Did anyone ever _(old tech)_?

[amadeus]

I thought the question on its own might not necessitate its own thread so I thought it might be fun to open it to other things.

Here’s my question: did anyone ever use one of those services like MCI or Sprint where to make a cheaper long-distance telephone call you’d dial them first, then dial the number you wanted to call?

I’m just imagining how time-consuming it would have been with a rotary phone. It would be 20+ numbers.

 

[NovaKart]

I thought the question on its own might not necessitate its own thread so I thought it might be fun to open it to other things.

Here’s my question: did anyone ever use one of those services like MCI or Sprint where to make a cheaper long-distance telephone call you’d dial them first, then dial the number you wanted to call?

I’m just imagining how time-consuming it would have been with a rotary phone. It would be 20+ numbers.

I remember using phone cards but through my lifetime (born early 80s) we always had touch-tone phones. I have used a rotary a few times but can’t remember where.

About old technology questions, I was wondering why there are luddite writers like Woody Allen and David Sedaris who still use typewriters but I’ve never heard of technophobe writers using old computers without internet capabilities.

I think the ability to backspace is such a huge improvement. When I was in middle school we used electronic typewriters in typing class only, computers were already common. At least we could backspace on those but I think the ability to be able to look over your whole document is such a vast improvement and this is what I grew up with before internet, since I’m not old enough for the typewriter era.

When I was a kid my dad had a laptop with just MS DOS, before Windows existed, so there were highly portable computers even then.

I figured the era when home computers were common but before the internet was widely available was just too short for many people to get stuck in, maybe 15 to 20 years, so maybe that was why you don’t hear about people who don’t use email but still type up their documents on an old PC, while there are still people on their typewriters like on Murder She Wrote. But actually you’d have to get a printer too, which I doubt you could hook up to an old PC. You’d have to get two antique devices that would be hard to keep up.

 

[amadeus]

I was wondering why there are luddite writers like Woody Allen and David Sedaris who still use typewriters but I’ve never heard of technophobe writers using old computers without internet capabilities.

For me, the reason I would use a typewriter to write would be in parts the kinetic, the novelty of sending something personally typed and not copied, and that it only has one function—to print characters. The last part about not having distractions makes it a lot easier for me, whereas an old computer can still do other functions, just not as well.

The thing I don’t like about old typewriters is how easy it is for fingers, at least in my case, to slip between the keys when I’m trying to type something out. The IBM Selectric models have keycaps that are more like computer keys, which is what I’m more comfortable with.

Edit: regarding the use of telephone cards, I have never used one. If I ever had to use a pay telephone, I would just pay in quarters, and 95% of things wouldn’t have been urgent enough anyway so they could just wait until I was home anyhow.

Last pay telephone I used was in the hallway of my old apartment building, which I used to call my cell phone which I had misplaced and couldn’t find. You can make a phone call for ¥10, but I ended up spending ¥30 to find my phone because it would go to voicemail before I could find it. That was an old rotary phone from the sixties (the one in the hallway, not my cell phone )

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I always use Chinese ink and goose feathers for my manuscripts, and if I am not in a hurry, clay tablets and bone stylus.

 

[Kyriakos]

Phone cards, meh
Does anyone remember what typing "ICPC" did on that worst computer of all time?
To this day I don't see why Amstrad ever existed. It was fully outdated at the time of release.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

As late as 2005 the math and science center I was attending used floppy disks and FTP. That was well into the CD burning time period. We had to buy an external floppy drive for our home computer.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

No I never knew this. Though I imagine it'd be easy for a phone company to dial any number for you because of some physical limitation one has.

I remember having the clean the rollers and the ball in computer mice; they got dirty. This was well before lasers.

 

[amadeus]

No I never knew this. Though I imagine it'd be easy for a phone company to dial any number for you because of some physical limitation one has.

Before companies like this set up these services, a long-distance phone call on a weekday evening would cost you 25¢ per minute—meaning a 30-minute phone call to grandma cost you $7.50—and this was at a time when the average household income was $12,000 per year.

If you used the operator to place the call for you, you would pay an even higher rate than direct dialing, so the laborious task of dialing all these numbers could save you quite a bit of money on your long-distance phone call.

 

[Gori the Grey]

As late as 2005 the math and science center I was attending used floppy disks and FTP. That was well into the CD burning time period. We had to buy an external floppy drive for our home computer.

Floppy disks? Floppy disks?

B/c 3.5" don't count. I know they called them floppy, but they were not floppy. Only 5 1/4" merit the name.

*****

Back to typewriters. I just this week finally threw away the typewriter my parents sent me to college with. It's feature was that underneath the ink ribbon was a white-out ribbon. So if you mistyped something, you could shift a particular key; that would raise the correction ribbon; you could re-type the bit that had been mistyped; that would erase it; then you could type the correct bit. Advanced tech in its day. Jr year the Writing Center got computers. With Word Star.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Floppy disks? Floppy disks?

B/c 3.5" don't count. I know they called them floppy, but they were not floppy. Only 5 1/4" merit the name.

You forgot the 8"

 

[amadeus]

The last 8” floppy disk was made (excluding hobbyists) in 2014. Some parts of the U.S. nuclear weapons system ran on 8” floppies until 2019, which sounds horrible at first but systems designed to do one thing—and hopefully the control systems of the nuclear arsenal of the United States fall under that umbrella—are built to be durable, which is probably something you want when dealing with critical defense infrastructure.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Floppy disks? Floppy disks?

B/c 3.5" don't count. I know they called them floppy, but they were not floppy. Only 5 1/4" merit the name.

*****

I don’t make the language! People use hard drive all the time still when referring to an SSD or flash memory. But yes they were the 3.5 inch ones.

The oldest working computer in my house now is an Apple II Plus. I think. Either that or my Atari 800.

 

[Kyriakos]

The old disks were very easily destroyed - then again, this was true to some extent for cd-roms and the like as well. You also have the console cartridges (which are anything but floppy).
Although there was charm in owning physical copies, I prefer the current situation where everything is digital.

 

[Akka]

Floppy disks? Floppy disks?

B/c 3.5" don't count. I know they called them floppy, but they were not floppy. Only 5 1/4" merit the name.

Well, it's "floppy disks", not "floppy casing".

 

[Gori the Grey]

Fair enough!

 

[uppi]

Before companies like this set up these services, a long-distance phone call on a weekday evening would cost you 25¢ per minute—meaning a 30-minute phone call to grandma cost you $7.50—and this was at a time when the average household income was $12,000 per year.

If you used the operator to place the call for you, you would pay an even higher rate than direct dialing, so the laborious task of dialing all these numbers could save you quite a bit of money on your long-distance phone call.

We used to have a telephone system which would do this automatically for you. You would dial the number of the intended recipient and it would add the prefix number of a cheap operator, based on some rules (like time of day)

 

[amadeus]

We used to have a telephone system which would do this automatically for you.

During the sixties Western Electric had phones that dialed by inserting a punchcard.

I thought the cards would have been 0-9 on one line, but these cards used a kind of matrix system. Double the punching, but more possible commands. Taken from this site about card dialers.

 

[danjuno]

At this point, physical media in general is considered old tech. Not exactly a change for the better.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Remember this?

 

[danjuno]

I remember the phrase, but we generally just bought Tapes.