Damn, beat me to it! I remember handing in freshly-typed term papers in college, and keeping the slightly smuded carbon-on-onionskin copies in a box. I threw the last of them out, oh, gosh, almost 20 years ago.
The first copier I ever saw was one that used heat on specially treated paper. You put the untreated side of the paper against the face of what you wanted copied, then fed them through the copier together. It was the most amazing damn thing I’d ever seen.
This reminds me of all the huzzahs when they started making copiers that used plain paper! It wasn’t all that long ago, in FOGI years.
I miss that smell, AND the look of the final result.
You could get a pretty good bang if you took a whole roll of caps and hit them with a hammer.
[sub]waste of ammo though[/sub]
It seems like every 10 to 15 years rock and roll, or at least some of it, tries to get back to basics. Not necessarily in the actual music, but in the way it goes back to minimal “garage rock” production values. When that happens I have enjoyed it and actually try to keep up. Let’s see…
Mid 1950’s: I wasn’t born yet but I love early rockabilly, Chuck Berry, R&B, Elvis’ Sun sessions.
Mid-late 1960s: I was only 10 in 1968, but I liked it instantly and still subscribe wholeheartedly to all the hype about this period of popular music.
Late 1970s early 1980s: Early New Wave/punk bands–X, Devo, B-52s. Wonderful relief after years of 1970s arena rock and disco.
Early 1990s: Grunge and various indy-ish bands (like Counting Crows, Garbage, etc). Loved 'em.
Mid 00’s: Not sure if there’s any kind of movement, but I do hear a lot of things I like on public radio.
I remember the days of Betamax and trying to watch scrambled Cinemax, do I quailfy?
Comptograph (Been racking my little brain)
I used one of those at one of my first jobs. It was a bookkeeping service for small businesses, and we had to make up a tape with all the coded information (purchases, expenses, payroll) on it for each business each month. That got sent to the main office by mail and they sent back a profit and loss statement. You should have seen the excitement in the office when we got a computer, and it was actually connected to the head office in California. We could send the info through it and it would take a lot less time for the P & L to come back.
Oh man you are so in 
I was always amused that John Cougar’s albums were distributed by Mercury records. That makes him a Mercury Cougar! 
What is the minimum age for full membership in FOGI? I’m 50 and getting mail from AARP.
Thus far, and as far as I’m aware, the minimum age for FULL membership of FOGI is 50 for males and 45 for females.
Associate membership can be granted to persons below those ages provided they can show just cause why said membership should be granted.
BTW do you wear carpet slippers?
I am informed that this is one of the prime requisites demanded of all FOGI members and associates.
Also, being in possession of a cravat is viewed with extreme favour
Well, it’s been real. 
Wait a minute! I go out for a day for some good cane shakin’ and you people go and volunteer me for something’? Back in my day, when you had an idea for something you were the one expected to do it. I only started the thread not the club, although I do expect to be a charter member and get a nice pin and I’ll bring the jello mold to the first official meeting.
By the way, this Wile E is a she.
Well. No wonder that Cartoon Character Oracle thought you were Bugs Bunny. 
Gad. So many things to respond to, so little attention span. . . .
Yep; used an old fashioned adding machine. And onion skin paper (reminds me: is Eaton’s Corrassable Bond still around? Just the thing for typists who can’t type.) Lemme throw out another old office machine: the Addressograph!
I think that chemical odor toasted some neurons. . . .
Ah. Nothing like taking a hammer to a roll of caps; expense be damned. Which reminds me of metal clamp-on roller skates. Why, I don’t know.
AARP goes after everyone who turns fifty.
Never thought I’d see the day when BetaMax would be considered antique.
It matters not, the FOGI does not discriminate between gender.
As far as we are concerned a FOGI is a FOGI is a FOGI.
Now then, do you accept the exalted position of chairperson or not?
Betamax and scrambled Cinemax? Pshaw! I remember when we got three, count 'em, three TV stations out of NYC! 2, 4, and 7 were CBS, NBC, and ABC respectively. And videos in an ordinary home would have been considered a pipe dream.
