Eλευθερί
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@eleutheri
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Post by Eλευθερί on May 21, 2019 8:04:08 GMT
There were no electronic pocket calculators, such as we know today. Scientists and engineers would use slide rules for quick calculations. I was probably in the last generation that was taught how to use a slide rule. By the time I got to trigonometry in high school, we had switched to pocket calculators.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 16:25:17 GMT
Some of us still do.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 17:00:21 GMT
Doghouse6: as to stereo, I know my dad had stereo LPs from the early 60s. He had a phonograph player with a stereo receiver.
As to cassette tapes, I just watched Marlowe (1969), which had an interesting scene in which a certain character (played by William Daniels) dictated a message into a tape recorder in his chauffeured limo, then handed the tape - a cassette tape - to Marlowe (James Garner). This was 1969, so yes, cassette tapes were in use then, and (obviously) not just prerecorded ones, but apparently blanks that you could record on.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 17:03:33 GMT
Eλευθερί: it was a common courtesy for men (both young and old) to hold doors open for women. And it was common for women to express at least a modicum of appreciation for said courtesy.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 17:19:54 GMT
movieliker: That's not true. Fruits and vegetables were a big part of the diet back then, just as they are now. Fiber was referred to as "roughage," and I remember even in school days, getting more "roughage" was talked about. It was pretty common to have a dinner salad so as to get more "roughage" in your diet. Prunes, and prune juice, were commonly consumed to help ward off constipation. I found a diet and nutrition book in my parent's library, dating from the late 50s, that talked about the importance of eating 3 pounds of vegetables a day.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 17:52:04 GMT
Here's a few more I thought of:
It wasn't unusual for kids (mainly boys) to be allowed to shoot guns, such as a .22 pistol or rifle. It wasn't unusual to have kids practice their shooting skills with said guns - sometimes even in their back yard - without the police and SWAT teams being called to arrest them and their parents.
It was still expected that young women would aspire to married life and becoming a housewife or "homemaker" for the rest of her life. College for women wasn't so much about seeking a career, rather than seeking out a better (i.e., higher-earning) husband than what a high school graduate could expect to find. Men were expected to be the worker and bread-winner. Back then it was still quite possible for a man to have a job that provided for house and home/family without the spouse having to work. Jobs - and companies - tended to last much longer. Men could expect to work for the same company all their working life until retirement, and even qualify for a pension.
However, it wasn't unusual to see wives, and kids, doing various side jobs to bring in some extra spending money. Moms would work temp jobs at the local mall during holiday season, for example. Kids would often get paper routes, or could go around the neighborhood and offer to do yard work or other chores for some extra cash - without OSHA or child welfare agencies being called in to put a stop to it.
The making and drinking of coffee hadn't been turned into some global cult fetish then. In fact, most people didn't even use coffee filters - they used a percolator that had a metal filter basket inside (no paper filter required). Men would fill up a Thermos bottle of hot coffee, brewed at home, and take it to work with them. No need to find your nearest local Starbucks or any such place as that. You brewed your own - and it wasn't made from any sort of fancy-shmancy specially roasted coffee beans: it was usually common coffee beans from Brazil - purchased in a metal can. Grinding your own beans was unheard of. To most people back then, "Espresso" was a very foreign word.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 18:08:27 GMT
Smoking was still quite prevalent, in spite of growing concern, and warnings, about the health hazards associated with tobacco use.
You can certainly see this in the movies of that era. In The Last Detail (1973), there's a scene where Jack Nicholson's character (Baduski) lights up a cigar while on an Amtrak train - and nobody says a thing about it.
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Post by Doghouse6 on May 21, 2019 18:54:25 GMT
Doghouse6 : as to stereo, I know my dad had stereo LPs from the early 60s. He had a phonograph player with a stereo receiver.
