The times they are a'changin'

SimonAH

Yesterday I watched the RedBull 'jump out of a perfectly good balloon' thing (and fantastic it was too) and had a bit of a whoah! moment.

What triggered it was that I was watching something very similar to the Apollo moon landings, but that I was watching it live, in full colour, over the internet, on a palmtop sized iPhone instead of crackling black and white on a CRT television hooked up to a massive aerial bolted to the roof of the house... I then looked around the room to see the good lady on a laptop booking her face and my daughter on a netbook finding out things about the Blitz for her homework. I saw the flatscreen TV on the wall with umpteen channels whanging into it from all corners of the globe via the BT box with it's huge array of on demand programs.

I was born in 1970, but wow, how things have changed.

Remember the test card girl? Getting a colour telly? LWT? Stations shutting down in the evening?

DonDaddyD

What is the test card girl and LWT?

Who remembers public pay phones?

rick_chasey

SimonAH wrote:

I was born in 1970, but wow, how things have changed.

My Dad was groaning under the weight of job offers having just graduated with an average degree in the late '70s.

Firms actually approached about-to-be graduates.

Those were the days indeed. .

SimonAH

DonDaddyD wrote:

What is the test card girl and LWT?

Who remembers public pay phones?

Test card girl;
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2009/08/29/t ... ed-by-itv/

London Weekend Television
http://www.coldal.org/remember.html

rjsterry

HTV for us West Country folk, but I remember the test-card. We had a B&W TV until I was at least at junior school IIRC, and it was still working well enough for me to watch in my bedroom when I was 17 or 18. I remember getting our first hard drive for our Commodore Amiga: 20MB, and we wondered how we would ever fill it.

tailwindhome

To me the biggest change is the laptop.

When I was at university (92-96) you had to book time to use the computer suite and at busy times you might be working overnight. Then you saved your work onto a disk and went to use the computer which was attached to *the* printer.

A decade later I was back in the library studying for my prof. exams and everyone had a laptop.

rolf_f

DonDaddyD wrote:

Who remembers public pay phones?

I do. There's still about 67,000 of them in the UK. If you can't remember them then either you are a goldfish or you badly need to get to casualty as you've been hit by a bus and are suffering from severe amnesia

graham.

If you stared at the test card girl, and then moved slowly towards your telly, you could get her to poke the clown in the eye with her chalk!

FoldingJoe

Rolf F wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Who remembers public pay phones?

I do. There's still about 67,000 of them in the UK. If you can't remember them then either you are a goldfish or you badly need to get to casualty as you've been hit by a bus and are suffering from severe amnesia

Somebody on out street has one in their garden!!

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=ocean+view+road+bude&ll=50.836774,-4.542375&spn=0.007792,0.01929&hnear=Ocean+View+Rd&gl=uk&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.836772,-4.542503&panoid=GV8Jj8-ou8GcDQfiKmHimg&cbp=12,329.22,,1,9.72

mtb-idle

I miss floppy discs as they were a source of endless amusement in the workplace.


other worker drone: 'Where's so and so?'

me worker drone: "I dunno, but i saw him walking around with a floppy in his hand five minutes ago"

PBo

Rolf F wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Who remembers public pay phones?

I do. There's still about 67,000 of them in the UK. If you can't remember them then either you are a goldfish or you badly need to get to casualty as you've been hit by a bus and are suffering from severe amnesia

Nah, he's been hit by a lance Armstrong thread.....

mtb-idle

I'm old enough to remember watching the moon landings live (albeit as a young child) and I can confirm that to my four year old mind they were booooorrrrriiiing!

me: "Mummy, I want to go out and play"

my mummy: "Sit down and watch this, it's history"

me: "But it's boring"

my mummy: "sit still and stay there"

See the thing is when you watch it nowadays, even if you watch a 2 hour documentary there's loads of background story, music, stuff happening, voiceovers etc.

When we watched it live i think we watched the countdown to lift off for about two and a half hours, and seriously, cos they only had about one camera that was all you watched, the launch pad for two hours with a clock counting down and little stick men occasionally moving around.

