Things in living memory which seem very anachronistic now

[Ediswan]

So daytime use only?

 

[gg1]

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I remember my aunt and uncle having a set of christmas tree lights hooked up to one of those.

re phone numbers, was there a consistent logic applied to the number changes when area codes were introduced in the 60s, ie if you new the old style number and the town, could you easily work out what the new number would be?

 

[dangie]

This is most unusual and exceptional. “One” was reserved for telephone services such as the operator, 100 etc. The first numbers allocated to subscribers were 2 something. I’d love to find out more about this.

A little information here:
‘…and as late as the 1950s [Joules] had the telephone number ‘Stone 1’

Joules Brewery, Stone

 

[DerekC]

"Lift telephone and listen" phones - my grandma had one because dial phones hadn't been introduced on her exchange then. You waited for the operator to answer and asked for the number. If it was further away they had to put you through to "Toll" (for phones outside the local area but still in the same region) or "Trunks" - either put you through to a different operator and you asked for the number again. After much clicking and popping and sometimes a snippet of chat between operators, you would hear the destination phone start to ring. When the phone was answered "your" operator would check that it was the right number before switching themselves out of the line. I think the minimum charge for a trunk call was four minutes, and you would get "pips" on the line to tell you time was almost up. Even after dial phones went in, there were quite a few years before STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling in those innocent days) came in.

It didn't always work as intended before STD. On holiday with uncle and aunt and cousins, I recall once standing in a phone box somewhere in North Wales trying to call my mum in Hertfordshire to check in (I must have promised to let her know we had got there safely and been given the money for the call). It seemed to be taking a long time, and suddenly a cheerful Ulster lady came on the line saying "Hello, Belfast, did you want a call to Ireland?" She was very helpful and somehow routed my call back to the right place.

It all seems like a different age!

 

[lyndhurst25]

Free “for sale” and “wanted” ads in the local newspaper. Local ebay in the pre-internet age. Being a delivery boy for the local free-sheet, I got first dibs on any bargains that were advertised. I remember getting a disk drive and cassette recorder for my Commodore 64 quite cheaply that way.

Disk drives and cassette recorders.

Car tax discs. Easy to tell if any car was taxed and legal. So much so that it enabled the local busybody to put a note on my windscreen on New Year’s Day to “remind” me that my road tax had run out the day before. I think that they were just annoyed that a stranger had parked in their village to go for a walk. Of course, I did renew it when the Post Office reopened in January 2nd.

 

[signed]

Free “for sale” and “wanted” ads in the local newspaper

You still find cars on those for sale posters from older persons that don't know how to operate FB Marketplace

 

[lyndhurst25]

I remember my aunt and uncle having a set of christmas tree lights hooked up to one of those.

re phone numbers, was there a consistent logic applied to the number changes when area codes were introduced in the 60s, ie if you new the old style number and the town, could you easily work out what the new number would be?

UK Geographic Telephone STD codes with their mnemonics

It all makes perfect sense. Sort of.

 

[pdq]

Houses with 'Vacancies' advertised where spare rooms were let on a daily basis to visitors. This was common in holiday areas, and my parents in Tenby took in visitors in the 70s.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

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Wow - yes. I had forgotten about those! Our Christmas tree lights - two sets used one of those.

 

[AM9]

"Lift telephone and listen" phones - my grandma had one because dial phones hadn't been introduced on her exchange then. You waited for the operator to answer and asked for the number. If it was further away they had to put you through to "Toll" (for phones outside the local area but still in the same region) or "Trunks" - either put you through to a different operator and you asked for the number again. After much clicking and popping and sometimes a snippet of chat between operators, you would hear the destination phone start to ring. When the phone was answered "your" operator would check that it was the right number before switching themselves out of the line. I think the minimum charge for a trunk call was four minutes, and you would get "pips" on the line to tell you time was almost up. Even after dial phones went in, there were quite a few years before STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling in those innocent days) came in.

It didn't always work as intended before STD. On holiday with uncle and aunt and cousins, I recall once standing in a phone box somewhere in North Wales trying to call my mum in Hertfordshire to check in (I must have promised to let her know we had got there safely and been given the money for the call). It seemed to be taking a long time, and suddenly a cheerful Ulster lady came on the line saying "Hello, Belfast, did you want a call to Ireland?" She was very helpful and somehow routed my call back to the right place.

It all seems like a different age!

i grew up in the catchment area of the Hainault exchange (in Ilford when that was part of Essex). It was the last exchange in the London tgelephone group to move from manual to automatic. OK most of the time as we'd got used to just picking up the receiver and waiting until an operator asked for the required number. A benefit was that there was no time limit for calls, each one being a single unit charge. It was only if somebody was trying to call you that (eventually) the operator might interrupt to let you know there was a call waiting. The only problem was that my mother went to work there when she returned to work and I sometimes was asked who I spoke so long to.

 

[Devonian]

pre-automation numbers started at 1, although occasionally using 0 for fire services etc, and just carried on. Brown’s of Chester rejoiced in Chester 1 and had the Telegraphic Address of “Progress, Chester.”

