I understand that, and the little I know about 8-tracks I’ve never understood why it competed with the compact cassette which had the same limits of fidelity, but was better in most regards (handling, compactness and most importantly, the capability to make your own tapes).
Eight track tapes were only common for about 2 years. I happen to have run into them, but kinda by chance.
Floppy disks, though. They were ubiquitous. On the other hand, we found a couple today, cleaning out my square dance club’s storage space. And both the 28 year old and the college kid recognized them.
There was a brief time where 8 Tracks had a higher audio quality.
Then Cassettes improved and there was no reason for 8-Tracks.
Its last ditch was producing inexpensive 8-Track recorders. My sister had one round 1980 or 1981.
Car cigarette lighters. Cars now have generic 12-volt power outlets useful for all sorts of adaptions - even cigarette lighters. However, the actual lighter is an accessory that has to be purchased separately.
No, the long coiled phone cords were so that you could do something else while still being on the telephone. My mother had one on the kitchen wall phone so that could continue prepping food or cooking while talking on the phone.
And she also had a shoulder rest that was clamped on the handset and let her have both hands free while talking on the phone – that was a Mother’s Day gift I got her that she really enjoyed.
Not exactly an item but there was a noticable change in the 2000s when literally everything was still closed on Christmas except gas stations, where now literally almost every retailer is open on Christmas.
I remember my family having their dinner plans fall through in 2002ish and we drove literally 30 minutes around town looking for ANY place that was open for food. Now I can go to McDonald’s Christmas morning to get something to eat.
Which makes older movies like Christmas Story where the only place open to eat was a Chinese restaurant so weird.
I still see corded wired telephones in most every office I visit, so I doubt that a coiled handset cord would be unrecognizable by a present-day youngster.
How different would the world be if this existed?
IIRC the popularity of the consumer 8-track derived mainly from its use in automotive applications. It looks to me that must have been to a great degree because the consumer 8-track cartridge was entirely self-contained, with the pinch roller internal to the case (unlike the radio station kind, where the pinch roller rose from the player’s innards), so nothing in the consumer 8-track player needed to move into the inside of the case, unlike in a cassette where you have to get the spindles through the spool hubs and the drive capstans behind the tape, both going through the case. That meant fewer moving parts in the system and you can just simply shove the cartridge in to have it play, so it must have been quicker to put into the market.
(The broadcast-station cart meanwhile soldiered on until everything at the stations went to digital libraries)
Around here a restaurant open on Christmas is so rare that the newspaper does articles about ones that are open. They don’t include Chinese restaurants because everyone expects them to be open, and they are wildly busy.
Most other businesses are also closed on Christmas, even the supermarkets.
Here is Upstate New York.
I still write a check every other week to pay my house cleaner. I’m sure my son has seen them. I’m pretty sure he’s seen me write the occasional check to pay for school events.
How about Traveler’s Checks?
Meanwhile, over here in the Pacific Northwest, Chinese restaurants being open on Christmas simply isn’t a thing. You want hot food on Christmas? Get your ass to Denny’s.
This certainly wasn’t ubiquitous all across the country, but anyone older than 40 who lived in NYC should have seen one:
Whereas I grew up on Long Island in an area with a heavily Jewish population so various restaurants, not just Chinese, being open on Christmas was definitely a thing. I remember going to a diner one time after seeing a movie as a kid.
Huh, I didn’t realize that. We go to one every year, but maybe it just happens to be one of the few that’s open. (It’s packed every year.)
The cardboard sides of the oil cans were the reason that there was a learning curve to installing the spout. If you couldn’t line it up and thrust sharply, at the right angle, you’d just collapse the cardboard and then you couldn’t get the spout to go into that spot at all.
I might have 1 or 2 left.
It’s probably only really a thing in areas that have a sizable Jewish population. I know there’s enough Jews in Seattle that there’s an eruv erected around parts of town, so there may be a few such restaurants in that area, but here in Olympia there isn’t a single Asian restaurant open on Christmas that I’ve been able to find. Not that Olympia has more than a couple of exclusively Chinese restaurants - we’re more of a sushi, pho, and teriyaki city.