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Things that used to be common place in people’s homes

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pdq

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So we can add - TV sets that were deep enough to support a box on top.
Set top boxes are very much still a 'thing', despite no longer sitting atop a set. A linguistic remnant, like dialing a number.
 

PG

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I've found our one, though without the spray gun attachment. The fourth picture shows where the hose fits into the output end.
I reckon that's an even more niche website than railway history ones :)
My parents had one from before I was born, I'm fairly certain it lasted into the early nineties after I had left home. Don't ever recall seeing the spray gun attachment, we always thought the blowing function was to help clear the hose if something got stuck in it :)
 

PeterC

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Amazed you've still got working 8" drives. If you do find a supplier check if they've got any punched cards and paper tape while you're at it ;)
Not relating to household items but back in the 80s I worked in the IT department of a major PLC. I was managing an office move and asked about binning a drawer full of punch cards in one of the cabinets. Response from the manager of the team owning the cabinet was a sudden panic, that was the back up for the mainframe operating system, I assume only needed if all machines at both centres went down at once (I was not on the ops side). He went rather quiet when I reminded him that we had scrapped our last card reader a week earlier.
 

philjo

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A friend of my parents worked at ICL and had a large supply of discarded punch cards at home which he used for shopping lists etc.
 

Peter Sarf

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Talking of window signs, how about the Blue Arrow you were supposed to put in the window when you were expecting a delivery from the catalogue.

Or catalogues generally for that matter. We always had the Kays and Marshall Ward catalogues for getting disappointing new clothes from, and I had a Maplin catalogue for ordering mystifying new electrical components from
Ah ha - Maplin !, sadly gone. About ten years before that Tandy (branded Radio Shack) went under.

Now it is just Currys since Clas Ohlson retreated from Croydon.
 

Master Cutler

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Not sure if they have already been mentioned, but Vapona fly killer blocks were commonplace hanging in many houses during the summer back in the 60s and 70s.
 

Bevan Price

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Don't recall seeing them listed above, but I think that "real" pianos were more common than they are now. Of course, not everybody could afford one, but they were a way of having home music before record players (and successors) became widespread.
 

najaB

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Don't recall seeing them listed above, but I think that "real" pianos were more common than they are now.
I suspect that rather depends on your definition of "more common". I doubt that a larger percentage of houses had them in the past since, in real terms, they are considerably more affordable these days. What might well be true that as a percentage of "home entertainment devices" they certainly would have been as early TVs, radios and hi-fi's would have been prohibitively expensive. According to Wikipedia the earliest 12" TV cost the equivalent of $8,000 in 2019 dollars, an upright piano can be had for less than half of that.
 

eoff

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I suspect that rather depends on your definition of "more common". I doubt that a larger percentage of houses had them in the past since, in real terms, they are considerably more affordable these days.
They last a long time. I suspect the opposite, downhill trend since some time 100-200 years ago.

Hard to find evidence though, this seems to make sense from the USA...

 

takno

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They last a long time. I suspect the opposite, downhill trend since some time 100-200 years ago.

Hard to find evidence though, this seems to make sense from the USA...

They do last a long time, but that article seems to treat them like they only last a year. Given that a large proportion of the 1978 pianos will still be kicking around somewhere, along with a decent number of earlier ones, and a good number from later, it's not unlikely that a good solid 5% of homes have a piano now.
 

najaB

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They last a long time. I suspect the opposite, downhill trend since some time 100-200 years ago.
We're actually saying the same thing, but approaching it from different directions.

The percentage of houses with "entertainment devices" has likely increased, but over time the likelihood that that device will be a piano has decreased. However, the increased relative affordability of pianos and growth in the number of houses means that the number of pianos in houses is probably greater now than in the past.

Making them more numerous but less common. Statistics is fun!
 

Bevan Price

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I suspect that there are probably a lot more electronic keyboards about than conventional pianos. A real piano would probably occupy too much space in some recent house designs (at the lower end of the house price range.) Even in a 1970s semi., my late parents chose to sell the piano to create more free space (when my school studies took too much time for me to keep practicing the piano.)
 

