9 ms·

The world in 1975 (2007)

69 points by apsec112 11y ago

Isamu 11y ago
>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 stations, which played anything. Even then, some of the college stations still played Top 40. What was the point of that?) >Most Americans had never heard of espresso. True, although if you were paying attention to the movie, "Shaft" ordered espresso. I noticed this but still didn't understand what it was supposed to be. >Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect". To be fair, early in the 70's it seemed to some researchers that the historical trend was downward and we were headed into a new ice age. This was widely reported. Later on more work was done to get better global temperature proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards.
- whitie 11y ago
  "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 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
  - Isamu 11y ago
    Not trying to be controversial or anything ... just that the reporting on the ice age thinking had traction in popular press. Nor am I saying that this represented a consensus view that later changed to another consensus view. I think, however, that it took time before the ice age faction gave way. Meanwhile, in reading popular science reporting of the time, I think it is not too subjective to claim that the ice age notion took hold for bit in the public imagination before global warming did.
    - whitie 11y ago
      I just linked the paper to show that what you did say was incorrect. This is really not the forum for half sayings and saying what-nots.
      - hueving 11y ago
        Wtf are you talking about? The guy is talking about what he experienced in the 70s. Are you seriously going to claim his memory is fucked and they were actually saying 'hot age' when they were saying 'ice age'? Regardless of what the scientific consensus was of the time, a pending ice age was reported in the mainstream media.
        whitie 11y ago
        Don't have a tantrum. "Later on more work was done to get better global temperature proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards." Anecdotal memories of an article or two on Ice ages in the Seventies do nothing to support that claim - It was wrong. nuff said
        hueving 11y ago
        Support what claim? The claim that he had a memory?
        whitie 11y ago
        The claim which I quoted twice.
        hueving 11y ago
        The thing you quoted had nothing to do with scientific consensus. It was what the media reported.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  So compare it to present-day Top 40 radio. There is no contest. There really was a great variety of good music. Check the Top 100 lists through the decade. There was a lot of utter dreck as well. Even that might have been at least somewhat interesting. Punk wasn't exactly evenly distributed. The only reason I knew about it then at all was from people writing about it, which made it appear to be an artifact of journalism.
  - stevefolta 11y ago
    Also, in 1975, punk was just getting started, and it wasn't yet clear that radio was not gonna play the Ramones. I remember hearing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the radio for the first time, and thinking they'd never play it again, 'cause it was just too weird.
- kazinator 11y ago
  It could be there was a lack of variety in mainstream broadcasting, but that doesn't mean it was bad. Underground music scenes weren't necessarily about quality; a lot of is is about rebellion and self-expression. Being able to express certain ideas lyrically as well as musically. The Top 40 crap then was better than today, simply because it used real musicians and vocalists. Music wasn't put together like Lego blocks by some computer geek working with a music workstation. Let's not even get started on pitch correction of vocalists, good grief! I was just cycling home in the dark and deliberately went the wrong way into a one-way street. The "One Way Ticket" Eruption song came to mind, man. I haven't heard that in over 35 years probably. Completely forgot about it. I didn't even speak English; now I understand what it's about, listening to it on YT.
dang 11y ago
A discussion from 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503640.
vermooten 11y ago
> 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.
- 13of40 11y ago
  My parents used to check out a movie projector from the library. Can't remember anything we watched, though.
- Allegrippus 11y ago
  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 control which you often adjusted to avoid getting a stripe across the picture.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    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.
  - flyinghamster 11y ago
    Not only that, but there were definitely VCRs in 1975. In particular, the Sony U-Matic was released in 1971, and Betamax dates to 1975 (with a November release in the US). Of course, the early VCRs were either used in educational or industrial environments, or else were toys for the rich. There are plenty of other nits to pick with this article, as well. Pong wasn't the only video game, even if it was by far the most common (and yes, pinball dominated the arcades then). Dynamic range compression on LPs was certainly a thing, but producers didn't go overboard with it back then the way they do now. Still, it's funny how some things never change (like media fearmongering).
