|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: I remember... (For older shipmates?)
|
Beenster
Shipmate
# 242
|
Posted
The rag and bone man, horse drawn cart and all!
And the telly, banging on the top to get the picture, getting up to change channels.
The chimney sweep and running outside to see the brush come out of the chimney.
Frost on the windows in the morning - or rather - ice - and drawing smiley faces in the window.
Sherry. Every day, my father would come home from work and say to my mother "shall i pour us a sherry" and she would say "oh what a lovely idea". As if it was a novel idea.
Headscarfs. My mother always had a headscarf. Tied under the chin.
I do remember faxes in my first job. It was an international company so after we had left on a Friday evening, the faxes would come in from the US and then arrive from Tokyo on a monday morning. And do you remember the random cutting of pages, so some pages were longer than A4 and others only a few lines long. And the writing just faded in the sun. I had to quickly photocopy these curled up pages on a Monday morning before everything faded. That was hugely difficult.
Posts: 1885 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
Ah, telly. We actually got one in about 1972 and after spending some time tuning it in, gathered round to watch the Andy Williams show, in black and white. What a novelty.
Once we moved, there was all the fun of trying to find the correct position for the indoor aerial. Some nights it ended up on top of a statuette perched precariously on the far left of the tv casing. Other nights the statuette needed a pile of precisely placed books under it. On really bad nights we had to move the television in a westerly direction so the aerial could hang from the end of a nearby bookshelf, but we then sometimes got French television which was so full of static that it wasn't worth bothering.
The radio was fun. We had my grandparents' set, which had to warm up a bit first but then we could tune in to whatever was going. The front of the radio panel had the names on, so you knew where to find them: Athlone, Hilversum, Luxembourg, as well as the more usual Home Service and Light Programme.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
The fax machine paper makes me recall the innovative IBM Selectric™ typewriters with daisy-wheel™ printer balls. My first secretary got one of these, and then an upgrade. They both had unscrewable printer balls which meant that she could change fonts from Times to Helvitica. The second one had a little wee screen which didn't actually type until the second line showed up in the viewer. Carbon copies with carbon paper naturally, copy to send, copy for the file. The viewscreen meant less use of whiteout.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
I am a big fan of the "make a family live like their ancestors hated living". Currently watching "Back in time for the weekend", which is all before my time, but only just.
They have just shown a 16YO a carpet sweeper. She was scared to touch it. I remember them, although we usually had a vacuum as well.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
|
Posted
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
The radio was fun. We had my grandparents' set, which had to warm up a bit first but then we could tune in to whatever was going. The front of the radio panel had the names on, so you knew where to find them: Athlone, Hilversum, Luxembourg, as well as the more usual Home Service and Light Programme.
I "inherited" our old family radio in 1988 when my parents moved into a flat. Ours was a Ferguson. I remember the mains hum as the valves warmed up. When the valves were almost hot enough the hum would fade out and the voices or music would gradually fade in. The sound quality was very good.
In 1989 I used that radio to tune in to Cologne when the Berlin Wall fell. Berlin was also marked on the tuning but I couldn't get a signal. The long wave reception from Cologne was quite good in London and the old valves coped very well.
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
IBM Selectric™ typewriters with daisy-wheel™ printer balls.
The Selectric printer balls were more properly called "elements". The IBM repairman used to have a hissy fit when we called them "balls".
Daisy wheels were something different. They were the print element in daisy-wheel printers. They were called that because the letters radiated out from the center, like the petals of a daisy, and the whole thing would rotate until the correct letter was positioned in front of a little hammer, which would then strike and push the letter onto a ribbon, and then onto the paper. Sounds implausible, but they were very fast (and noisy!) for their time.
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
ABR: evidently I have conflated two different things.
The next innovation was dot matrix printers, which I recall got used with with a word processing language-type thing called "Runoff". The documents had to have code inserted to some out right, much like the UBB code used on this forum's software. Word*star was the next step up from that, which I think would take us to the mid-1980s.
On another old thing, how many of us ate off of Melmac dishes and plates. Definitely pre-microwave, because they melt.
I'm also remembering standard-8 and super-9 movie film. I still have a silent movie camera I bought in the mid-1970s. 4 minutes a film and them mail away for development.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I'm also remembering standard-8 and super-9 movie film. I still have a silent movie camera I bought in the mid-1970s. 4 minutes a film and them mail away for development.
