As I was lecturing to a Graphic Design class today, I realized that a number of my old pre-computer skills are utterly useless now.
(I stopped myself from telling this story, instead I stared off into space and thought of the “Early Obsolete Inventions” Thread, and decided I’d bore you folks instead).
So-specific-that-it’s-barely-relevant example:
Once upon a time, if a film for printing had a glitch in it, you had to get it re-imaged before you could make a plate from it. And they’d usually have to remake all four (CMYK) for a color job. The problem was, you had time booked on a big printing press and the fix would usually mean you’d miss that and delay the job by a day or three.
But I had a steady enough hand that I could ink it with a ruling pen, or usually, scrape away the emulsion on the offending film to make the film workable.
I was proud of the fact that I could make a nice, round dot by scraping a 1/150" circle.
So what happened? They don’t even make films any more! “Direct To Plate” means my handy… nay, heroic… trick has become anachronistic.
And you? Can’t wait to hear from the HyperCard and slide rule users (but not if you still wear it in the big vinyl holster)…
Tape to tape video editing for tv news - I crushed that skill! Similarly our microwave transmission trucks are being phased out by backpack live units! Press button, go live.
Listen to scanners for breaking news? Between agencies going encrypted and smart phone scanner apps the novice can at least play the game a bit, scanner users are definitely a rarity in my business (though I still own & program a number of scanners and still hold an advantage, but the art is definitely dying).
Physical map use - don’t get me wrong, the GPS navigator is really good, and I can’t imagine not using it, but quickly looking at a map and understanding how to approach an area without being tied up in traffic and trying not to be blocked by authorities during a news event is most certainly a skill, and one you don’t see used as often anymore by the younger set.
Going back to videotape - back when the tape would break, and with that a whole day’s work would be lost… unless you knew how to open the cassette up, wind the tape back up with a pencil, cut out the offending damaged area with a razor then use scotch tape to splice it back together so you can get a one pass dub off the original before tossing it…
I used to have mad mimeograph masters repairing skillz. Gentle scraping with a hobby knife, then re-type the letter or word using a scrap of the inked paper. Do mimeograph machines even exist outside of museums any longer?
I developed the ability to memorize phone numbers, being too lazy to look them up all the time. One time I knew everybody I know’s home, business, cell and fax numbers.
In this age of cell phone number storage, it’s no longer worth it.
When I started my first job as a graphic artist we didn’t use Macs- they came a few years later. I cut red rubylith films for large areas of color. I drew on vellum (translucent thin plastic sheets) with rapidograph pens (a sort of very precise fountain pen).
Want to know how a perfect round-cornered box was created in the olden days? I’d first draw the box area onto the vellum with a light blue pencil that the camera would not pick up. Then draw the round corners in ink with a circle template, overlapping the area slightly where the curve would meet the straight line. Then draw the straight lines with a ruler, making sure that they went into the curve perfectly. Finally I would take an x-acto knife with a specially angled blade and carefully scrape away the overlapping curved part. It was an art and a skill to do it perfectly.
I’ve often thought that few professions have undergone a paradigm shift as radical as the graphic design industry- going from ink on film to doing almost everything on the computer.
There are likely more than a few former journalists out there (like me) commanding a strong familiarity of AP style – not much call for that familiarity since the number of newspapers, and the number of reporting positions at still-functioning newspapers, has plummeted.
Same goes for copy editors, whose services are no longer needed because they kind of want a salary. I used to find it remarkable to find typographical errors in one of the two Denver daily newspapers.; the other day, remarkably, I found three typos on one page of the one remaining Denver paper.
In the mid 70s I worked primarily as an architectural illustrator. Using perspective to draw building renderings. I made decent money at it too. I had to use extra long straight edges to reach those vanishing points. Painted them in gouache. Today a computer can bang one out in no time and cad jockeys work cheap.
Not much call for hacking analog cable anymore, digital cable last I investigated was no go.(I know the config files in cable internet modems can be messed with to increase bandwidth but thats it.)
I was a master of the home studio, mixing board, amps, mics, effects, track recording, etc… and had thousand of dollars tied up in solid state technology! I spent hours practicing and recording, rerecording, doubling tracks, etc …now any kid can do all that and more with a few mouse clicks with his laptop in his basement.
Yep, the old days of stealing cable or satellite signals have all been replaced by downloading or streaming content over the internet so even if it could be done, it’s pointless.
There’s also a growing movement towards using long-range digital antennas to pick up more FTA signals without having a cable/satellite TV bill.
I had a fantastic touch with using himem.sys and emm386 to load DOS and various drivers into upper memory. I could get boatloads of free conventional memory in the 640K space.
I might be the youngest librarian you’ll find who ever had to maintain a card catalog (doing original cataloging and producing cards.) This would have been 2005. I had nightmares about dropping a drawer when I had the rod out.
I learned to solder when I was about 12 and now I restore tube electronics as a hobby and I’m pretty good with point/point soldered wiring.
My previous job was at a high tech electronics company and most electrical engineers thought soldering was “for the techs” or a college lab activity! :rolleyes:
…except one really nice 20-something Asian lady engineer who has since moved on to Apple! I think she understood that the Chinese actually MAKE STUFF instead of just designing it.
[QUOTE=2gigch1]
Going back to videotape - back when the tape would break, and with that a whole day’s work would be lost… unless you knew how to open the cassette up, wind the tape back up with a pencil, cut out the offending damaged area with a razor then use scotch tape to splice it back together so you can get a one pass dub off the original before tossing it…
Yeah, that I don’t miss.
[/QUOTE]
And you really don’t miss cringing when that splice rolled past the heads with a SSCRXXGRXXRXXXXGSSS and hoping that crappy splice doesn’t chip a head.
[QUOTE=solost]
I’ve often thought that few professions have undergone a paradigm shift as radical as the graphic design industry- going from ink on film to doing almost everything on the computer.
[/QUOTE]
Can’t say I miss rubylith and stinky stat cameras, but you’re right about the neck-snapping changes that happened. I’ve still got a pica stick.
Want to make a non-uniform stretched image in 1980? Draw or print it on white sheet rubber. Pull it however you want, pin it in place and shoot it. Today? Add a vector handle or two and slide 'em around on screen.
Another printer here whose skills are obsolete and can be done electronically.
I used to run offset printing presses and do prepress such as negatives, masking, stripping, layout and plate making. Now everything is direct to press, and no manual adjustment is required. I looked at it as a craft, but no one pays for craft. Had to unlearn and relearn to continue working.
I started my career during the end of the “management information systems” days, just before the internet came along. I remember actually feeling proud of myself and oh so very adult when I had to carry a reel tape or two from our offsite storage building to our computer room. I knew a few different programming languages and quickly got the knack of learning any language I needed to. My skills ran the gamut from assembly language to Cobol, so I could make the machine bend to my will and I had an intimate understanding of what was going on under the sheet metal when I cracked the whip on it. I discovered that I’m a spacial thinker because people would describe faulty behavior to me from the user’s perspective and I would see in my head the code I’d written, understand what went wrong and how to quickly fix it. “You see the matrix, but I just see blond… brunette… redhead.”
These days they have frameworks instead of languages. I felt myself falling behind the technology a few years ago so switched to being a business analyst. I just attended a pre-implementation meeting and very little of the technology is anything like I remember. It’s full of services and frameworks and lots of unfamiliar terms. I understood that they’d have to stop and start things, but that’s about it.
When I was going to college, nobody ever, EVER told me that my bachelor degree had an expiration date. In technology, they very much do!