11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
"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.html http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-computer-stands.h...
- Allegrippus 11y ago
  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 :-)
- carlob 11y ago
  Nitpick of the day: it's au contraire, eau is just water, au is roughly at the. ;)
  - 11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
    Thanks! Haha.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
sabujp 11y ago
> 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 you could only get money out of your own bank? You can now get an account at many banks/credit unions that waive atm transaction fees. > Only rich people had credit cards. If you had debts, a credit card was harder to get. 100% agree that we need to bring this back. If you don't have good credit, 760+ you shouldn't be allowed to have a credit card with high interest rates. > Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or worked your way through. Why is college so much more expensive now? Even online/"low cost" programs. > There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food, so people had to at least try to cook. Really, no pizza delivery?! Well I guess with oil shortages that's believable. > The work week was five hours shorter. You can still see this in the old phrase "nine to five." People actually did work nine to five, with a paid hour for lunch. There are many people who work multiple jobs to make ends meet and the vast majority aren't doing what they want. > Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private. :( > Everybody was afraid of "crime" (illegal acts by people of lower social class) and "terrorism" (political violence outside a state monopoly). Yup, more of that now even though we're safer now than at any other time in history. > Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect". They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would heat up and we would have ecological disasters. Not just doomsayers, but looks like oil companies knew about it too but decided to keep it hidden. > There was an oil shortage, and people responded by driving less, in more fuel-efficient cars. I saw the first Hummer H2 I'd seen in years a few weeks ago costco pump in the bay area when oil prices were ~$2.15/gallon. It all boils down to economics.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  "Why is college so much more expensive now?" there's only a bazillion posts on HN about this, look up student loan threads.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>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-and-424/ 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.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Regarding of the speed of cashiers: ALDI is the only store where actual tests showed that the speed has gone down since the introduction of scanners — but all prices of all products had to be known by all cashiers, and there was always only one product of each type.
  - intopieces 11y ago
    I have a feeling that inventory control, price accuracy and the ease of training cashiers are considered reasonable trade-offs for how long it takes to ring customers.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, the cashiers memorized the EAN, the barcode. Even today they often type the barcode faster in than it can be recognized. For inventory control and price accuracy you get the same advantages as with barcode, but you can be faster and work without a barcode reader.
jgh 11y ago
>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?
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  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?
mcculley 11y ago
> 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.
- smikhanov 11y ago
  None of this is practical now with the security hassles In North America with TSA, absolutely. When I need to do a stopover in one of the efficient airports in Central or Northern Europe, I often go out to arrivals area (even if it involves going through passport control) and then back through departures. This way I can spend time doing some shopping for brands I don't have at home. CPH and ZRH are very good for that, CGN less so, ARN is not worth the hassle. Security in the departure area is always incomparably better than the same in America and with a layover of 1.5-2 hours you can do it at almost a leisurely pace.
- jhallenworld 11y ago
  There was once an hourly air shuttle between Islip and DC. You just walked onto the plane and bought your tickets.
proc0 11y ago
Also, there population of earth was 50% less (3.8 bill according to my quick search). Everywhere you go there would be 50% less people. Imagine that.
- hueving 11y ago
  Not really. Some places would be completely undeveloped while others would have been about the same size or even larger (think of industrial mid west cities).
