# Older people: amuse me with tales of your hardships in pre-tech days that would seem trivial today **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 6, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026 "2011-05-06T23:40:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/241 "2011-05-11T14:27:45Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > I don’t know about high schools, but Whatsit Jr. is learning typing in 3rd grade. Cool. when I went to school, we had just moved it to seventh grade. I graduated in 2003, so that would be 1997. I know it just had moved because I had to install the programs for the teacher, as the newly donated computers were all old relics that only ran DOS and didn’t have a CD drive (and many of the floppy drives didn’t work.) Fortunately, I knew how to use a null modem cable. I guess that fits the thread: can you imagine using a special cable and DOS to connect only two computers at a time, and copying files at 2400 baud, 22-24 times slower than modern dialup? Nowadays, all the computers would be networked together, or I’d at least be able to use a flash drive. Or the program might even be on the Internet. Whatever it is, it sure wouldn’t take 9+ weeks of skipping lunch to finish installing a \<10MB program on 20 computers. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/242 "2011-05-11T15:30:54Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > True enough. However, more places took checks. In fact, most places took checks, but required a buttload of ID. I used to have my driver’s license number printed on my checks, just to save time. I went to dispose of a box of records that was more than 10 years old. Almost did it blindly, cuz hey, everything’s changed since then. Good thing I checked, my -SSN- was printed on my checks! ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/243 "2011-05-11T16:11:04Z")
Digitizing maps for use in our GIS lab was a BITCH. Having to tape the map to the tablet, (once you got your turn on it) register the four points, create a file or open an existing one, and then actually digitizing. There was a monitor to see how it was going, but it was off to the side and didn’t really help. And the digitzing itself was tedious. Click…Click…click…Shit!..Go to keyboard, undo last vertex…go back to board and remember where you left off… You had to think ahead of time where you would add future lines because you had to create “pointless” vertices for them to attach to. Now If want to make a map, most of my data is already in the system. And I can scan in a lot of stuff and simply overlay it using simple buttons on my GIS application. My office switched from a command line driven GIS to a GUI one a year or two after I arrived and it still amazes me just how quickly I can get stuff done in an emergency. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/244 "2011-05-11T16:57:02Z")
And every restaurant and bar you went into, more than half the people smoking! When I started in the travel industry there was still an ashtray in the lunchroom. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/245 "2011-05-11T17:29:51Z")
> [@BaneSidhe](#): > > Oh Og, I remember that crap. To this day I still can’t do the math properly to get the center of a page. Do they still teach typing [or keyboarding] in high school, or is it assumed that most, if not all kids can type? They did in my high school (early 90s). It would have been possible for me to graduate from high school without having learned to type. Typing was one of the few worthwhile classes I took in high school. There was an advanced typing class where you learned how to center stuff using an electric typewriter. We learned on electric typewriters in the basic class. We had a computer programming class. The programming language was BASIC, and the computers were Apple IIe’s. > [@cwthree](#): > > Once upon a time, there were no answering machines and no voice mail at all. If someone called and no one was home, you were out of luck. Offices were stocked with pads of pink, 1/4 page “While you were out” slips. You had to take messages for your parents, too. That sucked. You were supposed to keep a pencil and some paper near the phone, but nobody I knew actually did that. The phones didn’t store any contact information in them. If you wanted to call somebody, you had to know their phone number (or look it up in a phone book, but that was a pain, so you memorized numbers you called often). You couldn’t store it in the phone, like you do now. I used to know a fair number of phone numbers, now I can barely remember mine when somebody asks me. They’re all in my cell phone now. The phones had cords. You couldn’t really move around while you were on the phone. Even if the cord was long enough to allow you to move, it got tangled up. Sometimes it got tangled up anyway (it seemed to be engineered to do that), and you had to untangle it or stay really close to the phone. There weren’t portable video game systems or DVD players in cars. Long trips sucked, especially if you