Physical stores where you look at a catalogue, fill out a carbon paper form, and then receive your goods - or have them made available for shopping and pickup later.
Consumers Distributing was a Canadian department store without goods. Warehouses and tiny stores in plazas.
But when my parents came to Canada, the government was then so square they did not trust Canadians with dangerous liquor. They did not have it on display. You went to the government liquor store, filled out a form requesting the desired bottles and if approved, picked up a discreet bag; stern warning optional.
I used to love “Service Merchandise” - they had conveyor belts from the basement warehouse up to the cashier to deliver the stuff you picked out from the catalog (or floor display models, I think).
How about Buicks with real Venti-ports in the side of the hood?
They they went to chrome duplicates with no holes, just black paint inside, then these little decorations that couldn’t vent anything even if they were punched through.
Point of sale counters with no cash registers. The clerk would put the bill of sale in a container and then in a pneumatic tube, or more common in small stores a wire basket on a wire trolley, which went to a secure office. Back would come the completed receipt with change if it was a cash payment.
I had completely forgotten about one clothing store that still had these when I was a child. The store had about 4-5 of these POS counters with wires (or cables) that went up to the balcony at the rear of the store. It was so cool watching the small cage zip up to the cashier and zip back to the counter with the receipt and change.
I think there’s a discussion about those either earlier in the thread, or somewhere else on these boards. Some of us who are definitely old enough to have heard of them had never heard of nor seen them (raises hand). Other people did seem to think they were common. I don’t know that we ever figured out why some of us thought they were all over the place and others had never seen the things.
A store not all that far from me had that system still going up through the 1990’s or early 2000’s – I can’t remember what year they went out of business. (They didn’t go out of business because of that system, though; it had become if anything an attraction. As @Railer13 says, it was cool to watch.)
I suspect that I know why. I saw them plenty when I was a kid - but I’ve always lived somewhere where more than 90% of the time, I had to parallel park between two other cars. I suspect they would be far less common in places where parallel parking is rare - if everywhere you go has a parking lot where you just pull in , I wouldn’t think you’d be worried about scraping your tires on a non-existent curb
My father’s 1940’s vintage car had what I found out are called trafficators. They were short arms that extended from the doorframes indicating a turn was about to be made in the indicated direction. They had lights so they could be seen at night. They withdrew into the frame after.
They never functioned properly, so my father had to resort to the traditional hand signals when turning (straight out for a left turn; angled upwards for a right turn).
Electric eye door openers in department stores. Two waist high brass posts about four inches in diameter with a light bulb behind a lens in one and a mysterious black window in the other.
The automatic door openers of the 1960s ( or before ) that swung open when activated by a pressure sensitive mat at the approach to the door. I don’t know whether they were hydraulic or pneumatic but they emitted a mid-pitch slightly pulsating whine as they did their work.
It sounded kind of like the cartoon depiction of space lasers of the time.
