes. A mall in Saratoga NY had one as recently as 2017
Remember the drive-thru photo booths.
And sometimes in the 2000s
WOOLCO
There's a weird feeling of sadness that comes from this. Like the life you knew is over. I understand one day we'll look back at current items with that same feeling though. Everything is relative. Yet I can't help but reflect with a bit of sadness about days long gone. I'm only in my 30s, so I imagine someone older feels it even more.
That's why we collect things such as gas pumps, jukeboxes, vending machines, as adults that we couldn't have when we were kids or that are now obsolete. Brings back memories and preserves the past.
As a person who will be 68 in about a month, I can concur that we old shits feel that sadness even more!
Who knows what crazy stuff we'll have in another 30 years. World is always changing in strange new ways.
I'm in my early fifties and I definitely feel the sadness. I miss flash cubes!
You have to keep in mind all the stuff we have left behind that very few of us alive remember. Horses for transportation, outdoor plumbing, home made ice cream machines, butter churns, just a few that I can think of off hand. It's always changing.
Those old phones were so durable. You could slam them down as hard as you wanted when hanging up on someone ☎️
LOL
Yep
and they heard it too. I have one & love to slam it down on telemarketers
We still use the phrase "hang up the phone," but fewer and fewer people know where it came from.
I remember you leased them from the phone company and they easily last 20 years.
I remember my mom buying the TV guide for the week when she did the weekly grocery shopping on Friday....I read it cover to cover and circled the "must see" shows for the upcoming week....did anyone else do that?
TV Bible
Mine too my mom and granny would buy TV guide for the week lol on Saturday 😂😂😂😂❤❤❤❤
It was one of the high points of my week as a kid...getting the guide, reading through the nightly TV schedules, looking for holiday special shows, beauty pageants, etc. and reading the descriptions for the weekly episode of your favorite shows, then circling them so you wouldn't miss anything( long before the days of vcr's and digital recorders; if you missed your favorite show, maybe you'd catch the rerun). Now with hundreds of channels, that charm and anticipation is gone (and half the time nothing good to watch)!
Absolutely!!
we want the old size of,TV guide,NOT like now!/. looks like, regular magazine! 😔😠🙏
I miss film the most. I managed a camera store from 1992-2013 and saw the emergence of digital. I do love that younger generations are shooting film again. Kodak can’t keep up with the demand and people are paying steep prices for this medium. It makes me happy to see the art continue. There’s nothing like film.
Yes, Agreed!
My first SLR was a Pentax ME Super. I had that camera for 30 years before the film rewind died. Now I have a Nikon D 90 and N90. The N90 is a film camera with a faster shutter speed than the digital version.
I used to work at CVS, back in the 90s. At the time, we had to send film out to the Kodak lab (and, later, the Fuji lab) to be processed. One thing I dreaded: dealing with missing film orders and mixed film orders (i.e., when a customer would get another customer's pictures). What a pain.
I think the big difference with film photography is that we took time to plan our shot. We had a limited number of pictures a roll of film could take, so we didn't want to waste a shot. With digital you can take 100 pictures and hope that one or two are good enough to use, and delete the rest. Digital is great for its convenience, and affordability, but for many the trade-off was the skill it took to get a good picture. Now you just take pictures until, purely by luck, one satisfies you.
@@fr2ncm9 The ME Super is a classic! How amazing that it lasted 30 years! I shoot with a D90 too & my main film body is my N80. Cheers!
I discovered a cache of old office supplies at work: adding machine paper, typewriter ribbons, stamps with date rolls ending in 99, fax paper. I had fun explaining to the young people what each thing was, I felt like an archeologist!
Ha, I forgot about those stamps where you could change the date. Yeah played with one as a kid.
Waking up in the morning before sunrise and reading my newspaper and having my coffee was the most peaceful part of my day years ago. It prepared me for the workday. I miss it. The Sunday paper was especially nice. The "funny papers" were my favorite.
I'm with you! Remember when the "paperboy" would come around to "collect" payment? I had a "paper route" for a few years as a kid. I knew everybody on my side of town!
Our local paper stopped delivering them to your door and made you put a tube at the end of the driveway. At my age, I wasn't about to go out in the snow and ice at 5 AM. I sadly cancelled my subscription.
You didn't say it, but I miss having a phone hanging on the wall in my kitchen the most. I was at an indoor pool with my wife and kids last weekend and I saw approximately 25% of the adults with cell phones in a watertight case in the pool. It amazes me that when I was a kid, in the 80s, we could go on vacation for a week or two and leave our phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen. Now, we can't even go swimming without it.
I feel your pain. Lol. I agree with you. I miss those days.
Back in the days when single celled organisms began to clump together they didn't know it but they were trading independence for security.
Yeah, but your wall phone wasn't also a computer with access to the entirety of human knowledge.
@@McPatMan124 I'd happily give up the advantages of a smart phone in lieu of the advantages of human interaction.
Do you miss the stretched out phone cords?
Sometimes I have to refrain from getting too lost in nostalgia for times gone by. But your videos allow me a quick trip down memory lane and I so appreciate them! Thank you!!
It's barely worth it to indulge in nostalgia for a mythical good old days. Humans persist in believing that nothing changes, that everything that's here today will be here tomorrow. Everything changes, quickly, slowly or imperceptibly. Think about it - does it look like the 1950s now? Even the 199i0s? What's around today may well not be around in the future.
@@413smr Unfortunately some things never change such as racism and hatred of one another. Actually the good old days were over when Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden.
@@glennso47 🙄
@@413smr Why are you here.
@@413smr At least back then people had half of a brain and quality was used in most products. Now consumerism has completely ruined us as a whole. Not only that, but jobs paid a living wage when you could get it. I can't even afford an apartment while my mother at least had one when she was my age, and she was working one full time job. I can't afford that at 15 an hour even. There's clearly no such thing as the 'mythical good old days' when clearly us Gen Z knew they had it good, and we want a slice of it too.
I miss VHS cassettes and going to movie rentals.
I miss buying cassette tapes to play on my Walkman
Browsing was the most fun , whether Blockbuster or Family Video .
@@kdub2229oh the nostalgia.
The heartbreak when a new release was out of stock, hard pass.
yep
I grew up with all these things and the think I miss most is the civility we had when we had these items.
As long as you were of the same race and ethnicity, that is 😂
@@kjsdpgijnThat's such a great point. It really puts a big question into place when the statement of everything was better once upon a time!
@@kjsdpgijn so woke
@@themookshit He’s telling the truth. These boomers don’t miss that old tech. They miss homogeneous societies.
As we get older and reflect we find the good ol’ days were not ALL that good. Just like everything…there was good AND bad. To brush the past too positively OR negatively is a mistake we all make. An honest, thoughtful reflection is needed personally and societally. With ALL of that said…I remember fondly much of these items…though not very fondly of not being able to get away from cigarette smoke while eating, or in a car or airplane!
I remember all these things when I was a kid. Miss those days 😔
me to people had imagination back then they had IQ's they knew the difference between someone lying and someone telling the truth, even a monster movie was meant to scare people not gross them out!
Used to love getting the newspaper, especially on Sundays. Sunday funnies! Phone books would be delivered every year and had coupons for anything you were looking for and you would write numbers all over the cover of it. Good ol'days.
