A thirteen-year-old boy goes retro:
My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.
In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.
I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don’t have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, “Walkmans eat tapes”. So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day.
How did we survive?
God, I’m old.
I remember buying a box of needles for my Auntie’s gramaphone. Then a diamond sylus for my record player. Then we advanced to a laser beam and now it’s a network of phone masts.
Ain’t technology wonderful.
Let’s not forget the perplexing act of having to put film into a camera.
I recall when “mixing” various audio components required a jig to cut the magentic tape.
How about the agony of having to wait until you got home to make a phone call? Either that or using a pay phone.
How about having to work with a travel agent any time you wanted to book an airline flight?
Or having to (snail) mail an order when ordering something from a catalog?
I’m only 53, and I remember:
Rotary phones.
Most cars were manual shift.
Home computers weren’t even a glimmer, yet.
Black & white TVs were the norm.
No seat-belt or helmet laws (or hundreds of other laws).
It amazes me how things have changed just in my lifetime. The current generation has no idea what it was like. Things they take for granted, we saw invented.
Seems like every 20 years or so sees radical technological changes. And its getting faster. . .
Being a techno-geek, I love it!
As Isaac Asimov said, “Primitive man with his stone axes and railroads…”
Writing was invented by Michael Schrayer when he released Electric Pencil for CP/M. People thought they were writing before the word processor, but they didn’t know any better.
I remember this thing called “cash.” It was sort of like a debit card, only it only came in preset amounts; you couldn’t refill it; and you had to have multiple cashes if you wanted to make large purchases. The bank claimed that cash was reusable, but it wasn’t; in fact, you had to turn your cashes in when you purchased something. No two countries agreed on the same cash standard, either, so you had to get nation-specific cashes every time you went abroad.
“Being a techno-geek, I love it!”
Being that (before we had such words for it) and an avid science fiction reader from day one. I always *expected* serious change, some of which happened, some didn’t (we didn’t get to Mars in the ’80s and our current spaceflight capability doesn’t look at all like ‘2001.’ Sigh.)
But I like to tell people that while they didn’t get the 21st Century flying cars (which I never took too seriously anyway) the big, flat-panel TVs *did* pretty much arrive on time…
I’m only 53, and I remember:
Rotary phones.
I’m 52 and remember rotary phones on party lines.
Most cars were manual shift.
And people knew how to drive them.
Home computers weren’t even a glimmer, yet.
Even most businesses didn’t have corporate computers (mainframes).
Black & white TVs were the norm.
And my family didn’t even get one of these until I was 6. We got a grand total of 4 channels.
No seat-belt or helmet laws (or hundreds of other laws).
Before 1966, most cars didn’t even have seat belts installed. Child car seats hadn’t been invented. Almost no one wore a motorcycle helmet, and only champion racers and uber dorks (the kind the geeks beat up on the playground) would consider wearing a helmet on a bike.
I’m 47. I remember the first push-button phone I ever encountered. I took driver ed in an automatic but my first car was a stick (and had to teach myself to drive it but once I grasped the function of the clutch it was just a matter of coordination). And growing up I was always frustrated when TV shows would promote that they were in color because we didn’t have a color TV. When we did get a color TV it was one of those huge console sets that took up about three square feet of floor space.
The first VCR I had used analog tuners and would only accept 14 channels, but since we didn’t have cable and only got seven channels well enough from our rooftop antenna to watch, setting the channel tuners on the machine (using really tiny dials) was a simple enough matter, and we used the VCR remote to change channels but still had to get up to use the on/off switch and the volume control.
First answering machine was second- or third-hand and used standard cassettes for messages and I think the greeting was stored on the same tape.
So now some teens are entirely unfamiliar with cassette tapes? At 46 I’m just old enough to remember when they were a new thing, circa 1970.
When I was little, in the late 1960’s, my Dad owned an open real deck, somewhat larger than a typical stereo receiver of today, which was connected to the Zenith console stereo. He would record us kids reading and also record songs off the radio. I later found out that at one time you could buy recordings in the open reel format–my parents had a few in their cabinet.
Once when I was in high school (1980), I listened to a few tapes on it that my brother had made from records years before; one was ‘Led Zeppelin IV’, aka ‘ZoSo’. I found it had four tape speeds, of 15, 7-1/2, 3-3/4, and 1-7/8 inch per second. I believe cassettes run at that lowest speed, or half of it.