couldn’t read in the car. They sucked a little less once I got a Walkman, but they were still boring. My mom tells me about driving from Maryland to Nebraska in an un-air-conditioned car in her childhood summers. That had to be unbearable. And, when my parents wanted to go somewhere, we always drove, never flew. What would have taken two hours on a plane took two days of driving. You couldn’t email yourself something so it wouldn’t get lost. You had to write it down and keep track of the paper you wrote it on. Later on, pre-Gmail, you had a limited amount of space in your email account. You had to tell people not to send you huge attachments, and, periodically, you had to clean out your inbox so you wouldn’t run out of space. There were no power windows or power door locks in many cars. You had to wind a crank to get the window to go up or down, you had to open the door or trunk with the key, and you had to make everybody in the car make sure their door was locked when they got out. The upside was that you could wind the windows up or down when the car wasn’t running. There were station wagons and vans where you could ride, unrestrained, in an area of the vehicle with no seats. This was fun, but you could get hurt. My best friend in elementary school broke her elbow when her parents got into a fender bender in their van, and she was riding unrestrained in the back. I remember that van. There was a bench in the back of that van, covered with some green velour material, but no seat backs, and no seat belts. Not all of the vending machines took bills. Often, the thing that was supposed to accept bills was broken. You had to keep change on hand for the vending machines, pay phones, and (if you used a public laundry facility) the washers and dryers. A lot of these devices only took quarters. The ones that took bills might not have been able to tell the difference between a $1 and any other bill. I never tried this, but I always believed it, and never tried to use a bill other than a $1 in a vending machine. (Now, I try not to buy anything from vending machines, because it’s probably unhealthy and/or overpriced) If you drove on toll roads or bridges, you had to stop periodically and pay tolls. There was no EZ-Pass or similar that let you pay tolls without stopping. On turnpikes, you had to get a ticket when you got on the turnpike, so they would know how much to charge you when you got off. Sometimes there was just a basket to put your toll money into, no attendant, and you had to have exact change. People kept change in their car cup holders for tolls. People smoked, indoors. You were expected to keep ashtrays around for when people came over, even if nobody in your house smoked. Cars had cigarette lighters and ashtrays. Sometime in the mid 80’s, it became acceptable to ask people not to smoke in your house or car. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/246 "2011-05-11T17:39:35Z")
I remember being around 6 years old, and running to the store to buy cigarette for my baby-sitter. Nobody thought twice about selling a pack of cigarettes to a 6 year-old! Weird. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/247 "2011-05-11T17:40:57Z")
Born in 1970. Our first home video game was [Pong.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong#Home_version) Monochrome graphics, with two “paddles” (each one a simple line on the screen), a ball (1, or maybe four, pixels) and a “net” (a dashed line) across which you batted the ball back to your opponent. Hours of entertainment, despite having a single degree of freedom (paddle moves up or down). Skip to the 21st century, when first-person shooters feature photo-realistic graphics with details like waves on the water, trees swaying in the wind, computer-driven enemies with uncanny intelligence, real-time physics, 5.1-, 7y.1, or even 8-channel sound effects that will blow the walls out of your home, and the ability to play (over the internet) against other players located clear across the goddam planet. Victory (against the computer or against other players) requires some serious thought with regard to strategy, choice of in-game weapons/equipment, and timing. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/248 "2011-05-11T17:58:14Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Anyway, these things were 3-ring or spiral bound books of map pages that were roughly 1 mile square Must have been a bitch to fit in the glove compartment . . . ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/249 "2011-05-11T18:03:47Z")
I graduated from college in 2006 with a journalism degree. I know how to resize a photo using a proportion wheel and how to make a headline count (flitj and all that). Nowhere I’ve worked have I had to make use of these talents. Photos are resized in Photoshop, and headlines are just written on the page. It doesn’t quite fit at 36 pt.? Just size it down until it does. Our college paper moved from paste-up to FTP transfer of PDF files just before I became the editor. Before that, you had to have the InDesign files and the paste-ups ready by 11, when someone from the printer would stop by to pick them up. If the paper wasn’t ready, then someone had to drive 45 minutes down to the printer in Washington and drop them off. Of course, without a hard deadline, we often stayed at the office until 2 in the morning on production nights. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/250 "2011-05-11T18:07:04Z")