The last such number was Rhenigidale 1, on the island of Harris. It was connected to the Inverness auto-manual exchange via a radio link and could only be reached through the Operator until 5th March 1990.

 

[Merle Haggard]

This also bypassed the dial lock fitted by a parent to prevent overenthusiastic use of the phone by the offspring.

There was another way to make trunk calls without dialling 0 to start..

It probably counts as fraud, so it was my friend that did it. To call the surrounding towns there were local exchange codes different from the trunk ones which, in a call box, were only charged at the local rate. To make a trunk call at local rate an example would be if you wanted to call a Scampton (Lincs) exchange number from Northampton you dialled the Leicester local code number, followed by the local code number from Leicester to Lincoln and then the local code number from Lincoln to Scampton. It was a bit faint when you got through, though.

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I spent my early childhood in an old stone terraced house with no power sockets and there my mother plugged an iron into one of these. No problem at night, lamp in the other socket. At least 10 amps down a tiny twisted flex from the ceiling. When I later did physics at school I realised the flaw, and also understood what was making the smell of fish (overheating bakelite, & it's a dodgy gas)

 

[AM9]

There was another way to make trunk calls without dialling 0 to start..

It probably counts as fraud, so it was my friend that did it. To call the surrounding towns there were local exchange codes different from the trunk ones which, in a call box, were only charged at the local rate. To make a trunk call at local rate an example would be if you wanted to call a Scampton (Lincs) exchange number from Northampton you dialled the Leicester local code number, followed by the local code number from Leicester to Lincoln and then the local code number from Lincoln to Scampton. It was a bit faint when you got through, though.

Yup, did this (more to check that it would work than to make lots of cheap calls). For a while I lived in Colchester but went to Mid-Essex college. There a couple of GPO/POT students described how to avoid an STD 'a' rate call from Chelmsford to Colchester. Instead of diallling 0206 etc, the method was to dial 961 which was the code for Witham, and then dial 88 which was Witham's code for Colchester. As you say, the line was a bit noisy and feint, but it did work.

 

[Trackman]

You still find cars on those for sale posters from older persons that don't know how to operate FB Marketplace

One near me a few months ago, the widow hadn't a clue about prices so just put on it '£500 no offers' for the BMW, I cannot remember the model but was about 10 years old . Was snapped up straight away. Word has it was worth at least £3,000 as someone knew the owner and the car, very low mileage and only went out at weekends and was in pristine condition - plus a full BMW service history.

There was another way to make trunk calls without dialling 0 to start..

It probably counts as fraud, so it was my friend that did it. To call the surrounding towns there were local exchange codes different from the trunk ones which, in a call box, were only charged at the local rate. To make a trunk call at local rate an example would be if you wanted to call a Scampton (Lincs) exchange number from Northampton you dialled the Leicester local code number, followed by the local code number from Leicester to Lincoln and then the local code number from Lincoln to Scampton. It was a bit faint when you got through, though.

In the 70's we sussed out you could make conference calls by dialling the speaking clock. Faint, but you could all hear each other. It used to infuriate other callers who told us to shut up! I imagine this was for the local exchange only.

 

[GordonT]

Memory is a bit hazy but I think at one time the town hall/civic centre/burgh chambers etc. of cities and reasonable sized towns issued an illustrated guide for new residents and possibly visitors to the community. Also vaguely remember folding street directories which embodied a flimsy ruler-like appendage. The "ruler" acted as a means of pinpointing the location of specific streets or places of interest. What I cannot remember is why the "ruler" was needed as opposed to the more usual alpha numeric designation of each square on the map referenced in an index for each street name or place of interest.

 

[52290]

If you think that blu-rays, or DVD box sets, have died out you should check out the Blu-ray.com website, or the appropriate section of Amazon or even visit an HMV store.

Tonight I shall be settling down to watch my recently acquired 6 dvd box set of The Likely Lads and Whatever happened to them. My Sony blue-ray player gives a far better account of them than I remember my old cathode ray tube telly ever did.

 

[Busaholic]

Car tax discs. Easy to tell if any car was taxed and legal.

My Clio kept its last 2014 expiring tax disc in its rightful place until it went to the great car showroom in the clouds earlier this year! The scrapping of the system was possibly the worst of all the disastrous decisions taken by the government around that time and has directly impacted all of us legal drivers with the colossal rise in car insurance premiums.

 

[AndrewE]

My Clio kept its last 2014 expiring tax disc in its rightful place until it went to the great car showroom in the clouds earlier this year! The scrapping of the system was possibly the worst of all the disastrous decisions taken by the government around that time and has directly impacted all of us legal drivers with the colossal rise in car insurance premiums.

and indirectly by the loss to teh govt. of the "tax" from all the people who don't bother paying it. The rest of us make it up for them. (Ditto insurance, but don't get me going on that one...)

