Obsolete Skills

In My Humble Opinion
21

Although those things were called “mimeographs”, technically a Ditto machine is different from a Mimeograph. see here, for instance:

[quote]

The mimeo machine (mimeograph) used (heavy) waxed-paper “stencils” that the typewriter cut through. The stencil was wrapped around the drum of the (manual or electrical) machine, which forced ink out through the cut marks on the stencil. The paper had a surface texture (like bond paper), and the ink was black and odourless. You could use special knives to cut stencils by hand, but handwriting was impractical, because any loop would cut a hole and thus print a black blob. If you put the stencil on the drum wrong-side-out, your copies came out mirror-images.

The ditto machine (spirit duplicator) used two-ply “spirit masters” or “ditto masters”. The first sheet could be typed, drawn, or written upon. The second sheet was coated with a layer of colored wax. The pressure of writing or typing on the top sheet transferred colored wax to its back side, producing a mirror image of the desired marks. (This acted like a reverse of carbon paper.) The two sheets were then separated, and the first sheet was fastened onto the drum of the (manual or electrical) machine, with the waxed side out.

The usual wax color was aniline purple, a cheap, durable pigment that provided good contrast, but other colors were available. Unlike mimeo, ditto had the useful ability to print multiple colors in a single pass, which made it popular with cartoonists. One well-made ditto master could at most print about 500 copies–far fewer than a mimeo stencil could manage.

I, too, remember that Proustian odor for the ditto copies. Wiki says that:

But, c’mon. isopropanol is just rubbing alcohol, and I’ve worked with methanol often enough without fume hood (or gloves). I think the warning is overblown.

More here on the differences:

http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/40/408.html

22

I can make hats from rye straw completely by hand.

23

Before FOX news, I used to have to think for myself.

I can repair a carburetor as well as replacing the rotor and distributor cap on a car.

I have mustered the courage to walk into a brick and mortar establishment and purchase pornography face-to-face from an actual human being, in many cases a young woman! As to whether I could still do that, I’m not sure.

24

I’d rather not say what I remember here. :frowning:

Whippersnappers. :mad:

25

Since when are cooking from scratch and map reading obsolete skills?

26

I remember the smell of the ditto machines in grade six… aaahhhh.

(I’m probably going to get some nasty tumour from it now…)

In grade nine we did a section on printing and we made master plates to put on the rotary press using “rubylith” and an exacto knife. (I may be getting that a bit jumbled in my memory.)

We also did photography and the high school had its own darkroom with a huge camera built through the wall. I was not good with darkroom skills.

27

What, you’ve hunted mammoths and painted on cave walls? :wink:

28

There are a lot of things on that list that I’ve never done, but some that are still useful.

Adjusting the recording levels for transferring sound to tape (or computer) is something I do every day. It’s also something that none of the young people who come here to work at the radio station have ever done. They didn’t spend their youth in front of a tape deck, recording their albums (or their friends’ albums). Consequently, they have no concept of recording levels or how to read a VU meter, so there is no consistency in the sound levels of their work. It’s all over the map, and you can’t explain it to them. I know, we’ve tried in vain for years. I’ve also done double-speed copying, although it was a terrible option that always sounded bad, so I stayed away from it where possible. I can still edit with a razor blade and sticky tape with the best of them.

I adjust my turntable’s tonearm often. I have an SME tonearm, on which the “arm” part detaches. I have three different “arm” sections, each with a different cartridge for a different purpose. Each one must be adjusted for proper tracking force before use, every time. I’ve never put a weight on the headshell, though I’ve seen it done. :: shudders ::

The ball on an IBM Selectric typewriter was easy to change. Lift up the locking flap and remove the ball, put on another one, lock the flap. Anne, the ball had all the letters on it, and it was attached to a motorized spindle that would turn it and/or shift it up or down to strike the letter onto the paper, through the ribbon. There were different balls for different fonts - pica or elite, or something more esoteric, before “fonts” became part of the common experience. I’ve changed the ribbon in manual typewriters many times. I can’t remember when I last used one, though!

I’ve done the changing of film in 35 MM, 126 Instamatic and my mother’s ancient Brownie reflex camera. I think we discovered in the '70s that they stopped making the film for it. I can program a VCR, and clean and demagnetize its heads by taking off the lid and going inside with alcohol and electric demag tools.

I see an entry on that page for ISDN that hasn’t been fleshed out. I don’t know what anyone else uses it for outside of radio, but we use ours all the time, to do real-time conversations with people in other cities, in full fidelity. What else was ISDN used for?

29

I believe we call that “realia”. :wink: Nope, didn’t learn a thing about cards (MLIS 2004.) Learned everything about cataloging, which I do use in my daily job, and indexing and abstracting, ditto.

ETA - a few months ago we were sorting out the office products in cabinets here in the workroom and we found several Selectric balls. We have no idea if we have the typewriters they go to. We did what I’m sure we’ve done for the last 20 years when encountering them - we put them back in the box in the back of the cabinet.

30

I’d rather not say. Harumph! :mad:

31

I could set the digital clock on any VCR.

I could get any Atari, Intellivsion, Colecovision or Nintendo ‘cartridge’ to work (they were finicky at times).

I could go from UHF channel 17 on the ‘dial’ to 57 in one long turn of the wrist without re-gripping the dial.

32

That’s not behind the times at all. I graduated in 2003 and one of the computer labs still had a printer of that sort (all the computers in that lab were running Windows 3.1 as well).

You’ve obviously never been in a dorm that doesn’t provide cable. That’s not obsolete at all.