The 'Parade' magazine was my favorite inside the Sunday paper. Did you have that as well?
American made news paper disposal machine in public place that using honest system can not stay in business since people a free to taok more than one copy of news paper then most case, vandalized the machine to take the money!
People still get newspapers all the time.
@@22ergie We did get Parade every Sunday. My parents had a subscription to "The Rocky Mountain News"! Miss that little newspaper insert!!
I think you can track the decline in informed voters with the decline in newspaper readers. Not only were newspapers more common back then, but they were also much more professionally written and had better journalistic standards. Not nearly as many snarky or sensationalistic headlines and partisan hackery. Just the fact, ma'am. And yes, the 'funny papers' as my grandfather called them, were a treat on Sundays.
VCRs and cassette tapes immediately came to mind when I saw the title of this video. Neither were featured, so a "Part 2" is definitely required.
I remember having an argument in high school with another guy who claimed that CD's would make LP's obsolete. And now CD's are obsolete and LP's are highly collectible and often specially printed for new releases.
I just digitized all my home movies from VHS and Hi-8 tapes…..
@@lanceash I still have all my LPs and cassettes that I started buying back in 1974….
@@Bernz66 How did you do it? Because I've got a pile of home movies on camcorder tapes that I need transferred to digital.
@@lanceash CDs are obsolete? I had planned on getting a player in the near future.
Here's another one -- Remember the S&H Green Stamps we always got at the grocery store with our purchase? It was a kind of rebate program (like cash-back programs on some credit cards). You could save a whole bunch of Green Stamps over time and then take them back to the store to get a few free grocery items.
My family would sometimes spend the evening pasting the stamps into the booklets after dinner
I got a whole set of dishes that way.
Yes and K savers
My Grandma let me have her Gold Bell gift stamps that were around back in the day when grocery shopping was a daily necessity. Took me all year to fill enough stamp books to get my own scooter (when scooters had big wheels and needed constant "pumping" to keep going, before razor scooters and motorized scoots). Probably my very first independent decision as a child. 50s and early 60s were better, simpler times.
Of all the things that have been lost over the years, it's my mind I miss the most!
You ain't the only one
Ozzy Osborne?
I miss my virginity. Lost to a hooker on one drunken night.
Joe Biden
I feel so old since I remember EVERY one of these every objects. Time flies far too fast.
Same here. I'm nearly 60 and watching this video makes me feel old, as if I didn't already feel old enough! When I was a kid here in the UK, you had to purchase your bus ticket from a conductor who walked up and down the bus. Train carriages still had a corridor that ran along the side of the carriage, with separate compartments for passengers. Telephones still had rotary dials. The TV only had 2 or 3 channels and you had to get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel. I can remember when telephones first got buttons. I can remember when TVs first got remote controls. I can remember changing all my vinyl records and cassette tapes for CDs. Life back then was far simpler and in many ways more innocent.
@@revdan4853 I cant imagine how my grandparents felt. Grandma was born in a North Dakota town so rural she grew up speaking Norwegian more than English since the tiny town was mostly immigrants. She didnt have indoor plumbing or electricity and traveled by horse drawn cart more than by truck. When she died it was in a house with an LED TV, smartphone, wifi, wireless security cameras connected to my phone so i could keep an eye on them, with a powered recliner that could stand her up for her.
@@revdan4853 I remember when push button phones came out. I never did figure out how to press one for English on my rotary.
Absolutely 😊
If you give your life to Jesus, then you will have no ending of time.
I grew up with all this , I miss the old world .....
Yes me too, I'm so glad I got to grow up back in those days.
RESIST AND RECLAIM THE GOOD OLD WORLD💯 HANDS DOWN A WAY BETTER PLACE ‼️
Bring back Columbus!
Same here @shannon newman. I grew up with all this and I miss the world back when and would go back in a heartbeat if I could.
Me, too
It's sad to see all of these things that I grew up with now noted as obsolete.
What's really bad is when the stuff you played with as a kid turns up on Antiques Roadshow. Sadly, I remember everything on this list.
@@howardsmith9342 And then you REALLY feel as old as dirt :)
That means you are getting old and will soon also be obsolete
Your next.
🤪
@@greghomestead8366 You already are.
TV Guide was a NECESSITY for the fall and spring previews. Another awesome video.
I looked forward every year for the fall preview guides!
I used to read TV Guide last pages about movies, directors and stars of cinema when I was too young to watch films like The Godfather or foreign arthouse films.
Anyone remember checkbooks and bank savings books?!
The teller would add the interest and amounts manually in the book!
checkbooks are still pretty common. I work construction where credit card payments cost a fortune (3% on a $50k remodel is $1,500) and even many younger people still have checks, bank will even send you a single check if you dont have a checkbook. I think something like 90% of our transactions are via check and most of the remaining being money orders, EFTs, and stuff like that.
I don't miss standing in line for half an hour just to see how much is in my bank account
I opened my first savings account at age 12 . 1966. I can still visualize the passbook.
I still have one
How about s&h stamps
I remember going to NYC on a train when I was around 13 in 73 with my father to watch a baseball game. I remember going through what seemed like hundreds of phones in the train station to see if there was change that someone forgot to grab.
and????? did you find any?
@@nomadbrad6391 I believe so
So did I.
Phone banks
reminds me of when i would do the same in the 90's for vending machines as a kid so i can get myself either a soda for "free" or even play a arcade game without begging my parents for change
I miss catalogs, Sears, J.C. Penney, Spiegel, Victoria's Secret. Also really miss pay phones and the Sunday paper (printed on paper), sections scattered all over the house on Sunday.
When I was a kid, I couldn't wait for the new fall TV guide schedule. Looking for the new shows and reading the latest in news about what is next up for television and programming. 😊❤️
I don’t know if these really fit into this category or not but How about the weekly readers or the Highlights magazine we would get from school, i remember getting one every week from school these memories are priceless
You know that lil pamphlet we would get every week at school where you could order books magazines and posters of your favorite characters but unfortunately, I never got to order not one thing, but ALWAYS wished I could😞
I was just thinking about weekly readers and wondered if they were still around.
yea i miss those little mags, i still try to get my wife to believe that readers in the 70s said the best ways to lose weight and get in shape was sex 3-5 times a day but she doesn't believe me
"Highlights" is still available and has ones for different age groups. I gifted a subscription to my little granddaughters.
I remember Weekly Readers in school. We could also order books from the back by filling out an order form and mailing it in with the payment. Miss those days.
I remember all of these - including the little post office stamp machines that looked like a letterbox. I particularly liked the sound the mechanical sound the cigarette and candy machines would make when you pulled the tab.
chunck- ka-shunk.....
In school we had a machine you put a few quarters in and get a decorative pencil or another had notebooks.
I bought a Lance vending machine and love it so much 😍😍😍
Those pulls on the cig machines was oddly satisfying and unnerving. The way the long shafts came out. Made you think are they supposed to do that? Will this even work or will it jam up?
