Things that are archaic

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

We still have plenty of pay phones here. Probably not as many as there used to be, but still plenty about.

Ditto the UK - I can see the one we used to use before we had a telephone from this very room.

Archaic are cars without power steering over here. The only one I know of that's still registered for the road is my fathers '76 land cruiser.

I have never owned a car with power steering yet. Then again I sold my last car a good five years ago.

Originally Posted by monster

Do kids still plaster their walls with posters of their idols? Mine don't... but they could just be weird.

Yup. Just on Friday one of the boys was telling me about his new Ben 10 poster. We weren't allowed to put anything on the walls, but Dads made us two huge corkboards from leftover tiles. My sister's mostly had official posters of men she fancied, mine had poems, things I'd traced from '20s and '30s fashion magazines and pictures of models from Just Seventeen. And cats. In a film or a novel I would have become a stylist. Or a lesbian.

[DanaC]

I had all kinds of random shite on my walls. Posters of stars, poetry, book covers that I thought were interesting. A whale and a bowl of flowers ala Hitchhiker's. The 'Atheist's prayer'. Some bull-fighting pictures.

The end third of the room was raised up on a platform, with steps up to it, like heavy wood decking. The bed was sunk into that and there was a beam overhead that marked the start of that little section, with the ceiling there high, and the rest of the room brought lower. It was like a little cave, with a big window. A bed sunk into the middle and a desk at one end. The entire thing pretty much was covered with stuff.


That sunken bed was awesome, but it was a motherfucker to change the bedding.


My nieces have a few posters up. And calendars.

The first thing I thought of when I read the Op was the difference between the pre-mobile phone world, and the post-mobile world. As has already been mentioned, narratively it has a profound effect on movies. It's one of my pet delights actually, spotting that kind of time-bound plot point.

[Pico and ME]

Unions.

Well not quite, but soon to be.

[Spexxvet]

Pagers

[Shawnee123]

Johnny Fuckerfaster "jokes."

[monster]

Darning socks

[Shawnee123]

The toaster repair store.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Pagers

I was a telesales assistant for a company providing alpha numeric pager systems to corporate and medical sectors in the 90s. I remember at the time that they had much better coverage than any of the mobile phone providers. Intercity Paging. Got took over by motorolla and our branch closed. Funny watching mobile phones become so ubiquitous.

One of the really cool things about working for that company, was that i had my own alpha numeric pager :0 Used to love it when it went off on the bus or train *grins* I liked the idea that people might think I was 'on call' :p Of course, most often when it went off it was cus J was messaging me to tell me to pick up more milk or whatever on my way home lol.

[SamIam]

Typewriters, my sig not withstanding. I'm of an age when we still had to use typewriters my first couple of years of college - getting the footnotes right was a nightmare!

[DanaC]

I held off on an electric typewriter for years. I used to do a lot of writing when i was in my teens and early twenties, and generally preferred to write by hand, but did get quite attached to my mum's old Adler typewriter. It was a bastard and it hated me (it musthave done, because it took great delight in skinning the tips of my fingers when they went through the keys). But, for some reason, i liked it.

I did break and get an electric typewriter when I was 21/22 ish. Was very cool, with its corrector ribbon and its little memory store.

That was like, a year or so before PCs began to really take off in the high street.

[Shawnee123]

Phones: party lines, where you shared your line with one or more families. MAN that sucked and my 'rents got our own line when my brother and I became teenagers.

I tried to explain to my nieces about rotary dials phones. It was hard to sneak calls to your best friend when "you just saw her on the bus on the way home what could you POSSIBLY have to talk about?"

My mom had one of those big office electric typewriters on which I cranked out my 25 page history paper, with footnotes. Took me forever. Mom kept asking if she could type it for me, but I was writing it as I was typing it, pretty much (had all the research done, just hadn't plopped it all together. Got an A+ anyway!)

Then I got my roomies older electronic (I was a sophomore) when she got a new one because she typed papers for lawbags for money in college. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Another probably obsolete thing: making money for typing law papers for law students.

[wolf]

Acoustic Coupler Modems. 300 baud.

They are difficult to describe to kids who have only known 14.4K, DSL, or cable.

[DanaC]

That kind of modem was very, very hobbyist here. I realise it wasn't exactly mainstream over there either, but in the UK our computer and comms development was on a very different path.

I never quite got over the disappointment of realising that my new Vic20 wasn't actually going to let me hack into anything, least of all the Pentagon.

14.4k was my first connection. Prior to that I was part of the great unconnected multitude, hawking my C64/Amiga to and from mates' houses to interact.

[Undertoad]

Needle and thread: I don't know if I could locate it in the house, don't know that I've used it in over 10 years. (but this may be a product of the fact that I don't dress nicely, ever)

Similarly, tying things together with *string* seems like an elegant way and yet I don't know what string is available here and whether I could find it if I needed it.

[Sundae]

Just been sewing velcro onto a dress - I'll be attaching gold cardboard hearts to it tomorrow. I wanted to keep it as a potential vampire dress for the future, while still transferring it into the Queen of Hearts.

We have string in our house and I know where it is. I was looking for it just the other day but don't remember what for. It's usually used for the garden - tying things up and supporting them. I got a package from ebay wrapped up in brown paper with string. I was so delighted about it I mentioned it in my feedback