The Busy Signal....forgotten things from recent past...

I remember my grandmother sending me out with empty milk bottles for the milkman to pick up.

I also remember dozing off in front of the t.v. and waking up to a test pattern on the screen with a contant high-pitched tone.

Also, dining counters in department stores.

Before video games in arcades, we had machines like these, back in the day when SEGA was an American company:

www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: Skid Mark


Card catalogs at the library! The Dewy Decimal system. Polaroid cameras were cool. Also, CB radios. When I was a kid most cars had one. Speaking of cars, ashtrays. I miss those.

I was one of the nerds in school that worked in the library instead of study hall. Loved the Dewey Decimal System. I was the one that put the books back the kids checked out. Or brought the projectors to the classes for Movie Day. Or made copies for the teacher on the old copy machines that left your hands somewhat purple. LOL The Ditto Machine.



Plus you had that long paper slicer, the guillotine.



I loved when nothing was going on though, because then I could go on the computer and see how far I could get on the Oregon Trail.

Sadly one day, I got to watch the Challenger. Still shocking. I had just got back from picking up a TV and walked in just in time, we were all excited that a teacher was on there. Just as I got in, it blew up. I just saw a documentary that said the guy in the Big Bird costume was supposed to go in to get kids interested in the space program, but the costume wouldn't fit in the shuttle, so they picked the teacher instead. Talk about close calls.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: CrikeyMagnet
A few years ago, I found myself downtown without a cell phone and needing to make a call. It was then that I realized pay phones are essentially a thing of the past. I can't find a clip of it... but there was an episode of Phineas and Ferb where their father describes the pay phone as a little room you can go into to have a private telephone conversation. The response from one of their friends was "You guys are blowin' my mind!"

I'm sure most of the stuff that has been "lost in the mists of time" just slipped away without us noticing, though. Much like 8-tracks gave way to cassette tapes, which then gave way to cd's and now have given way to no-physical-media. The awesome things from our childhood are being replaced with things that may be equally awesome... but are also portable.

Yeah....pay phones being gone is strange. They used to be everywhere....now it is really hard to find one if you need it. Another funny thing about that is the way the younger generation doesn't remember phone numbers because they don't have to anymore....everyone dials by name.

My university campus had a pay phone - it looked like one of those American phones, but it was disconnected, vandalized and look like a prop from a post-apocalypse movie that had forgotten to be collected.

Rusty cars on the roads is the one thing I don't see any more. Cars used to have lines of rust running down the sides of the car, usually from the corners of doors and radiator grills. Now I don't see that anymore except from British Telecom and council vans.

CRT monitors - they are gone too - I used to have a great big chunky 20" computer monitor - those are gone too. My parents still have a 16" CRT TV set. It's amazing to see how it is deeper that it is wide.

VCR (Video Cassette Recorders) - they are gone as well. In the past, the only way to watch a TV program when you were out, was to set up this box to record onto tape. They you could replay that video whenever you wanted. Most people had a large box of VCR tapes as well as ones they bought from the stores.

ZIP drives - an attempt by the magnetic disk drive industry to stay in business, but they were overtaken by CD-ROMs and DVD's.

VGA and Super-VGA graphics boards - A graphics board that offered 256 colors simultaneously was seen as a dream, then 16-bit color with 65536 colors, then 24-bit color with 16 millions colors (as on a standard computer screen).

Chunky yuppy mobile phones and FiloFaxes. Those mobile phones were the size of a brick. There weren't any smartphones at the time, so everything was stored on little paper cards that could be clipped into a mini ring binder. Owners would pay tens if not hundreds of pounds/dollars for special pages to store golf scores, medical conditions, telephone numbers, pop songs and genuine leather covers. They would also be completely devastated if they lost their Filofax.

Office In, out and pending trays. Before everything was computerized, paperwork would be stored in these stackable trays. If someone left, was fired or off ill, the entire state of their work would be frozen in time. The next person would have to take over from where everything was. Now everything is "in the system".

originally posted by: Anyafaj
Or made copies for the teacher on the old copy machines that left your hands somewhat purple. LOL The Ditto Machine.

I remember those. Whenever the teacher passed out a test or quiz, some of the kids would pick up the paper and sniff it.

Also, there was a computer programming class that I took in college and the programs were done on keypunch cards and the output was printed on greenbar paper.