@@jjryan1352 they were like pull chords on lawnmowers. Sometimes they would just decide nope I want to eff your arm up I’m only coming out 2 inches then I’m stopping
Born in 79, I remember most of these stuff, I wish i could go back, I miss the payphone and pin ball machines
I remember as a kid we use to go around checking payphones for left change, sometimes we would find a broken one full of change
I was playing pinball on the nes. It was 1983. My mom had it still and I got to borrow it
During the '50's, my mom preferred using enclosed green phone booths in dept. stores with the attached stool inside & small counter to place her purse.
I remember those at our local bowling alley ☺️
I loved the old wooden ones you’d find in places some times.
You gave me a nice memory image. 🙂
Trucking we had them in truck stops
I recall the banks of payphones at airports near baggage claim and ground transportation as well.
Anyone remember slide rules? They performed mathematical functions, including the calculation of trigonomic functions. Their use was tricky to master. Our year in school spent two years learning to use the damn things only for the rules to change allowing for what were called "scientific calculators" to be used in our GCE exams in 1979. Oh, and the calculator recommended by our school was made by an obscure electronics company called Commodore.
I was so mad at them for not building a network of enthusiasts for the Commodore 64. Yes, the other computers had better graphics but the games were so much fun.
I still have a slide rule around someplace. We put men on the moon with slide rules.
Sold by Radio Shack!
In 73 there was a freshman course on how to use one. By 76/77 they were almost gone. I still have a few, includuing a 4 foot training one.
I have a BS in Engineering, and I'm *just* old enough to have never used a slide rule. I did take a mechanical drawing class as a Freshman in 1992, using triangles, compass, and drafting paper.
One thing that wasn’t mentioned was the old ditto machines I used to love being the teachers helper smelling the ink and filling the warm papers right off the machine…….
Purple ditto ink got all over your hands, too
Mimeograph.
carbon copy haha@@Adogslife54
Imagine what Frank Costanza's collection of TV Guides is worth now!
I remember the daily newspaper would have a section showing what would be on tv that day, for local broadcast and bigger cable channels, along with a few entertainment articles.
If you got a Sunday paper it would have a book with everything to be on tv for the following week. My dad kept that on top of the tv and we’d use it to figure out if anything good would be on. Commercials and all.
"I remember the daily newspaper would have a section showing what would be on tv that day"
Soon, the daily newspaper will belong in one of these videos.
We still have the daily newspaper here in my area of Eastern Oregon.
@@renmuffett there’s a daily paper her in Chattanooga, TN. It’s the two big newspapers combined into one: The Chattanooga Times, and The Chattanooga Free-Press.
They used to be the morning paper and the evening paper. Now it’s just the one a day, and a few people in my neighborhood still get them delivered.
I haven’t read a newspaper since maybe 2009. I get everything online now
Love your user name, @ Honky Tonkinson
I used to spend hours going through every page of the Sunday paper after my dad was done with it
One thing that I miss from the past are pin-ball machines.
@Kevin Hanz
Pinball machines are alive and well at the myriad old time amusement arcades throughout the country.
tilt
There's a pinball machine at my family's favorite restaurant. Ironically, it's "Back to the Future" themed. My kids (7 & 9) love it. It makes me happy to see them playing it.
Next time you're in Vegas, go to the Pinball Hall of Fame.
Yes and video arcades too
Does anyone remember when you had to get a paper bus ticket and they would punch a hole in it? I remember my mother getting tickets at the booth in perforated sheets. Also the card sleeve inside a book from the library. The librarian would stamp the due date on a card and slide it in the sleeve inside the book's cover. Card catalogues to help one locate a book in the library are obsolete too. Microfiche (I think that was the name) where you could look up some old paper or documents on a huge machine with a projector screen at the library! So many memories are coming back! Oh, and tv dinners when they were in aluminum foil before microwaves! They went in the oven. You had to peel the desert section back to brown it.
I miss each and every one of these! Life didn't zip by, people were not in such a hurry. What I wouldn't give to go back!
And people weren't nearly as crazy as they are now
Yes me too, we were blessed to have experienced those days. I definitely would go back in a heartbeat.🤔
WELCOME TO‼️YOUR‼️ DIGITAL PRISON⏰
*@bridgetmccracken1381* - I second this!
I agree with you 100%. Would love to go back. Life was so much more enjoyable then for sure!
I honestly miss all of these things. Seems like many of them the internet killed off, but having grown up throughout all of 80’s and 90’s, I was around to see both ways be the norm. Yes, the ways today are much more convenient overall. But I miss the world being more of a physical and tangible place with things like in this video. To me those things made it more interesting and colorful. Not just “in the ether” so to speak.
Perfect comment. I have seen many changes in my 56 years, some things are better and some worse.
Michael, you’re so right about the physicality of things. For example, going to the local video store was a common Friday activity and marked the beginning of a restful weekend. It was fun to browse through the collections and plan part of the weekend. That is gone. Now you just create a playlist and it’s not special.
@@thihal123 Agreed. Could tapes or discs at your local video store be out, or damaged when you got them? Yes. But you were out interacting with people. And you didn’t always have instant gratification if something was out that you wanted. When you did find it back in, it was more of a treat. Today we just sort of expect to have whatever we want, whenever we want it. And I admit, I’ve gotten used to that myself, from streaming content to Amazon deliveries sometimes within the same day you order them. But things feel a little less special today to me than they used to.
The internet is a disease. It’s amazing how once it’s gone and run it’s course how quickly all this stuff will come back. :)
@@Mike1064ab The internet is not a “disease”. In the grand scheme of things for human existence though it’s still just a baby. The same even more so with social media. We just haven’t yet learned how to use it like adults on so many levels, control what’s out there, or understand some of its psychological implications. It may have temporarily caused us to lose our way in terms of some physicality, but it’s completely opened up the world to so many people, and has the potential to be an even more powerful and legitimate learning tool once we can filter out the fallacies from the truths. Sure at times I miss the simplicity of when I was growing up without it. But just the same I sure wish I had had it as a resource growing up. Using a 10-20 year old set of dated encyclopedias or old school books as opposed to say current accurate scientific knowledge? Or having online access to things like the National Archives, Smithsonian, Louvre, or even government court reports? I’ll take online resources any day.
As a little kid I remember sitting on the phone book as a booster chair at the dining room table. In Chicago the phone books were VERY thick.
I remember that; I also remember my West Virginian mother-in-law laughing at the very idea. Her "big" phone book was barely as thick as the Detroit Free Press Sunday edition. 😁. Thanks for the fun reminder!
my sister was 5'0" and drove a 69 Dodge Charger back in the day. She used a phone book to sit on so she could see over the dashboard. Not sure if it was a Brooklyn or Manhattan phone book....LoL
*LOL! I got such a kick out of this. I remember as a kid on vacation on Lake Sebec in Maine, the town of Bowerbank ( population 17) two spinster sisters were the post office, town clerk, tax collector , Magistrate and phone switchboard operators. Our cabin on the lake had a hand crank wall phone, our phone number was "7". Those were the days.*
You know why the candy vending machines had a mirror on the front? So you could see the look on your face when the candy didn't come out.
Ah the days of rocking the machine.
When the snack vending machine took your money you lean it forward to get what you paid for and maybe a few extra for the next customer. You only took what you paid for, all else was the price unpaid that accidently fell for the failures of dispensing what is owed.