betamax! back in the mid 80’s even though betamax was already mostly gone, my older brother had a betamax machine. the cassette carrier rose up from the top like something out of star trek (sulu’s ship’s phasers sights comes to mind), it was the coolest thing and as i recall the picture was way better than vhs ever was. and the commodore 64, vic 20 and 128! heh, cable, had the box that was attached to the tv by a cable, had 3 rows of numbers with a toggle, a tuning dial and a row of switches under the numbers, we figured out pretty fast that we could steal the playboy channel :eek: (which is pretty cool when your a 12yr old boy)by pressing down the buttons for the channels on either side of the channel assigned to playboy and adjusting the tuning dial, then along came set top boxes with wireless remotes and no more stealing premium channels ☹ ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/251 "2011-05-11T18:08:55Z")
almost forgot, choplifter and space invaders and other games on rom cartridges that would turn your commodore into a game console…mine was the popular house to hang out at for a few monthes and this was sposed to be an edit, not a post ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/252 "2011-05-11T18:30:42Z")
I had to pay over $100 to join a video club just to be able to rent a VHS tape of a movie that was popular about two summers ago. And if I didn’t rewind it before turning it back in… whoa nellie! And then I put that tape in a giant box on top of my giant box of a TV (which also had a record player), manually adjust the tracking, put popcorn in my popper, wait for the corn to pop, hope I remembered to refill the ice trays so I could also have a coke … Manually fine tuning in TV stations in my VCR, push down record and play at the same time, no timers for setting up in advance (that would come a couple of years later), no SLP, but my RCA had its own longer record time option (4 hrs on a 2 hr tape), the remote on my next VCR was wired, but at least it had a remote! ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/253 "2011-05-11T18:36:31Z")
Oh wired remotes. I remember my father telling me when we got our first wireless remote what a step backwards it was and how we’d never be able to find it. He was quite unimpressed with this step in technology evolution. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/254 "2011-05-11T19:01:10Z")
i find it very disturbing for some reason, how many of (dang near all) of the things in this thread were in my house growing up (including the awesome adding machine way back earlier in the thread) one year we got my mom a stereo system for christmas, cost $500, had its own cabinet, had 4(later 5 with addition of cd player) seperate components for each function. the components were, turn table for vinyl records, tuner, cassette deck, and equalizer for the two HUGE tower speakers. what made it cool was it had dual cassette players you could dub back and forth, and the cassettes would AUTOREVERSE so you didn’t have to get up and turn them over. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/255 "2011-05-11T19:06:56Z")
The record player and TV, in my childhood home, were part of the same massive piece of furniture. There were two huge speakers attached to either side of the TV. Big TVs were _heavy_, just like big monitors. Our living room TV is one of the last of the old TVs. I bought it in 2002, and it probably weighs 80-some pounds. It would be a huge pain in the butt (in the back, more likely) to try to move that thing (though one person could, in theory, do it, unlike with my childhood TV cabinet). It’s not going anywhere till it breaks, that’s for sure. I remember backing up my first computer, circa 1994, to a huge number of floppy disks. I had to sit there and change disks periodically. I’m really glad I never had to use that backup, restoring from it would probably have been at least as much of a pain as making it. If I want to back up something on my computer now, I mail it to myself in gmail. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/256 "2011-05-11T19:23:37Z")
> [@Fir\_na\_tine](#): > > Banking during the pre-computer era. > > Every checking or savings account had a ledger card. Every deposit you made or withdrawal was recorded on the ledger card and the balance increased or decreased. Interest on savings accounts and CD’s was calculated by hand. > > Loan accounts had similar cards. Each payment you made reduced the loan principle **after the interest portion was manually calculated and deducted.** > > It was amazing when the computer age started and card systems were being converted how many battalions of clerks became unemployed. If you needed to withdraw money from your bank, but at a different branch, didn’t somebody at your regular branch have to fax a copy of your signature to the branch where you were, before they’d let you have any money? I know there were also banks where they had a sort of CCTV system for things like this. I don’t know how widespread that was, but they show a picture of it in a 1960 encyclopedia that I have. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/257 "2011-05-11T19:24:05Z")