When I was working on my masters degree, one of the courses I took was a communications course. Once the instructor arranged a telephone interview with the media guru philosopher Marshall McLuhan. I remember that during the course of that interview he predicted that in a generation or two everyone would own a Super 8 movie camera and that home-made films would be ubiquitous.
What would he say to YouTube?
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
It was one of my aspirations to have a golfball typewriter. Not that I ever did. I can still remember a group of us standing around watching an electric typewriter regurgitating a letter that someone had typed into its tiny memory. The keys went up and down by themselves. "It's haunted," someone said and we giggled, a bit nervously.
Photography was still mostly black and white in my childhood. It was, however, a change from the monotony of sepia which many a photographer in an earlier generation had found frustratingly limited. There was no point in taking pictures of pretty garden scenes until colour film became more widely available, and suddenly black and white was out of favour and an expensive option for the arty-minded. And you had to get your photo right first time, no digital editing.
Snapshots of family holidays, with pronounced colour casts developing over time (blues would leach, photos often gained a reddish or yellow tint) had to be handled carefully by the edges so you didn't get your fingerprints spoiling the shiny surface. But wedding photos looked quite a lot better.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amorya
Ship's tame galoot
# 2652
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
Daisy wheels were something different. They were the print element in daisy-wheel printers. They were called that because the letters radiated out from the center, like the petals of a daisy, and the whole thing would rotate until the correct letter was positioned in front of a little hammer, which would then strike and push the letter onto a ribbon, and then onto the paper. Sounds implausible, but they were very fast (and noisy!) for their time.
And you could print two copies at once by feeding two sheets of paper plus one sheet of carbon paper into the printer!
Posts: 2383 | From: Coventry | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Beenster
Shipmate
# 242
|
Posted
Cameras! And sending off the wretched film to Truprint or similar and waiting a few days to get 1 decent picture and a heap of awkward shots! But it was still exciting waiting for the envelope.
I remember my first watch. It was a wind up Sekonda. I was so proud to wear it, I felt very grown up.
Posts: 1885 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
There was no point in taking pictures of pretty garden scenes until colour film became more widely available, and suddenly black and white was out of favour and an expensive option for the arty-minded. And you had to get your photo right first time, no digital editing.
Unless you had a darkroom at home and did your own processing. Color film was very sensitive to the temperature of the developer and the time you left it in; black and white much more forgiving of both. And you could crop the print under the enlarger and also jiggle with "dodging and vignetting" -- basically exposing parts of the print for different times to overcome exposure problems and to achieve special effects.
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
Camera: Asahi Pentax Spotmatic. Single lense reflex, i.e., no viewfinder. I actually found it on a park bench, turned it into the police, who called me about a year later and said the rule on unclaimed things was that I could have it if I signed a form. Which I did. I paid to develop the film in it, but is was blank. I am trying to recall the year, maybe 1968. It was like Christmas in July, such a good camera, which I still have. It was the older screw on lense model and I managed to put a flash holder for it, for a Sunpac flash, which I also have. I have many fond memories of using it. I could usually get 37 photos on a roll of 36, and this extra was always a free one when developing films. My previous camera was a little Brownie made of bakelite I think.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
|
Posted
When I was about 10, so about 1981, I went to Holland with my junior school. My folks lent me an aged brown plastic / bakelite Brownie which took B&W pictures on what was by then ferociously-expensive 12-shot 126 roll film. I think I was scared to use it.
Now I find the techno-apathy which my parents espoused, is mine too. My kids despair of me.
--------------------
"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pulsator Organorum Ineptus
Shipmate
# 2515
|
Posted
In the days before refrigerators became common, my grandmother had something called a "meat safe". It was in effect a wooden cupboard with metal mesh sides (to keep the flies off. She kept it in the coal cellar. And, yes, she kept raw meat in it.
Posts: 695 | From: Bronteland | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
My first camera was a box Brownie, with 120 film. You held it against your body and looked down into a viewfinder which reversed the picture. 8 exposures like that don't half teach you composition.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
|
Posted
When I was a child we used to hear the dawn chorus. As soon as the sky started to lighten the birds would begin to sing, and by the time the sun came up there would be literally hundreds of birds of all types singing their hearts out, claiming their nesting territories. It was deafening, wonderful, and used to last for about 20 minutes at full volume before gradually dying away. Every morning, from mid-January until the end of the nesting season in late June.