I miss the Phone Booths, the Juke Box and the Phone Books a lot 😔
Cops still use phone books for confessions
Remember when there was a little personal juke box in every diner booth. You could have your lunch and listen to your favorite song for a nickel.
Phone book delivery trucks.
Saw these in my early life. I feel the world changed the most for millennials. Everything went from being physical to digital by the time I got out of high school. Those before me was all physical. Those after me is all digital. I was the inbetween.
I'll agree with that. I was born in the mid 80's and it seemed like the mid 2000's got to be a really confusing time. I had just finished school in a world that barely knew the internet and then all of a sudden, everything was online. I just stopped trying to keep up with it.
@@GeneralChangFromDanang me to, 1984, we saw the physical to digital change the most
I am not so sure about that, to me Gen X are the ones who saw the most change. I was a kid in the 1970’s (born in ‘72), teenager in the 80’s and young adult through the 90’s. We saw a TON of changes- video games, home computers, using old rotary phones to digital to the first bag phone and Motorola 8000 “cell” phones, the list goes on and on. We not only remember them but we used a lot of analogs before the digitals. I was sophomore and taking typing but my Junior year we had “office of the future” with Apple Macintosh computers. Bare bones cars with manual everything and 8 track to cassette players if you were lucky to CD players in cars and all electric windows and door locks by the time I graduated high school.
You sound like an early Millennial so yes we have both lived through some incredible times and changes.
I was born in 2000. I’m gen Z. The first 8 years of my life there wasn’t that much technology. There was but not as exaggerated as now. But now that I’m 23 everything is technology it’s crazy.
@@ledhed5717 I would agree. Us Gen Xers saw a lot of things that were non digital go full digital. I don't remember 8 tracks but I certainly bought vinyl records and cassettes, then CDs, then converted my CDs to MP3s stored on my computer, and now everything is streamed. I remember my parents paying with credit card and the carbon paper and now I see people walking out of Amazon Fresh stores without having to use a checkout isle. The biggest single change is the internet though. My parents bought me a World Book encyclopedia set in the mid 80s. I lived through the online BBS days, AOL, Netscape browser vs IE war, and now the current dumpster fire that is social media. I can see it in my own kids that the Gen Z don't have a concept of patience when a 3 second wait for Google to populate your search results is "tedious". I don't long for the days of having to walk or drive to the library, check out a book and look up info to learn something vs watching a 5 min RUclips video about how to apply thermal paste to a CPU, but the kids of today really won't have any idea of previous life unless we have a significant CME (solar flare). I've lived without electricity for weeks at a time so I know what my parents went through.
Small town living provides most of these "lost/forgotten" items fairly easily. Some places are so isolated that getting rid of these items would actually make things more difficult than modernizing everything.
I miss public telephones. If someone doesn't have a cell phone, or is in an area without service and needs to make a call urgently, public telephones including payphones are a literal godsend. Imagine being trapped somewhere with no car, no bus service, nobody else around and its -20C or colder outside!
That is why you need to wear clothing that can withstand that cold! always plan your trips eliminate your single point of failure.
I agree; especially when in remote areas, where there are no cell phone towers, a payphone would be literally lifesaving. Or imagine you get robbed. Making an emergency call via a phone booth costed nothing(where I live). Some places still have emergency phones, clearly signaled as such, but they too keep on disappearing
Since everyone carries cell phones now, you could always ask someone. Especially since most calls are cheap/free now.
@@cattysplat Not everyone carries cell phones. Not everyone can afford them. Cell phones and cell service where I am are very expensive. It can happen quite easily that there is simply nobody around when you really need to use a phone. Seriously, would you let a random stranger in a slightly sketchy area of town use your cell phone?
A crazy location for pay phones was on the platforms in the NYC subway system. The noise was incredible. Those old ones had separate slots for different coins.
Just wanted to say thank u for having this channel cus it brings me so many memories ❤
When our TV set would act up, my dad would remove some vacuum tubes and head down to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and use the TV Tube tester just inside the store. If you found a weak tube, they had a replacement for sale right there.
Why is there not a store called Piggly Wiggly now?
Good one! I completely forgot about those tube testers.
@@heidibonjour I think they still exist in the Southern States, and have been around for many years.
@@Abitibidoug I LOVE that name! If there was one in my city I would shop there! "😂Piggly Wiggly!"
@@heidibonjour I was at one in Myrtle Beach, SC in 1996 and another in Lafayette, LA in 2010 and possibly others.
A Yellow Pages phone book was delivered to me in late 2022. Within 5 minutes, I found a listing for a business that closed 5 years ago. A restaurant opened there 4 years ago and is not listed there. That book landed in the recycle bin immediately.
But the online listings are inaccurate even more commonly.
These items brought back alot of good memories. Some of them came and went just in my lifetime.
_Alot_ is a town in India. _A lot_ is more than one of something; multiples of.
I miss them all. I miss the world I grew up in. It was safer, saner and seems to me a lot happier.
I was born in 1962. It was a much better place growing up then. It's gotten so bad, I tell people, I'm happy I'm getting old. That's sad.
@@jamesp13152 my dad was born in 69 and said he hated growing up during that time due to the all the terrorist attacks,bank robberies, plane hijackings, and constant mass poisonings in toys due to lead paint, im not sure how it was ever "Safer".
@@notjimpickens7928 Things like what are happening right now in Nashville didn't happen growing up. at least 3 grade school children dead! Buildings weren't hit by jets killing thousands in an instant. Never had to worry about being shot going to school. Believe what you want, I know. Your Daddy is delusional.
@@notjimpickens7928 I was born in 1963 and I didn't experience any of that where I live it was a lot safer then
@@notjimpickens7928 When I grew up in the '60s, I don't recall ever having to be instructed in grade school about what to do if someone started firing an AK-47 on the playground.
I loved using the old indoor wooden phone booths with the chair inside. The light and fan would go on when you closed the door. It's been at least 30 years or more since I've seen one. 📞
Man I forgot about them they were so private
Those where my favorites.
@@Demy1970 They needed to be, for Superman to change in and out of his costume.
Things I miss are taking a date to a Drive In movie like back in 70s & 80s. The walk in phone booths that were at every grocery store or shopping center complex. I also remember cigarette vending machines in bowling alleys. Rotary Telephones.
I still use a rotary phone. Got a yellow one on the wall in the Kitchen, and the other in my computer room. Both work great! They still have cigarette vending machines in casinos, but they look like a regular vending machine so not as cool as a old timey one.
I miss the phone number you could call for time and temperature. And alerting your parents to pick you up at the library by calling home collect and them refusing the call so it was free!
You sneaky little devil…😀😀
I stayed in a hostel a few years ago and they had a repurposed cigarette machine that sold toiletries for people staying there. It was so cool!
in the 70s a few states if you knew where to look had vending machines that sold pot nothing great every label different yet in reality you were paying 50-100 for the name and maybe $5 for the weed!
that's awesome! They were so much cooler looking than regular vending machines - guess because they never got updated after the 60s lol
I once saw a cigarette vending machine repurposed to sell mini works of art!
