My mother used to be a switchboard operator, and she's only 62 - she was kind of offended when we were in a history museum and there was a switchboard just like she used to use, haha
I worked a switchboard (badly) in the 60s when I had a summer job as a hotel receptionist. And I'm with T's mother too - perfectly normal, everyday stuff classed as antiques? C'mon!
I'm 58 and the telephone equipment I started out as an apprentice on in 1981 Strowger is also in a Museum :-) I also have one of those first mobile phones I recovered from a skip back in 92 is now a collectors piece. I think programming the video recorder was harder than my job now as a cyber consultant.
"Big ice" was the first to buy refrigeration units. They were big complex machines only economical for large operations. Many people still had ice boxes and ice delivery for decades after that.
I forget all the details, but the railroad created the ice industry. Ships carried it too, but it was the railroads that allowed ice to get to every small town and whistle stop in the US. They built huge warehouses that were double walled, and filled with sawdust and they stacked it full of ice from the Great Lakes. Double walled train cars did the same, and they put blocks of ice in train cars of perishable items. Then they started to carry train cars of ice to sell the ice. But, then a southerner invented refrigeration. And ice plants popped up in every small town. These ice plants still loaded train cars, but they also sold ice locally, and the ice from the Great Lakes was suddenly worthless. Ice could be made all year round and they didn’t suffer such great losses during the summer. Originally they had to cut about 4 times as much ice as they sold, so it would last all Summer. It was probably the late 50’s or early 60’s before they stopped selling ice door to door, and people bought refrigerator freezers for their homes, in numbers that eliminated the need for door to door ice. I recall the local ice plant in the town I live in was operating after I was married in the early 80’s, they made the ice sold at stores or you could go buy large blocks of it at the plant. Now, I think the bags of ice we see at local stores are made by a machine, that makes those round ice pieces we now see, no large plant is needed. And refrigerated train cars and trucks took all their business away. My father worked in an ice plant when he was younger, and it’s fascinating how it worked, a large pool of salt water was chilled to 28 degrees in a roof top evaporator, and metal tubs of fresh water were lowered into it, an overhead hoist lifted them out after a day and 300 pound blocks were made.
In college I worked at a video store, then later in a photo lab developing film. Now I'm a newspaper editor. So, yeah. I'm just going to tell my grandkids I was a pirate and a cowboy. It'll be easier than trying to explain to them that photos used to come on strips of chemically-treated celluloid, Netflix was a building with VHS cassettes in it and we printed out Google News on paper and delivered it to people's houses each morning.
I don't think future generation are somehow braindead about older technologies. Like we know how a telegraph works also we totally get technologies from the 1900s even 1800s. Your kids and grandkids will surely understand the technology we have today.
@@calamusgladiofortior2814 yar MATEY why don't you swab my poop deck=). BUT yeah im a truck driver right now and another 6 or 7 years when robo trucks are the thing ill be out of the job as well=(
Jeremiah Douglas Yeah, I read a report this week saying up to 25% of jobs in the U.S. are vulnerable to being replaced by automation of various sorts with current or emerging technology. I guess I might not be the only one taking up the pirate life. Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum... ;)
I'm from Scotland, it's pretty crap, so I moved to Bangkok. It gets dark at 18h30 every day, most of the side streets have very few lights and a lot of them don't have pavements. Oddly enough they call the place 'The city of Light'.
My great grandma was a dispatcher for CHP for 45+ years. She retired and has her name on a gold placer under her picture from youth. I think it's so cool.
It's also why the individual wires on an ethernet connection are designated "Tx" and "Rx". Alot of people now believe that it stands for "Transmit" and "Recieve", but it dosen't and never really did. The "T" stands for the contact at the "Tip" of the jack. The "R" stands for the "Ring" contact near the base of the jack. And the "x" is a variable place holder for the number of the jack. So jack #1 on a switchboard would have two wires designated "T1" and "R1" connected to it.
@@royponpon1755 It would be more correct to say that this 'may' be where the Tx/Rx terminology originated, but this isn't what it means. Tx == transmit, Rx == receive, in electrical engineering anyway (which is where the ethernet discipline sits). You're right to say that, with jack plugs (the jack is the female by the way, the plug is the male) at least, Tx means Tip.x and Rx means Ring.x, but that doesn't translate to electrical engineering 'just' because they use the same symbol.
When I was a boy I wanted to be an elevator operator. The uniform was so smart, and it seemed the height of glamour to ride up and down in a department store all day.
My grandmother actually experienced the ice cutters era, she said that she remembers her father bringing home big ice cubes for them to use home. Pretty cool that she was able to experience it
All in all it wasnt that long ago, if he was born before the 1940s or on a poorer country than the united states or England she most likely experienced it, i still remember that lovecraft made a book about this terrible and terrifying new invention called air conditioner
@@carso1500 I remember a Three Stooges short where they were ice delivery guys and they had to take a big block of ice up a super steep set of stairs. Hilarity ensued. That was made in the 1930's, so not even a century ago.
@@HarryBuddhaPalm Yeah in 50 years people will question when watching a movie from today why there are some guys without arms and legs why not just get some cybernetic prosthetics? or why is everyone driving their cars did they not had self driving cars on the early 2000s? Just like how we now look weird at 2005 movies because of the lack of smarthphones and the not total and absolute prevalece of the internet we have now a days
my grandmother grew up in Erie Pennsylvania where they had a ice farm. They would cut up the ice fill a barn with ice and hay. She told me they use to sneak into the ice barn all the time.
After your tenth kid (no condoms) kids were kind of disposable, kids ran the streets, if they did not come home, there was another kid already on it way out the baby canal. just the way it was.
@@solardale715 , of course 6 of your first 8 died before they turned 4, so I guess you got used to them being disposable. Similar tradition from back in the day: You have a son. You name him John. John dies within the first few months. You have another son. You name him John. John dies a couple years later. You have a son. You name him John. He lives long enough for you to have another son. You name him Jim.
A more recently disappeared job is typesetters. In fact there's a whole lineup of jobs related to commercial printing that have gone - typesetters, paste-up artists, color separators, negative strippers, platemakers, etc. In the days before offset printing took over, typesetters worked on giant hot type machines that cast molten metal into lines of typography. And before that, typesetters would assemble lines of type by plucking metal slugs out of bins and assembling them in a composing stick. In fact there are still artisanal printers who do this. But once upon a time, this was how all type got done. It may sound laborious (and it was), but it was still much faster than copying books by hand.
And before scanners were invented there were price stickers on each item and the cashier would key in the price. Then the cashier made change WITHOUT a calculator. The bagger also helped you load your car.
I asked for a raise at WalMart last time I was in there scanning my own shit. I refuse to shop there and when I do, I got to a warm body behind the till, that way I have human proof I paid for my purchase when they try to accost me when I leave.
Although the company’s will probably keep it around a bit longer because people could steal things a bit easier, and some people like talking to the cashiers and baggers, I am a bagger myself and many people have short conversations with us and like to discuss certain things going on, I enjoy that and they do to, obviously it’s going to be taken out eventually but it’ll be around longer than say a trucker or something like that, but yea you’re right
"I can remember when it was the law that you had to keep your hands on the steering wheel in your automated car because people didn't trust computers to drive..."
Light For Japan Productions I saw somewhere a woman was talking about the moment she realized she was now old was when she told her kid to hang up the phone. The kid turned to her and asked why do y'all say that...she realized the kids now have never had to hang up a phone and the phrase was outdated we are old Hahahah
When I was very young (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) my father's company had a switchboard. I was so impressed when I saw it that I made one out of two shoe boxes and pencils tied on twine. Ah yes, the good old days.
I teach computer design among other things, and when I tell my students to save their work by pushing the button with the floppy disk on it, 70 to 80% have no idea what I'm talking about...
My experience goes back even a bit further. When I first started with computers, they were activated by either punch cards or perforated tape on big reels.
There was a time when several houses shared the same phone number. It was called a party line. You could listen in on other peoples conversations and if you picked up the phone and someone was on the line, you’d have to wait your turn.
Also, if you wanted to make a long-distance phone call or trunk call, you'd have to ask your local telephone operator to make the call to the call recipient's local switchboard, where their operator would then call that line and see if the person were available, then call back your operator to connect you. Your operator would then call you and connect the two of you together. This is why long-distance calls were so expensive, because they were so labor-intensive. I can personally remember long-distance calls from phone booths where the operator would tell you how much change to put into the phone for a very short call duration. If you ran out of time, the operator would cut in and tell you to deposit more change. If you listen to Jim Croce's "Operator" you get the idea of what really happened.