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Going for an interview with your bank manager to apply for an Access or Barclaycard or even a loan (not a mortgage)

The Blackberry (physical push-button QWERTY keyboard mobile phone)
Hard-copy telephone directories
Carbon paper
Manual typewriters
Floppy discs
Overhead projectors
Paper store catalogues

Possibly...the gradual decline of the shopping mall as rents increase and/or companies go bust

 

[Merle Haggard]

Going for an interview with your bank manager to apply for an Access or Barclaycard or even a loan (not a mortgage)

The Blackberry (physical push-button QWERTY keyboard mobile phone)
Hard-copy telephone directories
Carbon paper
Manual typewriters
Floppy discs
Overhead projectors
Paper store catalogues

Possibly...the gradual decline of the shopping mall as rents increase and/or companies go bust

I tried that in 1969. (£50 loan, for a purchase for preservation but I didn't exactly admit that). He looked at my last bank statement and said something like 'you haven't got enough money in your account for us to give you a loan'. He didn't seem to understand the principle...

 

[AndrewE]

I tried that in 1969. (£50 loan, for a purchase for preservation but I didn't exactly admit that). He looked at my last bank statement and said something like 'you haven't got enough money in your account for us to give you a loan'. He didn't seem to understand the principle...

I had something similar, being declined for a credit card in about 1976.
I said "I have banked with you since before I started work [in 1974,] you know exactly what my income is (from BR, so it was secure) and what my outgoings are, and what I have transferred to savings. What on earth makes you think I am not credit-worthy?"
Their answer was that I hadn't borrowed any money from anywhere, so there was no record of me paying a loan back! They didn't argue any further though.
Contrast that with nowadays when there seems to be a constant stream of adverts pushing credit cards.

 

[Harvester]

Mainframe computers (and peripherals).

 

[Merle Haggard]

Mainframe computers (and peripherals).

With all the data on tape drives remorselessly whirring backwards and forwards . Input and output by punch cards. Masses of typists punching input cards.
Someone on here may know exactly what the was size of the memory of the original T.O.P.S. computer at Blandford House but I'm sure it was tiny by comparison to even a basic laptop of today.
Barclays Bank had a mainframe computer in Northampton in 1968-9 and its cost was about the same as the then recently built aircraft carrier Ark Royal.

 

[MotCO]

Going for an interview with your bank manager

Finding a bank on the High Street takes some doing today!

 

[AM9]

Tonight I shall be settling down to watch my recently acquired 6 dvd box set of The Likely Lads and Whatever happened to them. My Sony blue-ray player gives a far better account of them than I remember my old cathode ray tube telly ever did.

Presumably a much more modern TV is really responsible for the improved picture, not the disc player.

 

[Ashley Hill]

The Blackberry (physical push-button QWERTY keyboard mobile phone)

I had a Blackberry phone. I liked it.

 

[johntea]

Knock off DVDs / software / games at the car boot sale, bung the car boot operator a few quid to tip you off when Trading Standards are on the horizon! (Someone on the street I used to live at actually used to be involved with it all and their setup was crazy, multiple machines knocking out hundreds of duplicated DVDs in one go)...then you got home and realized you had just wasted your money on the high DVD quality of an audience member sat in a cinema sneakily filming the blockbuster on a potato

There was the big scary dramatic PIRACY IT'S A CRIME advert they used to shove on DVDs at one point which was utterly pointless as if you were watching a knock off it was highly likely the high seas would have just edited that out anyway!

"You Wouldn't Steal A Movie" Advert May Have Led To More People Stealing Movies

Turns out you would steal a movie.

www.iflscience.com

An infamous early 2000s anti-piracy campaign may have actually increased piracy, a new study has claimed. If you bought and watched movies legally in 2004-2007, you will be well aware of the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" anti-piracy campaign videos. One of the benefits of pirating movies, in fact, was you didn't have to see the irritating piracy warnings.

For the uninitiated, the advert listed a number of crimes and attempted to equate them with downloading a film, whilst also attempting to make downloading a film look as dramatic as the other listed crimes.

The modern alternative seems to be the likes of modified Amazon Fire sticks

 

[OhNoAPacer]

MP3 players

 

[GRALISTAIR]

5+1/4 inch floppy disks

 

[philthetube]

Bulky red machines at railway stations into which feeding some coinage enabled you to produce your name on a strip of metal. There was an enormous dial affair to set each character one by one and a handle to emboss each letter in turn. At least that's my recollection.

Cigarette machines.

Cigarettes sold individually with the target market being school children.

Fag and a match for a penny from the shop opposite my school

If you wanted to watch a TV programme you had to be present when it was transmitted. None of this high faluting video recorder nonsense, and as for the idea of on demand streaming, well!

My local chippy used to shut down a night when a new James bond film was shown as no one came out

The school nit nurse and the resulting purple heads.

nitty Nora the bug explorer

Outdoor weighing machines sometimes associated with seafronts.
Some versions spoke your weight as if folk would appreciate advertising their weight to passing folk.

Seaside donkey rides along the beach.

still donkey rides about.

Uxbridge underground station still has both weighing scales and cigarette machines on site, neither working though.