I am at this very moment holding a slide rule in my hand. And yes, I do know how to use it, though I hardly ever do.
As the kid of a couple of depression babies, I used a lot of before-my-time technology growing up.
- Hand cranked corn sheller, probably bought in the 1920s (we used it to husk walnuts)
- Underwood manual typewriter, ca 1940 (I learned to type on it)
- Corn planter, disk, harrow, plow, from roughly the late 1930s, they were the right size for a small truck farm.
- Assorted hand tools, a lot of these were older than I was, but taken care of.
- Adding machine, about the same vintage as the typewriter, by my time, hand calculators had mostly replaced them.
- An old school, manual cash register, I used this on my first job, although electic and digital models had mostly taken over.
I won’t list the B&W TV or the hard wired rotary dial phone, as they were what was being used in the sixties and seventies. As an adult, I’ve learned to cook on a wood cook stove and quilt by hand (stuff my late SO’s grandmother still did) but it wasn’t my regular method of cooking or staying warm.
ETA: Oh, yeah…I learned to drive on a 1960 Chevrolet stake bed ton truck…three years older than I was.
I was born 1981.
As a kid, I had a rotary phone, black and white tv (13"), a radio flyer, a record player, watched old movies, listened to old music, carried a pocket knife, really genuinely enjoyed the company of my grandparents and great aunts, etc etc. I am far more in touch with the 1930s - 1970s than the vast majority of people my age. I can sit down and have a conversation with someone in their 80s about stuff that they are interested in, and they don’t feel like I’m patronizing them, because I’m not.
The one where you poured hot lead in and it made the individual lines? If so, then that’s pretty awesome, the magazine my mom worked for when I was little had a trio of those and I would get to help from time to time.
I have a manual typewriter from the 1940s, a polaroid camera from the 1960s, and a turntable and some vinyls with Greek folk music on them.
That’s the one. I have a couple of pairs of shoes I’ve ruined with spattered lead. The molten lead is under quite high pressure and can squirt impressively far when you screw something up.
My wife is out and about today in our 1966 Cadillac. I was born in 69, she was born in 71. It’s a hearse derived from Caddy’s Fleetwood 75 commercial chassis.
That. Is. So. Awesome.
I’ve always thought that Linotypes were the pinnacle of mechanical engineering. I envy you.
It might be helpful for you to speak with my wife about this. She thinks I am crazy.
I will say that it is the most complicated piece of machinery I have ever gotten my hands on. There are so many intricate sub-mechanisms tucked away inside larger complexities that I still don’t have a good mental picture of what’s happening during the casting process. And I’ve been at it a couple of years!
I think when the word “molten” is involved, any degree of squirting should be regarded with a healthy dose of respect.
Looking around my house – and it was a family homestead before me – I have a hard time finding anything older than me except for antiques and furniture. Perhaps I have a few tools from my Dad that were made in the 1930’s, but that’s all I can think of. But I’m an antique myself.
When I used a slide rule, it was still the best way to calculate (calculators came later – my father had an early model that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, but you had to use a stylus to enter number by pressing on a pad. It cost $100).
While we had direct phone dialing when I was a kid, those in the town next to us did not. Their phones didn’t even have dial (sort of like this, only black and without the button in the middle).
We were pretty up to day, though. My father sold TVs and appliances.
On my wishlist of obsolete but cool stuff, someday I’d like to own a Curta calculator.
The guy who installed the windows when I was active in Habitat for Humanity was a stickler for doing things meticulously. He insisted on installing the windows plumb in walls that weren’t. As trim carpenter, I had to make a lot of long, shallow taper cuts to build the window frames out flush to the drywall. After a lot of experiments with taper jigs in table saws and other, more dangerous stuff, I found that I could cut them fastest and accurately enough by using a hand plane.
Hand planes were probably invented well before the Romans came along. Power planes have largely replaced them, but there are still a few things they do better than any other tool.
I’m surprised on one has mentioned bicycles.
How about lead-acid batteries?
Iron. I think the basic oxygen process dates back to the 1920s.
(Oops, wrong on that one. However the invention dates to 1948, which still is before I was born)
Latex rubber tires. AC electricity. Tungsten filament incandescent light bulbs.
The humble water closet (toilet).
Walt
My wife’s abacus is a strictly decorative item in our home now, but when she was a kid, her Japanese-born grandmother used one in her shop, prefering it to even a simple adding machine. To this day, my wife remains fully functional on the abacus, slide rule and 10-key adding machine.
Oh, and also the manual typewriter.
And books! With real paper, nonetheless!
My boyfriend restores antique television for a living. There are old televisions everywhere in his house. In the living room there are three color televisions from the 1960s, a 1950s Philco, and part of a 1946 RCA 621TS which is being restored in the basement. Oh, and his ‘everyday’ television is from the late 80s. Ironically, though, we don’t watch much television at all.
My boyfriend still has one of those. He had to have it fixed last year because the motor froze or something.
We got indoor plumbing when I was 7 years old. I remember, clearly, that cold, dark walk down the path on winter mornings.
As usual the Family Circus has coverd this
I have a wire recorder in storage somewhere.