Old things youngins might like to know

[TonyaW]

Obviously, we all survived Lawn Darts.  [emoji23]

Once played lawn darts in the parking lot (yes, a paved lot, no they did not stick) of Milwaukee County Stadium after a Brewers  game on my 18th Birthday. 

Yes we were drunk and legally so there's another thing to add to the list, 18 year old drinking age. 

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[Roll]

I was big into laserdiscs! They were great for anime (not that there was all that much released back then) because they had 2 audio tracks on them, so you could have subs & dubs on one disc.

Speaking of anime, to get our hands on any we had to share vhs tapes. If you were lucky, you'd know someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone else who might have had a series you'd heard about and wanted to see. We'd get an address for this person, send an actual physical snail-mail letter, asking if we could get a copy. Eventually we'd get a 12th-generation copy that's barely watchable (if you squint just right...), but we loved every minute because it was the only way we could see it.

Oh, and when US companies finally started bringing anime over on VHS we'd happily pay $40 for a single episode.

At one point I had this great idea I'd get a laser disc player and buy every single anime released on it. In retrospect, that was surprisingly feasible (maybe not for a 14 year old, but in general) and I have had far more anime vhs and dvds than I would have had even owning every laserdisc.

And VHS anime sharing... oh wow. I remember that the only other person around me that was really into anime aside from me and my friend was the manager at this video store. He used his position to create a nice little stock of anime at the store and ordered a few titles for me that were out early in the rental catalogs they used for stock before the wider releases. A little bit past the vhs trading only days, I had my always up to date Ranma 1/2 collection (of course, OF COURSE, it was Ranma) and I would let him borrow them to copy them, and because I couldn't find anything else to carry them in I took them to him in easter baskets. It was really weird in retrospect and I don't know why that was the only thing I could find. Not grocery bags, not a cardboard box... an easter basket. He had been involved in the VHS trading for years (since he was a 20 something year old anime fan in the early 90s, had to be) and hooked little kid me up with some of them. In that vein, I still remember getting my first little cheaply printed Rightstuf catalog and being amazed at the dozens (... dozens...!) of titles.

[Daisy Jane]

11 pages in less than a day?! Fantastic!

I was born in 81. I remember color tvs being more common than black and white, but there were still plenty of b&w around.
Dial-up internet
Walkman, then discman came before iPods
The Era of Satanic Panic in the 80's
Zubaz
Pogs were insanely popular for a year or two in the mid 90s and then disappeared.
All of the kids I went to school with wanted these shoes, but they were about $150, which would be like $275 today.

[TonyaW]

We used slide rules to calculate the math in physics class.

They are actually pretty fast once you learn to use it.


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My brother (4 years older) was one of the last classes that used slide rules in high school while I was in one of the first classes where calculators got small and cheap enough that we used them.  He used to race me checking (ok doing) my math homework.  He used the slide rule, I used the calculator.  It was a  pretty close race. 

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[steph2.0]

Technically you could dial into a BBS system, which was almost like a forum. There was a modem you could plug your phone headset into and it would connect to a central server. Then you could read and leave messages for other people. I never had that, I did not start getting into this stuff until a few years later on my first PC.

Yes! Acoustic modems! You would dial the BBS (Bulletin Board System) directly - literally dial them, no buttons on phones then - wait for the answer tones, and lay the corded phone handset into cups on the modem that fit it. We could lift the handset out and whistle into the coupler to see what characters would show up on the screen. Early ones were at 110 baud, but when I got into it, it communicated at 300 baud. That's 300 Bits Per Second. No kilo, mega, or giga, bits. Which actually wasn't too bad, considering it was all straight text. I remember getting my first direct-wired 1200 baud modem. Blisteringly fast, and no acoustic coupler. Amazing!

When Compuserve came along, they acted as a central access point for multiple forums, so you didn't have to dial the BBS's directly. You could call one number and be connected to a whole world of forums. It was through there and UseNet that I got my first information about cross-dressing and trangenderism.

Wow, I am soooo old...