@@jenniferburchill3658 back in 73 cigs were .60 a pack and a carton was $3-$5.00 depending on where you were, went the lawsuits started is when the jacked the prices, so instead of the manufacturers paying up to this day the smokers are the ones actually paying for the lawsuits! as for the manufacturers they haven't paid out one blood covered penny, yet they profit each time a pack is bought, before i quit 30 years ago i was a 4 pkg aday smoker, i knew a distributor who would give me box's of outdated brands most of which were stale but smoke able, that is until i found out he was a thief and i turned him in,
@@tooldog5062 FOUR packs a day????? DAMN! 🤯
Phone booths were essential for Superman.
As for carbon paper, if I'm not mistaken, when we send someone an email and ":cc" someone, that refers to the old way of sending someone a "carbon copy." When actual paper was used, a piece of carbon paper (or sometimes more than one) was used to make a copy of the original document.
c.c. is correct . Just explained that very concept to my 39 year old daughter last week . Ha ! She had no idea about this .
@@zephyrcalm9717 I don't know if there was a blind carbon copy option in the old days. Good point. That hadn't occurred to me.
Typing any correspondence you’d use one piece of carbon paper between the original sheet and a second sheet, with the second sheet being your file copy. If your letter was going to Person A and you wanted Person B to get a copy of it, you’d add another piece of carbon paper and another sheet of paper.
If Person B’s copy is going WITH Person A’s knowledge, you’d add a notation such as “cc: Person B” at the bottom of the letter. Everyone knows what’s going on.
If Person B’s copy is going WITHOUT Person A’s knowledge, you wouldn’t add any notation when typing the original letter. When it was finished, you’d take the whole lot out of the typewriter, then put just Person B’s copy and the file copy back in. Now you add “bcc: Person B”. Thus Person B knows that they got the copy without Person A’s knowledge. And in both cases the notation is on the file copy.
The post office and stores at one time had postage stamp vending machines.
Barney Fife refused to use them.
I miss those because I didn't have to wait in line for stamps
@@garyfrancis6193 😄
Out here in California, you can buy a postage stamp or multiple postage stamps at any 7-Eleven convenience store just by asking the cashier.
Barney Fife was a man of principle.
I miss pay phones. They were part of the best times in my life.
Smart phones now unfortunately a real necessity ✔
The old quarter on a string worked great on those old phones but there was a easy way to get free local calls without them as well,lol ! The quarter was required for long distance!
The Dry Dock bar in Algiers, Louisiana had a cigarette vending machine around 2006. I used to go and get cigarettes before I was old enough to buy them at a store. The barkeep never questioned me. I just walked in and straight to the machine. I would quickly be in and out. It was a few bucks more in the machine than in the store but not having to beg someone to pick me up a pack was well worth it.
I miss drive-in movie theaters. They were fun and you could go with the whole family.
I worked at one in the 70's. The indoor concession stand was very bright, and all the stoned people would be squinting and grinning as they ordered their treats. It was SO obvious and funny!
Yes, but you would probably get robbed at a drive in these days 😢
I live in a small East central Illinois community and we have a twin screen dive -in, they play first run movie, digital, with 2 separate FM 's for the sound. Have been busy for years!
I'm 65 and I remember all these things. I took typing in the 10th grade, and when computers came, that turned out to be the best skill I ever acquired from high school.
My dad said to me in grade 9, why are you taking typing? You will never be a secretary! And then just a decade later when we had those first Macintosh computers, he said, you were smart to learn to type!! LOL
@@susanfaulkner2304 I was a late computer adopter myself, but use youtube a lot to trouble shoot the numerous problems I encounter so I don't have to ask others for help all the time! :)
I'm 76 and I took typing in 9th grade. It's served me well all my life.
I'm 59. Lol, I took typing in the 10th grade also. The typing skill I learned in that class has actually stayed with me all these years, as I've probably typed 10 million words since. My teacher's name was Mrs. Wadsworth. Every time she wanted to test our speed, she'd have us place our fingers on the correct keys and then she'd say, "Alright students. Eyes on copy." Then she'd tell us to start. I also remember that dangerous paper cutter at the side of the room. We'd use it whenever we needed to turn in a smaller sheet of paper. I'm surprised no kid ever chopped a finger off using that thing.
I'm 59 also & took typing in 10th grade. I worked on Computers in the 80s & was glad I learned to type. The class had 2 electric typewriters & the rest were manuals.
As a cashier in a mall in the '70s all through college, one thing I do NOT miss is the credit card imprinter. If you didn't get the 3-part charge slip in there just right and really lean into it pushing the roller bar across, the slip would get all wadded up/folded/torn! I could check out 10 cash customers in the time it took to run 1 or 2 charge sales.
I burned through a pack of those damn things, just to practice. My boss though it was a good idea. His boss…not so understanding….
Nah, it was easy.
Knuckle knockers!!!!!!
The local gas station down the street still uses the old credit card imprinter. The gas boy and owner is about 80 years old. He asks if you want your oil checked every time and he always washes your window. It almost brings a tear to my eye when I visit. This old man is one of the last vestiges of a bygone era. I give him my business when I can. And I always tip.
We still use those in the Air Force in the 90's. Whenever any organization requested fuel, they would pay with their organization CC. If it didn't imprint thru all the 3 papers, I just keep going back n forth until everything is embossed.
I used all the office stuff…typewriter, carbon paper, Rolodex, fax machine etc. Used many vending machines and jukeboxes in the past. I was walking through my granddaughters high school a couple years ago. Their vending machines that once had soda in are now all Gatorade, bottled water, Powerade and vitamin water.
That last job I worked had a huge office supply closet. I hated having to buy scissors or Post its the first time years later.
And energy drinks, which are just as unhealthy as soda.
@@Nitephall those are not energy drinks there sports drinks energy drinks have a lot of caffeine in them sports drinks have no caffeine in them
I remember in 1940 the government used Remington Manual Typewriter to type desecration of War! In 1993 my ex-employer in Waltham, MA use IBM-Selected II to type a laid off notice for long term employee!
@@johnmadow5331 desecration or declaration of war? 😉
I just remember the cigarettes in vending machines often being stale but I remember the feeling of pulling the knob and hearing the sound.
We still use fax and rolodex in the law office! Believe it or not, some clerk's offices don't accept documents via email, and a well-maintained rolodex is the easiest way for everybody in the office to have access to the same set of contacts. Funny how some of these objects still have their niches.
It’s crazy that some govt agencies require a fax for requests. Imagine these people running healthcare.
How about Wordperfect?
Haven't used my FAX in years (my neighbor use to come over & have me fax insurance claims for her). I still have & use my rolodex
I had to contact the IRS and we can never get each other on the phone and there was no way to email her so I said faxes back and forth this was in 2021 and the IRS is still using fax machines to communicate I finally did get the person on the phone and she turned out to be quite nice but it was so silly that I had to fax things and wait for the confirmation and hope to God she got it
Fax machines are still common in eastern Asia, because it's not easy to type out correspondence on a computer when you have thousands of characters to deal with in Chinese and Japanese.
This brought back a lot of memories. Incredibly many of the things you covered that were once so commonplace are now considered collectible. Even phone books!
they are wrong about vending machines even in my small town there is four places that have them and you go to big towns they are all over, in fact there are a lot of small business owners that own them and make extra money off them
I still miss the phone books !!!
