Eλευθερί
Junior Member
@eleutheri
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Post by Eλευθερί on May 22, 2019 2:57:09 GMT
Recognize this? It's a punch card. This is what they used to program and enter data into computers back in the day. The cards were punched using a keypunch machine: The personal computers which could be connected directly to keyboards and visual displays (originally CRTs--cathode ray tubes) like we all know and love/hate didn't appear until the very end of the 1970s.
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Post by twothousandonemark on May 22, 2019 4:33:45 GMT
Nuclear War forever on the brink. Sassy times those.
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Post by poelzig on May 23, 2019 5:59:41 GMT
TV and MoviesThere was basically no home video. If you missed a movie in the cinema, you couldn't see it unless it was later broadcast on tv (and you happened to be home for the broadcast) or was brought back to the cinema for a re-release. (Classic films might periodically be shown in cinemas on special occasions.) There were no Marvel Universe movies, no Pirates of the Caribbean live-action movies, no CGI animation like Shrek. For that matter, there weren't really any superhero movies yet (except for mid-1960s Batman and earlier movies with Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Aladdin, etc). The highest-grossing films weren't films that were targeted to teens and kids. (1970 had Love Story and Airport; 1971 had The French Connection, Fiddler on the Roof, and Diamonds are Forever; 1972 had The Godfather; and 1973 had The Exorcist and The Towering Inferno.) Lucas and Spielberg hadn't re-defined the meaning of blockbuster yet. In the US, in most areas there typically just 4 or 5 tv channels. You had to fiddle with the set-top antenna to get decent reception, and many houses and buildings had larger antennas on the roofs. (Not many people had cable tv.) Stations only broadcast until around midnight (or maybe 1:00 or 2:00am). There was no such thing as CNN and 24-hour news. And it took a lot longer for movies to get from the theater to the TV. (Maybe a year.) A year? Maybe for low budget stuff that didn't do well in theaters. More like 3 years for popular movies. Also there was no guarantee a movie would even make it to TV eventually or be shown in a theater near you for that matter.
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Post by poelzig on May 23, 2019 6:11:10 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. I hate it when I hold the door for a woman and don't get a thank you or at least a smile in return.
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Post by telegonus on May 25, 2019 8:22:24 GMT
Also,--and I hope this hasn't come up yet--books generally meant hard covered. Paperbacks were becoming more common, and by the end of the Sixties-early Seventies what became known in the publishing industry as trade paperbacks (nearer in size to hard cover books, longer and often wider than the traditional mass market kind, still in use, btw) became commonplace.
Even in city neighborhoods, stores were far more specialized. Although many drugstores still featured soda fountains and lunch counters, back in the day, as well as cigarettes and candy, one also generally shopped for health related items in drugstores only. Today, the big drug chain stores sell everything. One can get bread, cheese, canned goods, soft drinks, milk, papers, pens, pencils, children's toys and clock radios in today's pharmacies (the preferred word these days for what were once called, near universally, drugstores; and before that, apothecaries).
A personal issue with me: the word educated was still connected to what was sometimes called the Great Tradition, which is to say overwhelmingly European in orientation, with a strong historical focus. In other words, one of the many things one got from one's schooling was a sense of the past, of human evolution at various levels; how things got started in one century, flourished, rose to great prominence, then declined two or three centuries later with changes in religion, science, technology and politics.
The liberal arts were strongly stressed, though in public schools science and math education was gaining strength, slowly but surely bringing an end to the notion of education being classical, essentially cultural, while today it's much more about how to become a professional, advanced degrees well beyond the undergraduate level; with this not a matter so much of intellectual fashion as of sheer survival.
Also, bicycles were still largely for children. The few grownups one saw riding them were usually men, as often as not European, wearing sandals with socks, their pants legs rolled up. That was a common sight in college towns and in places where there were many institutions of higher learning, research facilities, think tanks and such, where the occasional adult American male could be seen riding his bike, like his French counterpart, and often going to the same movies (at the "art house" theaters), and drinking the same wine.
The world has changed massively in just my lifetime. I don't even recognize places that were once familiar to me, where I could navigate (virtually) blindfold from one street or store to the next due to my familiarity of the landscape (so to speak). That the word change in large metropolitan areas means tearing down dang near every building that isn't a designated a national historical landmark strikes me as tragic; and especially as what replaces mostly old and often lovely buildings, places that reflected the sense of time and place where they were built has given way to glass and steel behemoths with, so far as I can see, have to aesthetic value and look like they'll last just so long, only to be replaced by another, equally ugly building in the span of, likely, less than a century. It's planned obsolescence in architecture and design these days.
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Eλευθερί
Junior Member
@eleutheri
Posts: 3,710
Likes: 1,670
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Post by Eλευθερί on Jun 21, 2019 1:12:01 GMT
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Eλευθερί
Junior Member
@eleutheri
Posts: 3,710
Likes: 1,670
|
Post by Eλευθερί on Jun 22, 2019 3:21:35 GMT
People thought tanning was good for your health.
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Jun 22, 2019 3:29:37 GMT
People thought tanning was good for your health. Oh, gosh, I had forgotten about that! I never tried to tan, my skin was too fair. But lots of people did.
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