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What Technology Did You Have When You Were Younger. That Would Seem Ancient Now?

Mitchell

Level of Coral Feather
Joined
Sep 9, 2002
Messages
33,346
Points
38
As we know , most of us can't get along without our internet and cell phones.

Back in "The Day" what did those of us not be able to get along without?

Being 50 years old, I can think of a few things.

My walkmen radio.

Also.

My gaming console.. Atari., Intellivision,

And.

The odd alarm clocks I used to have.

One alarm clock I used to set to wake myself up for school would like Scream out the time. "It's 6 am!"

Then play almost this weird ballet type song a couple of times before screaming out the time again.

Anyhow, thoughts on this?
 
A handheld calculator that cost $100 in like 1998.

A typewriter

Bus tokens

The clapper

Audio-cassette tapes

Floppy disks

Answering machines

Blockbuster / Hollywood Video

Chicken Pox Parties

A tv that looked like this:

30f05e68a1fdd8605efa2a4d8d4bc1aa.jpg
 
a TV that looked like this:
maxresdefault.jpg

a monophonic reel-to-reel tape recorder
a manual typewriter
a black dial desk telephone
 
Of the things chicago listed.

I had audio cassette tapes, Floppy Disks, and video stores as well.
 
I'm 61 so I remember rotary phones. Also had a reel to reel tape recorder and the original pong videogame
 
I can vaguely remember that my grandparents had a rotary phone in their house when I was a child. (I;m 50, btw)
 
I had a Walkman I listed to often.

Now that I'm older, I wish I could go back in time an throw it away and spend more time talking to people back then. I had a lot of friends/associates, but I would have had way more, and had deeper connections.

I had that Atari, played it at home since TV back then had less than 10 channels.

Not really "technology," but boy, getting that big 64 pack of crayons with the built in crayon sharpener in the back, I felt like a rich man!
The art sets in the 80's/early 90's were wonderful. Hopefully today's kids still buy and use whatever's around today.

We had the rotary phone, and boy, there's one technology that whoever invented it is going to Heaven - caller ID! That so revolutionized phones, and bestowed peace on countless millions up until today.

I couldn't imagine having to answer the phone not knowing who the hell is calling. If dad or mom didn't want to talk to someone, no one could answer the phone at all!
 
A PS1. I don't ever play it, but it's there.

Windows 95 Operating System Disk.

Rotary Telephone
 
Something else

Change the channel dial TVs where one would have to get up and change the channel with their hands.


Although that is mostly when one does not have cable.

Even though for people who don't have cable, most TVs even without cable , have remote controls anyway, at least that Ive seen.
 
I grew up with a rotary phone and even had one in the basement of the first house I bought. I remember a video game system that I had with 4 games. Tennis, hockey, squash, and practice. I didn't have Atari but had a game system called Odyssey2 that was made by Magnavox. Also had a portable 8 track tape player. Wow what memories
 
We had a rotary phone until deep into the 80's.

Also: cassette player, commodore 64, 5.25 floppies, a discman, V2000 VCR, MS-DOS. My father had a car phone, but it was non-functional. He pretended to use it, just to see the looks on the other drivers faces :)
 
Rotary (only one), cassettes, a stereo system (if you were lucky), yeh the TV with a dial and not a remote, no games systems or anything like that (that was about 10 years after I granulated from college). Cars didn't have all these fancy things as now - even the high level ones. I know there's other things we have now that we didn't have back then (i'm 64). You young whipper-snappers.......
 
Do those LCD games youd get with a McDonalds happy meal count?
 
I had a SLV-N77 VCR and a corded telephone.

Things my family had when I was alive, but I didn't really use, were a casette player from the 90s and a rotary phone (grandparents). There's probably a few others but those two are what I remember off the top of my head.

I think my grandpa still has his rotary phone. He taught me how to use it, but I didn't use it unless I had to call someone to pick me up or something.
 
We had a rotary phone. Then one on the wall with the crazy long cord. Had a Walkman then a disc man. Then I turned 16 and got my license and got that cassette tape connected to a cable that plugged into the disc man so you could get listen to CDs in your car. Like Wayne in Wayne's world after they got the money.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
I must be old; half the stuff listed here is new-fangled technology that didn't come out until I was in college. I grew up with wall-mount rotary phones, and the first one I remember was on a party line. On cars, gas caps were behind license plates, virtually every car had triangular vent windows, few had air conditioning, starter buttons under the accelerators, and high-beam light buttons on the floor. We always carried a can of oil in the car, "just in case". We got our first TV to watch Kennedy's funeral; it was black and white, and I wondered why the dial had 12 channels, since no place I knew of had 12 stations. If you missed a show, you were out of luck; there were no video recorders, either Betamax or Video Cassette Recorders. When a tube went bad, it was my job to ride my bike down to the store with the tube tester, and get a new one. My whole family laughed when we saw the first electric can opener in a store; "How lazy can you get?!" I did calculations with log tables until I could afford a Keuffel & Esser Log-Log Decitrig slide rule. I high school I saw my first handheld calculator; it cost over $300 and had five functions; +, -, x, /, plus a percent key. When I got to college, the campus computer had just upgraded from paper tape input to punch card input. The first desktop computer I ever saw was purchased by one of the college math faculty in kit form from Heathkit, for him to solder together himself; he never got it working. Our family box camera held a 12-exposure roll, each Christmas we took at least three or four pictures. I saw my first home clothes-dryer in junior high, my first self-defrosting freezer when I was in high school, and my first microwave oven when I was in college. The idea of paying good money for a dedicated appliance just to make coffee or cook something slowly would have been laughable; today I own both a coffee-maker and a slow-cooker.
 
I remember going over to my friend's house to use her word processor to write up my science fair project.

Having a cordless phone made me feel like Queen Shit.

My friends' had refrigerators with icemakers, which I thought was the pinnacle of technology and luxury.

I watched my Poppop's favorite video game system shift from Atari to Nintendo to PlayStation.

Using payphones to call collect and say my name was "movie is over" so I didn't have to save quarters to pay to call.

As I got a little older - nokia prepaid cell phones (I was bomb at snake) and sending codes on beepers (831 = i love you)
 
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