- Stephanie

[steph2.0]

I had my always up to date Ranma 1/2 collection (of course, OF COURSE, it was Ranma)

OMG, Ranma 1/2. I haven't thought of that in years. I've never been into anime, but when I heard of Ranma I had to check it out. I dreamed and wished and prayed that something like that could happen to me. Serious, soul-crushing dysphoria, though I didn't know what to call it back then. I finally had to leave it alone and suppress it before it drove me nuts.


- Stephanie

[Julia1996]

At one point I had this great idea I'd get a laser disc player and buy every single anime released on it. In retrospect, that was surprisingly feasible (maybe not for a 14 year old, but in general) and I have had far more anime vhs and dvds than I would have had even owning every laserdisc.

And VHS anime sharing... oh wow. I remember that the only other person around me that was really into anime aside from me and my friend was the manager at this video store. He used his position to create a nice little stock of anime at the store and ordered a few titles for me that were out early in the rental catalogs they used for stock before the wider releases. A little bit past the vhs trading only days, I had my always up to date Ranma 1/2 collection (of course, OF COURSE, it was Ranma) and I would let him borrow them to copy them, and because I couldn't find anything else to carry them in I took them to him in easter baskets. It was really weird in retrospect and I don't know why that was the only thing I could find. Not grocery bags, not a cardboard box... an easter basket. He had been involved in the VHS trading for years (since he was a 20 something year old anime fan in the early 90s, had to be) and hooked little kid me up with some of them. In that vein, I still remember getting my first little cheaply printed Rightstuf catalog and being amazed at the dozens (... dozens...!) of titles.

I've never understood the big deal about anime. It's just Asian cartoons after all. But people are nuts for them. There were some people in school who were all into anime but they were labeled poindexters and were kind of outcast from the popular kids.

[Roll]

OMG, Ranma 1/2. I haven't thought of that in years. I've never been into anime, but when I heard of Ranma I had to check it out. I dreamed and wished and prayed that something like that could happen to me. Serious, soul-crushing dysphoria, though I didn't know what to call it back then. I finally had to leave it alone and suppress it before it drove me nuts.

You know come to think of it, while I would always watch random anime stuff on TV I wasn't fully cognizant was even anime to begin with due to my age (I was obsessed with Robotech), I didn't go heavy into anime as anime until Ranma, which I picked up immediately after hearing the story synopsis by pure chance. Since then, anime became a huge thing in my life for many, many years. It's weird to realize it, but those early trans feelings basically led directly to even my choice of entertainment media.

[Faith]

BBS .. so cool. I ran one for a while. Tied up my phone for hours.  I bought this shirt. Ended up giving it to my grandson .. he asked his mom what it meant, he had no clue.



so many old things to try to remember. Most of this stuff in this thread I don't remember until it's mentioned by someone else, then it's 'oh yeah'

ps .. anime, bleech 

[sarah1972]

What is really scary is that my modern day smart phone has about the same battery life than that box. And the call quality today is a lot worse than back then. Rarely had any dropped calls.

Might not have been all that healthy, I carried it in a backpack and it had 8W transmit power. You would literally get grilled while making a phone call

Computers nicknamed breadbox and games stored on cassette tape would be another one...

Oh... this was my first cellphone 25 Years ago... 12 lbs and it could not even text...

My dad had a carphone in the late 80s, it was gigantic, bigger than a car battery, and probably heavier.

[Roll]

I've never understood the big deal about anime. It's just Asian cartoons after all. But people are nuts for them. There were some people in school who were all into anime but they were labeled poindexters and were kind of outcast from the popular kids.