It will come sooner then you think, just RFID tag(smaller then a grain of rice) every product. Then people just push their kart thru a machine which scans everything as it goes thru and gives you the total. Once walmart thinks it will save them money in the states, they will implement it and it will force everyone else to do it, if they want to try to stay competitive. www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1146015
@@paris466 It might interest you to know, SparksFly, that I have a little bit of insight to your comment as I was working at a big retail store just a month ago. Large-scale automation is certainly in the works. The company that I worked for was already showing off the robots that they had which could scan the shelves, determine picks, check top-stock, & identify plugged products completely autonomously. Furthermore, they had robots that could unload trucks without any human intervention. These were both being tested in stores somewhere in the US. In fact, during the time that I worked at that store, they tested out a "scan & go" system, in which the customer would carry around a scanner while shopping, scan their object, & then simply pay their money & leave, spending almost no time at the already automated check out counter (the problem with that is the store has a very outdated client tracking infrastructure, so they couldn't figure out how to stop people from stealing without hiring more people). More to the point, the system that they're trying to push the hardest is an Online Grocery Pickup system, in which the customer places an order online, an employee goes out into the store & gets everythign for them, then they drive by & pick everything up without ever entering the store at all. Some stores within that same company, I've been told, have been doing the same but with a delivery system (ripe for automation in the coming years itself) as well. Basically, the wet dream for these retail companies is to transform their stores into warehouses -- one with no customers & as few workers as possible: stocked & organized by bots with customers picking their stuff up like a drive-through fast food restaurant, or having it delivered. & I'd say that, by in large, they can probably achieve their goal within the next 10-15 years.
One of my older uncles was an "Ice Man" back in the early 1900s. He had a special wagon that was packed with straw and rice hulls, lined with canvas. He would get up before dawn and ride to the ice house, pick up a load ice blocks, and then deliver it to houses on his route.
Fast food will still most likely exist, it will all just be automated and you will be able to call for food from your smarth phone that will be delivered vía drone at your door, but i'm certain restaurants will still be a thing since they arent exactly a place to get food easier but they are more places to go out with friends or family
I'll be able to tell my grandkids that I used to deliver food when I was younger. I wonder which will shock them more: that it took a human to deliver food (or anything) or that they will know someone who knows how to drive all by themselves.
As a 6 year old in the 1960s, I still remember my aunt having and ice-box. She had a regular refrigerator but still had an ice-box in the car-port. I clearly recall my uncle Rick putting several big blocks of ice in it on the day before Thanksgiving to help preserve pies and stuff she had made.
My husband's aunt remembers buying a block of ice in Arizona and putting it in a cage on the outside of the driver's side of their rental car before driving through the Arizona desert.
I am 59 and remember ICE boxes in Canada. My great uncle used one in the country. I was so curious he showed me the storage building not far from the cottage. I think it was in 1965.
They used to pull the iceblocks out of the lake (with what looks like draft horses from the pics I've seen) about 100 feet from my dock up here in central Ontario. When they tore down the ice house and blacksmith shop my wife's grandpa and great grandpa salvaged a boatload (literally) of lumber and built the boatsheds out of it.
I still use ice. I fill up a few 2ltr bottles with water and then leave them outside to freeze. Usually they'll supercool so when you pick them up they're still liquid until you give them a smack and watch the wave of ice crystallization move through the bottle. Then they sit in my fridge for a few days before going back out to freeze again. I don't think I'm saving any tremendous amount of power, but it's very little effort to be more sustainable and that electricity can light my house thanks to modern LEDs.
Small correction, Joe. The Knocker-Upper job still exists. Only I don't use a pea shooter, I've moved up to .50 BMG so I can do my route from home. As you can imagine, business has been rather slow lately..
I'm also still doing that job. I moved up from pea shooter to 138 db of Ramstein everymorning at about 5 am... The neibours are never late for work anymore.
This comment reminded me of an incident that I am far too proud to have been peripherally involved in. An asshole neighbor was put in place, no sound ordinances where violated, and reverie was involved. And a 1/2 scale cannon. Good times....
@@dunmermage You must live in New Jersey. The rest of the country has self service gas stations. Evidently, New Jersey doesn't trust it's citizens with guns or gas.
My family on my moms side ran an ice cutting business back in the day, they owned huge amounts of land with lakes that they cut ice from in the winter.
Same with truck drivers. I have a friend from high school who became a truck driver, and when we asked him why he wanted to do it he said it was because he wanted the ability to say to his grandchildren that he was one of the last truckers.
My great Aunt was a switchboard operator for BellSouth. She was management by the time she retired. It must have been so neat to actually be there for all the changes in technology. She passed away in 2010 at age 83 and she never stopped being fascinated by the world around her.
Think you hit it on the head a few videos ago....maybe 50 years from now people will look back and think we were crazy by not having cars drive on their own. Also, today, new drivers do not know the stuggle of pulling over and following road maps to get to your destination and folding those bad boys up again.
God help us all of somebody didn't fold dad's map up right. No bs in the late 80s my brother borrowed the car to goto a merchant marine open house thing. Except henwent to visit his gf at college. 2 things my brother didn't know. 1. She found a bf in every state she visited :( 2. You forget your aliby and cover-up when your figure out your h.s. sweetie is stupting someone else. Lucky for him someone tipped off my dad what happened and he was more disappointed at Jessica then my brother. Man, I never thought I would miss those days. My brother passed on since. Appreciate your teens and 20s, its cleche but true that you'll most likely miss that time the most.
People are worried because so many jobs will disappear in the next 30-50 years as AI becomes more sophisticated no career path will be is safe. Not even programing or computer repair will be safe. Society will have to fundamentally change at some point.
In the 50s my family lived near a factory that sounded a siren early in the morning to wake up the workers - who lived where they could hear the siren and walk to work.
I am an older person now and I did three of these jobs in my life time; Pinsetter, Elevator Operator and Switch Board Operator. Man, I sure do miss the Good Old Days.
"Dialing in" is more of a honing concept used to input precise, position coordinates. In the case of telephones, a specific telephone number sequence. But the term "dial" became a noun as well when we started using circular controls to access points on a numerical or band width scale. ie a sun dial (older ref.), a radio dial, the dials used to affect trajectory, television dials. It was originally used only as a verb until these things came into public use. We like our Dials, they are everywhere still today!
Fun fact, ice was also created by filling shallow reflective pools with water. At night the convention process would freeze the water, even when the temperature was above freezing.
Black ice is the bane of drivers in northern climates. Two or three degrees above freezing and there's a film of unseen ice on the roads by late evening. Horrible stuff.
Freezing happens because of radiation, not convection. At night, the radiation temperature of the clear sky can be up to -60 in perfect conditions. This means any upward facing surface gets colder then the ambient air temperature around it. Increased convection actually reduces this effect, warming it back up closer to air temperature. As a general rule, a clear sky makes the roads about 7° colder, so beware of any air temperature below 7°. Clouds absorb this effect.
Link boys, I literally can picture Link showing up in his green tunic to help me navigate through the forest. I hope he's upgraded to a tempered sword.
I worked in a building in the mid 80's that still had a manual elevator with an operator during the open hours. When I worked outside of those hours I had to operate the elevator myself. It definitely look some finesse to get it lined up just right.
When my grandma was a kid in France (in the late 40s), there was a milk guy who would deliver milk in glass bottles. You would put the empty bottles outside your house with coins in them and the guy would collect them early in the morning and change them with full bottles. There were also guys going from villages to villages to sharpen your tools. She said they used to walk around and they had a small trailer pulled by a German shepherd with sharpening tools inside. This is just hilarious!
Milk men were still a thing all over Britain right up until the mid 2000’s. Nowadays the dairy will go around in a van and a few young lads will jump out and deliver the milk. Is it really that archaic elsewhere in the world?
Those tool sharpening guys were still a thing in Germany a couple of years ago - about twice a year I had a little flyer of one of those traveling sharpeners among my snail mail spam. I guess he went out of business because I preferred to go to the local knife shop who has better quality equipment.
I worked as a "pinsetter" in the early 60's although the title in for the job was "pin monkey" back then. It was probably the last of the non-automated bowling alleys in NYC. It was a combination bowling alley pool hall and bar. It didn't really require any great skill, you just had to be fast and small so you could get out of the way. Of course it was illegal for a kid to be doing it since the law back then forbade minors being in pool halls or bars without being accompanied by an adult. I think I lasted three weeks until my parents found out.
I’m in the printing trade and so was my father and grandfather and it’s pretty amazing and scary how many jobs have disappeared from that industry in as little as 40 years
Here in Glasgow, Scotland there's still some guys who shout aloud to sell newspapers on the street, there's not many now, I feel that will be something of the past, as well as the newspaper industry as a whole.
The Capacitor when I first moved to Leeds in ‘96 they had Yorkshire post sellers on every street corner shouting “Eeeevnin post”. They’re nowhere to be seen now. Shame really. Rag and Bone men were also fairly common still back then, of course they would shout “Any old iron!?” While driving past with their horse and wagon. I thought it was weird then but when you (very rarely) see it now it’s truly bizarre- straight out of an episode of steptoe and son!
My father grew up in Newcastle (northern England) and he told me about knockers. His father was a coal trimmer for the local shipyard. As I recall it was the shipyard who paid for the service.
Joe’s Grandpa was once a pinsetter, and my Great-Grandpa was an Ice Cutter. The IceHouse was conveniently located near the train depot, and the clear lake was about a half-mile down the main road. Not a rich man, but supported the family in the early 1900’s this way in the winter. Summers were filled with carpentry, which ensured a relationship with the local sawmill for the much needed sawdust to insulate the ice throughout the summer and fall, in central Wisconsin. Some of the ice saws and other tools are now on display as part of a mural in this small town of ~300 residents.