And then when it finally did take off it was "when does it get to the moon?". Oh, that's in about four or five days time.

Whaaat? I'm four, I can't be doing with all this concentrating.

And as someone mentions above, this was on a grainy probably 12 inch black and white TV with a whole family crowded around.

It's nice to know I witnessed it on TV but i will say yet again. It was boring.

mtb-idle

DonDaddyD wrote:

Who remembers public pay phones?

I do, and when I was a cub scout I had to carry around 2p so that I could use aforementioned payphone in an emergency.

2 p!

Greg T

Champion the Wonder Horse
The Flashing Blade

Waiting for the telly to warm up . . .

WAITING FOR THE TELLY TO WARM UP . . .

cjcp

rjsterry wrote:

HTV for us West Country folk, but I remember the test-card. We had a B&W TV until I was at least at junior school IIRC, and it was still working well enough for me to watch in my bedroom when I was 17 or 18. I remember getting our first hard drive for our Commodore Amiga: 20MB, and we wondered how we would ever fill it.

HTV for me, too. You must have experienced that bouncing rabbit on TSV. Gus Honeybun or something.

What I find to be a real throw-back to times gone by is the playing of God Save the Queen on Radio 4 when it switches service at nice. Something nice about that.

Corporate Camper

cjcp wrote:

What I find to be a real throw-back to times gone by is the playing of God Save the Queen on Radio 4 when it switches service at nice. Something nice about that.

Yeah, and I always think that the Shipping Forecast is pretty much a lullaby for adults, quite comforting.

tailwindhome

My kids wouldn't know what the first one is.....

cjcp

Corporate Camper wrote:

cjcp wrote:

What I find to be a real throw-back to times gone by is the playing of God Save the Queen on Radio 4 when it switches service at nice. Something nice about that.

Yeah, and I always think that the Shipping Forecast is pretty much a lullaby for adults, quite comforting.

Absolutely.

OT, but I once left the earphones in overnight and I woke up around 3am listening to an astro-biologist from Oxbridge talking about finding life on other planets. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming.

Corporate Camper

cjcp wrote:

Corporate Camper wrote:

cjcp wrote:

What I find to be a real throw-back to times gone by is the playing of God Save the Queen on Radio 4 when it switches service at nice. Something nice about that.

Yeah, and I always think that the Shipping Forecast is pretty much a lullaby for adults, quite comforting.

Absolutely.

OT, but I once left the earphones in overnight and I woke up around 3am listening to an astro-biologist from Oxbridge talking about finding life on other planets. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming.

When I lived alone I used to always fall asleep with radio 4 or 5 on, usually I'd switch it off in the early hours. Quite often I'd hear the radio or TV news the next morning and think I'd had some premonition of major events in the world... Turns out I'm not Mystic Meg though.

rolf_f

Greg T wrote:

Champion the Wonder Horse

Get it right. It's "Champ-eee-urrnnnnnnn the Warrrr-nnn-derrr Horrrrrrsse"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HYXCcgWQmM

Greg T wrote:

WAITING FOR THE TELLY TO WARM UP . . .

And trying to see how long you could see the white spot for!

lastant

Corporate Camper wrote:

When I lived alone I used to always fall asleep with radio 4 or 5 on, usually I'd switch it off in the early hours. Quite often I'd hear the radio or TV news the next morning and think I'd had some premonition of major events in the world... Turns out I'm not Mystic Meg though.

This. I miss the effortless osmosis of world events into my consciousness...damn relationships!

gbsahne001

remote controls

Keith47

For me it's got to be mobile phones.
Phones?
They're cameras, camcorders, mini computers, calculators, voice recorders, mini televisions, diaries, notebooks, dictionaries, torches, alarm clocks, music players (imagine the height of the equivalent pile of vinyl discs that you have stored on your phone right now!!), calenders, radios, books, games consoles etc etc!
Just think of the space back in the 70's or 80's that all those individual devices would take up and you've got them all in your pocket!!
The times they are most definitely a'changin'
(I'm over 50 BTW so am easily impressed :oops: )

Kieran_Burns

When I older
Waiting for Channel 4 to start.

