The world in 1975 (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#11

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:25 PM UTC

>There were no digital watches. And wind-up watches were cheap.

LED digital watches arrived at my school in 1974/75. LCD watches arrived about a year later.

>Headphones were giant things you used in the basement to listen to Pink Floyd.

I had a pair of 424s in 1975. They sounded pretty good.

http://www.tonepublications.com/old-school/sennheiser-hd-414...

>There was no portable way to listen to music except transistor radios.

Like a lot of people, I had a battery/mains cassette player/recorder. It wasn't an iPod, but it would have done the job. It's more accurate to say there was no tradition of personal music players. In-car players were very common.

>Cashiers punched in all the prices by hand, but it was only a little bit slower.

It was horrendously slow. And every single individual item had to have its own price sticker - which often fell off, holding everyone up.

It's interesting how many of these simply haven't been checked or researched, just patched together to create an "It was better in the old days' narrative.

I don't remember it being better. I remember it being very different. Many things now - smoking bans, health awareness, the public Internet - are huge improvements.

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#12

Post by icebraining » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:34 PM UTC

sabujp wrote: post #10

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is college so much more expensive now?" there's only a bazillion posts on HN about this, look up student loan threads.

i realize it's "easier" to get a loan now so they jack up the prices, so it's just that greed?

From what I understand, state and federal support budgets have also been cut significantly, making tuition income more important. Also, the "sticker price" has grown much more than the actual price, since more people get scholarships[1]; this is in part a psychological game - a $150k degree seems more valuable than a $30k degree, even if the students actually end up paying the same after scholarships and discounts.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-s...

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#13

Post by Allegrippus » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:34 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #6

"There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food, so people had to at least try to cook." Eau contraire, in 1976 I was delivering J&B's pizza to save up for college. And our freezer was filled with TV dinners. We had 'TV Trays'. Today, we have trays for our notebook computers: http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-computer-stands.h...

I always hated when the apple cobbler or other sugary dessert bled over from its section of the tray into the main course of salisbury steak and mashed potatoes or whatever. Of course, thinking back now -- the mashed potatoes always tasted awful like cardboard, so perhaps I shouldn't have cared that the stuff was getting all mixed :-)

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#14

Post by jgh » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

>Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private.

Wait, couldn't you just listen in on someone's line from the telephone box outside their house?

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#15

Post by carlob » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #6

"There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food, so people had to at least try to cook." Eau contraire, in 1976 I was delivering J&B's pizza to save up for college. And our freezer was filled with TV dinners. We had 'TV Trays'. Today, we have trays for our notebook computers: http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-computer-stands.h...

Nitpick of the day: it's au contraire, eau is just water, au is roughly at the. ;)

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#16

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

Allegrippus wrote: post #8

vermooten wrote: post #4

> There were no DVD's or even VCR's -- movies could only be seen in theaters, or older movies on TV. You could also buy a super 8mm film version, probably not the entire film though.

We did have video tape recorders, though. Setting up and running them for classes was part of my college work-study job around 1971-72. The units I operated were made by Ampex and were about the size of a suitcase. They used a wide tape which had to be threaded onto the take-up reel, similar to an audio reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tape head had to be cleaned with alcohol between each use, and there was a tracking…

I think they're using DVD and VCR as references to the media and not the machines, I know it's not correct language but have often heard people in the UK say "I have it on VCR" when they mean they have a video cassette tape.

Also they're clearly saying "no" in the context of a seven year old's view of domestic life. Obviously TV stations had recording equipment.

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#17

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 8:54 PM UTC

jgh wrote: post #14

>Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private. Wait, couldn't you just listen in on someone's line from the telephone box outside their house?

Depending on the exchange, in the UK, I think the "operator" may have been able to listen in too?

Crossed lines were a thing I think [in movies they were!] - induced signals in a different line that allowed you to hear someone else's call?

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#18

Post by mcculley » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

> To fly on an airplane, you just had to walk through a metal detector, and if someone was there to meet you or say goodbye, they could go all the way to the gate without a ticket.

Also, you could meet somebody for lunch at the terminal during a layover or have a meeting right in the terminal at a restaurant. I had a boss before 9/11 that had direct reports all over the country. He would sometimes fly out and have lunch with one of his reports at a restaurant in the terminal and fly right back out. None of this is practical now with the security hassles.

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#19

Post by mcculley » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

sabujp wrote: post #7

> You payed by cash or check You can still do this using a debit card. I'm not 100% sure how your credit is affected if you never get a credit card though. I know there are other ways to build up credit. Also, credit cards make products more expensive, there's probably a transaction fee for debit cards too. > There were no ATM's. To get cash out of your account, you went to a bank teller, and there was no fee. But yo…

>> You payed by cash or check > You can still do this using a debit card.

His point wasn't debit versus credit. It was that one had to have the actual paper cash or a checkbook handy when stopping at the store. It's a lot more convenient now.

Re: The world in 1975 (2007)

#20

Post by whitie » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

Isamu wrote: post #2

>Radio stations played a great variety of really good new music. Please. The lack of variety in the public sphere is exactly what led to the "underground" music scenes. In the 70's the new unheard music was punk and the like. When I left for college in '79 it was an absolutely jaw-dropping, exciting experience to find an entire music store filled with this "alternative" music that no one played (outside of college st…

"Later ... it was decided that the trend was upwards."

Between '65 and '79 there were 6 times as many research papers predicting warming. That was even despite increasing knowledge of Ice Ages.

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus" http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1