how things have changed

[vintagecollect]

Watching a classic Byran Adams video Heaven, he uses tons of CRT tvs, all different types to replace his band and even audience in auditorium.I think something of a tribute to TV that made videos possible too showing its influence. IN twenty years, someone can point to them and say, that's what TVS look like.

Today I saw a neighbor down the street breaking down a box for a sony HDTV, how much wa$ that?$ I still watch low def, TVs almost free til gone.

[CoogarXR]

Sometimes we get CRT tvs at the recycler I work for. When I put them in our store, sometimes kids as old as teens will say "why do these TVs have such big backs?!"

This generation won't know what a CRT is. Or a carburator, corded phone, wrist watch, encyclopedia, or a board game, hehe.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by CoogarXR

Sometimes we get CRT tvs at the recycler I work for. When I put them in our store, sometimes kids as old as teens will say "why do these TVs have such big backs?!"

This generation won't know what a CRT is. Or a carburator, corded phone, wrist watch, encyclopedia, or a board game, hehe.

Want to have some fun? Ask a teen to call up & order a pizza, and point him/her to a rotary dial phone... I did that to my wife's nephew age 19; he's no dummy; advanced math student at USC). He figured it out, but it took a minute!

Charles

[ChrisW6ATV]

That could come back to haunt a person, though... That teen could hand you THEIR phone and say "order a pizza, without calling the pizza place"!

[holmesuser01]

Speaking of rotary phone... My nephew came over last week. I have several rotary's and he wanted to call his mom. I handed him the phone... wired, of course, and he punched at the holes in the dial for a long time, getting more and more frustrated. He's 13, and got MAD at the phone... He slammed the receiver on the base and yelled at it.

I got the phone away from him, and operated it for him and handed it back to him. His mom answered, and he told her to come and get him. He doesent like being at my house. She came and got him, and I told her how he reacted to my phone.

I dont understand how people function in the REAL world anymore.

[kx250rider]

I wouldn't allow anyone; child or adult, into my house if they get angry at inanimate objects. Too scary.

Charles

[Electronic M]

I mastered rotary dial phones before touchtones back when I was about 6 years old in the mid 90's(and still use rotary dial phones), so that joke won't work on me.

Tom C.

[radiotvnut]

I'm 34 and the main phone in this house, up until around '98, was an old green rotary dial wall phone. I still have an old Western Electric 500 series rotary desk phone as a back-up.

[CoogarXR]

My grandma used the rotary phone until she died a few years ago.

She also had the "party line" until they discontinued the service. Remember the party line? It was one phone line that you and your neighbors share, and you could pick up the phone and listen to them talk (and they could do the same to you). I remember being a kid and wanting to call home and all the old biddys in the neighborhood holding up the line. One time I got in trouble for yelling "get off the phone!" into the phone, hehe.

[JCFitz]

Originally Posted by CoogarXR

My grandma used the rotary phone until she died a few years ago.

She also had the "party line" until they discontinued the service. Remember the party line? It was one phone line that you and your neighbors share, and you could pick up the phone and listen to them talk (and they could do the same to you). I remember being a kid and wanting to call home and all the old biddys in the neighborhood holding up the line. One time I got in trouble for yelling "get off the phone!" into the phone, hehe.

My grandma also used the rotary phone up until she died in 1999.
On another note but related to this discussion could you imagine an average teenage ipod listeners reaction to selecting sides of an LP record album with a rotary phone dial? Well that's how you get my Seeburg HSC1 home stereo console to play music. And instead of something you put in your pocket and stick little earbuds in your ear this baby is 6 feet long and rocks the house.

[ChrisW6ATV]

I have a Western Electric dial wall phone as my only phone that rings (except some cordless handsets). When someone calls, I want to hear real ringing, not those wimpy "whee-dee-dee" or "blub-blub-blub" sounds of electronic devices.

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

I have a Western Electric dial wall phone as my only phone that rings (except some cordless handsets). When someone calls, I want to hear real ringing, not those wimpy "whee-dee-dee" or "blub-blub-blub" sounds of electronic devices.

I was the same way until I got married. We now have a cordless phone that chirps. The wife got used to the bells in my old phones after a while

[Beachboy]

I grew up not only with rotary phones, but also we lived in the country and were on a party line system. I think there were around 6-7 neighbors on this "branch" of the party line, and when a phone call came in, everybody's phones rang at the same time. Each subscriber had a unique phone ring, a combination of long and short rings, so you had to listen to the phone rings to determine if the phone call was for you or for a neighbor. As CoogarXR mentioned, anyone on the party line picking up their phone could hear your conversation. I remember my mother spending what seemed like hours listening in on other neighbor ladies' conversations (and I'm sure they did the same!). I recall one neighbor had teenage kids, which kept the phone system tied up for hours, much to everyone else's chagrin. Can you imagine people putting up with that kind of phone system nowadays? We moved to town in 1966 and got a private line, which was like heaven. Mom stayed with a rotary phone until it broke and she couldn't buy a rotary replacement. Now she's using a pushbutton phone, but has never changed to touchtone service.

[zenith2134]

Even at my relatively young age, the changes have been quite apparant & shocking to me. I won't even begin to get into the computer and hi-tech waste issue...but as far as TVs are concerned, it sucks how things have changed. My mom's side had Zeniths and my fathers side bought S0ny's, Hitachis's, Mitsubishis, one of em had a huge old woodpaneled Pioneer projection set.
And now? Every single one of those tv's is gone, save for my father's '86 S0ny trinitron 27" and one from my mom's mother's house: a 13" Quasar (matsushita) from 85 with the remote that is a smalled down version of the tv. There was a 19" chromacolor in that house which I later trashed in haste.

[ha1156w]

We didn't get rid of our party line phone until 1990-ish. The CO (Altel nee Allied Telephone) was too cheap to run enough trunk lines to our community of about 250. Private lines were available, but you had to pay an outrageous mileage charge to the next station 17 miles away. Something like $100/mo I think. They didn't play nice with touch tone either.

Rings were done on a frequency-resonant basis. A "regular" phone would ring when the neighbor's phone rang, but the "party line" phone would only vibrate. The ringer would hit the bells when your ringer frequency was sent by the CO.

I've tried the rotary phone trick on a few of my peers that are my age and even they don't get it. They had the same reaction as KX250rider's nephew. I had a very bright 42 year-old attorney say to me once "Explain to me how a record works; I don't get it" when he was playing with my Victrola VV 4-40. I'm not even 40 yet and I felt ancient. Face it we're walking anachronisms....