First thing I thought of was the telephone switchboard operators. I work for the phone company and we use far less people than we did 20 years ago. I think with utilities like phone, power, gas, water, etc what if one day we don’t need people to place the lines, pipes, etc. What if we come up with more efficient ways. We are already converting most copper transmission to fiber optics and perhaps one day it won’t even be that. I do wish there were no overhead or buried cables everywhere. I thought the same thing about the knocker-ups. Both the pregnancy joke and then the window repair. As far as the ice - I worked a little in an ice house at Six Flags. They use to make their own ice and deliver it to the food and drink stands. We literally would have to shovel ice. Looking back on it, it wasn’t very sanitary. I’m glad they don’t that anymore
In China they have giant machines like robotic-trucks that lay chunks of road and railtrack in 20 metre long pre-made segments, it's allowed them to construct tens of thousands of miles of new infrastructure in just a decade.
Mobile networks are gaining more and more bandwidth every few years, meaning that maybe one day we won't need cables to transport information. Also, there are methods of wirelessly transmitting power, but I don't know much about that or how that can advance. I imagine though that in 100 years we may not use any cables at all. Unless it turns out that fibre optics are still more efficient across continents etc
Gramma told a story about riding out with her dad to watch men cut ice from a lake and load them on horse-drawn sleighs. Around the time I heard this, I also had just found out she was a feisty redhead, so I picture it as a scene from Anne of Green Gables.
@Davvy Jannes Plugging it in??? Don't kid me, mister. Whoever heard of such preposterous thing? If I had a car, and god forbid why should I even own one?, I would never interfere with the contactless charging, or the ability for the car to go charge up itself when needed. Silly concept that.
I was a pin setter when I was around 12 to 14! It was awesome! The second pic you had up was what it was like for me. I had a specific team I set for (I don't remember their name), and they paid me $20 plus tips to set once a week, twice a week during the summers a few times and on a couple of special occasions. I had a lot of fun with the other kids. I need to see if it's still there, I still live nearby! I'm 37 for reference.
Yeah I only know of cabooses from one that sits outside the train station where I live but they used to be on every freight train even after my parents were born
When I was little about 5 or 6 yrs old, my cousin and I would always hang out and play on the RR tracts and wait for the train , just to wave to the caboose guy. Yes, 55 years ago parents let their kids play on RR tracts!
I remember elevator operators in every department store, which are also disappearing. And department store window displays, especially downtown near Christmas.
I grew up in northern New England, and talked to a lot of people over the years about the ice harvest and 1) if you go around to country diners and inns the walls are often decorated with the saws and picks used for ice and you can still occasionally find a guy old enough ho participated 2) it was such a big deal that according to multiple folks the ships would leave the maine coast with ice and come back via Jamaica full with stuff as random as diamond ore and conch shells. The conch were button ore, and there are still a few factories standing that did nothing but drill buttons out of seashells. Seashell button driller, job #7. You should do one on ice though, and maybe get hold of a real icebox. They're usually beautiful and way more effective than you'd think if used them right.
Very entertaining! Utility meter readers/pretty much gone. It seems that anything analog is being replaced by digital. Examples: volt/ohm meters, air pressure gauges, calipers. All gauges need a calibration periodically. Most people don't realize this, and assume that when a number is displayed, THAT's IT! There was a saying I heard in college: it's better to be approximately correct then precisely wrong. Somethings just stick with with me. Have a good new year!
Analogue gauges are and will be important safety devices. CE norms state that every halfconducter must be assumed to fail in some point and safe operation is to be preserved electromechanically. As long as safety is a thing, analogue gauges, mechanical switches and similar stuff will always be a thing. And calibration is also a thing we rely on in every case.
@@OneTrueScotsman Even though the building I live in was built in 2017, these guys have to show up to read the electricity meter, but they only have to show up every 5 years, the other years they send a letter and let me fill in the reading.
My Grandfather starting before WWI followed by my uncles and my dad worked the ice through the '30s and '40s until they were old enough to drop out of school and join the Army for WWII.
@@joescott Conversely, you could do a video on jobs that people don't realize still exist (like cowboys ... I'm always surprised people think cowboys don't still exist). Lol :)
@@joescott Yes for some weird reason this was the most interesting episode since I started watching you ( don't ask how long because I can't remember )
I still arrange my long-distance road trips by the light of the full moon during wintertime. I live in Canada and our winter nights can be quite long, and driving on dark remote roads can be dangerous at night, especially with low visibility. When the full moon is out and the light reflects on the white snow, it gets really bright!
There's actually a music venue in Phoenix Arizona called "The Icehouse" because back in the day it was an ice house. In a city that sees multiple 110f+ days during the summer, with 115f to 120f not being out of the question. That's 45c with 48c to 50c on the most brutal days, for our metric friends 😎
I was recently in Myanmar and actually saw ice cutters going around to self built communities to sell them blocks of ice! It was neat to see a part of life that seems so foreign in the US
I have been BINGE watching your videos lately, and I'm OBSESSED! Your videos are great, and the way you talk about these subjects always lures me into them more! Love, love, love it! Definitely my favourite youtube channel :D
I guess many industries won't exist for much time anymore, because of 3d printers. Like... Why would you buy a mug if you could print one the way you like it, maybe with some design that isn't even sold today?
I think you're right... personal 3D printers probably will upset a lot of global industries one day, but I think it might take longer than we all thought. I'm a huge tech nerd, & even I don't really want a 3D printer as they exist now... I'm not looking to print up plastic trinkets. Much more useful would be a general purpose printer -- something that could print in a wide variety of materials, equally suited to printing up a T-shirt or a pizza as it is to printing up a mug or a plate. Imagine a 3d printer that could print up electrical things like a working desk lamp, for instance. Something like that would be a true revolution in home 3D printing. As it currently stands, though, 3D printing is already making *huge* waves in industrial manufacturing, bringing down costs & making available more efficient designs left, right & center. So that's cool.
Given that 3D printers for now work with plastic I certainly wouldn't use that for a mug, we get enough microplastics in our systems already. Having 3D printed ceramics is a whole new level of difficulty so mug creators probably still have some good years left. And if you want a custom one, you can already order one with your own creatives even if you won't be able to change the mug model itself.
"I wish I had a phone, I wish I had a home, to have one in, if I did have one on"....actual lyric from a song circa 1997, which this video made me think of
In Ramadan (a month in lunar hijri calendar aka islamic calendar) muslims fast. When someone fasts he or she shouldn’t eat or drink from dawn to dusk. Back in old days there were some people who woke up others before dawn to prepare for fasting. In some villages in Iran they still do this as a tradition. Thank you Joe for another great video.
That's cool. So maybe you've heard this question before. I've never heard an answer. In placed like Alaska (where I live) do you follow the dawn to dusk routine or do you use a clock set to another countries time zone? If so, where?
"You've got to stop selling these for a dollar a bag, WE LOST THREE MORE MEN ON THIS EXPEDITION!" "If you can find a better way to find ice I'd like to hear it!" *grumble grumble*
My Dad grew up in (bfe) Nevada (born in 1934) and they stored their perishables in a "Spring House" that had a cold spring bubbling up through the ground. My Mom (born in 1940) remembers chasing the ice wagon to eat chunks of ice off the Giant Block that was hauled on the back of the truck. There was also a milk truck that delivered All your dairy. They would take your clean wash bottles (from cream and milk) off the front porch and take them to refill them. Amazing perspectives Joe. I hadn't thought about that!
As long as their are repressive income based taxes, there will be a market for "creative" accountants... :) Hopefully, we will switch to a strictly consumption based tax system and all the people at the IRS will need to go find *honest* jobs.
My great grandfather delivered ice on the south side of Chicago back in the 20’s and 30’s. We still have a picture of him on his ice wagon with his son, my great uncle, sitting next to him. He supported a family of 10 with the money he made delivering ice to homes and restaurants.
"Knocker-ups" in a way still exist in the military. In a company or on board a ship there's a wake-up sheet where you write down your name, location, time you want to be woken up and why (for example going on watch). The on duty serviceman will come by and wake you at the prescribed time making sure you sit up and sign his log sheet to show he woke you up. Watches and phones are fine but they can occasionally fail. If you signed the log and fall back asleep you're in trouble. An unsigned log sheet and it's the other guys problem.
0:34 *"A knocker up is not somebody that you pay to get someone pregnant ..."* But that begs the question: is there _actually_ a job where you pay someone to get someone pregnant? And if so what's it called?
When I was a kid I read an article that on some island there's a job to de-virginise new wives, so that the husband doesn't have to deal with it himself. I don't remember exact details at this point, but it stuck in my mind as something shocking. 😁
I also took bowling for gym in the late 60's. It was in New Hampshire so we had our choice of ten pins or Candle Pins. The pinsetting was automated (although you had to step on something to clear the candle pins) but the scoring was manual. I still think bowling is the greatest sport. I mean name another sport where you can wash down nachos with beer while waiting for your turn.
My mom was a telephone operator who did night shifts in 1981 for department of telecommunications india (now BSNL India’s government operated but private sector telecommunications company). She moved to a desk job role in early 90s. I played with her headsets as a kid and pretended to be her.