Film projectors are something I don't see much of anymore. That and type writers. I've had electric and non electric. I had one of those clunky old Royals. I loved that thing.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: grainofsand

I think mobiles have totally killed that random community interaction thing from back then, hell I even see groups of 'friends' out together now and everyone is just looking at their own screens.

I think this is one of the most annoying things about the culture nowadays. Nobody interacts when they are out anymore. Just glad I am raising my kids to want to play outside rather than sit and watch/play TV/games all the time.

Some kids though, no matter how much you want them to be outside kids, it just won't happen. I was one of those. I loved indoors growing up. I still do. I just was never an outdoor kid. Give me a book and a nook and I was a happy kid. When my grandmother shoved me outside, I sat on the porch with a book. When she took my book away and handed me a ball, I sat on a swing for hours, then came home to my book. LOL I just was never a playtime kid. Some kids are just not into it. I tried. I liked volleyball ok. Archery I loved, but nobody had it near us. Shooting, I loved, again, not just done, especially girls. Bowling, but we only did that on Saturdays and that was indoor. Miniature Golf, but that cost money. And tetherball, but to my parents that cost money and anything that cost money with 5 kids was out of the question. Ballet. But my stepsister's child support paid for that and once she grew bored with it and wanted to quit, all of is girls were pulled, whether I wanted to stay or not. So that was that with ballet. So books it was.

originally posted by: Imagewerx
Then...........Go on holiday,get the film out of the box,load it into the back of the camera in partial darkness,pull the film wind on lever a couple of times to get it ready to take the first photo,take photos,travel home,put the film into a Kodak envelope,go to the post box,wait two weeks,open the little plastic box they sent the slides back in,get the projector and screen out,put the slides into the magazine making sure they are all upside down and round the wrong way,draw the curtains,switch the lights off and keep on pulling a handle in and out of the side of the projector.Oh and while on holiday keep an eye on how many photos you had taken as they were only ever a maximum of 36 on a roll of film and you only had four rolls of film with you.

Today.......Take one memory card with you,switch camera on,take 4000 photos,see them all 1 second later,delete 3950 of them,view photos on your tablet every night in the hotel room.Upload the photos of the synchronised jumping in the air to Facebook.

Kodak had the higher quality looking cardboard slide mounts I seem to remember,while was it Fuji who used the horrid plastic ones that you could open up to take the transparency out?

We had a TON of cardboard slide mount photos in the basement. I used to love going through them as a kid and using the basement light bulb to look at the photo.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

Yep....I think I had all the Hardy Boys books passed down to me as well.....read those all the time, some more than once. I always loved series books!

My first crush was when the TV show came out. *le sigh*

originally posted by: Nyiah
Remember the wonders of exploring Geocities & Angelfire sites via webrings? Not too many sites still do webrings. If you build a page on either after studying a simple HTML book (or web page for it) you were sure to impress your friends. It was HTML coding & you could DO it!

And at one time, the highlight of online gaming was a choice between AOL or Yahoo! Games. Thank god for today's options, eh?

I remember those days. Surfing through all the weirdness of Geocities and those webrings was the digital equivalent of wandering around SanFranscisco on Google Streetview.

Fortunately, there is an archive: www.reocities.com...

An example page: www.reocities.com...

I still have a Bell and Howell slide cube projector around here.

Anyone still own a manual typewriter. I've got an old Royal.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: CrikeyMagnet
A few years ago, I found myself downtown without a cell phone and needing to make a call. It was then that I realized pay phones are essentially a thing of the past. I can't find a clip of it... but there was an episode of Phineas and Ferb where their father describes the pay phone as a little room you can go into to have a private telephone conversation. The response from one of their friends was "You guys are blowin' my mind!"

I'm sure most of the stuff that has been "lost in the mists of time" just slipped away without us noticing, though. Much like 8-tracks gave way to cassette tapes, which then gave way to cd's and now have given way to no-physical-media. The awesome things from our childhood are being replaced with things that may be equally awesome... but are also portable.

Yeah....pay phones being gone is strange. They used to be everywhere....now it is really hard to find one if you need it. Another funny thing about that is the way the younger generation doesn't remember phone numbers because they don't have to anymore....everyone dials by name.

I had the opportunity to use and old dial phone a few years ago. Guy still had one hanging on the wall and ready to go.