Behind our house there was an unused pasture which was slowly tumbling down to woodland. In late summer flocks of hundreds of sparrows would roost there and they made a terrific din settling themselves in the evening. So we had a spring dawn chorus and a late summer evening chorus.
The birds still sing at dawn in the springtime but there are hardly any birds now. I feel sad that today's children and young people will never hear the dawn chorus.
--------------------
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
Very true, Chamois. Sparrows were so common, that they used to jump up on the tables in outdoor cafes, looking for crumbs. They used to roost in our ivy, hundreds of them.
In fact, I remember when birds such as corn bunting were singing at every field corner, plus of course, turtle dove, cuckoo, tree sparrow were abundant. What the hell have we done?
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
What the hell have we done?
We've destroyed their habitat, and then we've brought in cats and allowed them to run loose.
![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
--------------------
"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
And produced CDs of birdsong and waves so that people can relax to them.
Even acknowledging all of the amazing and wonderful things that have been developed and discovered in my lifetime, I am still of the opinion that, as a species, we are total fecking idiots most of the time.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
|
Posted
Amen.
--------------------
"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
Bloody hell, it makes me feel sad. I mean, the disappearance of birds. We used to get turtle doves in our hedge in the garden, making their lovely purring sound. Now if I see one in the whole summer, I've done well. Ditto corn buntings. Ditto a ton of stuff.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
When I was about 10, so about 1981, I went to Holland with my junior school. My folks lent me an aged brown plastic / bakelite Brownie which took B&W pictures on what was by then ferociously-expensive 12-shot 126 roll film. I think I was scared to use it.
Now I find the techno-apathy which my parents espoused, is mine too. My kids despair of me.
Thanks for remembering the 126 size for film for this. I couldn't recall it, but recognise the size as you posted. My father had a box camera which took 620. Have no idea why I recalled one number and not the other.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
I think, now, that my sister's camera had 120, and mine 126. The one I bought more recently had 620, I think. I used it at school to show children how to fake fairy photographs and ghosts in the classroom, a venture which appeared in a memory on Friends Reunited. Although they had seen how it was done, they were still shocked by the one with a transparent girl by the piano.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
|
Posted
Pre-decimal (UK) currency. Oh the difficulty of primary school maths! 12 pence in a shilling, 20 shillings in the pound, learning the 11 and 12 times tables by heart and all the calculations in 3 columns for pounds, shillings and pence with different rules for carrying over.
I sometimes still dig up pre-decimal coinage in my garden. Mainly ha'pennies, sometimes a penny. Recently one with Queen Victoria's head on it. When I started school my bus fare was 2d each way so I used to set off in the morning with four big pennies in my pocket. I can remember playing with them on the kitchen table, lining up the pennies with the queens' heads and the pennies with kings' heads. The best thing was finding a penny with the head of young Queen Victoria before she was widowed. They were very rare.
--------------------
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
Do you remember those wonderful sets of tables of money, weight, distance and so on that were on the back covers of exercise books - complete with the mysterious little box in the corner that said "Troy Weight"?
They still exist, but current ones are but a pale reflection of pre-decimal, non-metric glories.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Offeiriad
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
|
Posted
Hogsheads and Firkins! I remember those tables!
Posts: 1426 | From: La France profonde | Registered: Aug 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
There's a song with those in it, I think. With an ever extending chorus going down to the nipperkin, and finishing, I think, with Good Luck to the Barley Mow.
When we did cookery at school, we had measuring jugs in gills and half gills.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
I was slightly too young to use a slide rule in school, but I did used to know how to use one.
I did have to use log tables. Calculators were just about coming in, but I can probably still use log tables. I am not sure whether kids today would believe having to use them to do multiplications.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
|
Posted
Then there was the 16 times table for ounces ad pounds, and the 14 times for – what was it?
Insurance. Travelling in Europe in 1959 or maybe 1964 I was taking a photo out of a train window and knocked the detachable lens hood of my camera. I'd only just bought it; insurance paid for a new one, a few quid. Nowadays you'd have an excess of what – £100 or so?
GG
--------------------
The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
I remember when calculators first came in. There was some discussion amongst the teachers as to whether we ought to be allowed to have them, then it was decided that we could. The books of log tables were thankfully put away.
I can also remember teachers discouraging us from using ballpoint pens because they wouldn't do our handwriting any good, and encouraging us to stick to fountain pens.
