That “ding-ding” sound when driving into a gas station, buying a dollar’s worth of gas while getting the tires checked and the windows cleaned by an attendant, who gave you saving stamps.
Push-button automatic transmission.
Lawn mowers without the auto-shutoff or mulching features.
Returnable glass soda bottles (no metric sized plastic bottles).
Eating eggs and bacon every day for breakfast, because all that protein was good for you.
Fallout shelters, and “duck-and-cover” at school.
Watches that had to be wound, but at least you could tell what “clockwise” meant.
The Dewey Decibel System must be where you go into the library and yell real loud, “WHERE ARE ALL THE BOOKS?!?!??!”
It should be the Dewey Decimal system. Decibels are for sound. I laughed at your unintended mistake. Sorry, I hate the grammar nazis too, but that one was too funny.
In the good old days, Art Fleming was the host of Jeopardy, and Don Pardo was the announcer. And instead of a rack of TVs with the answers, they were printed on cards. Thus, when a contestant chose a category, someone behind the answers wall would lift up the card that was covering that answer – occasionally they would struggle to pull it up cleanly – which then allowed the contestants to see the answer that there were supposed to craft a question for.
More importantly, you didn’t have to wait for Art to finish reading the answer before you buzzed in. If you were a hotshot, you could buzz in immediately, and read the answer yourself real fast. Of course, if the answer was harder than you thought, you ended up standing there in embarrassed silence.
You could go to the corner store and get sugar cigarettes, or little packages of gunpowder that went “Bang!” when you threw them on the ground, or simply squeezed them in your hand.
MTV actually played music videos. All day long.
Having to put ice cubes wrapped in a towel on the power pack of your C64 to keep it from overheating.
The closest thing to CGI was Max Headroom.
Mario was some little guy who’d run up a ramp, dodging barrels thrown by Donkey Kong.
Going to the drive in wearing your PJ’s, taking home made popcorn in the car, and falling asleep in the back of the station wagon before the start of the 2nd movie. Then Mom and Dad would have to carry us in from the car straight to bed.
When the Jerry Lewis telethon was THE show to watch in the summer. It was usually very highly rated and anticipated. We got to stay up all night, would call in to make a pledge and hope that our names got read on the air by the local TV personalities. We kept track of the amount pledged and HOPED that they would beat last year’s total…of course they ALWAYS do.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned BETAMAX vcr’s!! The Beta tapes were smaller than the VHS tapes, and were supposedly superior quality, but they never caught on.
And what about those laser disc movie players where the discs were bigger than an old vinyl record?
Also…buying candy cigarettes at the corner store and the adults smiling and saying…“oh, how cute, they are smoking!!” Imagine little kids bringing candy cigarettes home with them these days!!
when your sterio or you tv broke down, you could pull the tubes and try them out in the tube tester at the drug store or hardware store. and fix it yourself for less than 10 dollars
Anybody else ever work on a computer with Drum Drives? How about removable hard disk platters? Water cooled computers with paper tapes and teletypes? Ferrite cores? Wire-wrap? Reed relays?
Jeez, I’ve worked on some seriously old computers!
Mini-Moog Synthesizers
Cars with fins and rocket-nozzle tail-lights
Any other cities have cheesy local talent shows? Ours was sponsored by Boyle heating. I still remember their song: If you need coal or oil, call Boyle. Fairfax8-3200. Fairfax8-3200.
Oh yeah, phone numbers that started with names.
Sunday night at 8:00 Disney came on. Never missed it.
Anybody else have a Dialing for Dollars? The local TV station would draw a name at random from the phone book, call them, and ask if they knew the jackpot amount. If they knew (pretty much had to be watching) they won it.
THE NATION’S BEST MUSEUM OF OLD TV AND RADIOS (This is in my hometown, I have visited, it is fascinating. The site also has RealAudio of old radio broadcasts): http://www.antique-radio.org/
If I find some more I will post them - but have fun with these - especially the TV Party site - it is awesome.
wacky ninja said: (roughly) …“Muppets were still making original episodes.”
Do you remember that the muppets were on Sat. Night Live the first year? Had some great caracters that were pretty sleazy. I remember a skit where two of them were trying to pick up Raquel Welch in the back alley of the studio. Funny.
Our first color TV wasn’t rectangular, but had rounded sides.
“Live” television that wasn’t sports.
The advent of instant replay.
Wide World of Sports was the only place to see anything that wasn’t football, baseball, basketball, or hockey.