My grandmother was a telephone switchboard operator at the US Capitol in the early 1950s to the 1960s. She really enjoyed the work environment. And yes, operators would sometimes listen in on the exchange. This is why in older books and movies, characters will say, "Let's not discuss this over the phone." I remember that we still had a "party line" in the 1970s. Occasionally, you'd pick up the phone to make a call and someone else would be talking on the line. During my 18-year old son's lifetime, there were still elevator operators in some of the elevators in the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC.
One of my favorites I learned on TED is the US Whaling Industry. Before oil was discovered in Texas in 1901, the largest source of lamp oil was whales. So future whale populations were saved by...entrepreneurs and evolving technology. But we didn't make laws to save the displaced sailors then, so I take issue with doing it now.
@@michab.r.1854 I'm referring to making laws that try to artificially impede or prevent technology or progress. If your job is George Jettson and you push buttons every day with no thought or engagement into what your making, that's a job that's waiting to get replaced by an engineering solution. I think the same with solar. If I produce my electricity over buying coal, why would I want to protect that industry?
I'm 36 now but when I was a teen, I worked as a 'Sticker', putting the pins back up for 'Skittles' games in the pub, the precursor to bowling. Was very similar to what you showed the kids doing there, we would have to roll the balls back down a side gulley, reset the pins and hide as best you could in the booth, because the ball and the pins are pretty heavy and fly pretty hard. Some pubs still have Skittles alleys too, so it still exists as a job.
That brought back memories. I used to be a pinboy when I was in Junior High. Hard work - you had to be fast and agile - sometimes a pin would come whizzing past your head. One advantage that we had over pin setting machines is that multiple types of pins could be bowled in the alley. I was in New England, and my local alley had candle pins, ten pins, duck pins and Baltimore ducks (also called "rubber ducks"). I really don't miss that work.
The Fine Arts Building in Chicago actually still has trained Elevator Operators that work the super old elevators there. It was really cool to experience.
oh yeah! LOVE that building, such a timeless classic. The experience of riding in an 'operated' elevator definately has an air of nostalgia about it. Manually opening & closing the doors, operating the 'throttle' is definately skilled labour...being able to stop precisely in line with the floor, it often takes a few extra nudges on the throttle to get it just right. Also-the building that my company recently moved into has 1 elevator (out of a bank of six) that has an operator, an old Polish guy. Apparently it's a unionized job and he's making somewhere in the neighborhood of $100/hr! I'm pretty sure though that when he retires he'll be the last.
Very well-insulated with sawdust. My family got our own ice in the cellar there was an extra deep part that would be filled up with ice and sawdust about 15 ft by 15 ft by 10ft I believe.
My mother used to be a switchboard operator, and she's only 62 - she was kind of offended when we were in a history museum and there was a switchboard just like she used to use, haha
My mother was also a switchboard operator. Which history museum was this?
My great aunt too, she said they would listen to the conversations, but she would tune out cause they were really boring
I worked a switchboard (badly) in the 60s when I had a summer job as a hotel receptionist. And I'm with T's mother too - perfectly normal, everyday stuff classed as antiques? C'mon!
I'm 58 and the telephone equipment I started out as an apprentice on in 1981 Strowger is also in a Museum :-) I also have one of those first mobile phones I recovered from a skip back in 92 is now a collectors piece. I think programming the video recorder was harder than my job now as a cyber consultant.
@@The_True_one
Downtown L.A. not mom, my sister!
the question is: who woke up the knocker upper?
Ori Shahar another knocker upper
Tiqonn OW
then who woke up that one?
Ori Shahar person who didn’t sleep
There mom. "Wake up you Id...t go and crack some widow glass."
who knocked up the knocker upper.
I wonder if “big ice” campaigned against refrigerators.
Cool though
"Big ice" was the first to buy refrigeration units. They were big complex machines only economical for large operations. Many people still had ice boxes and ice delivery for decades after that.
I forget all the details, but the railroad created the ice industry. Ships carried it too, but it was the railroads that allowed ice to get to every small town and whistle stop in the US. They built huge warehouses that were double walled, and filled with sawdust and they stacked it full of ice from the Great Lakes. Double walled train cars did the same, and they put blocks of ice in train cars of perishable items. Then they started to carry train cars of ice to sell the ice. But, then a southerner invented refrigeration. And ice plants popped up in every small town. These ice plants still loaded train cars, but they also sold ice locally, and the ice from the Great Lakes was suddenly worthless. Ice could be made all year round and they didn’t suffer such great losses during the summer. Originally they had to cut about 4 times as much ice as they sold, so it would last all Summer. It was probably the late 50’s or early 60’s before they stopped selling ice door to door, and people bought refrigerator freezers for their homes, in numbers that eliminated the need for door to door ice. I recall the local ice plant in the town I live in was operating after I was married in the early 80’s, they made the ice sold at stores or you could go buy large blocks of it at the plant. Now, I think the bags of ice we see at local stores are made by a machine, that makes those round ice pieces we now see, no large plant is needed. And refrigerated train cars and trucks took all their business away. My father worked in an ice plant when he was younger, and it’s fascinating how it worked, a large pool of salt water was chilled to 28 degrees in a roof top evaporator, and metal tubs of fresh water were lowered into it, an overhead hoist lifted them out after a day and 300 pound blocks were made.
@@alphagt62 a bit old, but thought I'd say thanks for that comment, some interesting points I hadn't thought about or looked into.
otakuman706 thanks! I think I saw a TV special about it on PBS, that’s where I learned all those details.
In college I worked at a video store, then later in a photo lab developing film. Now I'm a newspaper editor. So, yeah. I'm just going to tell my grandkids I was a pirate and a cowboy. It'll be easier than trying to explain to them that photos used to come on strips of chemically-treated celluloid, Netflix was a building with VHS cassettes in it and we printed out Google News on paper and delivered it to people's houses each morning.
I don't think future generation are somehow braindead about older technologies. Like we know how a telegraph works also we totally get technologies from the 1900s even 1800s. Your kids and grandkids will surely understand the technology we have today.
@@RezwanNavide I know, I was just making a joke at my own expense. Apparently I like careers in fields which are on the cusp of becoming obsolete.
@@calamusgladiofortior2814 yar MATEY why don't you swab my poop deck=). BUT yeah im a truck driver right now and another 6 or 7 years when robo trucks are the thing ill be out of the job as well=(
Jeremiah Douglas Yeah, I read a report this week saying up to 25% of jobs in the U.S. are vulnerable to being replaced by automation of various sorts with current or emerging technology. I guess I might not be the only one taking up the pirate life. Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum... ;)
Have you considered getting into shipping freight? As youre collecting soon-to-be dead careers apparently
"Imagine getting home from a pub in pitch black because there are no streetlights" yeah, I've been to Scotland
Scotland must have changed quite a lot recently then. I never heard of anyone in Scotland actually going home from a pub.
@@KaeYoss When I was a student in Scotland the pubs closed at 2230 (instead of 2300 so a lot of English students got caught out by the closing time).
I'm from Scotland, it's pretty crap, so I moved to Bangkok. It gets dark at 18h30 every day, most of the side streets have very few lights and a lot of them don't have pavements. Oddly enough they call the place 'The city of Light'.
I’m Scottish 🥺 do other places have more light?
@@emmaharkins everywhere else has more light than you
My grandmother was a phone operator, she is still alive at 92 yrs
God bless her.
Nice!
That is epic.
My great grandma was a dispatcher for CHP for 45+ years. She retired and has her name on a gold placer under her picture from youth. I think it's so cool.
The plugs used for switchboards gave us the guitar jack and by evolving smaller, the earphone jack.
It's also why the individual wires on an ethernet connection are designated "Tx" and "Rx". Alot of people now believe that it stands for "Transmit" and "Recieve", but it dosen't and never really did. The "T" stands for the contact at the "Tip" of the jack. The "R" stands for the "Ring" contact near the base of the jack. And the "x" is a variable place holder for the number of the jack. So jack #1 on a switchboard would have two wires designated "T1" and "R1" connected to it.
And now we have Bluetooth.
Yielded many early plugs. We still use a similar version on the spark plug cables used in combustion vehicles.
@@royponpon1755 It would be more correct to say that this 'may' be where the Tx/Rx terminology originated, but this isn't what it means. Tx == transmit, Rx == receive, in electrical engineering anyway (which is where the ethernet discipline sits). You're right to say that, with jack plugs (the jack is the female by the way, the plug is the male) at least, Tx means Tip.x and Rx means Ring.x, but that doesn't translate to electrical engineering 'just' because they use the same symbol.
Adrian, that's why their still called phone plugs/jacks to this day.
When I was a boy I wanted to be an elevator operator. The uniform was so smart, and it seemed the height of glamour to ride up and down in a department store all day.
My grandmother actually experienced the ice cutters era, she said that she remembers her father bringing home big ice cubes for them to use home. Pretty cool that she was able to experience it
All in all it wasnt that long ago, if he was born before the 1940s or on a poorer country than the united states or England she most likely experienced it, i still remember that lovecraft made a book about this terrible and terrifying new invention called air conditioner
@@carso1500 Yeah we live in a caribbean island and her father owned a shop so she was able to see it happen often.