api 11y ago
I read it with an eye to what got worse, since most things got better. The thing that truly leapt out to me was how awful pop music and the radio are today. There is good music, but nowhere near a radio. You really have to dig in obscure places for it. Pop is with very few exceptions loudness enhanced vapid junk that all sounds the same and that and oldies are all the radio will play. Only a bit of actual inspired music has broken through in the past decade... basically m83 and a bit of decent hip hop. Compare this to the early 90s, the last time popular music was decent. There were literally dozens of amazing new bands and several whole new styles in a span of 5 years. That was I suppose before the marketers took over and figured out how to endlessly push junk. I don't always cheer for disruption, but boy would I celebrate the total ruin of that industry. What a joke.
jegoodwin3 11y ago
Mostly on base -- but no mention of the exit from Saigon? 1975 was the year the '60s ended. Also, in 1975, one heard a lot more about 'the coming ice age' than global warming. The concept had a brief reprise in the 80s with 'the Cold and the Dark' (Nuclear Winter).
harel 11y ago
I still don't get the whole 9 to 6 thing. 9 to 5 seems more reasonable (considering past norms. I don't believe were productive 8 hours a day sttaight). I think, at the very least the song lyrics should change, or better yet, we go back to past norms.
oldmanjay 11y ago
This is not a very good article. inaccuracies aside it is also not well written and I'm not sure what the point is supposed to be. Misremembering the past isn't really an end unto itself in my eyes.
bootload 11y ago
In '75, Vietnam had finished. I remember asking my Dad was this the war that'd been going since I was little? Man no longer went to the moon. Woodstock was Snoopys friend. Towns were more compact. There were no traffic lights in my town, no traffic lights until you hit the inner suburbs. Shops had limited hours. 9-5 weekdays, 9-12 Saturday. Except banks. They opened 10-5 and were closed weekends. No Sunday shopping existed. Everything was cash only. Supermarkets hardly existed. Towns had grocery stores, big towns had markets. You got up early on Saturday and shopped for the week in the limited hours available. Food had to be prepared. There were no fast food outlets. Fast food was limited to fish fingers and frozen vegetables. I could never imagine bread being a dollar a loaf. Milk came in bottles. Milk, bread and the paper were delivered to the house. News arrived by radio, newspapers then TV. Newspapers printed several times a day. TV was limited to four channels and black and white. Radio was AM. There were a lot of stations but only a few rock stations. Lots of 50's and 60's music on the air. Vinyl was king. 45's were less popular than LP's. 78's was old music. Stereo was affordable. Cars got smaller, a lot smaller due to the oil shocks. Petrol contained lead. Most families had one car, maybe a second smaller car. Divorce was a new word. More women were moving into full time or part time work. Finance was restricted. Most people aspired to buy a house. Housing and land was affordable. Asbestos was deemed safe to use as building materials. The difference between the fit and unfit was less. A lot more people smoked. Drinking was institutional. Fat people hardly existed. Diabeties was an old people disease. Kids died in droves on the road. The road toll was more than double what it is now. Men retired at 65 and died soon after. It was a lot colder and a lot wetter and greener in the winter time. University was free. The library was the place to find out new ideas in books. Calculators started appearing. I heard about time-sharing for the first time. A scientist I knew worked with computers. His username was "Stout".
- markc 11y ago
  Where? Much of this stuff you describe was true in the mid-60s where I lived (suburban MN), but not in 75. >Woodstock was Snoopys friend. And a famous '69 music festival. In 75 my parents had credit cards (as did all of their friends). We shopped at a supermarket and shopping malls. We ate tons of pre-packaged food like TV dinners and spaghetti O's - far more than people do today. Fast food was MacDonalds, BK, etc. Milk came in cartons from the supermarket. Newspaper once a day. TV had been color for many years and we got at least a dozen channels. Radio was FM for music AM for news/sports. 8 track tapes and cassettes were everywhere. Most people had touch-tone phones. University was not free. I had been programming computers at school (junior high) for several years via dial-up time sharing. I guess changes come to different parts of the country at very different rates.
chiaro 11y ago
>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. >If a flight was longer than a couple hours, you got a free meal, sometimes two, and it wasn't bad. Still largely true in Australia.
jhallenworld 11y ago
Pretend you are shopping for Christmas... http://www.wishbookweb.com/ http://www.wishbookweb.com/
martin1b 11y ago
Great trip down memory lane. Thanks!!

