The Oldies "I remember when" thread

[ilkleyram]

Cameras. The wonderful days of no speed cameras, no cctv, no anpr cameras, no ring door bells, no cameras in cars snitching on other drivers, no charges for driving through cities or in bus lanes. Better days

[Elwood P Dowd]

1 hour ago, richinspain said:

I've still got my Commodore Vic 20, complete with games and cassette deck with knob and signal lights to adjust the tape head. Twenty minutes of beep, burp, beep, beep whir and then an error message was an absolute buggar.

The word Cload isn't used much nowadays?

[Anag Ram]

I remember way back when you could have a conversation at work or in the pub with someone who wasn’t in a trance staring at their phone.

[Mucker1884]

3 hours ago, FindernRam said:

You actually have a bell!!! A rarity indeed. Next you'll say you have lights and use them.

I actually have 2 bells!  ?
Only recently to be fair, (Since early June) but you'll be surprised how many of the older generation (in particular) don't react to one tone.  Having two tones "seems" to have an effect (But it's early days yet, to show any definitive results)!   If Muckerette joins in, we have 3 different tones between us!  ?

I do have lights, but all re-chargeable clip-on types (option for Red/White).  More to be seen than to see, in all honesty, but it's very rare for us to still be out after dusk.  (Carry them in a bag, and take them more as a "Just in case".)  Last used after watching the sunset on the Landes coast (SW France) in September 2019... and again next week... same place, same time, same romantic couple! ?
Knowing it will definitely be dark afterwards (obvs) for the 12 minute rural track ride back to the campsite, I'll also take my super-doopah Fenix Head torch, which detaches from headband and clips onto handlebars.  That'll defo light the way... Floodlight stylee!  ?
(Muckerette's lights are permanently fixed, and permanently on, ye olde dynamo stylee).

 

?

 

 

[uttoxram75]

On 29/08/2022 at 18:17, Mucker1884 said:

ye olde dynamo stylee).

I can't, no matter how I try, get my head around the fact that wheels on a bike can create electricity for a bike light but car wheels can't make electricity to charge an electric car as its being driven.

[Eddie]

1 hour ago, uttoxram75 said:

I can't, no matter how I try, get my head around the fact that wheels on a bike can create electricity for a bike light but car wheels can't make electricity to charge an electric car as its being driven.

The energy to power a light comes from the rider having to pedal harder.

Car wheels most definitely can generate electricity. Ever heard of a milk float?

At the end of the day though, neither can generate more energy than was used to fuel the generation process, because perpetual motion contravenes the fundamental laws of the universe - the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

 

[Elwood P Dowd]

If perpetual motion contravenes the fundamental laws of the universe how would you explain Jason Knight ??????

Edited September 3, 2022 by Elwood P Dowd
Spelling

[Gone]

Sadlergate bank holidays Mondays, the mile, union 1&2, progress, Berlin’s, Burleys, Jackie Stamps……? when Derby used to be a City x 

[Animal is a Ram]

On 03/09/2022 at 15:44, Elwood P Dowd said:

If perpetual motion contravenes the fundamental laws of the universe how would you explain Jason Knight ??????

The exception that proves the rule ?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Does anyone remember the time before central heating when coal fires were the norm, when you woke up on a winter morning and there was frost on the inside of the windows?

I remember my father putting “slack” on the fire at the end of the night at the pouring water on it so the there would be a fire burning in the Morning.

 

 

[Crewton]

10 hours ago, Elwood P Dowd said:

Does anyone remember the time before central heating when coal fires were the norm, when you woke up on a winter morning and there was frost on the inside of the windows?

I remember my father putting “slack” on the fire at the end of the night at the pouring water on it so the there would be a fire burning in the Morning.

 

 

Yes. 

[Miggins]

10 hours ago, Elwood P Dowd said:

Does anyone remember the time before central heating when coal fires were the norm, when you woke up on a winter morning and there was frost on the inside of the windows?

I remember my father putting “slack” on the fire at the end of the night at the pouring water on it so the there would be a fire burning in the Morning.

 

 

On bath night dad would take the paraffin heater upstairs and put it in the bathroom for an hour to warm it through. Hot water for our bath was provided by an immersion heater. Woe betide anyone who left it on accidentally!

Does anyone else remember almost every day in November being foggy? We don't get that any more.

The day after Bonfire night was especially so with bonfires in back gardens and coal fires and there was a lovely smokey smell in the air.

What about when the chimney sweep came and we would be sent out into the garden to watch the brush emerge from the chimney ?

The terror when the chimney caught fire!

 

[FindernRam]

I used to write rude massages to the lass across the road in the frost on the window. I was 18 before I realised you had to write it backwards!