@@carso1500 I remember a Three Stooges short where they were ice delivery guys and they had to take a big block of ice up a super steep set of stairs. Hilarity ensued. That was made in the 1930's, so not even a century ago.
@@HarryBuddhaPalm Yeah in 50 years people will question when watching a movie from today why there are some guys without arms and legs why not just get some cybernetic prosthetics? or why is everyone driving their cars did they not had self driving cars on the early 2000s? Just like how we now look weird at 2005 movies because of the lack of smarthphones and the not total and absolute prevalece of the internet we have now a days
my grandmother grew up in Erie Pennsylvania where they had a ice farm. They would cut up the ice fill a barn with ice and hay. She told me they use to sneak into the ice barn all the time.
So a child would escort an adult home with a torch, then he'd extinguish the torch and walk back alone in the dark. 🤦
After your tenth kid (no condoms) kids were kind of disposable, kids ran the streets, if they did not come home, there was another kid already on it way out the baby canal. just the way it was.
@@solardale715 , of course 6 of your first 8 died before they turned 4, so I guess you got used to them being disposable. Similar tradition from back in the day: You have a son. You name him John. John dies within the first few months. You have another son. You name him John. John dies a couple years later. You have a son. You name him John. He lives long enough for you to have another son. You name him Jim.
When they weren't doing that, they were setting off explosives in coal mines.
Humanity has the maternal instinct of a... a... welp, not much, literally any animal I'm thinking of is more protective.
I love this comment!
A more recently disappeared job is typesetters. In fact there's a whole lineup of jobs related to commercial printing that have gone - typesetters, paste-up artists, color separators, negative strippers, platemakers, etc. In the days before offset printing took over, typesetters worked on giant hot type machines that cast molten metal into lines of typography. And before that, typesetters would assemble lines of type by plucking metal slugs out of bins and assembling them in a composing stick. In fact there are still artisanal printers who do this. But once upon a time, this was how all type got done. It may sound laborious (and it was), but it was still much faster than copying books by hand.
News papers will soon be gone!
My first job in printing I did negative stripping and plate making. My Dad was a pin setter in high school.
My dad gets super tense if someone keeps the refrigerator door open for 5 seconds, I can imagine him freaking out guarding those ice boxes
people use to scan your groceries and put in a bag for you
At least the bagger was never a thing i germany as far as i know. I always thought it was just an american thing.
And before scanners were invented there were price stickers on each item and the cashier would key in the price. Then the cashier made change WITHOUT a calculator. The bagger also helped you load your car.
I asked for a raise at WalMart last time I was in there scanning my own shit. I refuse to shop there and when I do, I got to a warm body behind the till, that way I have human proof I paid for my purchase when they try to accost me when I leave.
Although the company’s will probably keep it around a bit longer because people could steal things a bit easier, and some people like talking to the cashiers and baggers, I am a bagger myself and many people have short conversations with us and like to discuss certain things going on, I enjoy that and they do to, obviously it’s going to be taken out eventually but it’ll be around longer than say a trucker or something like that, but yea you’re right
@@humorouspickle8827 you do know how essential truck drivers are ?
"I can remember when it was the law that you had to keep your hands on the steering wheel in your automated car because people didn't trust computers to drive..."
Response: "What's a steering wheel?"
@@ezicarus8216 What are cars?
What are computers? We are one. Resistance is futile.
lol exactly
Light For Japan Productions I saw somewhere a woman was talking about the moment she realized she was now old was when she told her kid to hang up the phone. The kid turned to her and asked why do y'all say that...she realized the kids now have never had to hang up a phone and the phrase was outdated we are old Hahahah
When I was very young (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) my father's company had a switchboard. I was so impressed when I saw it that I made one out of two shoe boxes and pencils tied on twine. Ah yes, the good old days.
I teach computer design among other things, and when I tell my students to save their work by pushing the button with the floppy disk on it, 70 to 80% have no idea what I'm talking about...
floppy disk drives when floppy really ment FLOPPY had to have a folder just to keep them in so thay WOULD not flop around
I told what the save icon actually is to my friend and he didn’t even know what a floppy disk was.
He'll I'm 16 and I know what a floppy disk is I'll probably chalk that up to my interest in old technology though
My experience goes back even a bit further. When I first started with computers, they were activated by either punch cards or perforated tape on big reels.
Wow haha!
I remember when I was a little girl in Glasgow, Scotland watching the gas lighters light the street lamps.
There was a time when several houses shared the same phone number. It was called a party line. You could listen in on other peoples conversations and if you picked up the phone and someone was on the line, you’d have to wait your turn.
Also, if you wanted to make a long-distance phone call or trunk call, you'd have to ask your local telephone operator to make the call to the call recipient's local switchboard, where their operator would then call that line and see if the person were available, then call back your operator to connect you. Your operator would then call you and connect the two of you together. This is why long-distance calls were so expensive, because they were so labor-intensive. I can personally remember long-distance calls from phone booths where the operator would tell you how much change to put into the phone for a very short call duration. If you ran out of time, the operator would cut in and tell you to deposit more change. If you listen to Jim Croce's "Operator" you get the idea of what really happened.
I think grocery store cashiers. We already have self check out lanes, I think in the future all the lanes will be automatic.
If you get rid of those fucking weight scale things. I always need a cashier to reset that because something is going wrong with it.
It will come sooner then you think, just RFID tag(smaller then a grain of rice) every product. Then people just push their kart thru a machine which scans everything as it goes thru and gives you the total. Once walmart thinks it will save them money in the states, they will implement it and it will force everyone else to do it, if they want to try to stay competitive.
www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1146015
Along with the people who stock the shelves. Someday you'll walk into a store and there will be maybe 1 or 2 actual human beings
@@twn5858 The machine could just weight what you took from the stands.
@@paris466 It might interest you to know, SparksFly, that I have a little bit of insight to your comment as I was working at a big retail store just a month ago. Large-scale automation is certainly in the works. The company that I worked for was already showing off the robots that they had which could scan the shelves, determine picks, check top-stock, & identify plugged products completely autonomously. Furthermore, they had robots that could unload trucks without any human intervention. These were both being tested in stores somewhere in the US. In fact, during the time that I worked at that store, they tested out a "scan & go" system, in which the customer would carry around a scanner while shopping, scan their object, & then simply pay their money & leave, spending almost no time at the already automated check out counter (the problem with that is the store has a very outdated client tracking infrastructure, so they couldn't figure out how to stop people from stealing without hiring more people).
More to the point, the system that they're trying to push the hardest is an Online Grocery Pickup system, in which the customer places an order online, an employee goes out into the store & gets everythign for them, then they drive by & pick everything up without ever entering the store at all. Some stores within that same company, I've been told, have been doing the same but with a delivery system (ripe for automation in the coming years itself) as well.
Basically, the wet dream for these retail companies is to transform their stores into warehouses -- one with no customers & as few workers as possible: stocked & organized by bots with customers picking their stuff up like a drive-through fast food restaurant, or having it delivered. & I'd say that, by in large, they can probably achieve their goal within the next 10-15 years.
One of my older uncles was an "Ice Man" back in the early 1900s. He had a special wagon that was packed with straw and rice hulls, lined with canvas. He would get up before dawn and ride to the ice house, pick up a load ice blocks, and then deliver it to houses on his route.
Future: people used to work at automated food stops. They called it fast food back then
Fast food will still most likely exist, it will all just be automated and you will be able to call for food from your smarth phone that will be delivered vía drone at your door, but i'm certain restaurants will still be a thing since they arent exactly a place to get food easier but they are more places to go out with friends or family
Automats....what is old is new again...
2069:
Me: Back in the days, Joe Scott was a famous RUclipsr!
My grandkid: What the hell is a RUclipsr?
2070:
Me:Back in the days, my friend was a soldier!
My grandchild: What on earth is a soldier? we have drones grandpa, we don't need soldiers.
Yooo if my grandbaby cussed at me, I'd smack their ass into the next century 😂😂
@@lilhoss2627 I hate you
@@iain8829 you dont need to the kid would probably call child services and he would get his ass whooped
Who's Joe?
I'll be able to tell my grandkids that I used to deliver food when I was younger. I wonder which will shock them more: that it took a human to deliver food (or anything) or that they will know someone who knows how to drive all by themselves.
As a 6 year old in the 1960s, I still remember my aunt having and ice-box. She had a regular refrigerator but still had an ice-box in the car-port. I clearly recall my uncle Rick putting several big blocks of ice in it on the day before Thanksgiving to help preserve pies and stuff she had made.
My husband's aunt remembers buying a block of ice in Arizona and putting it in a cage on the outside of the driver's side of their rental car before driving through the Arizona desert.
I am 59 and remember ICE boxes in Canada. My great uncle used one in the country. I was so curious he showed me the storage building not far from the cottage. I think it was in 1965.
They used to pull the iceblocks out of the lake (with what looks like draft horses from the pics I've seen) about 100 feet from my dock up here in central Ontario. When they tore down the ice house and blacksmith shop my wife's grandpa and great grandpa salvaged a boatload (literally) of lumber and built the boatsheds out of it.