I also remember blowing in the cart of an NES, and still know how to hook it up using the RF switch. I know how to operate most functions of a VCR. I think I could figure out a treadle sewing machine if I had to, though I’ve never had the chance to use one (we have one, but it doesn’t work well enough to use). I do however know how to sew by hand. And I did have a 35mm camera long enough to learn to change the film–actually, I should find that. It still has pictures in it from 5 years ago, I wonder if I can still get them developed…

33

[Excuse me while I adjust my propeller beanie]

At one time I could hand-compile and decompile IBM 360 assember to/from machine code.

[Takes bow. Spins propeller]

34

I’m in a graduate program for library science (right this moment, even!), and we are indeed still being taught ISBD – I just turned five book descriptions for an ISBD assignment yesterday.

And fuckin’ A right, Dewey’s not obsolete! GRRRR.

(And neither is handwriting, for that matter. Some of these are head-scratchers.)

35

I counted 160 items on the list linked in the OP that I at least could do at one time (though there are numerous repetitions).

In no particular order, with nods to items posted already by others:

Hand-coding PostScript programs, which was a pretty damned obscure skill even when it was useful.

Hand-coding HTML pages? Check.

Building HyperCard stacks. Including building XCMDs and XFCNs to extend the capabilities of HyperCard.

Check.

Making intricate, complicated tables on proprietary Compugraphic typesetting equipment with non-WYSIWYG displays.

Operating a stat camera for repro…

Care and feeding of the processors for all that repro paper and film output from the stat cameras and the typesetters (later, the imagesetters).

Creating a mechanical by slicing up type galleys and FPO images and pasting them up on a board with hot wax.

Proofreading (and not just the grammar and spelling stuff that no one bothers with anymore, but also the visual proofing of type galleys and headlines for widows/orphans, bad breaks, letterspacing and kerning, etc.).

Check – EDLIN anyone? Likewise for WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, et al.

Changing modem configurations using the Hayes AT commands (though I did have occasion to do that again in helping my mother-in-law diagnose a problem with her dial-up connection not long ago).

Splicing cassette and eight-track tapes, respooling eight-tracks, and for that matter dropping the needle precisely on the right groove on a phonograph record (vestige of early college radio days).

Operating a 16 mm film projector, including threading the film, rewinding, etc. Loading/operating carousel-type slide projectors, filmstrip projectors, etc. (One of my college work-study jobs was running all the A-V stuff for the social sciences lecture rooms).

Using an optical surveying instrument, carrying a rod, using a chain.

Drafting, including inking, and hand-lettering (my old-school structural engineer father-in-law has complimented by lettering skills, which is high praise from him).

36

I can fix digital photos using MS Paint - no Photoshop for this old codger.

37

So you’re kind of like this guy?

38

There’s some strange stuff on that list. Since when is riding a bicycle an obsolete skill? Or reading a map? Or lighting a kerosene lamp (I use those during power outages)? And when did rewinding a videotape become a “skill”?

But in the spirit of the OP…

I know how to use a slide rule, and I still have my magnesium Pickett 12" slide rule with the leather case and belt strap. But I’m not old or anything. Or a geek.

I know how to use a manual choke. Although I haven’t had a car with one since 1978, my tractor, lawnmower, ATV, and snowblower all have them.

I can use an analyzer to figure out the pinout of a nonstandard serial port, build a custom cable for it, and then determine and configure the baud rate, start bits, stop bits, and so on. I even still have the analyzer!

Are ranching skills obsolete? I can milk a goat, brand a calf, castrate a sheep, trim hooves, and stack a tight truckload of hay.

It would take a bit of practice, but I could probably recover my ability to code in machine language directly on the front-panel switches of an S-100 buss computer (or a Data General Nova 1200).

I can balance dual carburetors.

I know how to use a card catalog, microfiche reader, 8mm video projector, and 35mm slide projector.

I can place a call on a telephone with a broken dial (or button) by tapping patterns to simulate the clicking from a rotary phone.

My greatest skill as a chip designer and as an OS programmer was cramming ten pounds of logic in a five-pound piece of silicon (so to speak). Nobody cares anymore. Your logic doesn’t fit? Get a bigger chip or add some more RAM.

I’ve forgotten some of them by now, but I used to be able to program in a lot of obsolete languages and I could probably recover them fairly quickly. Anyone else know APL, COBOL, SNOBOL, 8080 assembly, Data General assembly, IBM 370 assembly, FORTRAN IV, Delphi, Hypercard, UCSD Pascal, PL/1, or PL/C?

BASIC isn’t dead yet. The last estimate I read said that over half of all business programmers use Microsoft Visual Basic (although they may use other languages as well). Heck, I was teaching Visual Basic at a local university just six years ago.

39

I can make fruit jams and preserves and syrups.

40

I remember doing that!

Let me see. I can look up logs in my handy-dandy book of math functions (has EVERYTHING! all the way up to elliptic integrals, whatever those are. All I took was a year of calculus) and can multiply numbers by adding the logs (then converting back.

I can cut a person out of a picture with scissors instead of Photoshop. I can develop film. With chemicals. I can use a lightmeter-- and, for that matter, a 4x5 view camera and can use the movements to make a tall building have parallel sides in the photo. (this last is not an obsolete skill, I know). I can splice movie film and tape. Handloading 35mm Tri-X from a 100-ft roll for my Leica M3.

I can produce an engineering drawing with pencil and straightedge.

I can fill a fountain pen.

I can answer “what’s half of 3/8” in an eyeblink without a calculator. I can make change without a cash register, too.

Setting IRQ jumpers, as already mentioned. Low level formatting ST506/412 drives by calling the WD controller routine? IBM PC motherboard DIP switch settings. CP/M, and DDT anyone? Serial printer (Setting up communication between an HP-71 and my CP/M heathkit H89 via serial port remains my highest achievement to date. Pathetic, I know).