Waiting up 'til 1am to watch Thriller for the 1st time ('cos it was too scary to show during the day)

When I was younger
Repeated power cuts and the thrill of lighting a candle and playing with your cheap torch cos it was SO bright!

However, if you're talking about technology changes.... listening to a Compact Disc for the 1st time and typing in my first program on a ZX80

bompington

Keith47 wrote:

For me it's got to be mobile phones.

This. It always amazes me that, with the internet having been around in some form since the 60s, no-one realised for a long time that the ability for computers to share information would come to dominate life quite so completely. Just look at science fiction - intelligent humanoid robots abound, but check the weather forecast online, who'd imagine that?
I was just starting a computer science degree in 1992, effectively the year the WWW went public in the UK, and already the academic world was entirely familiar with email and file sharing - but still no-one really knew how it would explode.

If you think of all the times you rely on globally available information transfer - satnav, email, weather, shopping, posting drivel on forums, tweeting that you're just off to the toilet - and how banal and familiar it seems, just imagine demonstrating it to someone - maybe yourself - in about 1990. Nowadays Bompetta, aged 2½, can comfortably use my Galaxy to make a phone call, flick through my pics, or draw a picture - this includes navigating through the apps menu to get there. I find it really quite hard to imagine what it is like to have such familiarity with the whole thing, even when I discuss it with my older kids who can understand and verbalise it.

CiB

I remember seeing colour tv for the first time, the Chelsea Leeds Cup Final replay at Old Trafford which would be April 1970, as well as the moon landings. That was big.

Agree with OP though that wandering round the house with a fully portable v good quality screen watching TV and then swapping it about to read the paper on it, then do a quick bit of shovelling money around from A to B without involving the bank manager then sharing a thought on this here internet is quite a step forward from what we grew up with

CiB

bompington wrote:

Nowadays Bompetta, aged 2½, can comfortably use my Galaxy to make a phone call, flick through my pics, or draw a picture - this includes navigating through the apps menu to get there.

One of my thousands of nieces at the age of 2 and having grown up with iPads & iPhones was also doing all that without a second thought. I did catch her once trying to resize a magazine picture with the thumb + finger action.

Greg T

My daugher wanted to watch a cartoon, I didn't know where it was

"Sorry Bianchi - I can't find the disc"

"It's on the computer - you've just got to network it"

She's four. . . .

tailwindhome

CiB wrote:

bompington wrote:

Nowadays Bompetta, aged 2½, can comfortably use my Galaxy to make a phone call, flick through my pics, or draw a picture - this includes navigating through the apps menu to get there.

One of my thousands of nieces at the age of 2 and having grown up with iPads & iPhones was also doing all that without a second thought. I did catch her once trying to resize a magazine picture with the thumb + finger action.

It's astounding how intuitive it all is. I bought a Galaxy phone at the weekend ( budget model £7.50/month) and within 10 mins had facebook going, photo loaded onto it and added my contacts...all without looking at instructions. Thats not because I'm really clever - they're just that easy to work.

littleprawn

Great thread!

Payphones where you could pay using 2p and 5p (the old large one!), then buying a BT phonecard!

I remember Saturday evenings were laced with great television - 3-2-1/ Generation game, TJ Hooker etc not the nonsense X factor we get annually....

The Internet has changed many things (look what has happened to the high street!)m and making skype calls to friends/ relatives where distance is no barrier. Online gaming where before I was on my C64 playing Return of the Exploding Fist or Paradriod!

aclivity

Keith47 wrote:

For me it's got to be mobile phones.

I always chuckle to myself if I ever use my phone calculator - I have a flashback to my (slightly mad) maths teacher - Billy Bold, who had been a navigator on Lancaster bombers in the war, I think, who used plane flight as an example for every bit of trigonometry - shouting with ridicule "what will you do when you are older, walk around everywhere with a calculator?"