I still use ice. I fill up a few 2ltr bottles with water and then leave them outside to freeze. Usually they'll supercool so when you pick them up they're still liquid until you give them a smack and watch the wave of ice crystallization move through the bottle. Then they sit in my fridge for a few days before going back out to freeze again. I don't think I'm saving any tremendous amount of power, but it's very little effort to be more sustainable and that electricity can light my house thanks to modern LEDs.
@Ian M Hello Ian. Canada can have warm / hot summers!
@Ian M Even here in Finland there is 1 special day each year which is not that cold, apparently there is supposed to be 4 seasons of the year? ;)
@@skaltura Back when I was younger, if Summer came on a weekend we'd have a picnic.
Small correction, Joe. The Knocker-Upper job still exists. Only I don't use a pea shooter, I've moved up to .50 BMG so I can do my route from home.
As you can imagine, business has been rather slow lately..
I'll send you a list of names addresses to "knock up"
Switch to drones.... With scary clown faces...
I'm also still doing that job. I moved up from pea shooter to 138 db of Ramstein everymorning at about 5 am... The neibours are never late for work anymore.
@@PCLHH Du...
Du Hast...
Du Hast To
Du Hast To Get Up Now.
This comment reminded me of an incident that I am far too proud to have been peripherally involved in. An asshole neighbor was put in place, no sound ordinances where violated, and reverie was involved. And a 1/2 scale cannon.
Good times....
Who remembers when a gas station attendant would pump your gas for you?
I do, it was several hours ago. I live in New Jersey.
Roland White And clean your windshield 🤗
Uhhh... you mean, like, today? I don't think I *ever* saw a gas station without attendants.
@@dunmermage You must live in New Jersey. The rest of the country has self service gas stations. Evidently, New Jersey doesn't trust it's citizens with guns or gas.
@@BoTwerdowsky When we moved out of state Mom had to learn to pump gas, lol!
My family on my moms side ran an ice cutting business back in the day, they owned huge amounts of land with lakes that they cut ice from in the winter.
Cab/bus drivers for sure will be a thing of the past.
Wiledex there already are auto metro trains
Same with truck drivers. I have a friend from high school who became a truck driver, and when we asked him why he wanted to do it he said it was because he wanted the ability to say to his grandchildren that he was one of the last truckers.
I think every type of chauffeur. Truck drivers, pizza or package delivery people, transport drivers, etc.
When street lights were first put in there were some who hoped the lights would end all street crime ...
I think taxis are going to be around for a while longer.
My great Aunt was a switchboard operator for BellSouth. She was management by the time she retired. It must have been so neat to actually be there for all the changes in technology. She passed away in 2010 at age 83 and she never stopped being fascinated by the world around her.
Think you hit it on the head a few videos ago....maybe 50 years from now people will look back and think we were crazy by not having cars drive on their own. Also, today, new drivers do not know the stuggle of pulling over and following road maps to get to your destination and folding those bad boys up again.
Yeah, I was never good at that.
The only way to fold a map is differently.
God help us all of somebody didn't fold dad's map up right. No bs in the late 80s my brother borrowed the car to goto a merchant marine open house thing. Except henwent to visit his gf at college. 2 things my brother didn't know.
1. She found a bf in every state she visited :(
2. You forget your aliby and cover-up when your figure out your h.s. sweetie is stupting someone else.
Lucky for him someone tipped off my dad what happened and he was more disappointed at Jessica then my brother.
Man, I never thought I would miss those days. My brother passed on since. Appreciate your teens and 20s, its cleche but true that you'll most likely miss that time the most.
imagine having to control your speed with the throttle instead of the push of a button.
People are worried because so many jobs will disappear in the next 30-50 years as AI becomes more sophisticated no career path will be is safe. Not even programing or computer repair will be safe. Society will have to fundamentally change at some point.
In the 50s my family lived near a factory that sounded a siren early in the morning to wake up the workers - who lived where they could hear the siren and walk to work.
My in laws live in Guyana where an alarm currently tells everyone in the sugar cane fields different specific times.
I am an older person now and I did three of these jobs in my life time; Pinsetter, Elevator Operator and Switch Board Operator. Man, I sure do miss the Good Old Days.
Isn't it funny how we still say we "dial" a telephone number, when most phones haven't had dials for decades
A lot of people still refer to video recording of something as taping.
Even audio recordings are still called taped.
"Dialing in" is more of a honing concept used to input precise, position coordinates. In the case of telephones, a specific telephone number sequence. But the term "dial" became a noun as well when we started using circular controls to access points on a numerical or band width scale. ie a sun dial (older ref.), a radio dial, the dials used to affect trajectory, television dials. It was originally used only as a verb until these things came into public use. We like our Dials, they are everywhere still today!
Just like even though we don't use tapes people still say rewind
There's sufficient stuff and stories in phones with actual dials and how to hack them for a new video. Joe?
@@agerven That's more of a ruclips.net/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q ruclips.net/video/rmkbudWbQ9A/видео.html
Fun fact, ice was also created by filling shallow reflective pools with water. At night the convention process would freeze the water, even when the temperature was above freezing.
I award you Coolest Factoid for this video.
Black ice is the bane of drivers in northern climates. Two or three degrees above freezing and there's a film of unseen ice on the roads by late evening. Horrible stuff.
Freezing happens because of radiation, not convection. At night, the radiation temperature of the clear sky can be up to -60 in perfect conditions. This means any upward facing surface gets colder then the ambient air temperature around it. Increased convection actually reduces this effect, warming it back up closer to air temperature.
As a general rule, a clear sky makes the roads about 7° colder, so beware of any air temperature below 7°. Clouds absorb this effect.
@@Serastrasz Are you challenging Mr Ortiz for the Coolest Factoid award? Very well then, swords at the ready gentlemen, and.........begin!
@@Serastrasz Thanks, the OP made no sense to me but your explanation does make sense.
Link boys, I literally can picture Link showing up in his green tunic to help me navigate through the forest. I hope he's upgraded to a tempered sword.
I worked in a building in the mid 80's that still had a manual elevator with an operator during the open hours. When I worked outside of those hours I had to operate the elevator myself. It definitely look some finesse to get it lined up just right.
When my grandma was a kid in France (in the late 40s), there was a milk guy who would deliver milk in glass bottles. You would put the empty bottles outside your house with coins in them and the guy would collect them early in the morning and change them with full bottles. There were also guys going from villages to villages to sharpen your tools. She said they used to walk around and they had a small trailer pulled by a German shepherd with sharpening tools inside. This is just hilarious!
Yup I remember the milkman and the breadman, in the 60's in Canada.
There were used until the 80s or maybe even 90s in Poland, you see them in the 80s movies
Milk men were still a thing all over Britain right up until the mid 2000’s. Nowadays the dairy will go around in a van and a few young lads will jump out and deliver the milk. Is it really that archaic elsewhere in the world?
Those tool sharpening guys were still a thing in Germany a couple of years ago - about twice a year I had a little flyer of one of those traveling sharpeners among my snail mail spam. I guess he went out of business because I preferred to go to the local knife shop who has better quality equipment.
I worked as a "pinsetter" in the early 60's although the title in for the job was "pin monkey" back then. It was probably the last of the non-automated bowling alleys in NYC. It was a combination bowling alley pool hall and bar. It didn't really require any great skill, you just had to be fast and small so you could get out of the way. Of course it was illegal for a kid to be doing it since the law back then forbade minors being in pool halls or bars without being accompanied by an adult. I think I lasted three weeks until my parents found out.
joe watching you has brought me alot of peace these past few months and i just wanted to take a second and say thanks,
I thank you too Joe ☺️
- My dad was a professional knocker-up.
- Did he go around a wake up people?
- What you talking about?
That joke is also sexual.
If only you could make it a profession nfl players would be in the Bloomberg 500
Ahhh... The evolution of the knocker upper
I’m in the printing trade and so was my father and grandfather and it’s pretty amazing and scary how many jobs have disappeared from that industry in as little as 40 years
Here in Glasgow, Scotland there's still some guys who shout aloud to sell newspapers on the street, there's not many now, I feel that will be something of the past, as well as the newspaper industry as a whole.
The Capacitor when I first moved to Leeds in ‘96 they had Yorkshire post sellers on every street corner shouting “Eeeevnin post”. They’re nowhere to be seen now. Shame really. Rag and Bone men were also fairly common still back then, of course they would shout “Any old iron!?” While driving past with their horse and wagon. I thought it was weird then but when you (very rarely) see it now it’s truly bizarre- straight out of an episode of steptoe and son!
My father grew up in Newcastle (northern England) and he told me about knockers. His father was a coal trimmer for the local shipyard. As I recall it was the shipyard who paid for the service.
Joe’s Grandpa was once a pinsetter, and my Great-Grandpa was an Ice Cutter. The IceHouse was conveniently located near the train depot, and the clear lake was about a half-mile down the main road. Not a rich man, but supported the family in the early 1900’s this way in the winter. Summers were filled with carpentry, which ensured a relationship with the local sawmill for the much needed sawdust to insulate the ice throughout the summer and fall, in central Wisconsin.