I loved the old currency. My father had built up a collection of shillings, one for each year since 1900, with only a few gaps. Sadly he was never able to complete it. The pennies were a decent size and reflected the days when they were worth something, and you could buy a pennyworth of something. I had a Victorian penny in my change one day, very worn but still recognizable, with the date of 1890-something, which was very pleasing.
I liked the Irish pre-decimal currency best. Each coin had a well-known animal on it. It always used to amuse children that the word for "pig" in Irish was "muc".
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
My Dad collected pennies for each year (except 33) in the last century up to decimalisation simply from his change and mounted then on a card divided into squares. It gave a great sense of history that one could find coins of such age in one's change.
(Did anyone have to write a composition on "A Day in the Life of a Penny" at school? I developed a feeling that teachers used it when they had run out of ideas. One of my fictional ones fell down a drain soon after being given in change... Curiously, I never thought of the obvious twist.)
[ 05. February 2016, 18:17: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I was slightly too young to use a slide rule in school.
We used to wear them on our belts, much as people wear cell phone cases now. It was quite the status symbol.
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
|
Posted
Slide rules were OK for science classes, but not precise enough for some other fields. I worked summers as a surveyor during Uni, and we used Curta Calculators, wonderful little hand-held mechanical adding machines from Liechtenstein, along with a book of trig tables for when we needed to multiple by the cosine of an angle. You could hear the gears whir as you added numbers, and they really got busy when subtracting.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
|
Posted
I remembered: 14 pounds 1 stone. But I'd forgotten 2 stone 1 quarter, four quarters 1 hundredweight, and 20 cwt 1 ton.
Let's not get into yards, chains, furlongs and miles, though the etymology in interesting.
Biros were banned for a while, but they did tend to be blobby. Dip'n'scratch and ink monitors were a long way back.
GG
--------------------
The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
|
Posted
GG, every year when school went back after the holidays, we each had to subscribe a penny for the roll teacher to buy a bottle of ink. Kept in the teacher's desk at the front, it was used for refilling fountain pens.
I had a lovely deep red Sheaffer which had an extendable nozzle for filling so the pen body did not have to be dipped in ink.
This was all fine unless the pen needed filling in maths class. "Your pen has run out? You had better run out too and chase it, " would be the response of the maths teacher I had for five years. A strong advocate of planning and being prepared.
--------------------
Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
We had to use fountain pens, and they were a pain. Normally we used cartridge pens, so running out was less of a problem.
I hated them. My writing was (and still is) utterly appalling, and a proper pen didn't help. We did get permission to use Pentel pens, which had real ink. They were better, but I was still like a drunken spider.
Biro's were not allowed. These days, I very rarely wrote at all.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
My first fountain pen was a small grey marbled Waterman, when I was about 9, and I treasured it. Until, at the superior private school where everyone was so much "better" than I was, it disappeared. I'm not sure what I used after that until I was given the navy blue Parker Lady at secondary school.
That disappeared at college, and I had to buy a new one. Curiously, at the end of my stay, when I was there after the rest, and took it upon myself to tidy the mess my friends had left in the sitting room in hall, I found my pen at the bottom of the heap. Curiously, because it had disappeared befoe we had that room to hang out in.
Something that is bothering me at the moment is that I have developed a wish, sixty years on, to add a grey marbled Waterman to the two fountain pens in the bureau. I can clearly recall the feel of it in my hand. I have a search set up on ebay. I did deliberately miss the end of an auction on one (it was in the States). This seems a little weird. It wouldn't be the same one, as the horrible little person responsible for it's loss will have dumped it long back, and probably completely forgotten the matter.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
|
Posted
Electronic calculators weren't allowed in A-level or university exams until my second year at university. They were extremely expensive when they first came in and the authorities weren't convinced it was reasonable to require every student to have one.
For my first year university maths course in numerical analysis we had to buy 5-figure log tables to get enough precision in the calculations.
I've still got my old slide rule. It's a very sophisticated "scientific" calculator with scales for sines, cosines, logs and other functions. Nowadays if students have heard of slide rules they assume they are for measuring, like rulers. I showed my slide rule to some students recently and they were fascinated by the idea of a mechanical calculator. I had to demonstrate it and they were impressed by the speed - but I'm nothing like as fast with it as I used to be!
--------------------
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
I just missed learning to use slide rules, which I consider a serious omission. Don't know why.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
I could never get the hang of slide rules - in particular, I was constantly dropping or adding decimal places.