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun
One thing that saddens me is the death of the jukebox. They're disappearing and becoming relegated to the man caves of hipsters and museums. I remember an old cafe where I grew up that had a jukebox, we'd order a plate of chili fries, fire up "Mary Jane's Last Dance", and play pool until we ran out of quarters.

Ahhnnn, I'm feeling nostalgic now.

Some of the Waffle Houses still have them.

Our town I grew up in finally got rid of their drive in movie theater. Broke my heart when I heard it. I don't live there anymore, but I had fond memories of going as a kid. They had 2 screens and they would play 2 movies per screen. They had no problem with you going from one screen to the other. The drive in here, they play 2-3 movies and you have to stay at the screen you chose. (Probably to avoid accidents, or hitting kids.) We used to bring in pizza and drinks, a bag of chips per kid and a candy bar per kid, and put our garbage in a garbage bag my dad kept in the car, then clean the car out the next day. Sometimes he'd treat us to one refillable bowl of popcorn, but if us kids wanted more, it was up to us to go get it. We'd usually lay down on a blanket outside the car, get devoured by mosquitos, then drown in Calamine lotion when we got home. LOL Ahhh, memories.

originally posted by: roadgravel
I still have a Bell and Howell slide cube projector around here.

Anyone still own a manual typewriter. I've got an old Royal.

Yea and I just saw at a barn sale, guy runs a clean out company and picks through the stuff and sells it a few times a year, and they had a mint condition set of camera and projector from early 60s, in box, like new ect.

originally posted by: SlapMonkey

originally posted by: AnyafajI just recently had a stray cat that didn't purr, she made Tribble noises. Cutest thing ever. I would imitate her to make her come to me. Eventually she took off. I loved that cat. She thought she was a dog. She played fetch, dug holes, chased cars. Best cat I ever owned.

My cat makes that noise all the time. Makes me want to punch her (because it wakes up sleeping babies and adults)...but I don't.

Yet.

I miss her. She took off on my sister. (I knew there was a reason I named her Trouble! LOL) I'd like to wish she moved on to a family who needed her more, and not anything nefarious, but apparently according to the Humane Society down there, there's a dog fighting ring that's been taking cats in the area. So I pray she wasn't swept up by them.


Digging holes in my sister's yard


Dangling on the window waiting for a good car to chase


Just chilling out.

originally posted by: neformore
Some more....

Windows 3.1/95/ME/97

And soon, everyone will have forgotten the days that AOL and Alta Vista ran the roost.

9600k modems

Let us not forget the other famous, WebCrawler. LOL

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun
a reply to: MystikMushroom

A lot of people in the service industry had them too, like IT techs and whatnot when they were on call, they'd just pass one pager off between them when it was their night.

Remember when you were waiting for a table and restaurants would give you a pager to go off to let you know your table was ready. I remember my dad getting a couple at the "Oooh La La" restaurants, as we called it when we were kids.

originally posted by: UKWO1Phot
a reply to: Nyiah

I remember when Amazon only sold books..
When you could sell anything on ebay.

Whatever happened to white dog poo??

My favorite website for books was Half.com I bought a crapton of books there, or music CDs.

originally posted by: Junkheap

originally posted by: Anyafaj
Or made copies for the teacher on the old copy machines that left your hands somewhat purple. LOL The Ditto Machine.

I remember those. Whenever the teacher passed out a test or quiz, some of the kids would pick up the paper and sniff it.

Also, there was a computer programming class that I took in college and the programs were done on keypunch cards and the output was printed on greenbar paper.

I remember the teachers coming in to read the bar paper through a machine to grade them. (And I was one of the sniffers too. I admit it!. LOL)

originally posted by: Skid Mark
Film projectors are something I don't see much of anymore. That and type writers. I've had electric and non electric. I had one of those clunky old Royals. I loved that thing.

I had taken typing and shorthand class in high school. My father was a one finger typer and I could do 65 to 85 words per minute, still can. So he would take me with him to the office on Saturday's to type up his reports and collect cans, then after everything was done, we would go across the street to the flight simulator on base and he'd let me fly it. As a kid, it was THE highlight of the weekend. Seriously. I would always crash hard, but I had a stinking blast every time!

originally posted by: roadgravel
I still have a Bell and Howell slide cube projector around here.

Anyone still own a manual typewriter. I've got an old Royal.

I used to own a Royal, but my stepmother sold mine at a yard sale.