Butts

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Oh, without a doubt. Cheaper, take up less space and more functional.

We had one of those Rosedale Electric Chord Organ's where you learn to "play by numbers" in the seventies.

The Cat used to take exception to our feeble renditions and launch itself claws unsheathed onto our backs in order to deter any further "noise pollution".
 

DynamicSpirit

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Encyclopedia (volumes of)

Yeah I wondered about that. When I was growing up the Encyclopedia Britannia was the source of knowledge to look-up in the same way Wikipedia is today. I even remember going to the local library a few times to look up their copies for bits of school homework. But I wonder if it was ever truly commonplace in people's homes? I'm sure it would've been pretty expensive to buy a set and would require a lot of storage space, so I'm guessing it would only be posh/wealthier families who were either of an intellectual bent or wanted to give that impression who would've owned them.
 

LSWR Cavalier

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Viewdata, Teletext. They were the future once

People would go from door to door trying to sell encyclopedias. One could pay so much a week and get volume A-Ar, then As-Ba..
 

takno

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Yeah I wondered about that. When I was growing up the Encyclopedia Britannia was the source of knowledge to look-up in the same way Wikipedia is today. I even remember going to the local library a few times to look up their copies for bits of school homework. But I wonder if it was ever truly commonplace in people's homes? I'm sure it would've been pretty expensive to buy a set and would require a lot of storage space, so I'm guessing it would only be posh/wealthier families who were either of an intellectual bent or wanted to give that impression who would've owned them.
I think a full Encyclopedia Britannica would be a big cost and space commitment. We had the 20 (smaller) volume Children's Britannica, which was affordable for a not particularly rich family. I don't think anybody else I knew had one though.

You also got rather smaller reference books like the big single-volume Chambers or Oxford dictionary, and the Pears Cyclopaedia.
 

Mcr Warrior

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I think a full Encyclopedia Britannica would be a big cost and space commitment. We had the 20 (smaller) volume Children's Britannica, which was affordable for a not particularly rich family. I don't think anybody else I knew had one though.

You also got rather smaller reference books like the big single-volume Chambers or Oxford dictionary, and the Pears Cyclopaedia.
Chambers dictionary, yep. Pears Cyclopedia, yep.
Encyclopedia Britannica, no chance! :s
 

eoff

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I was thinking of something more common like the Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary in 3 volumes.
 

takno

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I was thinking of something more common like the Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary in 3 volumes.
Might have been popular, but I've never heard of it :D. One definite plus of the various Brittanicas was that they were tastefully leather-bound, so if you got the set and put them on a rich mahogany bookshelf then you'd really made it.
 

birchesgreen

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We had the Encyclopaedia Britannica, we weren't a rich family so they can't have been that expensive, my parents couldn't afford to have the heating on much, I spent a lot of my childhood lying underneath a radiator trying to get warm! Obviously after that I used to go down the coal mine to dig coal with my bare hands while being whipped et cetera.

The 30 odd books are now in my loft, awaiting me having a bigger house and more bookshelf space one day!
 

xotGD

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Servants?

I mean, everyone seems to have them in period TV shows.
 

swt_passenger

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Another fairly common encyclopaedia was this one, usually known as “Mee’s”:
Both of my parents had sets of these as children in the 1930s, and during my 60s childhood they were still being regularly read while at my grandparents houses. Different editions, dad’s was blue from mid 20s and mum’s was a dark red I think from early 30s.
 
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trainophile

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Reading the above about the Encyclopaedia Brittanica reminds me of a skit on The Now Show on Radio 4 today, about how nonsensical calling the latest developments regarding the ending of the lockdown a "road map", on the basis that nobody under about 75 uses a physical road map these days, what with all the SatNav devices and Google Maps. It's a good point.

We are all so blessed to live in the current times when everything you could need to know is instantly available with a few key presses or phone taps. What would our grandparents have made of it I wonder.
 

swt_passenger

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Slide rules. People are more likely to have heard football commentators talking about them than maths teachers...
 
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