Phone books were getting so big around the early 2000's that they were nearly the size of a couple of encyclopedia's. Now they're barely the size of a magazine IF they're still out there. We still get one about once a year now, I just don't understand why they waste the money. I guess some people just can't let go.
The decline of the $2 bill had zero to do with digital currency. Cash drawers didn't have a spot for them, so businesses did not like to receive them. Some down right refused to accept them, despite it being illegal to do so. There was no way to redesign the cash drawer to fit another bill without having to build new cash registers.
The only way that could have been fixed would have been to eliminate $1 bills and make dollar coins. Then also eliminate pennies.
@@johnp139 they got rid of half pennies, the 1 cent penny days are numbered but the USA's tax racket of percentages that the decimals matter as the cost goes up means we'll still have the coins, even though a penny barely has any copper in it. Even then it still costs more than it is worth.
@@johnp139 There are dollar coins...
ha. $1, $2, $5, $10, $20. With the $50 or higher being under the drawer. Once the $2 bill went out style the $2 slot was used by what was most convenient for the location.
@@RottenRogerDM "ha. $1, $2, $5, $10, $20. With the $50 or higher being under the drawer. Once the $2 bill went out style the $2 slot was used by what was most convenient for the location."
Usually Paper Checks, and those carbon Charge Slips.
I think of the days when I bugged my parents for change $$ to play those great tunes back in the late 70's and early 80's.... more often it seems these days. I thank God my mom is still here to reminisce about those days with me 😊🙏
My older sister would buy a forty five every Saturday for a dollar. She had quite the collection.
Remember NCR paper? It was "carbonless" carbon paper. A receipt was printed with each sheet of having a pressure sensitive chemical, usually blue. Writing on it left an image on the bottom sheet. Pretty cool stuff back in the day!
Some places still use that, but rarely. I worked for a bit at a print shop where we printed things on them for a business. You had to set the digital press to print on the special paper and load it in the drawer.
Full-service gas stations are obsolete! I remember as late as 1986 or so pulling into a gas station and telling the attendant to fill up the tank. Then you would simply hand them the money through the window, and they would provide change if needed. Sometimes they would even lift the hood and check your oil and other essential components for you for free. Or even clean your windshield!
We still have full-service gas stations in New Jersey.
. Isn't it against the law to pump your own gas in NJ ?
@@johnyoung9874 Also in Oregon.
Cigarette machines were the illicit underage smokers best resource when I was a teenager. I also was required by my parents to have a pocketful of change for the phone before I left the house. I can't remember how many times my Mom would ask if I had enough change for the phone.
Yes! I remember that. I quit smoking a long time ago but when I was a teenager in the 80s I bought my first pack of cigarettes out of a vending machine. It was in the doorway of a bar which was across the street from the roller rink. I remember putting the quarters in and grabbing the cigarettes as soon as they fell out and then running out the door. I was terrified someone saw me. LOL. I think I was twelve or thirteen at the time. I remember all my friends over at the rink were like 'oh cool how did you get the cigarettes?' LOL. It was fun being a kid in the 80s. Everything seemed more relaxed and chill. People actually did things together instead of online. I miss riding my BMX bike, roller skating, climbing trees, and all of that. Better times for sure.
I Remember them too, As Teens we just bought our smokes from the corner store no problem 😁👍🏼
@@josebro352 I graduated in 81’ good times!!
A pack of Marlboro Lights cost $15 a pack. Imagine all the change you would need 😆
I remember my parents used to take me to some club in town when I was a kid. There were sometimes other kids to play with, but usually I ended up reading or playing with toys I brought with me. But one thing I remember about the place is it had a cigarette vending machine right by the entrance.
Can't remember if I ever used a payphone, though. I turned 16 in 2003, and my family replaced our landline with cell phones the previous fall, so by the time I was old enough to drive, I had a cell phone.
Those days were sooo much better and happier.
Judy Judy Judy !!!
If you were anything other than a middle - upper class white man sure.
Lots of similar values and things we could appreciate more today sure.
However, we forget about racism homophobia, the stigma around mental illness etc: Areas like medicine have advanced much further too now.
We can’t look back with rose coloured glasses.
@@Doodlebirds1 I think you are looking at today through those glasses. You have no idea what happened back then, because if you did, you would feel differently. Actually was quite the insult.
@@Doodlebirds1 Judy and domenic are correct. You are woke. Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug
@@domenicv7962have to have lived those days-
Notice how the phone book only shows 7 digits for the numbers. You didn't have to dial the area code if a number was in your area code, and for some states, that could be the entire state.
Up until the late 90's, NJ had 2 area codes: 609(south) and 201(north). By the time I moved to Arizona(1998) 856(south/south) and 732(middle of the state) were implemented. When I lived in Tucson, AZ 90% of the state was 520 with Phoenix being 602.
Back in the day, the first two numbers were often designated by letters (and names) as well. 774 was referred to as PRescott 4.
In AZ You have to dial the area code to call next door
@@azwizeguy same in Jersey.
@@N_Georgia_Trout I always thought that was a sitcom thing to prevent from using real phone numbers. On Seinfeld, he said his phone number was like Klondike 5 or something. Weird how much things change.
I feel like the 50 years span between the mid 40s and into the mid 90s, the general way the world was navigable changed very little. Certainly social issues and values have evolved greatly in that span but the technology we relied on to get through it was fairly constant. Newspapers were just as valid in 1945 as they were in 1995. Radio, TV and Movies evolved but how we participated in those medias remained constant. Phonebooks, libraries and encyclopedias were still the primary way people got their information. Film photography changed very little. Pay phones evolved but we still needed them, very few people had portable phones . Born in the late 70s, I think I'll be the last generation to make into adulthood who will remember how that world worked and the first generation to readily embrace the big shift we're all a part of today. My childhood was much closer to my parent's childhood than it was to those born a decade or two after me. If I live a while yet, I'll be one of the last living generations to have had a first-hand account of it all. I'm someone comforted to know that if all the technology stopped working, I'd know how to function in the world that came before it. Having those instincts have helped me more than hurt me I'd say.
Agreed. Everything changed when computers became commonplace, then the internet.
Gen X and Millennials questioned all the norms and started changing them when we had the power to do so. It was so frustrating trying to explain to Boomers and the silent generation that there were better ways to do things. Look how Boomer Steve Jobs was treated when he was fired from his own company. They were okay with the status quo. Computers and smartphones were the game changers, but early on boomers were trying to incorporate outdated ideology. Things really started to change in the 2000s when Gen X got in power. You think a Boomer would ever offer a street view of almost every street in the world for free?!?
@@billybassman21I personally view it less of a generational divide and more of a natural evolution in technology. I wouldn't presume to blame a generation. That's too broad a judgement for me to make.
Regardless of generation, there are always individuals that are more progressive than others but no individual is without their flaws.
I'd offer the perspective that street view is the illusion of free. Street view and google maps in general is subsidized by the businesses to benefit from its existence and the data that we feed back to it is sold/used as a very lucrative commodity.
