What is something from your days gone by you used often but today no longer exists?
Asked by
Cruiser (
40454
)
April 3rd, 2012
For me there are some obvious ones, like 8 tracks, VHS, rotary phones but it was those blinding flash cubes on our Kodak cameras that popped in my head the other day and made me wonder what else there was back then we used all the time that doesn’t exist today in just our short life times?
What do you remember using then that is not around anymore?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
56 Answers
Polaroids. Pong. 8 tracks. Cassette tapes.
maps (paper/book)
pay phones
@tom_g Encyclopædia Britannica just announced they will no longer print their books!
The old Vidal Sassoon shampoo and conditioner. They changed the formula and the fragrance.
Cassette tapes, phonographs, rotary phones (my parents still have theirs).
@tom_g I still use maps. GPS is wrong sometimes, doesn’t work sometimes, hard to get a picture of a large area. I still love paper maps when I am first planning a trip, and to have handy while on one.
Typewriter. Rotary phone.
Typewriter is a good one.
Although all these things still exist, so we haven’t really been answering the question.
Here’s something that you can’t find any more: a punch card reader.
21’” CRT TV with monaural (one speaker) and glowing vacuum tubes inside.
@JLeslie I have gotten lost using maps…missed exits, wrong way etc….but I have never ever gotten as lost as what a GPS can do to your travels!
Anybody remember when a new car actually came with the cigarette lighter thingy??
Paper straws. Red M&Ms. Cigarette advertisements.
A punch card reader is how computers, in very early days, used to store and read data. They were the storage media before tapes and other versions of magnetic media like floppy disks and hard drives and solid state storage came along. Here are some examples. This picture shows a punch card reader. Here’s some information about the history of punch cards.
^ Yup. I’ll never to that again!
@crusier New cars don’t come with a cigarette lighter anymore? So I can get rid of the cell phone charger designed to work in one?
How about cloth diapers?
@Pied_Pfeffer Cars still come with the lighter sockets just not the heater elements…at least that I have seen in gosh over 15 years.
A typewriter! I used one in school and during the early years in my career as an Admin. Asst.
It’s so funny when I see young people who don’t even know what they look like .. and I’m talking about manual typewriters too! lol
@Pied_Pfeffer Red M&M’s have been back for a long time. They were taken out during the red #2 scare even though M&M’s never used the dye, and then reintroduced a several years later.
@Cruiser Last year my friends who were adamant about not driving through Chicago from Lake Elhart, WI wound up right through the middle of Chitown because they just plugged in an address and followed the GPS left, right, left. My uncle once was listening to his GPS, and had not realized his address was the one he was driving towards and wound up driving north 50 miles out of his way. I find when I look at a map, sometimes better routes are missed by GPS. If new interchanges have been built, GPS doesn’t always know how to go. GPS will eventually get you where you are going, but sometimes it is screwed up, but usually not. My house is not correct on most GPS, it will take you a few blocks from where I live.
@JLeslie , some of my greatest adventures have been while following the GPS. I am never lost, just on another adventure. Anyone who lets me behind the wheel when they are in the car knows that. :-)
@Judi I’m assuming that means you agree with me. :). My sister since a very young age, and still now, takes getting “lost” in great stride. She just goes with it, explores the new place. It’s one of the parts of her personality I like most. She is rather controlling, quick to anger, in many parts of her life, so this free spiritish, rarely angry when she or another gets lost, part of her, is unexpected.
Response moderated
I never use ash trays anymore. Remember when grade school class projects were to make an ash try with clay for your parents? we would use a pencil for the indent in the side to hold a cigarette.
I think it’s called Dot Matrix computer printer paper.
Man, I remember looking up current wholesale baseball card prices on bulletin boards on my huge desktop using a dial up modem…then somewhere half way through printing, I’d have to unjam the paper (then it would tear at the side perforations...UGH!), and start everything up again.
Using the keyboard, dialing up and printing were seriously noisy.
@SpatzieLover Do you then remember having to put the phone handle in the rubber cups to get a list serve computer connection??
Oh , THIS will age me: skate keys! LOL Used often but not anymore.
Glass thermometers. Aspergum. Mercurochrome for cuts on knees. Spelling?
Rotary phone called a Princess Phone.
Piggy Banks for loose change. Mood rings as some of you will remember?
Irons and sprinkler bottles for wrinkled clothing. Cream deodorant in a jar. Bobbie pins to hold hair out of your eyes .
Another great question would be: what is something your parents used that adults don’t use anymore?
Skate keys! That is a good one. I didn’t skate, but I remember them.
Glass thermometers are gone? That is all I have in my house. I guess people use the digital kind now.
