@Steveg58 @pheedbackPhil Pay phones in the UK didn't have buttons until well into the 1980s. They ran on pulse dialing and if you needed long distance you could either dial the area code *or* talk to the operator.
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@cstross Same. I have their 78s now but nothing to play them on. I also learned the arm signals for turns from my Dad, “just in case one of the bulbs goes out.”
I can dial a rotary phone dial. (My kids cannot. We tried.)
I can also read an analog clock. I taught my kids, but their friends cannot.
We were watching a modern Mickey Mouse cartoon with our kids when they were young and at one point Mickey is in a room where the floor starts to rotate.
Minnie says “like a record player!” And Goofy doesn’t know what a record player is and they proceed to explain it and yeah.
This would’ve been ~2013.
@cstross
It was my grandparent who had the shellac 78s. My parent collection was all nice modern albums including (first edition) Beatles (father) & Rolling Stones (mother). Though I did also use my father's reel to reel tape player.
Also, nice wooden TV with 4 buttons- one in case a new channel was ever introduced.
@cstross Given the same things are true for me, you must also be in your early 20s!
@cstross I'm young, by the time I was born Star Trek was only airing in syndication. What do you mean "Which Star Trek"? There was just the one.
@cstross Growing up, cable didn't have twelve channels.
@harmoniousanger Growing up, cable didn't exist: we got three broadcast channels (one of which was only 6 hours a day, an experimental colour service).
@cstross there were 5 tv channels
#2 was cbs
#5 was nbc
#7 was abc
#11 was independent
#13 was PBS
@cstross I remember when Channel4 started and the topic at school for weeks was this new 'american' football stuff.
@cstross I have actually had occasion to use those hand signals.
Driving a pool car from work, the indicators stopped working. Fortunately, work was the AA, so they could come and sort it in the office car park while we went to dinner...
@cstross @CharlesShould My grandpa had a wax cylinder player!
@cstross Our first TV didn't have channel buttons. You had to look up the channel in the Radio Times, find out how many MHz it was, and adjust a tuning dial until you got the best reception you could.
Kids of today, don't know they're born ;)
@cstross
I remember both these things.
@cstross
I remember using my dinner money to buy five Park Drive tipped.
@cstross
It still is on the driving test. Any vehicle fitted with indicators can become indicator-free with one loose wire or a blown fuse. Amazingly, they don't stop running if this happens, maybe to avoid causing other crashes.
@cstross You're 105 years old
@rafa_font No, but a few months ago my wife and I should have celebrated our joint 120th.
@cstross using a slide rule in Maths at high school
@lizmeyer Yep, calculators weren't permitted in maths exams until I was 15, and we had to learn to use a slide rule. (I was right on the cusp of the transition—got my first basic four-function calculator aged 13, and I'd already learned how to do the operations longhand, so it was a time-saver, not a replacement for learning.)
@cstross @lizmeyer I'm a wee bit younger than you, we didn't have to use slide rules, but we did have books of trig tables that we were allowed to take into exams. Even though I was born after decimalisation I do remember some of the maths books in primary school having problems that required converting between pounds, shillings and pence.
I tried to explain slide rules to one of my younger colleagues. He was very confused.
Sliderules are one of the thing I love about post-WWII classic SF, where the protagonist has faster than light travel, has weird alien friends, but still whips out a slide rule (whilst smoking a cigarette) to work out his plot point of the story.
@cstross you are but a child! My first calculator was long after high school.
@cstross
Dad sometimes brought 2 boxes of punch cards home and worked late at night.
@cstross
Do you remember the Morris cars (or was it Austins?) where the turn indicators were a little semaphore that flipped out of the body and flashed when you signalled a turn.
Also "insert coins and press button B'.
@pheedbackPhil @Steveg58 There were no buttons on phones when I grew up. Just rotary dialers talking to Strowger electromechanical exchanges at the Post Office. (Motors and relays!)
@cstross @pheedbackPhil @Steveg58
> Strowger electromechanical exchanges
And what a fascinating back story *they* have!
@cstross @pheedbackPhil @Steveg58 @neil I can't hear the word without hearing the distinctive contact bounce.
@neil @cstross @pheedbackPhil @Steveg58 There was a working telephone exchange in Berwick Town Museum - though they seem to have neglected to put any information about it on the internet.
@cstross @pheedbackPhil
Buttons A and B were on the pay phones. When you places a trunk call the operator would tell you how much money to insert and then you would be told to press button B to drop the money into the box and your call would proceed.
@Steveg58 @pheedbackPhil Pay phones in the UK didn't have buttons until well into the 1980s. They ran on pulse dialing and if you needed long distance you could either dial the area code *or* talk to the operator.
@cstross @pheedbackPhil
Yeah, that's Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) it is what obsoleted the old button A button B phones.
@cstross @Steveg58 @pheedbackPhil button B predates me, but it must have been in the UK because i've seen them in old UK movies — and i seem to remember Hancock had a "bit" about them?
This style: https://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-public-phones.htm
Long out of service by the 80s. Used in both the UK and Australia.
We played 78rpm shellac records of The Ink Spots, Mario Lanza, Andrews Sisters, Glen Miller Band, etc. Dad collected them second hand, along with the gramophones and plenty of needles.
The arm indication was still in the driver instruction manual, but never tested. It was taught seriously for cyclists.
@cstross Did you have a circular disc of offcuts of leftover fabrics secured with a button in the middle and kept in your pencil case to clean the business end of a fountain pen that might have leaked?
@christineburns No, I just put up with the leakage.
@cstross @christineburns Excellent preparation for growing old.
@cstross @christineburns we went from pencils to ballpoints once it was time to use pens.
Not quite 60 yet, decimal / metric happened the year or so before I went to primary so I missed the change but it was still all new to the teachers which was a weird feeling; counting skills went up to 12 as a matter of course but no-one explained why or gave us anything to apply it to. Also calculators became a standard thing a year or so before we hit the exams, we got school-approved ones issued
@cstross I can drive a manual transmission.
@jmax When I learned to drive, you learned to drive on a manual transmission because if you learned on an automatic you were only licensed for automatics, and at the time that meant only about 4% of the cars in the UK. (Automatic transmission cars cost about 20% more and burned 10% more fuel.)
@cstross my mum had a reel to reel recorder from her brother, he imported it from the US, Realistic brand.
I wrote letters to my cousins in the GDR and was told to draw little parallel lines on the envelope seal so the recipient could check if the Stasi had opened the letter.
@cstross The elementary school cycling test?