> [@Fir\_na\_tine](#): > > Banking during the pre-computer era. > > Every checking or savings account had a ledger card. Every deposit you made or withdrawal was recorded on the ledger card and the balance increased or decreased. Interest on savings accounts and CD’s was calculated by hand. > > Loan accounts had similar cards. Each payment you made reduced the loan principle **after the interest portion was manually calculated and deducted.** > > It was amazing when the computer age started and card systems were being converted how many battalions of clerks became unemployed. If you needed to withdraw money from your bank, but at a different branch, didn’t somebody at your regular branch have to fax over copy of your signature before they’d let you have any money? I know there were also banks where they had a sort of CCTV system for things like this. I don’t know how widespread that was, but they show a picture of it in a 1960 encyclopedia that I have. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/258 "2011-05-11T19:29:03Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > i find it very disturbing for some reason, how many of (dang near all) of the things in this thread were in my house growing up (including the awesome adding machine way back earlier in the thread) one year we got my mom a stereo system for christmas, cost $500, had its own cabinet, had 4(later 5 with addition of cd player) seperate components for each function. the components were, turn table for vinyl records, tuner, cassette deck, and equalizer for the two HUGE tower speakers. what made it cool was it had dual cassette players you could dub back and forth, and the cassettes would AUTOREVERSE so you didn’t have to get up and turn them over. Now that sounds like a hell of a stereo! In some ways I’ve gone backwards in time. I still watch DVD’s sometimes, but I have no computer, and spend half my time listening to old LP records. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Tone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Lucas\_Tone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Tone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/259 "2011-05-11T19:44:20Z")
> [@UncleRojelio](#): > > One day, when I was 12 or 13, I went to the branch bank, with my passbook, and withdrew five whole American dollars. Then, with my little brother in tow, walked to the bus stop, and got on the bus to the mall across town. The mall had an arcade. Woot! Of course, we blew through the 20 quarters in a hurry and soon had to go back and get on the bus back home. > > Now days, if my kid wants to play a game, he just has GameFly deliver it to the door. I think the most amazing thing about this is that with only five dollars you were able to take the bus to and from somewhere and still have money left over. Two bus rides now costs me just over five bucks. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026/260 "2011-05-11T19:44:55Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > One word: [Filmstrip](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmstrip). > Sort of the Stone Age version of PowerPoint, really. FILMSTRIP! I remember the days. > [@Voyager](#): > > Vugraphs are another happily extinct presentation method. Ah yes, Vugraphs. First real job after college, ~ 1995. To make presentations, we had Macs and would make the slides up on the computer. Think I was using an early version of Powerpoint by then. Then when the presentation slides were correct, print them out on paper. Then take them to the photocopier, and put plastic sheets in the paper bin, and run the presentation through the copier. This left you with a paper copy and a copy on plastic sheets. For the presentation, you would put the plastic sheets manually on the overhead projector. Remember in school. Elementary school (~1976 - 1981), the teachers used a blackboard (sometimes they were actually green, but still called blackboards) and chalk. In Jr High, started using overhead projectors. The teachers would write notes on the overhead, then clean it for each “page”. You had to keep up so it wouldn’t be erased. Eventually they started using plastic sheets that could be written on and saved to reuse. Then there was an overhead that had a plastic spool that could be rolled across the top of the projector to make a new writing surface. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/older-people-amuse-me-with-tales-of-your-hardships-in-pre-tech-days-that-would-seem-trivial-today/581026.md?page=14)