On old time TV shows I always envied the homeowners who had the telephones with the super long extension cords where you could walk from one room clear across the living room then into another room.
@craig7 Indeed. I noticed too that the real reason for those ridiculously long leads in films, was so the leading lady could pick the thing up and throw herself langourously and sexily across her bed while still chatting away!
Just about - seeing a few "Teddy Boys". (So my Mum said they were, though I was too young to understand!)
In that same era: seeing the Bill & Ben The Flowerpot Men, and Andy Pandy , puppet shows for young children, on a friend's television-set..... while....
...... Our family not having a telvision, Listen With Mother on the wireless. It was some decades before I learnt firstly the theme-tune was from Gabriel Faure's Dolly Suite, and later that the "Dolly" here was the pet-name of a real woman in the composer's life.
Advance a few years....
- Also on the wireless: the Today current-affairs programme (presented by Jack de Manio), Down Your Way (an engaging round-Britain travelogue), The Archers (still running and now the world's oldest drama serial). Also Dad's Saturday-evening ritual of comparing his "Littlewoods" football-betting coupons with the results read in a special programme whose litany was nearly as poetic as The Shipping Forecast.
The introduction of ball-point pens, the original Biro indeed, by its make. That when I was in Primary School where our despairing teacher told us they would spoil our hand-writing he was trying to teach us, and called them "pig's grease". I was perfectly capable of spoiling my own hand-writing, irrespective of writing-instrument.
Using logarithms and the related slide-rule as multiplication and power calculation tools - before electronc calculators arrived in my last years or so at school. I still can use them.
Steam locomotives in regular use on the railways. (This ended in 1968.)
The Beatles bursting onto the pop-music scene and becoming the world's most famous and original pop band. They even played their own instruments - a band, not merely a singing troupe miming to synthetic back-tracks.
It being common for adults and children alike, to make or repair things like clothes, furniture, cycles and toys.
The introduction of the Transistor Radio. The previous portable wireless receivers used valves and bulky batteries.
The first "Computer Games" - bouncing a virtual ball around the TV screen, which acted as the display for the game unit itself, plugged into the aeriel socket.
@Gusman Er,no.My favourites back in the mid-'50s were "The Air Adventures of Hop Harrigan" and "The Sea Hound".Also "The Shadow" sounded like it would be interesting,but my parents wouldn't let me listen to that.
I remember a travelling carnival/side show that used to come to town every two years or so and set up in the mall parking lot. Amusement rides, a haunted house, and a "gorilla woman".
Used to be a small circus that would come every two or three years, set up a tent, have all the traditional acts plus elephant rides.
I'm so old that calculators were banned in schools. And blue laws. And credit cards were run on a sliding device and account numbers were verified through a booklet.
@2ndtimeguy We just had to rely on log books with thousands of close print figures all over them. After all these years if you put one in front of me… I wouldn't remember work out how to use one!
I am so old I remember the start of both Doctor Who and Coronation Street. IN BRITAIN. (In fact an early Dr Who episode was interrupted to announce JFK had been shot)😷
I'm so old I remember drive in movies. Movie theaters that only had one screen. When if you were waiting for a phone call you had to stay home all day because cellphones weren't even a dream yet.
@lissah Ice-cream vans are still common, and the one that comes through my street seems to have more adult than child customers. Including me, occasionally.
@rinkydinkydoink Precisely. Policy is driven by the ones pulling the strings that directly benefit them. For all the pledges to clean up governance, the old guard has never left.
When I could buy cigarettes for my grandmother with only a note, when there were cigarette machines at the bowling alleys by the restrooms, when old soda.machines sold 10 ounce glass bottles for a couple dimes and had a slim vertical door, or a top that opened like a cooler you had to slide the bottles through a maze of channels to pull it out.