69 points by apsec112 11y ago

Isamu 11y ago

>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 stations, which played anything. Even then, some of the college stations still played Top 40. What was the point of that?) >Most Americans had never heard of espresso. True, although if you were paying attention to the movie, "Shaft" ordered espresso. I noticed this but still didn't understand what it was supposed to be. >Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect". To be fair, early in the 70's it seemed to some researchers that the historical trend was downward and we were headed into a new ice age. This was widely reported. Later on more work was done to get better global temperature proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards.

whitie 11y ago
"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 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
- Isamu 11y ago
  Not trying to be controversial or anything ... just that the reporting on the ice age thinking had traction in popular press. Nor am I saying that this represented a consensus view that later changed to another consensus view. I think, however, that it took time before the ice age faction gave way. Meanwhile, in reading popular science reporting of the time, I think it is not too subjective to claim that the ice age notion took hold for bit in the public imagination before global warming did.
  - whitie 11y ago
    I just linked the paper to show that what you did say was incorrect. This is really not the forum for half sayings and saying what-nots.
    - hueving 11y ago
      Wtf are you talking about? The guy is talking about what he experienced in the 70s. Are you seriously going to claim his memory is fucked and they were actually saying 'hot age' when they were saying 'ice age'? Regardless of what the scientific consensus was of the time, a pending ice age was reported in the mainstream media.
      - whitie 11y ago
        Don't have a tantrum. "Later on more work was done to get better global temperature proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards." Anecdotal memories of an article or two on Ice ages in the Seventies do nothing to support that claim - It was wrong. nuff said
        hueving 11y ago
        Support what claim? The claim that he had a memory?
        whitie 11y ago
        The claim which I quoted twice.
        hueving 11y ago
        The thing you quoted had nothing to do with scientific consensus. It was what the media reported.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
So compare it to present-day Top 40 radio. There is no contest. There really was a great variety of good music. Check the Top 100 lists through the decade. There was a lot of utter dreck as well. Even that might have been at least somewhat interesting. Punk wasn't exactly evenly distributed. The only reason I knew about it then at all was from people writing about it, which made it appear to be an artifact of journalism.
- stevefolta 11y ago
  Also, in 1975, punk was just getting started, and it wasn't yet clear that radio was not gonna play the Ramones. I remember hearing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the radio for the first time, and thinking they'd never play it again, 'cause it was just too weird.
kazinator 11y ago
It could be there was a lack of variety in mainstream broadcasting, but that doesn't mean it was bad. Underground music scenes weren't necessarily about quality; a lot of is is about rebellion and self-expression. Being able to express certain ideas lyrically as well as musically. The Top 40 crap then was better than today, simply because it used real musicians and vocalists. Music wasn't put together like Lego blocks by some computer geek working with a music workstation. Let's not even get started on pitch correction of vocalists, good grief! I was just cycling home in the dark and deliberately went the wrong way into a one-way street. The "One Way Ticket" Eruption song came to mind, man. I haven't heard that in over 35 years probably. Completely forgot about it. I didn't even speak English; now I understand what it's about, listening to it on YT.

dang 11y ago

A discussion from 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503640.

vermooten 11y ago

> 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.

13of40 11y ago
My parents used to check out a movie projector from the library. Can't remember anything we watched, though.
Allegrippus 11y ago
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 control which you often adjusted to avoid getting a stripe across the picture.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  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.
- flyinghamster 11y ago
  Not only that, but there were definitely VCRs in 1975. In particular, the Sony U-Matic was released in 1971, and Betamax dates to 1975 (with a November release in the US). Of course, the early VCRs were either used in educational or industrial environments, or else were toys for the rich. There are plenty of other nits to pick with this article, as well. Pong wasn't the only video game, even if it was by far the most common (and yes, pinball dominated the arcades then). Dynamic range compression on LPs was certainly a thing, but producers didn't go overboard with it back then the way they do now. Still, it's funny how some things never change (like media fearmongering).

