I’ve done that,and I can read a VU meter. I can also cue a vinyl record (LP or 45) to the correct spot so that the song starts when you want it to.
I’ve done camera-ready paste-ups by hand. Beeswax, X-Acto knives, and so on.
I still do proofreading right on the paper, using correct proofreader’s marks.
Calligraphy, using dip pens and an ink pot.
I can do mental arithmetic, and have used that skill in retail work, casino work, and in adding up my purchases and calculating sales tax on them while waiting in line. (Hey, it kills time while waiting.)
I’ve also chopped down a few trees using an axe, though I’d much prefer to use a chainsaw. But at least I can use an axe.
I remember plotting on log paper and using flexicurves!
Other obsolete skills:
Finding an empty, snowy parking lot and performing fish tail and other spins on a rear wheel drive land yacht!
Approximating square roots or looking them up in a table.
Using coat hangers and aluminum foil to improve an antenna’s reception (or making up an emergency antenna when the one on your roof stops working).
Reviewing bluelines for potential printed materials. Then remembering not to file curly fax paper next to those bluelines. Heck, just loading up curly fax paper!
Making stick figures and other crude graphics on a green and white monitor or dot matrix printer.
I can set type with a Linotype machine, and many machines and systems that followed.
I can correctly kern any font.
I can typeset complicate math formulas on systems with no reverse lead (you have to set the characters from highest to lowest, regardless of their horizontal position) . . . and no monitor.
I can create camera-ready mechanicals with a t-square, triangles, Rapidograph, xacto knive, wax, rubylith, veloxes, etc., etc.
I can drive stick-shift.
I can adjust a turntable arm (weight and anti-skating) without using coins.
I can do all sorts of math in my head . . . or with a slide rule.
Add me to the list who can code HTML without a WYSIWYG editor. Wordpad, baby. Wordpad.
I can also:
Make candy, jam and ice cream from scratch
Layout a newspaper page (I can still remember the smell of the wax)
Load a film camera and develop the negatives/photos
Wax cross-country skis
Use a fax machine
I’m a bit surprised to see that they list using pagers as an obsolete skill. Despite the fact that they’ve been supplanted by cell phones for most of the population, they’re very much alive and well in the emergency services and medical fields.
Alot of these are not even obsolete. Using a fax machine? Driving a stick? Writing a check? Come on people I think you arent giving the youth of today enough credit…Although i have met people who dont know how to use a rotary phone or know what the dial up sound is…
I recall stacking 78 records in a gramophone. “Let’s twist again - like we did last Summer!”
Learning to use logarithms at school. :rolleyes:
The thrill of teaching myself COBOL from a book, and running programs overnight on the University mainframe.
Of course we used punched cards for input, so my fingers can still form the combinations for typing various letters on a handpunch. :eek:
Rushing downstairs to see the new Apple with something on the screen called ‘icons’.
If we wanted to change directory, we typed ‘cd…’
I don’t miss studying hexadecimal dumps to see what the registers were set to :smack:
Not totally obsolete. Recently I bought a pair of Lucky jeans on EBay, because I liked that particular style and Lucky doesn’t sell them in their stores anymore. I should have asked the seller, knowing the brand as I do–this particular version of the style was predistressed and had several small holes on the leg. So I had patches put on the inside just to prevent the holes from getting any bigger. It’s still really not my look, but they’re OK for just knocking around in.
I learned BASIC on a Timex Sinclair.
I took a PL/I course in 1985.
I haven’t seen a rotary phone in decades but I’m sure I could still use one.
I used to make cassettes of my new records and just use the tape until I needed to redo it.
I was the go-to guy for programming the VCR. I still am the Chief Remote Control Technician and troubleshooter.
When my wife and I got our marriage license 14 years ago, the clerk entered the information directly on the paper license by using a big honking Underwood typewriter. After we proofread it, we pointed out that she had misspelled my wife’s first name. The clerk then whited out the mistake, put it back in the typewriter, and typed over the error, perfectly aligned.
I commented to the clerk that she was probably one of a dozen people in the United States that could still do that. She looked quite pleased with herself.
I still use an IBM Selectric and can change the typing element, ribbon and correcting tape. Someone saw me put take out the paper I was typing on, put it back in and line it up to use the correcting tape. From her reaction, you would have thought I was Houdini.
A ten year old was recently amazed when she was testing me on simple arithmetic. I can do a lot of multiplying and dividing in my head. I told her some of the tricks I had been taught at her age “before there were calculators.” She was impressed.