Indeed. Our first stereo (phonograph/FM radio) was contained within a large 1963 Curtis Mathes console that also housed our first color TV, and looked very much like this: The business for which my father worked at the time had Capitol Records as a client, and he was often given promotional stereo LPs, some of which dated to about 1958, and which we were not allowed to play until we got that set. The common wisdom at the time was that playing a stereo LP with a standard mono stylus would damage it. I don't know to this day if that was really true, but in the mid-'60s, some record companies were releasing stereo LPs that were advertised as being playable on any phonograph. I do suspect that was mere marketing hype, and a cost-cutting excuse for record companies to discontinue the pressing of mono LPs along with stereo ones. Before then, mono LPs at any retailer were anywhere from $.50 to $1.00 cheaper than their stereo counterparts. I remember that. It's a fun film, bringing the character into the swingin' '60s, and one I like more now than when I first saw it in '69. Great cast, and gave Garner a chance to try out the dryly humorous, violence-averse persona that would serve him so well a few years later on The Rockford Files (the pilot for which even repeated a couple of one-liners used in Marlowe). EDIT: I just jumped back over to the Classic Film board, and discovered the mini-review that you were posting while I was writing this one.
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Eλευθερί
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@eleutheri
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Post by Eλευθερί on May 21, 2019 19:28:46 GMT
Eλευθερί: it was a common courtesy for men (both young and old) to hold doors open for women. And it was common for women to express at least a modicum of appreciation for said courtesy. This is still true in many parts of the US.
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Eλευθερί
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@eleutheri
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Post by Eλευθερί on May 21, 2019 19:32:59 GMT
movieliker: That's not true. Fruits and vegetables were a big part of the diet back then, just as they are now. Fiber was referred to as "roughage," and I remember even in school days, getting more "roughage" was talked about. It was pretty common to have a dinner salad so as to get more "roughage" in your diet. Prunes, and prune juice, were commonly consumed to help ward off constipation. I found a diet and nutrition book in my parent's library, dating from the late 50s, that talked about the importance of eating 3 pounds of vegetables a day. There was a medical textbook in my family that dated from pre-WWI. It discussed roughage.
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Post by Doghouse6 on May 21, 2019 19:56:08 GMT
Eλευθερί : it was a common courtesy for men (both young and old) to hold doors open for women. And it was common for women to express at least a modicum of appreciation for said courtesy. This is still true in many parts of the US. In the eastern Washington town (about 200,000 population) in which I now live, everyone holds doors for everyone: men for women; women for men; men for men; you name it. Any number of times while unloading something heavy from the car in front of my house, pedestrian passersby have asked if I needed any help, and strangers will pitch in with shovels or pushes when a vehicle gets stuck in the snow. All in all, a pretty polite place, especially to an L.A. native.
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Eλευθερί
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@eleutheri
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Post by Eλευθερί on May 21, 2019 20:07:56 GMT
Here's a few more I thought of:
It wasn't unusual for kids (mainly boys) to be allowed to shoot guns, such as a .22 pistol or rifle. It wasn't unusual to have kids practice their shooting skills with said guns - sometimes even in their back yard - without the police and SWAT teams being called to arrest them and their parents.
It was still expected that young women would aspire to married life and becoming a housewife or "homemaker" for the rest of her life. College for women wasn't so much about seeking a career, rather than seeking out a better (i.e., higher-earning) husband than what a high school graduate could expect to find. Men were expected to be the worker and bread-winner. Back then it was still quite possible for a man to have a job that provided for house and home/family without the spouse having to work. Jobs - and companies - tended to last much longer. Men could expect to work for the same company all their working life until retirement, and even qualify for a pension.
However, it wasn't unusual to see wives, and kids, doing various side jobs to bring in some extra spending money. Moms would work temp jobs at the local mall during holiday season, for example. Kids would often get paper routes, or could go around the neighborhood and offer to do yard work or other chores for some extra cash - without OSHA or child welfare agencies being called in to put a stop to it.
