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Behaviour/development

Did they have telly in the olden days when you were young Mum?

67 replies

ghosty · 22/10/2006 23:21

DS' corker of a question 5 minutes ago!

So, I have been thinking ...

What do we take for granted now that we didn't have in the "olden days"?

I remember not having a tv. My mother says the first time I saw a tv I was 2 and a half (I was born in 1970)
We always had a phone but didn't get cordless phones till I was well over 20.
I remember my Dad getting a VCR player when I was about 12 ... that was cool!
I worked for a 'mobile' phone hire and repair firm in my Uni Holidays ... they were mostly those brick like car phones
My Dad had a telex machine when I was about 8 ... a great big thing the size of an electic keyboard that clattered INSTANT messages to him from colleagues in America ... ...
I remember an american friend of ours showing us this amazing new innovation called BAR CODES on the label of his peanut butter jar that he travelled everywhere with ....

What else, Oh, being the first in the school to use the brand new Electric Typewriters in my typing lessons and the dizzy heights of BBC computers in the computer room at school (state of the art technology in 1984) and Amstrad Word Processor ... my Dad was so proud of his in 1986!

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CarolinaMooncup · 22/10/2006 23:27

oh gawd, I found myself announcing to 3yo nephew the other week that there wasn't any TV at all in the mornings when I was young.

I felt ancient.

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hunkermunker · 22/10/2006 23:30

We always had a TV, but it had a manual tuning knob on it and it was a tiny portable.

Phone - we had a red one with a dial on it when I was little - as you say, cordless phones not till I was 20ish.

Ditto with the VCR - I think I was about 12.

My first mobile phone was HUGE and had an aerial I pulled out when I wanted to make or receive a call - this was in 1997!

And remember BBC computers - they were fab. Although we had an Acorn Electron from when I was about 8 - its memory was 28k - so smaller than a photo you can upload to MN!

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hairymclary · 22/10/2006 23:31

I am 26 and we didn't have a tv when i was very little.
we didn't have a vcr til I was 13 (a hand-me down from an uncle)
we had a old fashioned phone that you had to spin the dial until i was quite old too.

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ghosty · 22/10/2006 23:38

We had a Sony Walkman too ... sometime in the mid 80s I think ... my dad picked it up in Singapore on a business trip. As he did a CD player in 1987 or so ... The envy of my friends I was
But I have stopped dead - haven't got an Ipod and can't drive my mobile phone.

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ghosty · 22/10/2006 23:39

And do you remember when remote controls had only 3 buttons? BBC 1, BBC 2 and ITV?

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southeastastra · 22/10/2006 23:49

i remember getting up to change channels, always my job being the youngest!

having electric blankets and fan heaters in the bedroom to keep warm at night.

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GhoulsToo · 22/10/2006 23:50

when we got married we had no tv for quite a few months then we got one it was reconditioned black and white. We had no phone, washing machine - in fact all we had in the kitchen was a cooker and utensils (to be fair that's all that would fit in the 'kitchen') -we had a second hand fridge with a hole on the inside (this was in the lounge), no car, no holidays, all furniture was second hand, every last piece. We didn't have much of the green stuff either.

We were as happy as pigs in much though.

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Linnet · 23/10/2006 00:19

WE didn't have a phone until I was 9 and that was only because we moved house and the house we moved to already had one installed. My Dh can't believe this.

Got a VCR when I was about 7 or 8 and it was huge and the to put the tape in you pushed this huge eject button and the top popped up.

Didn't get a microwave until I was about 14/15.

We went for years without a fridge because ours broke and my mum couldn't afford a new one. ditto for carpets in the hall, old one was ripped up and we went about 4 years with bare boards.

we got an atari computer for christmas one year, must have been about 8 or 9 then. It was useless, worked on tapes and you sat there for ages and if the tape didn't load you had to start all over again.

I remember feeling really old when my little cousin who was about 7 at the time got a hi-fi for christmas and I foolishly asked her if it could play records. She looked at me blankly and then tried to explain that it played Cd's, then it dawned on me she didn't know what records were, and this was only about 7 years ago.
the shame and I'm not even 30 yet!

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fussymummy · 23/10/2006 00:47

My little darlings have asked me if everything was in black and white when i was born in the olden days!!!!!!

I'm 38.

Made me feel great!!!

When i was younger all the washing was done by hand.

We had no heating.

Had coal fire in living room and kitchen.

For hot water, the fire in the kitchen had to be on most of the day.

We used to go to bed wearing nightdress, cardigan, leg warmers (remember those?), and gloves.

When we got up, we used to scrape the ice off the inside of the window!!!!

Hated getting up to go toilet in the night, as it was downstairs and freezing!!!!!

By the way, i'm from a family of 8 children and none of us are any worse for it.

