Bedspreads. The fancy ones or the awful chenille bumpy ones that you never ever slept under, instead you took it off and hung it up or placed it on a shelf. Waste of fabric and time.
White pages: I know you had to pay extra for an unlisted number, but did they charge women extra for an initial instead of their full first name?
Since creepos would dial up women’s listings to make obscene phone calls.
Not that I ever heard of. I’ve been listed by initials and have never been charged for that.
Not sure how much difference it made, though, except that creeps wouldn’t know what your first name was. People tended to assume that anyone listed by initials was female; and the only such calls I ever remember were some my sister got for a short stretch of time, on a phone that was listed in my father’s (clearly masculine) name.
It’s like you old timers were living in the future. Customers shouldn’t use them more than 12 times a year, but employees got dosed all day long. Plus 75% were leaking dangerous levels of radiation and some were still in operation until 1980! The most sciency thing I ever saw in a shoe store was the metal foot shaped ruler thing. (I feel I should have a shoe bomber joke in here somewhere)
Fascinating. I wonder what it felt like to play the most popular song of the day over and over again. I bet that got old in a hurry. I wonder how good the sound was over old time phone lines. I’m sure it was an amazing thing at the time. And they didn’t even give the women chairs to sit on, eight hours on your feet flipping records.
Long before I was born, my grandfather died (let’s call him “Robert Lastname”). He had a telephone, of course, and was listed in the phone book as “Lastname, Robert.” When he died, my grandmother kept on paying the phone bill in his name, and as long as the bill was paid, the phone company didn’t seem to care how Grandmother’s number was listed in the phone book, so it was “Lastname, Robert … 555-0123,” for years. Even after Grandmother died in 1989, and my aunt took over her house, the number remained listed in the phone book as “Lastname, Robert.” Again, the phone company didn’t care whose name was on the account, as long as that account was paid at the end of the month.
I got the impression that as long as the phone bill was paid, the phone company would list any name that the subscriber wanted in the phone book. And keeping “Lastname, Robert” in the phone book sure avoided obscene phone calls to my grandmother and my aunt for well over fifty years.
Called a Brannock Device.
They used this as a plot device in a 1940s episode of the Dick Tracy comic strip (spies were passing information through the communication link between the jukebox and the woman playing the records). Chester Gould operated out of Chicago*, so either they had a similar setup in The Windy City, or else Gould heard about the LA system and just used it for his strip.
- technically in Woodstock, Illinois.
There was a veterinarian around here who got a fluoroscope and was performing orthopedic surgery using it to “see” the bone without cutting open the leg.
He ended up with severe radiation burns to both hands.
Mergenthaler (Linotype) VIP.
One summer in college, I sold women’s shoes in a department store. We had those devices, but rarely had to use them. All the women already knew what size they wore. Even the ones with 14" feet who claimed to wear a size 6. And somehow they actually managed to squeeze their feet into that size 6 shoe.
I think those devices are primarily used for kids’ feet.
One of the things that is tangentially related to the OP is that while it was not from my childhood, I had a working Linotype in my garage until I moved a couple years ago.
Adding something on topic: I recall that in my mom’s station wagon, I not only had access to the rear-facing seats, I had a ‘booster seat’ so I could see out better. It was a plastic seat pan with metal rail legs that gave me an extra 6-12 inches of height. And of course it wasn’t strapped down or anything. Just another object in the car to become a missile in case of an accident. Essentially an ejector seat.
Meet Jen.
When I took a course in printing at San Jose State the lab had a Linotype in it, the only time I’ve seen one. Alas, only “seen” – there was never a reason to fire it up.
XYZZY
Loading computer games off of a cassette tape.
Having to write command line batch files in MS-DOS to play the latest PC game and booting from a floppy.
@echo off
prompt $p$g
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\UTIL\AUTOEXEC\BAT
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET TMP=C:\TMP
SET MOUSE=C:\UTIL\Autoexec\MOUSE
Loadhigh c:\windows\command\keyb fr,C:\windows\command\keyboard.sys
Loadhigh doskey
goto %config%
:WIN95
goto fin
:DOSXMSCD
loadhigh C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /V
SET SOUND=C:\util\sb16
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
C:\util\sb16\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\util\sb16\SB16SET /P /Q
loadhigh c:\util\autoexec\mouse\mouse.com
c:
call c:\command.com
goto fin
That quote shows up in recent books, at least, for all that modern readers might not know where it’s from (I saw it in a book published this year).
Ahhh yes. Using “copy con config.sys” and “copy con autoexec.bat”. And make sure you don’t have any IRQ or DMA conflicts.
You know, Colossal Cave Adventure is still around. If you’re feeling nostaligic, you can still download it and play it
(this is a filler sentence just to get past the site’s filters. below is the thing from my childhood that a younger person won’t understand.)
SYS 49152
I remember that “SYS” called a machine routine at address 49152 in C64 Basic, but which was it at that special address?
I’m wondering how many games such as Kick the Can, Red Rover and Hopscotch would be known by younger people. Are they still around?
I live in a quiet street where many children live, and I’m surprised how often I still see Hopscotch courts painted on the pavement.