@Cruiser , I remember that!
I also remember thermal fax paper.
@JLeslie you’re right: “but no longer exist. ” I guess glass ones still exist. lol Same with piggy banks. They still exist mostly for decoration? Irons yes; they still exist. If they can’t even exist anymore I’d have to cut my answer in half.
@Judi then you must remember the blue mimeographs we had in grade school! lol!
@Aster about irons, do you mean irons without a steam setting? Or, irons in general?
My answers at the top also didn’t really fit into “doesn’t exist.”
High tits and a keen wit. And mimeograph machines (loved that smell!)
@Cruiser , yes! And it was some sort of career training to learn how to use that big roller thing to make “copies.” that thing was magic at the time!
@Judi…at my Catholic School it was a “Goody-Two-Shoes” thing if you were selected to crank the handle and have smurf hands for the rest of the week! XD
100% cotton bullet bras ! They never fit but they were cool in hot weather.
They fit my sister , though. lol And garter belts – even to school.
Lacy cotton collars you snapped in front and wore over a sweater.
Blue carbon paper.
@Aster Oh, ok. I thought maybe if irons were not around anymore I was really behind the times. LOL.
Record players.
Transistor radios.
Radium glow in the dark watches.
^ or Calculator watches @LuckyGuy.
All I can recall from the dial up days @Cruiser, is how I had to mentally go through each step and physically check each thing to “fix” whatever problem I was experiencing. I’ve always been a night owl, so I often did this stuff while my family was sleeping. I can still remember how loud a printer jam was.
I remember when the first computer was introduced to our elementary school. We each had to wait a turn (for weeks) to get our 20 mins to play Lemonade Stand on the Apple iie.
@LuckyGuy Westclock irradiated a good part of a natural area near me from demolishing the factory where they used to paint the clock and watch faces with radium.
@Aster , my hubby is 11 years older than me and he was the one who taught me that the panties go OVER the garter belt, a fact he apparently learned from a girl named Debbie in High School.
Transistor radios, A mangle (used by my mother to dry washing), black and white television with two channels, vinyl LP’s, hula hoops, gonks, B pictures at the movies, paraffin heaters, plastic sandals, spangles, threepenny bits, gas mask schoolbags, tape recorders.
Red and Blue/Green paper 3-D glasses.
Game cartridges.
Privacy.
Card catalogues at libraries (some day libraries may be gone too).
Not having caller ID (how did we ever survive?).
Floppy Discs.
Rotary phones and rotary dial TVs.
Oh, and that 20 foot long phone cord that you could mummify yourself with…for the convenience of mobility.
Do they still have those SMPTE colour bars on TVs?
Lawn Darts.
@Judi Over them? News to me! LOL
Girls who fuck on the first date.
I still miss the VCR + manual devices (not the ones which were later included in VCRs after the company was bought out)
There has never been anything comparable in terms of functionality and versatility. I could program everything for two or three weeks at a time and it worked flawlessly. And you didn’t have to worry about whether your particular cable box was compatible or connected as was necessary once they became integrated in VCRs from all different manufacturers.
You just had to point it where your cable box and VCR were able to process the infrared signal and it was perfect.
They took a great product which functioned without a hitch and “improved” into obsolescence.
@Aster , apparently it makes for less to take off in amorous situations.
The Telex machine. I used to have to sit and type out telexes for hours in my first job. If you made an error you had to start again. Ugh…
The old transistor radio. I used to listen to my nana’s while we watched the fire burn.
@JLeslie – I used to use Vidal Sassoon shampoo and conditioner too. The one with the lovely almond fragrance.
@Plucky I so miss my Jarts. They now go for $160.00 a set online!
Mimeograph machines that made copies for you. They used mimeo paper you could draw or type on. It made your fingers purple from the ink on the paper. The machines made acceptable copies, but the current copy machines are far superior. And no purple fingers.
@Bellatrix Exactly! The almond fragrance. Why would they do away with it? And, why does not anyone else use it in anything else? All this vanilla everywhere, which I hate, and my husband dislikes it too. I wish some company would start using almond. Maybe I should make a product?
Yes! It was great shampoo and conditioner too. My hair was always super shiny and healthy when I used those products.
Stoker-fed coal furnaces (growing up I helped take care of two of them);
Milk in glass bottles delivered to your front doorstep
Cars without air conditioning
Canvas water bags that you cooled by hanging them off the hood ornament at the front of the hood so they hung down over the radiator (worked really well, too)
Leaded gasoline
Finally, one formerly very big event in Boise, Idaho that disappeared some time ago: the annual high school Veteran’s Day afternoon football game with its phenomenal halftime show performed by area high school marching bands.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