Edited October 24, 2022 by FindernRam
typo

[Mucker1884]

1 hour ago, FindernRam said:

I used to write rude massages to the lass across the road in the frost on the window. I was 18 before I realised you had to write it backwards!

You wasn't fully concentrating when you wrote this post were you?  You filthy beast!   

[Elwood P Dowd]

1 hour ago, Miggins said:

On bath night dad would take the paraffin heater upstairs and put it in the bathroom for an hour to warm it through. Hot water for our bath was provided by an immersion heater. Woe betide anyone who left it on accidentally!

Does anyone else remember almost every day in November being foggy? We don't get that any more.

The day after Bonfire night was especially so with bonfires in back gardens and coal fires and there was a lovely smokey smell in the air.

What about when the chimney sweep came and we would be sent out into the garden to watch the brush emerge from the chimney ?

The terror when the chimney caught fire!

 

At one time people were prosecuted for having a chimney fire ? Their names were published in the Telegraph, oh the shame of it.

There were some terrible fogs/smogs in the 50s and 60s, all that coal smoke I suspect.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Elwood P Dowd

[Turk Thrust]

I remember before computers, when at work (in a government department) if you needed to have a written document, you would write it by hand, fill out a typing pool slip and put it in a folder and place it in an out tray. Every 2 hours a messenger would do their rounds and pick up the folder and take all the collected folders back to the post room where they would be sorted. Then the folder would be taken to the typing pool and placed in the in tray.

the Superintendent of Typists would record the folder in her (always a woman) register and allocate it to a typist. Eventually the typed document would go back to the Superintendent to note the register, mark the folder back to you and put it in the out tray for the messenger to collect. Once sorted in the post room, it would be placed in your in tray.

You’d check the typed document, note any errors (there always were, and there was a special code for noting different sorts of errors) go through all the same procedures for it to go back to the typist for corrections and the same procedures for it to get back to you. About 2 days but there was a procedure for noting whether it was deemed urgent or non urgent.

This was the same procedure dating from Victorian times. All the way through the two world wars.  How  did anything get done? But it did and very efficiently too.

[Eddie]

Punch room girls.

During my early days in IT (it was called 'Data Processing'), we didn't have computer terminals. Programs had to be loaded to the computer from punched cards. You would write the program on what was known as coding sheets (each sheet had about 20 rows, each consisting of 80 spaces which corresponded to characters, and a 'large' program might be 1000 lines, or 50 sheets.

When you were done, you would deliver your coding sheets to the punch room which was staffed by specialist typists, invariably girls. They would transform your scribblings into punched cards, one for each row. The next day, you would get them back, in order (and numbered), either fastened together with an elastic band (small program) or in a file drawer (large program). Then you would book a bit of machine time and give your 'deck' to the computer operator who would run your cards through a card reader in order to load your program and run it.

 

[Crewton]

2 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Punch room girls.

During my early days in IT (it was called 'Data Processing'), we didn't have computer terminals. Programs had to be loaded to the computer from punched cards. You would write the program on what was known as coding sheets (each sheet had about 20 rows, each consisting of 80 spaces which corresponded to characters, and a 'large' program might be 1000 lines, or 50 sheets.

When you were done, you would deliver your coding sheets to the punch room which was staffed by specialist typists, invariably girls. They would transform your scribblings into punched cards, one for each row. The next day, you would get them back, in order (and numbered), either fastened together with an elastic band (small program) or in a file drawer (large program). Then you would book a bit of machine time and give your 'deck' to the computer operator who would run your cards through a card reader in order to load your program and run it.

 

Similar were the Comp Girls (Comptometer Operators), who used what were basically mechanical calculators to check our arithmetic. In my experience, most of the "girls" were 50+. The last one I ever worked with used to work part-time and was well into her 70s. They became redundant once such calculations became fully computerised during the 1990s.

[Stive Pesley]

23 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Punch room girls.

During my early days in IT (it was called 'Data Processing'), we didn't have computer terminals. Programs had to be loaded to the computer from punched cards. You would write the program on what was known as coding sheets (each sheet had about 20 rows, each consisting of 80 spaces which corresponded to characters, and a 'large' program might be 1000 lines, or 50 sheets.

When you were done, you would deliver your coding sheets to the punch room which was staffed by specialist typists, invariably girls. They would transform your scribblings into punched cards, one for each row. The next day, you would get them back, in order (and numbered), either fastened together with an elastic band (small program) or in a file drawer (large program). Then you would book a bit of machine time and give your 'deck' to the computer operator who would run your cards through a card reader in order to load your program and run it.

 

and if you made a small error in your coding sheet??

[sage]

On 29/08/2022 at 16:47, Anag Ram said:

I remember way back when you could have a conversation at work or in the pub with someone who wasn’t in a trance staring at their phone.

sorry, what did you say?