My closest friend in senior year of high school (1973-4) got himself an HP scientific calculator. It cost him about $600, but it did just about everything mathematical you can imagine. Of course, he wasn’t allowed to use it in tests.
For graduation that year, I received a used electric typewriter that had a key that allowed you to erase the previous character and overtype it with what you really meant. Without using an eraser or white-out or anything! Given that I’d learned to type on a 1906 Smith Coronna, I loved that typewriter!
For me, “twenty years ago” meant ‘sometime during or shortly after WWII’ for almost 30 years. “Fifty years ago” meant, “oh, a little past the turn of the century.” I got brought up short on this while listening to a story about a man who had been wrongfully imprisoned for over twenty years, and then released. Entirely independently, my boyfriend and I both automatically thought “oh, a little past WWII” and were utterly stunned when they said that he’d gone to prison in 1960. THat was one of my first “How did THAT happen?” moments.
FWIW, I think that the crotch-down-to-the-knees/tightie-wightie-exposed look is one calculated to make almost anyone who didn’t grow up seeing it to want to yank up the wearer’s pants and slap him silly.
I HATE ultra short hair on men, unless it’s a military thing. To me, the best look on, at least, a young man is hair that reaches from beneath the ear to the chin. On girls, lipstick should be pale, and the idea of wearing ankle-socks with a skirt is anathema!
I suspect I qualify for your organization, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Oh, remember when UHF channels started coming in? You had to get a tv with an extra tuner, and you had to FINE TUNE the station AND have an extra antenna.
It was exciting at the time.
My dad had an appliance repair shop back in the 60’s. When the first color tv’s came out, he set one up in the window of his shop so people could drive up and look at it through the window. He even set it up so you could listen to the audio on your car radio. Kinda like a mini drive-in.
As I tell young guys who go for this look: I’ve lived through the hippies and through disco. But that look is the stupidest fashion statement I have ever seen.
In high school business class, I learned to type from dictation using a machine where the dictation was on floppy plastic (?) tubular thingies. Anyone remember those, or know what they were called?
I don’t know if those machines were actually used in offices, or if they were mostly for training. In the 70’s, offices were using tape recorders, which got smaller and smaller. Much more efficient, not having that extra step (shorthand) between boss’s mouth and the typewriter.
You were lucky in your father’s profession. I don’t think we were able to afford a color TV until 1970 or so. And we continued to watch the black and white in another room if there was a conflict in interests.
As far as those “spirit duplicator” machines go…we used to call them “Ditto” machines when I was in high school (the 80’s), and yes, the smell of those freshly copied papers helped to get us through the day! Remember in Fast Times at Ridgemont High…there was a scene where Mr. Hand passes out some test papers and all the kids smell the papers before they start writing on them!!!
I felt like an old fogey (or should I say FOGI) yesterday when I realized that all the schools were closed because of 2 inches of snow that fell overnight…Two inches!!!.
Back in my day, (the 70’s) we walked to school in a foot of snow or more! True it was only 3 blocks, but we put on our boots and coats and hiked thru the white stuff, we loved it! After thinking that, I realized how old fogeyish that is, but it’s the truth! We might have had school close once or twice a year and we would be talking feet of snow if that was the case. And, while not getting school cancelled was a bummer, it really was fun walking thru the snow.
I remember also how we used to make prank calls for fun. We would grab the phone book and start calling people pretending to be the police, or doing the “is your refrigerator running?” stuff and thought it was just HILARIOUS!! Or we would call our teachers and hang up right when they answered—CLASSIC!!! That was our 6th or 7th grade entertainment on Saturday nights. Telling my neices and nephews of this practice brought forth blank stares and eye rolling. Sadly, this new-fangled technology doohickies like Caller ID prevent our youth from this right of passage.
One other thing from my teenage years that makes me feel old: I remember when “going to Pizza Hut” was a fancy dining experience. The whole family would pile into the car and have a sit down dinner at the Pizza Hut complete with pitchers of Dr. Pepper and several different kinds of pizza pie. (Thick N Chewy or Thin N Crispy crust?) I wonder how many youngsters(ha–fogey word!) ever go inside a Pizza Hut restaurant these days.