I'd offer the perspective that all technologies evolve from earlier more familiar forms. The first steam ships looked like (and were) hybridized sailing vessels. The first automobiles were built like horse carriages (a form better suited to the dirt roads of the time). The first personal computers resembled digital typewriters. When a friend's father first showed me Mapquest in 1996 (what became google maps) all I knew prior to that moment was paper maps. Mapquest looked just a digital paper map. That evolved into point by point directions you could print out. Then we had various portable GPS devices. Then those devices migrated to our phones and our phones would talk to us and now they're just systems we take for granted.
I'd offer the perspective that in 1996 fast internet was 56KB/second where one low resolution porn picture (yeah I said it) took 20 seconds or more to pop up on a screen. Just as highways needed to be built for those horseless carriages to resemble modern automobiles, "highways" of infrastructure, processing power, bandwidth, servers, hardware and software needed to be built to support the reality that is google maps today.
I apologize that this is getting to be a long diatribe on my part but I'd conclude with this:
While generations are not all one thing, I have lived long enough to know that there can be an overall mindset, a vibration in each point in time. In the world right now there feels to be this (often desperate) search, this need for purity but the truth is oh so messy. I believe that we're more puritanical now than ever but here is no immaculate conception. Many of us would like to (rightly) plug our ears and sing loudly rather than hear the truth about our heroes; the truth of who our real innovators were and how we got here - present GenX innovators included. What troubles me greatly is that rather than weighing the good from the bad and taking a really sober look at it all, being able to recognize the good from the not so good, there seems to be this need to segment everything into 1s and 0s because the ugly nuances are unpleasant and take too much time to sift through. I personally live for nuance and find them fascinating. The little ironies and paradoxes of our existence are and will forever be amazing to me.
I beg to differ. I was born in the early 50s. I think about the changes that occurred in the 50 years leading to say, 1970, and those that had happened in the 50+ years since. Sure computers and the internet have been massive changes, but what about: rock music, talking and color movies, TV (B&W, then color), air travel, jeans, freeways, shopping malls, space travel, fast food restaurants, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, recreational drugs, the rise and fall of global communism, the widespread acceptance of premarital sex? All of that took place from my parents generation to mine.
@@Argonaut121 To make my point more clear, I'm not speaking to the way values and pop culture changed in that 50 years span, nor am I speaking about any politics or social revolutions. I'm speaking to the consistency and familiarity of the technology that allowed us to get through our day to day.
I maintain that if someone from 1945 were transported 50 years into the future, they would certainly marvel at all the social changes, value changes, fashions (or lack of), differences and subtle advancements that took place BUT the way they navigated that world would largely remain familiar and understandable. In fact, I'd argue with all the sci-fi radio shows and films that a person consumed by 1945, someone from 1945 would be probably disappointed in 1995.
Substance to back my rational:
In 1995 your main source of information would still be centralized to newspapers, radio and television (which would replace newsreels).
TV was a rich man's toy in 1945 but it certainly existed and millions knew it existed from the several worlds fairs that took place in the late 30s. You're right in that color TV wouldn't be invented for another 7 years but that was hardly a paradigm shift.
We still went to the movies in 1995 much as we did in 1945. The first color film was in 1902. The first movie with sound was The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first movie with color and sound was Snow White in 1937.
If you wanted to learn about anything, you still went to a library in 1995. Books were still the best resource for information in 1995.
Right up into my high school years, most of my education was from textbooks, film strips, projectors and overhead projectors. Certainly TVs came into the mix but again, that's hardly a paradigm shift. Computers were present but at that time, they functioned most commonly as word processors and rudimentary electronic encyclopedias. The bulk of how I was educated and expected to perform resembled the way my parents and grandparents were educated.
If you wanted to find something or someone in 1995, the most reliable source was still a phonebook.
Going to a store or a large department store or a shopping plaza was still the most common way to shop in 1995.
Mail order and phone order catalogs were still the way people shopped from home in 1945 and 1995.
You could dial an operator in 1995 the same way you could in 1945.
If you needed to contact someone while traveling, pay phones were still the most common option in 1995. The first marketable car phone was invented in 1946 incidentally.
A person from 1945 would have little problem driving/using any automobile built in 1995 and all the similar features would be there. The basic technology changed very little in 50 years.
High speed long distance roads would have just began (Pasadena Freeway, 1939 /Pennsylvania Turnpike 1940).
Trains, busses and taxis would be very similar as would the way you called for them or bought tickets.
The jet age started in the late 1930s, the first Jet airliner debuted in 1946 but the concept of air travel would have been very similar as would have the methods of acquiring airline tickets.
Fast food was optimized in the 50s and 60s but it certainly wasn't a foreign concept in 1945. By then drive-in and drive-up restaurants were common as were automats and diners.
With the exception of MTV which was a short-lived visual extension of the radio DJ, we heard and consumed music much in 1995 as was done in 1945. Certainly the technology improved but the concept would not be foreign to someone from 1945. Jukeboxes were still popular in 1995 and well after.
People have been using drugs recreationally since before written history. Cannabis, cocaine, heroine, morphine and of course psychedelics all existed in 1945 and well before though it's true, the mass value change they caused didn't occur until the 50s and 60s, but again, that's not my point.
Bluejeans were invented in 1873 and were certainly present in 1945.
The first nuclear reactor was invented in 1942 and the whole world certainly knew about nuclear weapons by 1945 seeing as the US detonated two of them over two different Japanese cities that year.
The idea of a space rocket began with the German V2 in 1942. I will certainly concede that space travel and more importantly, the communications satellite would bring significant advancements that would not be present or understood in 1945.
Computers existed in 1945, it's how the British cracked the German codes but I will concede the supercomputers would have been 3 decades off. That said, the application of information that I am using this very minute to communicate back to you took hold after 1995.
Bring someone from the 40s into the early to mid 90s, they'd be entering a world they could function in. Bring them into 2010, only 15 years later and things start to become very confusing.
As a kid in the 70's and 80's, saw the transition from black and white tv to color, the cellphone, the personal computer, and in highschool in the 90's the birth of the internet. A huge jump from being born in 76 to today.
Yeah, but todays kids will see robots taking over most jobs, will see AI thinking for all, will have a leisurely, no work life, will be able to continue life with replacement parts and most importantly will see their TV sets replaced with hologram theaters and will finally meet beings from other planets. All energy requirements will be met with personal nuclear devices and cars will drive for themselves
And there will be no Democrats or Republicans only intelligent AI's to control us and make us happy (@ least until they decide we are a virus) and finally get rid of us to save the planet
Even bigger jump from 61
I remember reading Dick Tracy where he wore a wrist watch that had live audio and video features.…
similar to today's smart phones and Apple watches.
TV went color before the 70s. Your family may have a black and white set, but the only shows in B&W were reruns.
@@williamwilson6499 Correct, black and white would be what you had if you didn’t have a color set. LOL! Impressive knowledge!
In large towns and cities a corner newsstand was a place you could get out of town news papers and magazines. The people that ran them were out in all weathers pretty much from before dawn and into the evening. They often developed a bond with their customers.
These videos really bring to light the vast amount of change that has happened just in the last 60 years. It’s astonishing.
I miss phone books. I like to see all the businesses for a certain category all at once.
I remember when looking for pizza delivery, there would be like 10 pages of pizza place ads.
