General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI REMEMBER WHEN THERE WAS NO INTERNET.
Just sayin'. Because there will come a time when someone like me is the very last person to have lived when there WAS NO INTERNET.
And that will be awesome.
I love you all.
Really. Everyone. Everything.
Especially that new weird alien civilization sending us radio signals from your weird planet.
Oh, I love you.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)In fact, my dad had a friend who was a ham radio operator and I remember going to his house with my folks to watch the very first TV broadcast in our city. We watched a test pattern for a couple hours, and then a few minutes of somebody's actual face talk to us about the wonders of television. It was pretty amazing.
Before too long we got a TV of our own and I watched Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Captain Video, and Kate Smith singing "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain."
yuiyoshida
(41,835 posts)I remember when we played with Rocks, because there were no games or toys. We USED our superior imagination! There were no Books!! No paper or even a language!!! No water color paintings!
hahaha, kidding XD
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)I remember when we were single-celled organisms. We could only dream of someday evolving, and until then, we had nothing to do but swim around in the muck eating mold spores. That was, oh, maybe 10 million incarnations ago.
And then there was this time when...
malthaussen
(17,216 posts)I remember when there was nothing but primordial ooze...
-- Mal
yuiyoshida
(41,835 posts)The Primordial ooze bar!
WhiteTara
(29,721 posts)Yes, we used our superior imaginations to create play.
longship
(40,416 posts)Q: Do you remember Froggy the Gremlin and Smilin' Ed McConnell? (Later, Andy Devine)
Witness:
Plunk yer magic twanger, Froggy!
"Hi-ya! Hi-ya! Hi-ya kiddies!"
Then there's Ramar of the Jungle, which both Smilin' Ed and Andy's Gang made their cultural diversion. I mean other than Buster Brown shoes, the show's sponsor. "I'm Buster Brown. I live in a shoe."
What is he? One of the old lady's children?
Kablooie
(18,638 posts)Kukla and Olli say hi.
longship
(40,416 posts)Here they are, with puppeteer par excellence, Burr Tillstrom.
And here's Tillstrom with Jim Henson:
OMG! What a legacy they made!
BTW, another good puppeteer at the time, Paul Winchell!
He later made fame as the voice over as Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh films. But he was said to be the best ventriloquist in the business.
Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith are in the picture. "What's up, Winch?"
Tactical Peek
(1,211 posts)And Major Domo, not to mention Reject the Robot.
progressoid
(49,996 posts)I wasn't afraid of them, but they sort of gave me a creepy vibe. Hard to explain.
Of course, I only saw them on the weekend toward the end of their run. Thankfully I had more sophisticated things to watch like The Jetsons!
longship
(40,416 posts)Like the Muppets, the humor was a bit more adult. But as my parents liked it, I suppose that I did, too.
I still love "The Muppet Show" and "Kukla, Fran and Ollie". Both were high art.
Cartoonist
(7,320 posts)The worst puppeteering ever. The action of the mouth never matched the words spoken.
daligirrl
(620 posts)"The Red Balloon." I think it was Italian. I was fascinated by it!
longship
(40,416 posts)Last edited Sun Sep 4, 2016, 02:21 AM - Edit history (1)
And it is wonderful.
Here (not sure if it will work here):
Thankfully, it works. A great film.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)Finally, I'm relieved to know I wasn't the only kid who didn't like those creepy puppets.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)eleny
(46,166 posts)trof
(54,256 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)I have for years now tried to remember where "Plunk yer magic twanger, Froggy! " came from.
since my family had a tv set only spordically, and we moved a lot, sometimes I would only see a few weeks of any episodic show.
Andy's Gang was a children's television program that ran on NBC from August 20, 1955, to December 31, 1960.
Wiki reminds me now.
pressbox69
(2,252 posts)The Col. Bleep cartoon was great too.
2naSalit
(86,765 posts)Mitch's dad?
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)The telephone numbers were like woodland 3 2610. I remember that as a kid.
Cars have not changed much.
We had the best subway system in the world. There's a scene from "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974), in which Walter Matthau is a representing and giving a Japanese group how advanced the NY rail system is.
You can laugh at how behind we are now, but we use to be the best. I'm sure the rest of the world laughs at us now.