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

"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.html http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-computer-stands.h...

Allegrippus 11y ago
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 :-)
carlob 11y ago
Nitpick of the day: it's au contraire, eau is just water, au is roughly at the. ;)
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
  Thanks! Haha.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

sabujp 11y ago

> 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 you could only get money out of your own bank? You can now get an account at many banks/credit unions that waive atm transaction fees. > Only rich people had credit cards. If you had debts, a credit card was harder to get. 100% agree that we need to bring this back. If you don't have good credit, 760+ you shouldn't be allowed to have a credit card with high interest rates. > Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or worked your way through. Why is college so much more expensive now? Even online/"low cost" programs. > There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food, so people had to at least try to cook. Really, no pizza delivery?! Well I guess with oil shortages that's believable. > The work week was five hours shorter. You can still see this in the old phrase "nine to five." People actually did work nine to five, with a paid hour for lunch. There are many people who work multiple jobs to make ends meet and the vast majority aren't doing what they want. > Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private. :( > Everybody was afraid of "crime" (illegal acts by people of lower social class) and "terrorism" (political violence outside a state monopoly). Yup, more of that now even though we're safer now than at any other time in history. > Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect". They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would heat up and we would have ecological disasters. Not just doomsayers, but looks like oil companies knew about it too but decided to keep it hidden. > There was an oil shortage, and people responded by driving less, in more fuel-efficient cars. I saw the first Hummer H2 I'd seen in years a few weeks ago costco pump in the bay area when oil prices were ~$2.15/gallon. It all boils down to economics.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
"Why is college so much more expensive now?" there's only a bazillion posts on HN about this, look up student loan threads.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

>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-and-424/ 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.

kuschku 11y ago
Regarding of the speed of cashiers: ALDI is the only store where actual tests showed that the speed has gone down since the introduction of scanners — but all prices of all products had to be known by all cashiers, and there was always only one product of each type.
- intopieces 11y ago
  I have a feeling that inventory control, price accuracy and the ease of training cashiers are considered reasonable trade-offs for how long it takes to ring customers.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, the cashiers memorized the EAN, the barcode. Even today they often type the barcode faster in than it can be recognized. For inventory control and price accuracy you get the same advantages as with barcode, but you can be faster and work without a barcode reader.

jgh 11y ago

>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?

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
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?

mcculley 11y ago

> 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.

smikhanov 11y ago
None of this is practical now with the security hassles In North America with TSA, absolutely. When I need to do a stopover in one of the efficient airports in Central or Northern Europe, I often go out to arrivals area (even if it involves going through passport control) and then back through departures. This way I can spend time doing some shopping for brands I don't have at home. CPH and ZRH are very good for that, CGN less so, ARN is not worth the hassle. Security in the departure area is always incomparably better than the same in America and with a layover of 1.5-2 hours you can do it at almost a leisurely pace.
jhallenworld 11y ago
There was once an hourly air shuttle between Islip and DC. You just walked onto the plane and bought your tickets.

proc0 11y ago

Also, there population of earth was 50% less (3.8 bill according to my quick search). Everywhere you go there would be 50% less people. Imagine that.

hueving 11y ago
Not really. Some places would be completely undeveloped while others would have been about the same size or even larger (think of industrial mid west cities).

api 11y ago

I read it with an eye to what got worse, since most things got better. The thing that truly leapt out to me was how awful pop music and the radio are today. There is good music, but nowhere near a radio. You really have to dig in obscure places for it. Pop is with very few exceptions loudness enhanced vapid junk that all sounds the same and that and oldies are all the radio will play. Only a bit of actual inspired music has broken through in the past decade... basically m83 and a bit of decent hip hop. Compare this to the early 90s, the last time popular music was decent. There were literally dozens of amazing new bands and several whole new styles in a span of 5 years. That was I suppose before the marketers took over and figured out how to endlessly push junk. I don't always cheer for disruption, but boy would I celebrate the total ruin of that industry. What a joke.

