What young people should know about the past century
Two days before the onset of the second decade of the 21st century, Reddit’s age users compiled a list of memories they wanted to share with the younger generation. Although young people are unlikely to believe that their fathers could live in such conditions, when there was no Internet.
• I wrote a letter on a physical sheet of paper and sent it to Microsoft asking how to enter mathematical formulas in Word (on my Macintosh II at the end of the 80s). I received an answer, also by paper mail, from a real Microsoft programmer, who answered my question in great detail.
• TV remotes were not. It was necessary to tear off the back of the couch, get up and go to the TV to press a button.
• To make a copy of the document, it was necessary to insert a special ink sheet between two blank sheets, put all this in a typewriter and type the text.
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• Computer cost as much as a car.
• If you liked a song, but you didn’t have one, then you had to wait for the song to be put on the radio. It was possible to call the DJ and ask to put it, but if the song is rare, then he would hardly have agreed.
• If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to go to the cinema. If the movie was not shown there, then everything was very complicated. "Star Wars" came out in 1977. Only in 1982, five years later , the film began to be shown on paid channels (if you had one, because none of my friends had it). The film was released on VHS in the same year if you had a VHS VCR. It was not broadcast on television until 1984. But even five years after I first watched Star Wars, I had no opportunity to watch the film again.
• VHS VCRs - such boxes, in which the cassette was loaded from above, with analog tuning heads, they cost about $ 700 in 1980. Taking into account inflation, it is $ 1,858 for modern money.
• I didn’t see MTV until 1987, until I finally got cable television in my city.
• I have never seen anyone having sex until I went to college (there I saw porn on VHS for the first time).
• I personally saw sex, because the local beach was almost entirely occupied by nudists, and sometimes they just had sex. It was behind the park with a playground in the suburbs, although it was necessary to go through the dam to get to the beach.
• If you went to a bar or club, then returned from there with a natural ashtray, you had to wash all your clothes. I could not sleep until I showered and washed the smoke and ash from my hair.
• People gathered in the queue at banks on Fridays to hand over their checks (salaries in the US are issued weekly on Fridays) and receive cash. If you run out of cash at the weekend, it was very bad.
• When credit cards appeared, only a respectable man with a very good reputation could receive it. A single woman, even if she had a successful business, was almost always denied a card. If she was married, she could issue a card through her husband, with the name of her husband on the card. Of course, there were exceptions, but I remember reading an article in Newsweek around 1980 that the situation was beginning to change. By the time I went to college, they had already issued credit cards to anyone with a pulse.
• There were no mobile phones, pagers, text messages, voice mail and autoresponders. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to call him until he came home and picked up the phone, and then made an appointment. No “I'm on this or that address, jump in” or something like that.
• No Facebook or Email. Long-distance calls were expensive. When I graduated from college, I could not talk with fellow students for several months, until someone bothered to write a paper letter and send it by mail. You just lost touch with people.
• On Sundays, we called family and friends because tariffs were cheaper.
• If you went to study abroad or entered the Peace Corps, you would be in real isolation from family and friends. You could send or receive letters on very thin paper for airmail, but imagine: for two years not to talk and not see your family and friends, except for occasional photographs.
• If the camera runs out of film, then no more photos. We had to be very selective in choosing what to shoot.
• There is not a single movie or video from my childhood (and most of my friends too). Super-8 died, and VHS was still unavailable. I have no idea how I looked and how I had a voice as a child, and how badly I played football.
• I had to book all the tickets for a vacation through a travel agent (or call the airline and go there for a ticket).
• It was possible to pay in cash near the aircraft and immediately go to the ramp.
• I know people who were not allowed on the plane because they were not very well dressed . Men often wore a suit on the plane (One friend of mine flew across the country to buy a car and return home to it, he was in sweatpants. He had to go home, change his clothes and take the later flight).
• If you wanted to know something, there was no Google or Wikipedia. Some basic fact could be obtained if you had a collection of encyclopedias. But most of the information, from the most important to the trivial things (“who starred in that film?”) Was not available until you get the right reference book or go to the library and do a real search.
• If you needed a newspaper article, you had to go to the library, look in the card index, then take the microfilm and browse hundreds and hundreds of pages, until you can find something. Then you need to rewrite the desired text by hand or, if lucky, pay five cents for the copied page.
• In most cities there were at least two newspapers, and usually at least one of them was quite good. They were delivered by boys like me on bicycles.
• Milk was delivered to the door of the house.
• Most fruits and vegetables were sold fresh only at certain times of the year.
• We have never used sunscreen. And did not wear bicycle helmets.
• Machines broke all the time.
• In childhood we played outside (there was nothing to do in the house). Favorite "toys" were twigs and dirty coins.
• Toys were much cheaper, children had bicycles and board games, not smartphones, iPods, HDTV in bedrooms, computers, digital cameras, GPS, game consoles, video games and new cars, like modern teenagers. My first car was a Dodge of the 60s, for which I paid $ 100.