I know Binkie that was not your intention, but just a reaction from me.
rug
(82,333 posts)rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)Response to Binkie The Clown (Reply #1)
kestrel91316 This message was self-deleted by its author.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)But it wasn't until I was 8 to 12 the internet became widely used. I remember Netscape. Creating web sites just on html text on Angelfire. AOL discs were delivered freely to your house with more and more hours. Back then I had a WebTV the first time I ever connected down the highway into town
https://m.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)lunamagica
(9,967 posts)where you'd built websites and placed them in "neighborhoods". I knew HTML like the back of my hand. Notepad was all you needed to build a website.
AOL CompuServe and...I can't even remember the other one.
Things are more advanced now, but I feel kind of nostalgic for those days, when everything was so new, and exciting.
Different Drummer
(7,636 posts)Prodigy?
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)Prodigy for a little while. My favorite was CompuServe
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)called Linux.
Practically crash free, very intutive, and best of all...free.
lapfog_1
(29,219 posts)And, I believe that early papers on packet routed networks were written in the middle 1960s.
csziggy
(34,137 posts)My "on ramp" to get on the internet was access through the inter library loan catalog system from the Florida Library system. It was unbelievably slow - I'd select a link, go run errands, make dinner, come back and the page might have loaded. Of course, back then our telephone cable quality was low. Down the dirt road on a curve, there was a big mud puddle. Sticking up out of the mud was a brnch with two spliced cable ends duct taped to it.If it rained hard or if someone ran over the branch, the cable splice got wet and the telephone didn't work. It did connect me to the Library of Macau for some research my husband was doing.
In the late 1980s I upgraded to a Packard Bell XT computer with DOS 3.1 and subscribed to an internet service called The Source. It was expensive so I didn't do much with it. A few years later Compuserve bought The Source and they opened up their social and technical forums to subscribers. It was still expensive but software allowed downloading threads, reading and writing replies offline so what took hours to read offline only took a few minutes to download and upload.
Orrex
(63,220 posts)Spring of 1983. Magical technology in those days!
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)we could get online when it was still called the ARPA net.
Skittles
(153,174 posts)and I had to pump my own water and start a coal fire!
madokie
(51,076 posts)our water came from a hand pump in the yard carried into the house by bucket. The school I went too for the first 5 years had outhouses. We didn't even have electricity in our neighborhood until I was 5 years old.
Rural Northeast Oklahoma
Kablooie
(18,638 posts)True Dough
(17,314 posts)and everyone here is posting on it. If it wasn't for this vast medium, none of us from various parts of North America and beyond would likely be in communication right now.
The internet is like anything else, best used in moderation, but it's a magnificent tool! I sometimes think I have allowed too many hours to pass here, yet I still work full time and volunteer for 4.5 to 5 hours per week so the guilt isn't overwhelming.
Phentex
(16,334 posts)I think of the hours it took to make phone calls, look up something in a book or encyclopedia, drive some place you'd never been before. Folding and unfolding road maps!
True Dough
(17,314 posts)It's a huge time saver -- less standing in line at banks and stores. Arranging travel insurance is so much easier. There are lots of examples.
japple
(9,838 posts)have been made in technology. Most of us are huge proponents. But there are those of us who were born in the dark ages that remember a time when we didn't have any technology available for our amusement. The kids in my family chased after the DDT truck on our bicycles when they sprayed for mosquitoes on summer evenings in the US southern states. Kids in the rural areas, went out to watch the crop dusters when the cotton fields were dusted with poison on a regular basis. Life is a whole lot different now than it was in the wayback.
airplaneman
(1,240 posts)Even today we consider ourselves lucky because life was simpler. Parents who have to deal with these just make life more complicated and dangerous. Unfortunately I think our fate is habitat destruction and society collapse along with the internet coming to an end. I do not see us having a future expanding out into space either. Enjoy the good times while they last.
I love you all too. We do live in an amazing world.
-Airplane
struggle4progress
(118,330 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)struggle4progress
(118,330 posts)Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Verily, t'were the dark ages.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)it's true.
Historic NY
(37,452 posts)on the clickety-clack of a projector.
tonedevil
(3,022 posts)with pinball in the front and 8mm peep shows in the back. I sat between and gave change to both sides. This was in 1975 and it was a throwback to a much earlier time even then.
madokie
(51,076 posts)and then when they started getting popular hearing people say that the tv would be the ruin of our civilization
annabanana
(52,791 posts)i guess they knew what they were talking about
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)NOW GET OFF MY LAWN SO I CAN YELL AT CLOUDS IN PEACE!
malthaussen
(17,216 posts)... or maybe flouridation.