The making and drinking of coffee hadn't been turned into some global cult fetish then. In fact, most people didn't even use coffee filters - they used a percolator that had a metal filter basket inside (no paper filter required). Men would fill up a Thermos bottle of hot coffee, brewed at home, and take it to work with them. No need to find your nearest local Starbucks or any such place as that. You brewed your own - and it wasn't made from any sort of fancy-shmancy specially roasted coffee beans: it was usually common coffee beans from Brazil - purchased in a metal can. Grinding your own beans was unheard of. To most people back then, "Espresso" was a very foreign word.
But you could have your beans ground for you at the store if you shopped at A & P.
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klandersen
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@klandersen
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Post by klandersen on May 21, 2019 20:44:19 GMT
Doghouse6 : as to stereo, I know my dad had stereo LPs from the early 60s. He had a phonograph player with a stereo receiver.
Indeed. Our first stereo (phonograph/FM radio) was contained within a large 1963 Curtis Mathes console that also housed our first color TV, and looked very much like this: The business for which my father worked at the time had Capitol Records as a client, and he was often given promotional stereo LPs, some of which dated to about 1958, and which we were not allowed to play until we got that set. The common wisdom at the time was that playing a stereo LP with a standard mono stylus would damage it. I don't know to this day if that was really true, but in the mid-'60s, some record companies were releasing stereo LPs that were advertised as being playable on any phonograph. I do suspect that was mere marketing hype, and a cost-cutting excuse for record companies to discontinue the pressing of mono LPs along with stereo ones. Before then, mono LPs at any retailer were anywhere from $.50 to $1.00 cheaper than their stereo counterparts. I remember that. It's a fun film, bringing the character into the swingin' '60s, and one I like more now than when I first saw it in '69. Great cast, and gave Garner a chance to try out the dryly humorous, violence-averse persona that would serve him so well a few years later on The Rockford Files (the pilot for which even repeated a couple of one-liners used in Marlowe). EDIT: I just jumped back over to the Classic Film board, and discovered the mini-review that you were posting while I was writing this one. The opening credits of the Rockford Files was one of my first introductions to home answering machines. The first person to get an answering machine in my family was my sister sometime in the mid-1970s. The first few models used either a special sized cassette tape, a reel to reel tape or some built-in cartridge that most likely used some form of magnetic recording tape.
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klandersen
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@klandersen
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Post by klandersen on May 21, 2019 20:50:17 GMT
Here's a few more I thought of:
It wasn't unusual for kids (mainly boys) to be allowed to shoot guns, such as a .22 pistol or rifle. It wasn't unusual to have kids practice their shooting skills with said guns - sometimes even in their back yard - without the police and SWAT teams being called to arrest them and their parents.
It was still expected that young women would aspire to married life and becoming a housewife or "homemaker" for the rest of her life. College for women wasn't so much about seeking a career, rather than seeking out a better (i.e., higher-earning) husband than what a high school graduate could expect to find. Men were expected to be the worker and bread-winner. Back then it was still quite possible for a man to have a job that provided for house and home/family without the spouse having to work. Jobs - and companies - tended to last much longer. Men could expect to work for the same company all their working life until retirement, and even qualify for a pension.
However, it wasn't unusual to see wives, and kids, doing various side jobs to bring in some extra spending money. Moms would work temp jobs at the local mall during holiday season, for example. Kids would often get paper routes, or could go around the neighborhood and offer to do yard work or other chores for some extra cash - without OSHA or child welfare agencies being called in to put a stop to it.
The making and drinking of coffee hadn't been turned into some global cult fetish then. In fact, most people didn't even use coffee filters - they used a percolator that had a metal filter basket inside (no paper filter required). Men would fill up a Thermos bottle of hot coffee, brewed at home, and take it to work with them. No need to find your nearest local Starbucks or any such place as that. You brewed your own - and it wasn't made from any sort of fancy-shmancy specially roasted coffee beans: it was usually common coffee beans from Brazil - purchased in a metal can. Grinding your own beans was unheard of. To most people back then, "Espresso" was a very foreign word.