• I wrote a letter on a physical sheet of paper and sent it to Microsoft asking how to enter mathematical formulas in Word (on my Macintosh II at the end of the 80s). I received an answer, also by paper mail, from a real Microsoft programmer, who answered my question in great detail.
• TV remotes were not. It was necessary to tear off the back of the couch, get up and go to the TV to press a button.
• To make a copy of the document, it was necessary to insert a special ink sheet between two blank sheets, put all this in a typewriter and type the text.
')
• Computer cost as much as a car.
• If you liked a song, but you didn’t have one, then you had to wait for the song to be put on the radio. It was possible to call the DJ and ask to put it, but if the song is rare, then he would hardly have agreed.
• If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to go to the cinema. If the movie was not shown there, then everything was very complicated. "Star Wars" came out in 1977. Only in 1982, five years later , the film began to be shown on paid channels (if you had one, because none of my friends had it). The film was released on VHS in the same year if you had a VHS VCR. It was not broadcast on television until 1984. But even five years after I first watched Star Wars, I had no opportunity to watch the film again.
• VHS VCRs - such boxes, in which the cassette was loaded from above, with analog tuning heads, they cost about $ 700 in 1980. Taking into account inflation, it is $ 1,858 for modern money.
• I didn’t see MTV until 1987, until I finally got cable television in my city.
• I have never seen anyone having sex until I went to college (there I saw porn on VHS for the first time).
• I personally saw sex, because the local beach was almost entirely occupied by nudists, and sometimes they just had sex. It was behind the park with a playground in the suburbs, although it was necessary to go through the dam to get to the beach.
• If you went to a bar or club, then returned from there with a natural ashtray, you had to wash all your clothes. I could not sleep until I showered and washed the smoke and ash from my hair.
• People gathered in the queue at banks on Fridays to hand over their checks (salaries in the US are issued weekly on Fridays) and receive cash. If you run out of cash at the weekend, it was very bad.
• When credit cards appeared, only a respectable man with a very good reputation could receive it. A single woman, even if she had a successful business, was almost always denied a card. If she was married, she could issue a card through her husband, with the name of her husband on the card. Of course, there were exceptions, but I remember reading an article in Newsweek around 1980 that the situation was beginning to change. By the time I went to college, they had already issued credit cards to anyone with a pulse.
• There were no mobile phones, pagers, text messages, voice mail and autoresponders. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to call him until he came home and picked up the phone, and then made an appointment. No “I'm on this or that address, jump in” or something like that.
• No Facebook or Email. Long-distance calls were expensive. When I graduated from college, I could not talk with fellow students for several months, until someone bothered to write a paper letter and send it by mail. You just lost touch with people.
• On Sundays, we called family and friends because tariffs were cheaper.
• If you went to study abroad or entered the Peace Corps, you would be in real isolation from family and friends. You could send or receive letters on very thin paper for airmail, but imagine: for two years not to talk and not see your family and friends, except for occasional photographs.
• If the camera runs out of film, then no more photos. We had to be very selective in choosing what to shoot.
• There is not a single movie or video from my childhood (and most of my friends too). Super-8 died, and VHS was still unavailable. I have no idea how I looked and how I had a voice as a child, and how badly I played football.
• I had to book all the tickets for a vacation through a travel agent (or call the airline and go there for a ticket).
• It was possible to pay in cash near the aircraft and immediately go to the ramp.
• I know people who were not allowed on the plane because they were not very well dressed . Men often wore a suit on the plane (One friend of mine flew across the country to buy a car and return home to it, he was in sweatpants. He had to go home, change his clothes and take the later flight).
• If you wanted to know something, there was no Google or Wikipedia. Some basic fact could be obtained if you had a collection of encyclopedias. But most of the information, from the most important to the trivial things (“who starred in that film?”) Was not available until you get the right reference book or go to the library and do a real search.
• If you needed a newspaper article, you had to go to the library, look in the card index, then take the microfilm and browse hundreds and hundreds of pages, until you can find something. Then you need to rewrite the desired text by hand or, if lucky, pay five cents for the copied page.
• In most cities there were at least two newspapers, and usually at least one of them was quite good. They were delivered by boys like me on bicycles.
• Milk was delivered to the door of the house.
• Most fruits and vegetables were sold fresh only at certain times of the year.
• We have never used sunscreen. And did not wear bicycle helmets.
• Machines broke all the time.
• In childhood we played outside (there was nothing to do in the house). Favorite "toys" were twigs and dirty coins.
• Toys were much cheaper, children had bicycles and board games, not smartphones, iPods, HDTV in bedrooms, computers, digital cameras, GPS, game consoles, video games and new cars, like modern teenagers. My first car was a Dodge of the 60s, for which I paid $ 100.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/110904/
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