-- Mal
tonedevil
(3,022 posts)saps and impurifies our precious bodily fluids. Apparently the communists put it in our water in 1946. Im not making this up you can research it in the documentry Doctor Strangelove.
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)We got our first tv when I was 7.
I got my first computer, a Mac Classic, in 1992.
I learned about the internet in the late nineties,
which was when I started using email and got
a net provider.
I got my first cell phone in the early nineties.
I got my first iPhone in 2011.
I abandoned landline just a few years ago.
I resisted entering the electronic age; but now
I'm accustomed to it.
GP6971
(31,201 posts)Was 1954. A HUGE wood box with a small glass screen.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Mostly self-recorded stuff because it was cheaper that way and I was obsessed.
I learned how to type on a manual typewriter. I remember music stores.
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Different Drummer
(7,636 posts)Me, too. My grandmother had an old Smith-Corona manual typewriter that she used to type up her church's news to submit to the local newspaper. When she wasn't using that typewriter, I learned how to type on it.
lunamagica
(9,967 posts)edbermac
(15,943 posts)We had to watch TV by candlelight.
randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]
procon
(15,805 posts)No electric appliances, even the tiny fridge was run off bottled propane. The few electric lights we had used very low wattage bulbs that gave off a dim, very yellow light and frequently exploded. We did have a radio, but the brown out conditions made it almost useless.
Even in the 60s my grandma's farm in central California had no electricity.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)I was a science fiction fan from the time I was a teenager so I waited a hell of a long time for all these cool modern things! I even think most of them were invented by science fiction fans.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)raven mad
(4,940 posts)and rabbit ear antennas............
My mom remembered when it was only radio ...............
randome
(34,845 posts)And that's where all the monster movies were shown.
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AgadorSparticus
(7,963 posts)Sorry, but the days of doing research digging through boxes of microfiche SUCKED.
INTERNET has its ups and downs. And like anything, it requires responsibility which some folks have thrown to the wind. That's on them. But I sure as heck appreciate all that it has done to improve life and society.
csziggy
(34,137 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Goldies dept store. Venture. Dolgins. Grandpa's dept store. All gone now.
I remember when you could walk into a grocery store WITHOUT A SHIRT ON!
I remember when Pluto was a planet.
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nolabear
(41,990 posts)He was in Computer Sci at Duke U. and I worked there (psych dept. and hospital research, mostly running rats). Begot into one of Duke's computer networks to play Empire (with the inventor, I might add) and foremother branched on out as it developed. Man, the development of wifi was the best thing that ever happened. Dialup drove me crazy.
There was a time when few people typed, my children. Oh, I could tell you tales...
many a good man
(5,997 posts)There were slower, that's all.
Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)chillfactor
(7,580 posts)there was no TV, no internet, and dial phones with NO private lines and I read by gas lanterns because electricity was only for the rich. WOW! Hard to believe I am that old.
kimbutgar
(21,177 posts)But the internet ruined that for me.
Socal31
(2,484 posts)Wait, it was yesterday. And about twice per month. Thanks Time Warner!
spanone
(135,859 posts)black & white - and three channels
IcyPeas
(21,901 posts)I vaguely remember seeing this in some department store (maybe in the 60s). they'd put your money in a tube and seconds later the tube would come back with your change.
bhikkhu
(10,720 posts)I thought it was so awesome to be connected, though of course it wasn't connected to much - "cool" graphics cobbled out of backslashes, periods and quotations marks and so forth. Lots of tech talk and help on forums. I built my own computer in 1993 from local geek shop parts. At the time I had been writing seriously for awhile, long-hand on college-rule and sometimes (to be formal) on an old Smith-Corona. Looking at new options I debated either getting one of those typewriters with a screen that stored a line or two and let you edit before committing, or a computer. I knew I was was much more prone to rethinking and massaging phrases and paragraphs, so I built a computer.
I remember having to go to the library to find out about stuff, and hoping to find information less than a few years old.
Its hard to remember what the internet was like at first - I still recall reading about the first commercial enterprise, and all the principled debate over whether selling things over the internet should even be allowed...
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)Started doing genealogy in the 70's the old fashioned way. Legwork visiting libraries for census records, Birth/Death Indexes, mailing away for records, visiting cemeteries, etc., etc. This took years but I did manage to get back to the 1800's and my immigrant ancestors. I was accepted into a Genealogy Society which gave me access in another state to closed to the public census records. Got in my car and DROVE there.
This is what we did before the Internet.