jegoodwin3 11y ago

Mostly on base -- but no mention of the exit from Saigon? 1975 was the year the '60s ended. Also, in 1975, one heard a lot more about 'the coming ice age' than global warming. The concept had a brief reprise in the 80s with 'the Cold and the Dark' (Nuclear Winter).

harel 11y ago

I still don't get the whole 9 to 6 thing. 9 to 5 seems more reasonable (considering past norms. I don't believe were productive 8 hours a day sttaight). I think, at the very least the song lyrics should change, or better yet, we go back to past norms.

oldmanjay 11y ago

This is not a very good article. inaccuracies aside it is also not well written and I'm not sure what the point is supposed to be. Misremembering the past isn't really an end unto itself in my eyes.

bootload 11y ago

In '75, Vietnam had finished. I remember asking my Dad was this the war that'd been going since I was little? Man no longer went to the moon. Woodstock was Snoopys friend. Towns were more compact. There were no traffic lights in my town, no traffic lights until you hit the inner suburbs. Shops had limited hours. 9-5 weekdays, 9-12 Saturday. Except banks. They opened 10-5 and were closed weekends. No Sunday shopping existed. Everything was cash only. Supermarkets hardly existed. Towns had grocery stores, big towns had markets. You got up early on Saturday and shopped for the week in the limited hours available. Food had to be prepared. There were no fast food outlets. Fast food was limited to fish fingers and frozen vegetables. I could never imagine bread being a dollar a loaf. Milk came in bottles. Milk, bread and the paper were delivered to the house. News arrived by radio, newspapers then TV. Newspapers printed several times a day. TV was limited to four channels and black and white. Radio was AM. There were a lot of stations but only a few rock stations. Lots of 50's and 60's music on the air. Vinyl was king. 45's were less popular than LP's. 78's was old music. Stereo was affordable. Cars got smaller, a lot smaller due to the oil shocks. Petrol contained lead. Most families had one car, maybe a second smaller car. Divorce was a new word. More women were moving into full time or part time work. Finance was restricted. Most people aspired to buy a house. Housing and land was affordable. Asbestos was deemed safe to use as building materials. The difference between the fit and unfit was less. A lot more people smoked. Drinking was institutional. Fat people hardly existed. Diabeties was an old people disease. Kids died in droves on the road. The road toll was more than double what it is now. Men retired at 65 and died soon after. It was a lot colder and a lot wetter and greener in the winter time. University was free. The library was the place to find out new ideas in books. Calculators started appearing. I heard about time-sharing for the first time. A scientist I knew worked with computers. His username was "Stout".

markc 11y ago
Where? Much of this stuff you describe was true in the mid-60s where I lived (suburban MN), but not in 75. >Woodstock was Snoopys friend. And a famous '69 music festival. In 75 my parents had credit cards (as did all of their friends). We shopped at a supermarket and shopping malls. We ate tons of pre-packaged food like TV dinners and spaghetti O's - far more than people do today. Fast food was MacDonalds, BK, etc. Milk came in cartons from the supermarket. Newspaper once a day. TV had been color for many years and we got at least a dozen channels. Radio was FM for music AM for news/sports. 8 track tapes and cassettes were everywhere. Most people had touch-tone phones. University was not free. I had been programming computers at school (junior high) for several years via dial-up time sharing. I guess changes come to different parts of the country at very different rates.

chiaro 11y ago

>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. >If a flight was longer than a couple hours, you got a free meal, sometimes two, and it wasn't bad. Still largely true in Australia.

jhallenworld 11y ago

Pretend you are shopping for Christmas... http://www.wishbookweb.com/ http://www.wishbookweb.com/

martin1b 11y ago

Great trip down memory lane. Thanks!!