Some of the ice saws and other tools are now on display as part of a mural in this small town of ~300 residents.
First thing I thought of was the telephone switchboard operators. I work for the phone company and we use far less people than we did 20 years ago. I think with utilities like phone, power, gas, water, etc what if one day we don’t need people to place the lines, pipes, etc. What if we come up with more efficient ways. We are already converting most copper transmission to fiber optics and perhaps one day it won’t even be that. I do wish there were no overhead or buried cables everywhere.
I thought the same thing about the knocker-ups. Both the pregnancy joke and then the window repair. As far as the ice - I worked a little in an ice house at Six Flags. They use to make their own ice and deliver it to the food and drink stands. We literally would have to shovel ice. Looking back on it, it wasn’t very sanitary. I’m glad they don’t that anymore
In China they have giant machines like robotic-trucks that lay chunks of road and railtrack in 20 metre long pre-made segments, it's allowed them to construct tens of thousands of miles of new infrastructure in just a decade.
Mobile networks are gaining more and more bandwidth every few years, meaning that maybe one day we won't need cables to transport information. Also, there are methods of wirelessly transmitting power, but I don't know much about that or how that can advance. I imagine though that in 100 years we may not use any cables at all. Unless it turns out that fibre optics are still more efficient across continents etc
@CrazyAssDrumma I’m pretty sure the wireless power thing has something to do with electro magnetic waves?
I was wondering how safe the ice from the rivers and likes was to consume. Probably mostly used to cool iceboxes, not for consumption though.
@@joescott rivers and likes? lol
Gramma told a story about riding out with her dad to watch men cut ice from a lake and load them on horse-drawn sleighs. Around the time I heard this, I also had just found out she was a feisty redhead, so I picture it as a scene from Anne of Green Gables.
I was thinking of frozen, b/c they did that in that beginning
So your grandma was Anna from Frozen?
I'd love to see the episode for ice, i actually had a conversation with my 89 year old grandmother about it once. Love to know the full story
We have an elevator operator here. Last man standing. He’s been doing it for 50 years.
It's a good business if you get in on the ground floor.
@@wickedcoolname399 it has its ups and downs I imagine....
@@boxedfender4810 really elevating story
Jim McCracken in a small town in southern Oregon.
Has he gone up or down in the world?
putting Fuel in your car will be hilarious in the Future
@Davvy Jannes Plugging it in??? Don't kid me, mister. Whoever heard of such preposterous thing? If I had a car, and god forbid why should I even own one?, I would never interfere with the contactless charging, or the ability for the car to go charge up itself when needed. Silly concept that.
Style and Statements too sadly:/
Beyond hilarious...probably considered pretty disgusting as well.
@Davvy Jannes dude I think Jens was being sarcastic...
@xxxJesus666xxx the future will be all electric and autonomous, so no more "putting fuel."
I was a pin setter when I was around 12 to 14! It was awesome! The second pic you had up was what it was like for me. I had a specific team I set for (I don't remember their name), and they paid me $20 plus tips to set once a week, twice a week during the summers a few times and on a couple of special occasions. I had a lot of fun with the other kids. I need to see if it's still there, I still live nearby! I'm 37 for reference.
"He doesn't know how to use the 3 seashells."
I cant believe Joe did not catch that and give you a heart,lol
@@robertwoko4395 I'm just glad anybody noticed it and understood.
I still think it was funny how the Schwarzenegger was a past president who was first governor of California.
😅
Now that's funny as I myself sit on the toilet lol
The caboose train guy is gone now...... I miss the caboose guy waving from the train. He was replaced by a computer
Brakeman.
But, on trains where security is required, a caboose is still used.
Yeah I only know of cabooses from one that sits outside the train station where I live but they used to be on every freight train even after my parents were born
When I was little about 5 or 6 yrs old, my cousin and I would always hang out and play on the RR tracts and wait for the train , just to wave to the caboose guy. Yes, 55 years ago parents let their kids play on RR tracts!
@@whatwhat8524 Yes, much safer than parents today who let their kids "play with" drugs!
I remember elevator operators in every department store, which are also disappearing. And department store window displays, especially downtown near Christmas.
As a machinist I have seen crazy automation that has taken the entire departments from 20 people to 1 using robotic arms to load machines
I grew up in northern New England, and talked to a lot of people over the years about the ice harvest and 1) if you go around to country diners and inns the walls are often decorated with the saws and picks used for ice and you can still occasionally find a guy old enough ho participated 2) it was such a big deal that according to multiple folks the ships would leave the maine coast with ice and come back via Jamaica full with stuff as random as diamond ore and conch shells. The conch were button ore, and there are still a few factories standing that did nothing but drill buttons out of seashells. Seashell button driller, job #7.
You should do one on ice though, and maybe get hold of a real icebox. They're usually beautiful and way more effective than you'd think if used them right.
Very entertaining! Utility meter readers/pretty much gone. It seems that anything analog is being replaced by digital. Examples: volt/ohm meters, air pressure gauges, calipers. All gauges need a calibration periodically. Most people don't realize this, and assume that when a number is displayed, THAT's IT! There was a saying I heard in college: it's better to be approximately correct then precisely wrong. Somethings just stick with with me. Have a good new year!
Good point!
Analogue gauges are and will be important safety devices. CE norms state that every halfconducter must be assumed to fail in some point and safe operation is to be preserved electromechanically. As long as safety is a thing, analogue gauges, mechanical switches and similar stuff will always be a thing.
And calibration is also a thing we rely on in every case.
@@OneTrueScotsman Even though the building I live in was built in 2017, these guys have to show up to read the electricity meter, but they only have to show up every 5 years, the other years they send a letter and let me fill in the reading.
My Grandfather starting before WWI followed by my uncles and my dad worked the ice through the '30s and '40s until they were old enough to drop out of school and join the Army for WWII.
Hey Joe, can you do other episode like this please.
On jobs that have gone away?
Maybe extremely dangerous jobs that have gone away.
@@joescott Conversely, you could do a video on jobs that people don't realize still exist (like cowboys ... I'm always surprised people think cowboys don't still exist). Lol :)
@@joescott Yes for some weird reason this was the most interesting episode since I started watching you ( don't ask how long because I can't remember )
@@joescott and/or jobs predicted to go away! There must be hundreds!
I still arrange my long-distance road trips by the light of the full moon during wintertime. I live in Canada and our winter nights can be quite long, and driving on dark remote roads can be dangerous at night, especially with low visibility. When the full moon is out and the light reflects on the white snow, it gets really bright!
Yup, watch out for the moose, eh?
Sounds awesome. I'd love to live there.
There's actually a music venue in Phoenix Arizona called "The Icehouse" because back in the day it was an ice house. In a city that sees multiple 110f+ days during the summer, with 115f to 120f not being out of the question. That's 45c with 48c to 50c on the most brutal days, for our metric friends 😎
It makes me feel good about our heat waves here in Australia 👍
I was recently in Myanmar and actually saw ice cutters going around to self built communities to sell them blocks of ice! It was neat to see a part of life that seems so foreign in the US
I was a switchboard operator in 1973.
@Jim McCracken I turned 23 in Aug of that year.
My father was still a kid in '73
I was hatched in '73.
i misread that as 1793
my grandfather was a yugoslavian soldier in 1973, father was also 14
I was a switchboard operator in 1995 as the military compound I worked in did not allow people to call directly to people within the compound.
I remember when everyone owned ice picks. Ya, I’m old
Margaret, Theophilus OK BOOMER
Woah, that's actually pretty cool. Didn't know that one!
Now the only people that own an ice pic is a mass murderer
Pocket knifes in school. Every boy in Jr High got one at 13. It was a rite of passage.
I have two of them. I have a counter top ice maker and the ice I put into the freezer has to be broken up to use.
This is the first video of Joe's where i already knew over 80% of the content
Yes, I had an uncle who broke his foot in an ice house!!
Who’s joe?
I have been BINGE watching your videos lately, and I'm OBSESSED! Your videos are great, and the way you talk about these subjects always lures me into them more! Love, love, love it! Definitely my favourite youtube channel :D
I guess many industries won't exist for much time anymore, because of 3d printers. Like... Why would you buy a mug if you could print one the way you like it, maybe with some design that isn't even sold today?
Could you 3d print ceramic?
I wouldn't want a plastic mug
I think you're right... personal 3D printers probably will upset a lot of global industries one day, but I think it might take longer than we all thought.
I'm a huge tech nerd, & even I don't really want a 3D printer as they exist now... I'm not looking to print up plastic trinkets. Much more useful would be a general purpose printer -- something that could print in a wide variety of materials, equally suited to printing up a T-shirt or a pizza as it is to printing up a mug or a plate. Imagine a 3d printer that could print up electrical things like a working desk lamp, for instance. Something like that would be a true revolution in home 3D printing.
As it currently stands, though, 3D printing is already making *huge* waves in industrial manufacturing, bringing down costs & making available more efficient designs left, right & center. So that's cool.
Given that 3D printers for now work with plastic I certainly wouldn't use that for a mug, we get enough microplastics in our systems already. Having 3D printed ceramics is a whole new level of difficulty so mug creators probably still have some good years left. And if you want a custom one, you can already order one with your own creatives even if you won't be able to change the mug model itself.