IN my area Montgomery County Maryland during the 1950s and 60s many of the high school had school sponsored gun clubs. I think they were popular all across the country during those times. I don't know if they were for hunting or gun shooting competitions (Like the Olympics used to have) maybe they were both. They were a bit before my time. I just know about them from seeing older yearbooks or photos from Facebook from people who went to high school during the 60s or earlier.
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Post by Doghouse6 on May 21, 2019 21:15:10 GMT
The opening credits of the Rockford Files was one of my first introductions to home answering machines. The first person to get an answering machine in my family was my sister sometime in the mid-1970s. The first few models used either a special sized cassette tape, a reel to reel tape or some built-in cartridge that most likely used some form of magnetic recording tape. Yeah, a roommate at the time had a Code-A-Phone answering machine; a metal-encased behemoth that must have weighed at least 15 pounds.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on May 21, 2019 22:22:46 GMT
Eλευθερί: I didn't know that about A&P stores and their custom bean grinding service. That's very interesting. We didn't have them around here (Seattle area) when I was growing up here.
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rogerthat
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Post by rogerthat on May 21, 2019 23:09:59 GMT
Growing up in the 70's I'll add:
If you wanted a fact or more information on a topic/item : you consulted an encyclopedia or went to the library
Getting a library card was a big thing and everyone seemed to have one
It was more common than not that stores including grocery were closed on Sundays
Wood paneling, lineolium floors, and shag capets were big interior decor choices
Diners were more common
Local evening news was the main source of tv news and an important time to gather round the tv
(For the majority of Americans) there was no such thing as light beer or craft beers
Playgrounds in public parks were usually slides, jungle gyms, and swings all without saftey mats or padding on the ground.
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on May 22, 2019 0:40:54 GMT
Growing up in the 70's I'll add: If you wanted a fact or more information on a topic/item : you consulted an encyclopedia or went to the library Getting a library card was a big thing and everyone seemed to have one It was more common than not that stores including grocery were closed on Sundays Wood paneling, lineolium floors, and shag capets were big interior decor choices Diners were more common Local evening news was the main source of tv news and an important time to gather round the tv (For the majority of Americans) there was no such thing as light beer or craft beers Playgrounds in public parks were usually slides, jungle gyms, and swings all without saftey mats or padding on the ground. I was a teen in the 70's and I can confirm your observations. My parents spent big bucks, back in the day, for a set of encyclopedias. Just a few months ago, I sent them, and a whole bunch more old books, to the landfill because no one wants them, even charitable groups. They had mold in the pages. So sad... And the wood paneling, linoleum floors and shag carpets? Gag, yes, you got that right! Harvest Gold, Avocado Green and some sort of rust-color were what all the appliances were painted. And yes, the whole family sat down after supper to watch TV. A different era, nearly a different world.
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Eλευθερί
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@eleutheri
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Post by Eλευθερί on May 22, 2019 1:58:15 GMT
Disposable plastic diapers became available in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but were not widely used, as the babies in many families still wore cloth diapers. And those cloth diapers had to be cleaned and washed. If you were wealthier, you could afford a maid or nanny to do the dirty work, or you could pay for a diaper service. But most young mothers just had to grin and bear it. Imagine being a mother back in the days before medical birth control. Having nine kids with 3 in diapers.
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Post by movieliker on May 22, 2019 2:18:56 GMT
movieliker: That's not true. Fruits and vegetables were a big part of the diet back then, just as they are now. Fiber was referred to as "roughage," and I remember even in school days, getting more "roughage" was talked about. It was pretty common to have a dinner salad so as to get more "roughage" in your diet. Prunes, and prune juice, were commonly consumed to help ward off constipation. I found a diet and nutrition book in my parent's library, dating from the late 50s, that talked about the importance of eating 3 pounds of vegetables a day. I disagree. Yes, people talked about roughage. But nobody was talking about fiber. And there was no "whole grain" this. Or "whole grain" that. And no national campaign to get people to eat fiber. Everything was processed. Stomach and bowel problems were common.
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