4 ms·

Many people don't realize how hard it used to be to communicate just a few decades ago, especially across countries. Phone rates were ridiculously high (dollars

Many people don't realize how hard it used to be to communicate just a few decades ago, especially across countries. Phone rates were ridiculously high (dollars per minute at times) and there was no email/IM. When my dad went to Germany for work in the 80s, my family used the phone for urgent matters and paper letters for "long reads". Letters would take a couple of weeks to get there from South America, and a couple more weeks to come back with the answer, leading to a 4-6 week roundtrip.

euroderf 3y ago
A long distance phone call from across the country used to be a family event.
- nytesky 3y ago
  Heck many of my school friends were long distance because we lived on county line — I never called anybody except for very brief logistics.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    You mean a "party line" ? Been there done that too.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Probably not. Just intrastate long distance within the same area code could cost as much as an (expensive) cross-country call. Phone rates were oriented towards rarely calling outside of your immediate town and its neighbors. To some of the other comments about email, I was the chair of a non-profit board for many years. And while, everyone eventually on the board got on email, it probably took at least a decade and I recall at one point, I used an MCI service that would print out and snail mail an email to the laggards.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        > I used an MCI service that would print out and snail mail an email to the laggards. Was that before or after the USPS offered the same service ?
        ghaff 3y ago
        Don't know. This would have been early to mid-80s I think.
    - soneil 3y ago
      Sounds like almost the opposite - it sounds like they lived on the border of what would be considered a local call, so people could be geographically local but telegraphically expensive.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Yep. Pizza places would have five or six phone numbers so that everyone in their delivery area could call them on a local line and avoid toll charges.
Scalene2 3y ago
I did the math for how much I would have spent on long distance during the pandemic if it was in 1970, it worked out to several hundred thousand dollars.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Even without going back to 1970, there's an "interesting" question of how we would have adapted to the pandemic even 20 or 25 years ago. To me, it seems fairly obvious that we couldn't reasonably have just switched to WFH for an extended period--even leaving more expensive (albeit not 1970 levels) telephony charges out of the equation. Many, maybe the majority, of people were just getting dial-up Internet in the mid- to late-90s and basically none of the Internet services we take for granted today like Amazon existed until fairly late in that period.
  - tomjen3 3y ago
    I have been thinking about this on-and-off since I first read this on a blog somewhere - and all I can think is that we would have regged up higher phone bills, but probably we would have had to adapt more to working not just from home, but also async and we would have been better of for it. Probably wouldn't have saved lettering, but it would likely have made faxes far more common in peoples homes - you can't have a meeting with your boss, but you can send him an update pretty easily. In some ways I think it was our course that we had good enough technology to do WFH, but didn't get to take advantage of that to chance how we worked. The pandemic is a (hopefully) once in a lifetime opportunity to change and we kinda wasted it.
throw0101a 3y ago
> Letters would take a couple of weeks to get there from South America, and a couple more weeks to come back with the answer, leading to a 4-6 week roundtrip. If you heard that someone in your (ethnic) community was travelling (especially flying) back to the 'Old Country', the person would often be asked to take various letters during the trip to folks 'back home' (and then perhaps replies on the return).
paleotrope 3y ago
I distinctly recall in the early 90s when I first used a government system and was able to send essentially an instant message to someone on a terminal on the other side of the global. It was quite amazing. And then I called that person and paid 300 dollars for a 45 minute phone call.

euroderf 3y ago

A long distance phone call from across the country used to be a family event.

nytesky 3y ago
Heck many of my school friends were long distance because we lived on county line — I never called anybody except for very brief logistics.
- euroderf 3y ago
  You mean a "party line" ? Been there done that too.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Probably not. Just intrastate long distance within the same area code could cost as much as an (expensive) cross-country call. Phone rates were oriented towards rarely calling outside of your immediate town and its neighbors. To some of the other comments about email, I was the chair of a non-profit board for many years. And while, everyone eventually on the board got on email, it probably took at least a decade and I recall at one point, I used an MCI service that would print out and snail mail an email to the laggards.
    - euroderf 3y ago
      > I used an MCI service that would print out and snail mail an email to the laggards. Was that before or after the USPS offered the same service ?
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Don't know. This would have been early to mid-80s I think.
  - soneil 3y ago
    Sounds like almost the opposite - it sounds like they lived on the border of what would be considered a local call, so people could be geographically local but telegraphically expensive.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Yep. Pizza places would have five or six phone numbers so that everyone in their delivery area could call them on a local line and avoid toll charges.

Scalene2 3y ago

I did the math for how much I would have spent on long distance during the pandemic if it was in 1970, it worked out to several hundred thousand dollars.

ghaff 3y ago
Even without going back to 1970, there's an "interesting" question of how we would have adapted to the pandemic even 20 or 25 years ago. To me, it seems fairly obvious that we couldn't reasonably have just switched to WFH for an extended period--even leaving more expensive (albeit not 1970 levels) telephony charges out of the equation. Many, maybe the majority, of people were just getting dial-up Internet in the mid- to late-90s and basically none of the Internet services we take for granted today like Amazon existed until fairly late in that period.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  I have been thinking about this on-and-off since I first read this on a blog somewhere - and all I can think is that we would have regged up higher phone bills, but probably we would have had to adapt more to working not just from home, but also async and we would have been better of for it. Probably wouldn't have saved lettering, but it would likely have made faxes far more common in peoples homes - you can't have a meeting with your boss, but you can send him an update pretty easily. In some ways I think it was our course that we had good enough technology to do WFH, but didn't get to take advantage of that to chance how we worked. The pandemic is a (hopefully) once in a lifetime opportunity to change and we kinda wasted it.

throw0101a 3y ago

> Letters would take a couple of weeks to get there from South America, and a couple more weeks to come back with the answer, leading to a 4-6 week roundtrip. If you heard that someone in your (ethnic) community was travelling (especially flying) back to the 'Old Country', the person would often be asked to take various letters during the trip to folks 'back home' (and then perhaps replies on the return).

paleotrope 3y ago

I distinctly recall in the early 90s when I first used a government system and was able to send essentially an instant message to someone on a terminal on the other side of the global. It was quite amazing. And then I called that person and paid 300 dollars for a 45 minute phone call.