@@NUTTY-nw4ed Not yet. Just plastic. For now.
Guys, I didn't mean today. I meant soon. 3d printing still need to get a lot better. 😊
Taxi and Uber/Lyft drivers are on their way out. Truck drivers too
"I wish I had a phone, I wish I had a home, to have one in, if I did have one on"....actual lyric from a song circa 1997, which this video made me think of
If I had a million bucks, Id still be out robbing armored trucks.
In Ramadan (a month in lunar hijri calendar aka islamic calendar) muslims fast. When someone fasts he or she shouldn’t eat or drink from dawn to dusk. Back in old days there were some people who woke up others before dawn to prepare for fasting. In some villages in Iran they still do this as a tradition.
Thank you Joe for another great video.
In Turkey it's still a thing and they get paid by the neighborhood in Eid.
I remember this when I was leaving with my grandma. They were listening to the rosters as well.
That's cool. So maybe you've heard this question before. I've never heard an answer. In placed like Alaska (where I live) do you follow the dawn to dusk routine or do you use a clock set to another countries time zone? If so, where?
@@grannykiminalaska - I'm no expert, but I think they have to start and end at a specific time of day in places with no daylight.
@@Mosern1977 very interesting
"You've got to stop selling these for a dollar a bag, WE LOST THREE MORE MEN ON THIS EXPEDITION!"
"If you can find a better way to find ice I'd like to hear it!"
*grumble grumble*
My Dad grew up in (bfe) Nevada (born in 1934) and they stored their perishables in a "Spring House" that had a cold spring bubbling up through the ground.
My Mom (born in 1940) remembers chasing the ice wagon to eat chunks of ice off the Giant Block that was hauled on the back of the truck.
There was also a milk truck that delivered All your dairy. They would take your clean wash bottles (from cream and milk) off the front porch and take them to refill them.
Amazing perspectives Joe. I hadn't thought about that!
"They took ourrr jeerbbbss!"
Unfortunately I think my job, Accountancy, will soon be automated and gone. Oh well.
Colm Coakley you didn’t want to do that job anyway, right? Grow vegetables and relax!
As long as their are repressive income based taxes, there will be a market for "creative" accountants... :) Hopefully, we will switch to a strictly consumption based tax system and all the people at the IRS will need to go find *honest* jobs.
As a software developer in fintech and blockchain, I'm sorry, I'm trying not to work too fast.
My great grandfather delivered ice on the south side of Chicago back in the 20’s and 30’s. We still have a picture of him on his ice wagon with his son, my great uncle, sitting next to him. He supported a family of 10 with the money he made delivering ice to homes and restaurants.
Yeeeahh Boiii!!!... Joe Scott drops another awesome video and makes my fugging day for the win..
That's what I do.
How about years from now they think it is funny that we manually drive a car ourselves. LOL. Great video as always Joe!
"Knocker-ups" in a way still exist in the military. In a company or on board a ship there's a wake-up sheet where you write down your name, location, time you want to be woken up and why (for example going on watch). The on duty serviceman will come by and wake you at the prescribed time making sure you sit up and sign his log sheet to show he woke you up. Watches and phones are fine but they can occasionally fail. If you signed the log and fall back asleep you're in trouble. An unsigned log sheet and it's the other guys problem.
0:34 *"A knocker up is not somebody that you pay to get someone pregnant ..."*
But that begs the question: is there _actually_ a job where you pay someone to get someone pregnant? And if so what's it called?
A surrogate doctor? Lol
A wife
Just a joke don’t kill me
When I was a kid I read an article that on some island there's a job to de-virginise new wives, so that the husband doesn't have to deal with it himself.
I don't remember exact details at this point, but it stuck in my mind as something shocking. 😁
It exists called a natural insemination donor.
A stud.
I also took bowling for gym in the late 60's. It was in New Hampshire so we had our choice of ten pins or Candle Pins. The pinsetting was automated (although you had to step on something to clear the candle pins) but the scoring was manual.
I still think bowling is the greatest sport. I mean name another sport where you can wash down nachos with beer while waiting for your turn.
My mom was a telephone operator who did night shifts in 1981 for department of telecommunications india (now BSNL India’s government operated but private sector telecommunications company). She moved to a desk job role in early 90s. I played with her headsets as a kid and pretended to be her.
I want to know how many windows were broken by over-zealous and/or hungover Knocker-ups.
choronos
Over zealous blow hards !
Seriously though.
they compensate damage out their paychecks
around 17 windows
Rather then tapping on glass most people would replace one of them with wood or metal to both give a safer spot to hit and a louder sound.
When I was little I wanted to be a switchboard operator. I was so sad when it stopped being a thing
My grandmother was a telephone switchboard operator at the US Capitol in the early 1950s to the 1960s. She really enjoyed the work environment. And yes, operators would sometimes listen in on the exchange. This is why in older books and movies, characters will say, "Let's not discuss this over the phone." I remember that we still had a "party line" in the 1970s. Occasionally, you'd pick up the phone to make a call and someone else would be talking on the line. During my 18-year old son's lifetime, there were still elevator operators in some of the elevators in the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC.
One of my favorites I learned on TED is the US Whaling Industry.
Before oil was discovered in Texas in 1901, the largest source of lamp oil was whales. So future whale populations were saved by...entrepreneurs and evolving technology. But we didn't make laws to save the displaced sailors then, so I take issue with doing it now.
You take issue with making laws to protect people? Or?
@@michab.r.1854 I'm referring to making laws that try to artificially impede or prevent technology or progress. If your job is George Jettson and you push buttons every day with no thought or engagement into what your making, that's a job that's waiting to get replaced by an engineering solution.
I think the same with solar. If I produce my electricity over buying coal, why would I want to protect that industry?
I was watching movies from the 40’s and I was so confused by the purpose of switch board operators. What a time...
I'm 36 now but when I was a teen, I worked as a 'Sticker', putting the pins back up for 'Skittles' games in the pub, the precursor to bowling. Was very similar to what you showed the kids doing there, we would have to roll the balls back down a side gulley, reset the pins and hide as best you could in the booth, because the ball and the pins are pretty heavy and fly pretty hard.
Some pubs still have Skittles alleys too, so it still exists as a job.
Oh, yeah. I remember. Dial phones, operaters, and party lines
[Looks at thumbnail]
"So, smoking crack used to be a job, huh?
I thought that was the nail of the little finger? (EDIT: nvm, I think that's cocaine. Don't inject marijuanas kids.)
That brought back memories. I used to be a pinboy when I was in Junior High. Hard work - you had to be fast and agile - sometimes a pin would come whizzing past your head. One advantage that we had over pin setting machines is that multiple types of pins could be bowled in the alley. I was in New England, and my local alley had candle pins, ten pins, duck pins and Baltimore ducks (also called "rubber ducks"). I really don't miss that work.
I know where a bowling alley is in Ontario that still requires a pin setter. Each team has one
There used to be people who would say "OK Boomer".
Then they got old.
Ok boomer
Ok boomer
Ok boomer
@They_Call_Me_ Pebbles they call everyone who disagrees with them boomers I got called a boomer and I'm 23 lmao
Boomers are literally specific to a generation of people in a specific era of time. So, this only applies to you.
What a boomer thing to say 🙄
Grocery shopping is a process that's undergoing rapid changes. There will come a day when cashiers are no longer necessary.
The Fine Arts Building in Chicago actually still has trained Elevator Operators that work the super old elevators there. It was really cool to experience.
Yes! Thanks for mentioning that. I was just there this past month.
Are the doors glass clear glass? I miss those.
oh yeah! LOVE that building, such a timeless classic. The experience of riding in an 'operated' elevator definately has an air of nostalgia about it. Manually opening & closing the doors, operating the 'throttle' is definately skilled labour...being able to stop precisely in line with the floor, it often takes a few extra nudges on the throttle to get it just right. Also-the building that my company recently moved into has 1 elevator (out of a bank of six) that has an operator, an old Polish guy. Apparently it's a unionized job and he's making somewhere in the neighborhood of $100/hr! I'm pretty sure though that when he retires he'll be the last.
Damn. I am old enough to remember all those telephones. Even when they were made of wood.. As we lived in a backward rural area.
rationalguy Cool!
Very well-insulated with sawdust. My family got our own ice in the cellar there was an extra deep part that would be filled up with ice and sawdust about 15 ft by 15 ft by 10ft I believe.
Remember when people would study for years, sometimes their entire lives, just to make a painting?
Porn has ruined my mind, when I hear someone say BBC, I no longer think of British broadcasting corporation.
snouty snouterson that’s sick
@@andersoni.7472 someone with papa franku as an avatar calling out perversion. Bwha.
Tsin Lao lol I’m not that fucked up
I don’t get it? What does the BBC have to do with porn?
@@whiterol it's an acronym for a body part of a well endowed black man, Big, Black, .....
Norway was one of the biggest transporter in the world,
The city Kragerø has a museum for that
I actually had an English test where I had to write an essay on the history of ice cutters and refrigeration and it was very interesting