It's just an entertainment medium like any other, despite what some "it can do no wrong" fanboys think (in other words, some anime is really really bad, just like some western tv shows are really really bad, or some movies are really really bad). The big deal is more about that Japanese storytelling style and general sensibilities approach story lines and themes in a way that western television won't, and anime is often the preferred medium over live action for many of those story lines for practical reasons. This was even more true in the past. (For instance, Star Wars as a live action movie took revolutionary special effects with massive production times. Similar movies even today require massive budgets to look even remotely decent. With animation, there is literal practical difference between drawing a person riding a bike or piloting a giant robot, so it was and is just as simple basically to make a sweeping space opera that ran for 50 episodes as it was to make a light hearted comedy. In other words, think of the effects budget for Game of Thrones versus The Big Bang Theory. You can see why those sorts of stories used to be preferable to tell in animated form, at least in a culture without an age bias against animation. )

Story wise is often the big one that drew/draws people to anime explicitly. Ever tried to watch an old US TV series? Even the dramas are almost to a last very episodic, with little to no continuity or overarching stories. They were designed to be viewed one episode at a time, and if you missed an episode, no big deal. Anime was overwhelmingly the opposite, and would usually feature robust and well developed storylines spanning the duration of an entire series. Certainly episodic comedies and shows in general existed, but they were largely the exceptions. In other words, it has always been more like western television is now. (Which because of on demand viewing, concerns about missing episodes has largely evaporated and TV execs became far more willing to green light such serial story telling.) And if this is the golden age of TV according to many critics and viewer because of that very approach to story arcs, Japan was way, way ahead of us. Combine that with the practical reasons from before and the end result is simple... Anime provided a means to watch large scale and extravagant series, with comprehensive arcs and no need to worry about out of control effects budgets, that simply did not exist in other forms of media at the same scale in the past.

Today it continues to be popular because of the nerd cache it developed previously, coupled with that there are still many themes and genres that aren't considered marketable to western TV execs, but people still want to watch. (Giant robots for one.)

There's more reasons, but I gotta go to the bank.

[DawnOday]

The first computer I used in college had no screen.  We had keyboards to type in Fortran programming line by line and everything came out on a dot matrix printer.  I was lucky though because the year before they were still using punch cards.


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I remember waiting for hours for the dot matrix printer to print out a report at a blazing three minutes a page. I created a 600 page product manual using my duel disk IBM AT. Took a year. I could do it now in maybe a day.

[Julia1996]

I remember waiting for hours for the dot matrix printer to print out a report at a blazing three minutes a page. I created a 600 page product manual using my duel disk IBM AT. Took a year. I could do it now in maybe a day.

It's amazing how things have advanced.  My neighbor once told me she worked for a big office building during the holidays to make extra money. She said she was PTX operator. Every call that came into the building went to this....console I guess you would call it. She said it was a big wooden thing with cords sticking out of it. She had to plug this cord in to answer the calls and then plug another cord into an outlet to send the call to the office it went to. All the calls for the entire building came in through that console. Sometimes it amazes me that the world could even  run with such a lack of technology.

[Cassi]

It's amazing how things have advanced.  My neighbor once told me she worked for a big office building during the holidays to make extra money. She said she was PTX operator. Every call that came into the building went to this....console I guess you would call it. She said it was a big wooden thing with cords sticking out of it. She had to plug this cord in to answer the calls and then plug another cord into an outlet to send the call to the office it went to. All the calls for the entire building came in through that console. Sometimes it amazes me that the world could even  run with such a lack of technology.

"Ya Can't Miss What Ya Don't Have".

[sarah1972]

Oh yes... but that was even before my time. My grandma was a long distance / international phone operator on one of these consoles. One of her main tasks was to establish regular calls for international trade companies. She actually made friends and became pen pals with some of them around the world. When she passed, we found a stack of letters she exchanged with a phone operator in Japan. Keep in mind, that was in the 1920's and 1930's and they stayed in touch all those years.

She pretty much had her schedule what calls to establish when and a few minutes prior to the call, they would get in touch with the operator at the other end of the world. When it became time for the call, she connected the local office to the long distance line and disconnected herself...

It still amazes me that in these times, they could already make calls around the world. No Operator today... FaceTime and off you go...

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/81/d3/84/81d384a8060ccf91e24e66ed1ae34493.jpg

I remember waiting for hours for the dot matrix printer to print out a report at a blazing three minutes a page. I created a 600 page product manual using my duel disk IBM AT. Took a year. I could do it now in maybe a day.