Phone books were great for looking at local dining options in remote areas where cell phone reception might be less than good.
seeing them in alphabetical order instead of who is paying most for advertising was great, and sometimes there were even coupons in the book
We still receive them where I live.
Me too. I hate that you can only see as far as the edge of whatever screen you're on.
Regarding carbon paper and credit card imprinters...there was another big issue that was the reason for their demise. I worked in retail management in the 80s, and crooks were stealing the credit card carbons from the dumpsters behind the stores and getting customers credit card numbers from them. For a while, we started ripping out the carbons and giving them to the customer, or shredding them up. Soon, the companies printing them re-designed them so that when the cashier pulled them apart, the carbons stayed attached to the customer's copy, so they would get the carbons. Eventually, they went to carbonless forms that formed the image just from the imprint pressure. And then finally, it all went digital, and you just got a printed receipt like you do now. But carbons were a big security issue in retail.
the ones I did had three pages - the front went to the customer, the carbon had a white facing and was the store's record, and the back went to the processor. nothing was discarded.
@@kenbrown2808 That kind was the 'new and improved' version of the ones with the separate carbon tissue paper.
glad I never had to deal with them, my parents probably did.
The credit card stampers were still in use when I worked in a store. The reason was simple: if the power went out, we could still process a handful of transactions so the customer could get moving. The chip and pin number system is terrible. They have never fixed the issue with the chip getting scratched, rendering the card useless. You can't use the magnetic strip so the only solution is to use the stamper.
@@largol33t1 I've never seena chip "scratched" sufficiently to render it inoperable, but it has become force of habit to polish it with my thumb before inserting the card. I'm still a little suspicious of switching from the signature to the pin. it's always seemed to me that it's a lot easier for a thief to learn to poke 4 buttons than to duplicate a muscle sequence.
I am 70 years old so I remember using shoe polish to shine my shoes. Can’t remember the last time I did that.
Growing up my dad had a wooden shoe shine kit. Loved watching him take care of his shoes.
Boys on street corners and in train stations and airports used to chirp, "Shine Your Shoes, Mister?" The "shoeshine boys" of yore.
I just shined my shoes last week!
It's amazing to see how practically all of these obsolete objects have been condensed into one little cell phone...
And then some others to boot.
not if you dont have one ;)
Yep, the list is very long!
And most peoples brains condensed into a Thimble.
It's kinda why Radio Shack went out of business.
I was just talking about this stuff the other day.
A few other things we don't see anymore: Ashtrays in restaurants, pocket pagers, black chalkboards, television antennas, fallout shelters, arcades, and mail drop-off boxes on every corner.
Ah yes, television antennas. Made out of clothes hangers.
@@robertschmidt9296 Sometimes tin foil added to boost reception.
fallout shelters.....coming back for sure.
Don't forget matchbooks with a restaurant or bar's name, on it. There are a few rare restaurants/bars that still have matchbooks, like Gale Street Inn in Chicago.
I still have "rabbit ears" for each of my TVs.
I remember every one of these! Rockola still makes jukeboxes in California. I bought one of their 7" vinyl players a couple years ago. 👍
Funny thing vinyl is making a comeback.
Vinyl records are again outselling, and providing more dollar volume than CDs.
Ahhh, memories. I was waiting to see the library card catalog, too.
I miss cameras that used film, dropping the film rolls off to be developed at a store and picking up the photos. It was fun to look forward to seeing the photos. Was special.
True but it wasn't that much fun when you needed a photo you had just taken for an event and then either had to waste the rest of the film or wait for another two years for the film to be full before you'd have it.
It makes me miss the good old days. TV Guide was the best, the crossword puzzle in the back were easy and fun. Great job! Thank you
It's not actually any of those objects that one misses, I think. I think we you miss is the sense of quiet and space around things, which was more than today. The tradeoff of having everything become instant is that we tend to fill every moment up with stuff. Another aspect is the way streaming has made music feel less special. Same idea, I guess.
So true. It's not the things we miss, it's the time of our lives when everything was simpler and more peaceful. Even the bad things that happened seemed so far away.
I still listen to the radio...WITH COMMERCIALS. I just like it.
And movies that we're only at the movie theaters. You had to go there to see it instead of them being so instantly available.
@@Asphaltaperider Recently I discovered youtube vids of radio play from the 80s...with corresponding commercials, and boy did that take me back.
I'm guessing lots of people here also just miss *being young* :)
One very important one you missed, were things found in the library. The card file, microfilm, microfiche, and even the large selection of books. The last time I went to my local library, it had less than half of the books that it used to have. Even the little pencils and scrap paper to write down the books number are nolonger provided. Another is paper maps.
Stamp with roll dates. A library I used to go have one
Ah yes, the microfiche. And I remember being about 6 and learning the Dewey decimal system. Then the next year being told something to the effect of, "Okay forget all of that. Here are these computer terminals to search everything now."
@@KyraWS I worked at a community college library a few years ago and it used one of those to stamp the due dates.
Paper maps is a good one.
I was a pizza delivery guy before GPS.
@David Harper, as was I. I remember having a big book (that I had put together) of all of the apartment complexes. As for maps, we had a wall map of the delivery area, but most of the time I went by address and knew my area.
I still have an electric typewriter in my office and use it occasionally to fill out paper forms and documents. It looks better than writing by hand, and it's fast and easy.
Being born in the 80s and 90s... we've seen so much change. Such a weird, exciting, and sad time. Miss how things were and excited for the future with technology.
The Greatest Generation saw the most dramatic change to everyday life that any generation ever will. They were born as horses were being replaced by automobiles and an average life would see a man on the moon. An execptional life would afford one the opportunity to use a cell phone and the introduction of the computer age among the masses.
I miss them all! Those were the very best times🙏🏻👍
Fax machines are often combined into office and home printers, but they are far from obsolete. They are commonly used for medical and insurance documents.
Correct Mr. Bear. Especially in the Legal field and Real Estate fields. They still require a “faxed” copy of many documents. Software can be altered and is often not recognized by the courts. Purchase a piece of real estate in one state and you live in another…you better have a fax machine nearby because you’ll be faxing bank documents and signatures quite a bit.
true, some offices still use fax machines. We now have MFD or Multi-factor devices which are printer, fax and scan all in one device
I have an old fax machine sitting up on a bookshelf..lol
I USE MY FAX MACHINE EVERY SINGLE TIME I HAVE TO SEND PAPERWORK TO MY BANK!
As someone who works in IT, I wish all FAX machines would be rounded up and systematically destroyed. I love old technology, but FAX is just one of those pieces of tech that has been replaced by better stuff and literally has no benefits over the new stuff.
Relating to travel, I also remember the paper airline tickets and some of the airlines having their own ticket offices not just at the airport but in storefronts in downtowns of major cities. And American Express travelers cheques, road maps and atlases were very popular.
And getting to go to the airport gate to see off family or friends
Vending machines have been in every workplace I've ever been in. Carbon paper is still used in multi-part forms.
Checks too.
True but the vintage machines are not seen in use often. A working Tom's or Lance vending machine are worth big bucks.
I'm 32, and I'm glad to say that I remember seeing all of these items in real life.
Must be nice up in the Ozarks. (Sorry, just kidding)
Thanks so much for making me feel positively ancient.
LOL