But I was an absolute whizz with logarithmic tables and the like!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
|
Posted
Yes, with a slide rule you had to keep track of the decimal places separately. Our A-level physics teacher taught us to start by writing all the numbers in the calculation in scientific notation, e.g. 124 is written as 1.24*10**2 and 0.124 is written as 1.24*10**-1. When you did this it was relatively easy to estimate the answer you would get if you ignored all the powers of ten, and then at the end you just added up the powers of ten separately.
That sounds complicated, but once you've grasped how to do it is's quite easy.
Happy days!
--------------------
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Electronic calculators weren't allowed in A-level or university exams until my second year at university. They were extremely expensive when they first came in and the authorities weren't convinced it was reasonable to require every student to have one.
Yes, I remember wondering if I could afford £30 to buy one - that would be equivalent to over £400 today, which buys you an infinitely more powerful laptop. I didn't take the plunge!
We had to learn simple Fortran which we then transferred to a stack of punched cards and handed in to the folks running (wait for it) the University computer in the basement of the maths block. It took a day or two to get back the results.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
|
Posted
Although the Fortran I learnt in my first year in '89 was typed in on a green-screen terminal rather than needing to be processed on punch cards, the computer (actually, there were 5 of them) was still in the basement of the maths block. Graphical output (usually ASCII characters forced to appear in dodgy text-based simulations of graphical output!) was collated there for us to collect after a day or two.
By the time I graduated in 93, it was PCs all round, WYSIWYG graphics, desktop printers. And by postgrad study in '94, the internet. Amazing how suddenly that techno-splurge came on.
--------------------
"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
|
Posted
Where to start? Well I remember the squaddies billeted at our home after, I assume, Dunkirk.
And, after the first, temporary, removal of sweet rationing, buying a Mars Bar (from Sam's in Broad Street Teddington).
Then, five years in the early fifties in Gothic Cottage (really), in rural Hampshire - outside loo, no electricity.
And when we moved to a house with electricity, television at last - Frank Tyson in the 1955 series against South Africa. J.B.Priestley presenting with the new medium at the end of his career.
Computers? Learnt Fortran, and how to machine code the IBM 1401, about 1961 I suppose.
--------------------
Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
I still remember seeing adverts from Oracle for "TLO" - The Last One, the last programming language you will ever need.
They got that wrong. The development of computer systems has moved beyond anyone's ideas since I started. I do wonder what will happen once I give up, and whether I will have any clue as to what is happening.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
Dad would buy us one Mars bar and slice it up on a melamine plate for us to share the slices between us.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I was slightly too young to use a slide rule in school.
We used to wear them on our belts, much as people wear cell phone cases now. It was quite the status symbol.
Texas Instruments calculators were the geek style. I remember Fortran as well. Used it for SPSS, with Emac editor after we stopped doing punch cards and tapes. Computer was a mainframe Tops-20.
I went away to intern, and was able to remote into the mainframe ot the univ using Netnorth which was the Canadian deployment of Bitnet. 300 baud dialup cradle modem (modem sound link). Spent a lot of nights looking for usenet and posting to rec.arts.startek. There was a newsgroup for Episcopal, can't recall what it was called; never saw an Anglican one. Used to post on it daily in the 1990s. Usenet was dropped from most ISPs sometime in the last decade I think. Too bad. Largely untraceable, and easy to swap ideas and data sets.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
|
Posted
We had to use dip pens - a shaft with a copper nib and an ink well. Fountain pens weren't allowed until we had mastered the business of using the dip method - basically what a 16th century scribe would use but without the more aesthetically pleasing goose or swan feather.
Much later (1980 +/- 2) I worked in a place that was part of the UNIX world-wide laboratory experimenting with what we then called a modem link - which later went on to become the internet. Far from using this fantastic new tool for anything earth-shattering, the most common traffic was recipe swapping, in particular the recipe for the 'perfect' chocolate brownie.
--------------------
Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
|
Posted
We had dip pens at my primary school, too. Each dip in the ink well was enough for three letters: the first came out blobby, the second came out right and the third came out scratchy because the ink was running out by then. Ink stains everywhere - and they wouldn't let us use biros because they sometimes leaked.
My first encounter with an internet precursor was Starlink, set up by the astronomers for distributed computer processing. That would have been in the early 80s I think. It became part of JANET (joint academic network) which is the origin of the .ac domain names. I remember working one Saturday and seeing workmen installing a satellite dish on the top of the computer laboratory for the first computing satellite link in our university. Can't remember when that was but it must have been pre-1988.
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