It's amazing how things have advanced.  My neighbor once told me she worked for a big office building during the holidays to make extra money. She said she was PTX operator. Every call that came into the building went to this....console I guess you would call it. She said it was a big wooden thing with cords sticking out of it. She had to plug this cord in to answer the calls and then plug another cord into an outlet to send the call to the office it went to. All the calls for the entire building came in through that console. Sometimes it amazes me that the world could even  run with such a lack of technology.

[Julia1996]

"Ya Can't Miss What Ya Don't Have".

Lol, she told me the same thing. She said today that technology seems very primitive but at the time it was state of the art. So weird to imagine that.

[DawnOday]

It's amazing how things have advanced.  My neighbor once told me she worked for a big office building during the holidays to make extra money. She said she was PTX operator. Every call that came into the building went to this....console I guess you would call it. She said it was a big wooden thing with cords sticking out of it. She had to plug this cord in to answer the calls and then plug another cord into an outlet to send the call to the office it went to. All the calls for the entire building came in through that console. Sometimes it amazes me that the world could even  run with such a lack of technology.

Ever watch Andy Griffith? Sarah was the town operator and there are many references to her listening in on the phone calls. My cousins work for the phone company and they started back in the day of the switchboard. oh and many of the lines were "Party Lines" where the line was shared with others that could listen in on you calls. At times you would have to wait for someone to get off the phone before you could place your call.

[Cassi]

Oh yes... but that was even before my time. My grandma was a long distance / international phone operator on one of these consoles. One of her main tasks was to establish regular calls for international trade companies. She actually made friends and became pen pals with some of them around the world. When she passed, we found a stack of letters she exchanged with a phone operator in Japan. Keep in mind, that was in the 1920's and 1930's and they stayed in touch all those years.

She pretty much had her schedule what calls to establish when and a few minutes prior to the call, they would get in touch with the operator at the other end of the world. When it became time for the call, she connected the local office to the long distance line and disconnected herself...

It still amazes me that in these times, they could already make calls around the world. No Operator today... FaceTime and off you go...

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/81/d3/84/81d384a8060ccf91e24e66ed1ae34493.jpg

It's amazing how things have advanced.  My neighbor once told me she worked for a big office building during the holidays to make extra money. She said she was PTX operator. Every call that came into the building went to this....console I guess you would call it. She said it was a big wooden thing with cords sticking out of it. She had to plug this cord in to answer the calls and then plug another cord into an outlet to send the call to the office it went to. All the calls for the entire building came in through that console. Sometimes it amazes me that the world could even  run with such a lack of technology.

There was an operator on the Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In aka Lilly Tomlin.

[Cassi]

[Julia1996]

Oh yes... but that was even before my time. My grandma was a long distance / international phone operator on one of these consoles. One of her main tasks was to establish regular calls for international trade companies. She actually made friends and became pen pals with some of them around the world. When she passed, we found a stack of letters she exchanged with a phone operator in Japan. Keep in mind, that was in the 1920's and 1930's and they stayed in touch all those years.

She pretty much had her schedule what calls to establish when and a few minutes prior to the call, they would get in touch with the operator at the other end of the world. When it became time for the call, she connected the local office to the long distance line and disconnected herself...

It still amazes me that in these times, they could already make calls around the world. No Operator today... FaceTime and off you go...

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/81/d3/84/81d384a8060ccf91e24e66ed1ae34493.jpg

It's amazing how things have advanced.  My neighbor once told me she worked for a big office building during the holidays to make extra money. She said she was PTX operator. Every call that came into the building went to this....console I guess you would call it. She said it was a big wooden thing with cords sticking out of it. She had to plug this cord in to answer the calls and then plug another cord into an outlet to send the call to the office it went to. All the calls for the entire building came in through that console. Sometimes it amazes me that the world could even  run with such a lack of technology.

That's crazy looking. She wasn't kidding about the console being big.