“Good night Chet.”, “Good night David.”
Dan Rather broadcasting from Galveston during a Hurricane.
Being able to look up into the night sky and see the milky way.
School started Sept.10th.
Real Christmas Trees.
Two lane super highways.
The “Jet Set” were the only ones who could afford to travel by jet.
Remember when Presidents didn’t have sex lives?
Remember breakfast bars?
Remember when Jesus Christ wasn’t a Superstar
and nobody knew who Eva Peron was?
I had the G I Joe in a space capsule (I’ve seen them re-issued at Toys BackwardsR Us for $120 Canadian, just last month). As part of the original package, I got a bright orange 45 with the actual conversation between John Glenn and mission control. Too cool. This was before G I Joe got his Kung Fu grip, of course.
I remember when comics went up in price to 12 cents.
It used to be exciting when the Yanks sent a rocket into space.
I remember seeing a new game show called “The Wizard of Odds”, featuring a young Canadian host named Alex Trebek.
This would have been in the early 70s.
What I wouldn’t give now to be able to remember what his suit looked like.
Of course, I couldn’t have taped the show – no VCR.
And I even remember when candy bars were 10 cents from vending machines. No buttons to push. You had to pull out this big… it looked like a pinball machine plunger… and you had to pull so hard to make the candy bar drop!
Somebody mentioned radio dials with knobs that moved the little indicator - some of those even had a “seek” feature with a little electric motor that would move the indicator for you.
Dodge “typewriter” transmission, anybody?
Remember wearing “elephant cords”? With a paisley shirt, of course … the girls ironing their hair? I actually remember dressing approximately like “The Brady Bunch” or “The Mod Squad”. Remember the absurdly wide belt with the big square buckle on it?
A little later - the CB radio craze.
Not only no remote - the TV had a mechanical tuner which would wear out if used too much.
Model 33 teletypes - with a paper tape reader on the side. Standard trick to steal passwords by leaving the paper tape turned on. Tektronix storage tubes were coveted technology.
I learned assembler on a Xerox Sigma mainframe.
reel-to-reel tape recorders - for the low end market.
Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy. Sargent Preston of the Yukon and His Mighty Dog, King. Dick Tracy. Gunsmoke (yes, on radio) Our Miss Brooks. The Lux Theater of the Air.
Jack Benny. Amos and Andy. And many more. Deluxe radio sets made of ebony, with a black panther crouched on the top. FM radio was somewhat of a mystery and “short-wave” was pure magic.
Early TV: (Which I saw for the first time at age nine) Milton Berle. Ed Sullivan. Professional Wrestling. Texaco Star Theater (may have been Milton Berle’s show, memory fails)
Cars: Packards, Cadilacs, Chryslers and Buicks with straight-eight flat head engines. Chevrolets were six cylinder overhead valve only–no V8 Chevies until 1955. Ford went to OHV in 1954, I think. All sorts of trick places to hide the gas cap. Tail fins. Oldsmobile Rocket V-8 (those were some hot cars, those Olds)
I remember watching my father buy cigarettes from a machine. You put in a quarter, pulled the knob under the brand you wanted and got a pack of cigarettes with three new pennies under the celophane outer wrapper. Gasoline was something less than $0.20 per gallon, IIRC. I think it was around $0.25 per gallon when I started driving. Cigars could be bought for $0.10 each, good ones for $0.25.
Someone mentioned steel beer cans–the first time I was able to bend one double, I thought I was bullet-proof.
Hadacol, anyone remember Hadacol? Iron lungs? Polio scares? Front porch society?
Cars - dimmer switch used to be universally foot operated, and the emergency brake was a pedal.
My first car was a '65 Pontiac Catalina - those were the ones with a proboscis about a foot long on the front. It had a 389, and got maybe 14 mpg.
And I miss the center-mounted gas caps, unsafe or not. You could pull up to either side of the pump.
Cars didn’t have steering locks, either (neither does my current car, but that’s because it’s a Saab - it has a transmission lock instead).
Sears Silvertone guitars.
Remember when they used to sell small street bikes? Used to be a lot of 50 - 200 cc motorcycles that were real street bikes. Cheap, and popular with high school kids. A 350 was big then, and the 650 Triumph was viewed as some kind of mutant monster. A friend of mine used to run around on an under 100 cc Bridgestone, which he rode like an utter fool. Lucky he didn’t kill himself.
I laughed at your unintended mistake. Sorry, I hate the grammar nazis too, but that one was too funny.