Really appreciate the things we have now.

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nappyaddict · 23/10/2006 01:39

no flat screen tvs or computers. no dvd players and cd players were quite a new thing. mp3s and minidisks what were they!?! also you didn't have kitchen appliances that lit up or beeped at you when finished. ceramic straighteners and curling tongs too .. ad what about play nests and electronic baby swings!!

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HumphreyComfrey · 23/10/2006 01:48

No colour tv until I was about 10 - was amazed that Bagpuss was white and pink. Just thought he was differing shades of grey.

And when videos came out, my Dad bought a Betamax. Our local video store had a total of about 20 films on Betamax, then none at all once VHS reigned supreme!

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lizziemun · 23/10/2006 08:02

Me and dh were laughing about news story on london news on bbc on friday there was a man in his early 30's complaining about the noise coming from teenagers playing music on their mobile phones or ipods.

we thought that he was probaly being complained about when he was a teenager because he was playing his walkman to loud.

How thing change - not.

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FioFio · 23/10/2006 08:05

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KTeepee · 23/10/2006 08:11

Always has a tv but b&w only till I was about 13. Only one channel until about then too and programmes didn't start until about 4pm. Never had a vcr when I was living at home but a friend's family had a betamax one!

Remember getting our phone when I was 4.

No computers at school.

The thing I would miss most from present day is central heating - only had an open fire when I was little and even when we got heating it was a system heated by the fire so was always freezing first thing in the morning!

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LoveMyGirls · 23/10/2006 08:30

i was born in the early 80's so we had colour tv and video. no microwave until i was about 11.
we had an atari i can remember it loading and there was lines of colour. we had tapes instead of cd's, mini disks.
i was about 12 when my brother got a sega megadrive which we thought was amazing (nothing compared to xbox etc though)
dishwasher when i was about 14.
i got my first mobile phone when i was 17.

when i got my first house i think i was quite lucky compared to most of you, i had a 2nd hand tumble dryer, microwave aqnd fridge freezer and i got a washing machine on credit.

we got a dishwasher about 3 years ago.

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LunarSea · 23/10/2006 10:54

Tv was black and white, and tuned by rotating a dial (we had little stickers to show where on the dial the different stations - all 3 of them - were).

Didn't have a telephone until I was in secondary school - and who remembers telegrams when you needed to get in touch urgently and pones weren't commonplace?

We did have a washing machine but it was the old twin tub type where you had to put the washing in the top, and fish it out with tongs.

I remember getting our first calculator - which only did + - / and x and it seeming incredible at the time.

And for those who remember BetaMax - what about the Video2000 format? And 8-track tape players?

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LunarSea · 23/10/2006 10:56

Anyone remember those plug-in TV games which were a sort of ping-pong where you had to bat the moving blob back and stop it going into your goal? Todays consol owning kids would turn their noses up at that, but it was all the rage when it was the latest thing!

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intergalacticwerewolf · 23/10/2006 11:12

We had a Betamax. I remember my Dad saying that it was the next big thing.

I remember being the first person in my class at school to get a computer. It was a Sinclair Sprctrum and the games came on cassette tape.

Does anyone remember "programming" computers at school so that you would have a screen full of insults like "You are gay" etc?

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pesha · 23/10/2006 11:14

Weren't they called binatone? Used to love ours, may have been simple but was still totally addictive, wish parents had kept it.

My mums a teacher and got us a bbc computer when her school closed down. I was addicted to chuckie egg! Or granny's garden, remember that? And frogger/hopper, of course.

And the first 'remote control' videos, they had a handset that was attached to the telly by a long wire!!

(Sorry if I'm repeating anyone i didn't read the whole thread, i got very excited about binatone and just had to post!)

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SNORcacKLE · 23/10/2006 13:17

I remember being the envy of my friends when my dad bought me one of the early digital watches home from hong kong.

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laudaud · 23/10/2006 14:28

to make a phone call we needed to go through the local exchange. My grandfather had told me to phone him if any of my family were upsetting me so one night when everyone was in bed I picked up the phone, rang the exchange and told the lady I wanted to talk to grandad.

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lucycat · 23/10/2006 14:39

Linnet - we still had the top loader VHS players at the school where i used to teach.

We had a trimphone, in green just like this one it was soooo cool!

My mum and dad waited til I went away to Uni before we gor a VCR, 1988! and an automatic washing machine, before that we had a top loading twin tub!

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giddy1 · 23/10/2006 14:42

Message deleted

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TwigTwoolett · 23/10/2006 14:46

I remember seeing 'in glorious technicolour' on an advert for a programme and getting really excited because it would be in colour

I never understood when parents told me we only had a black and white set

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TwigTwoolett · 23/10/2006 14:47

when videos were introduced we had a betamax

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