hee! *sigh* but, hee!

[smg01]

Someone opened his review of one of our books with the following:

"There comes a time in every life when common cultural references stop having any meaning for other people. It came for me when I tried to explain to a younger colleague what "cc" on a letter means and realized I first had to explain what a typewriter was."*

Which does remind me that a few weeks ago, one of our student employees was helping to train another new student employee. I had to wince a little bit when I walked by and heard her explaining how to use the typewriter.

Ouch!

(Yes, we do still have typewriters here. For certain things/forms a computer and printer won't do.)


*I wonder if he also went on to explain what carbon paper was.

Comments

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Uh... I suddenly feel much older than I felt a few minutes ago. *sigh*

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

I know, right?

Then I started thinking sadly about all those schoolkids of today who will never experience receiving assignments or tests on freshly run ditto paper. They don't know what they're missing.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

oooh. yes. there was that mimeograph smell on the blue lines and...

These young whippersnappers!

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

You know, I was having a conversation about carbon papers and older fashioned typewriters last week.

Once had office job where we actually used those computer punch cards for some programming, along with our 5 1/4 flopy era pc's.--The punchcard machine was older than I was!

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

When I was a student in college, I worked in an academic offices on campus. When I started the job, there was one computer in the office. It wasn't a pc, it was a word processor and it was huge! (By the time I graduated four years later, I think everyone had their own computer. With the 5-1/4 floppies. That's how quickly times changed.)

But here's the biggie: for the first year or two, until they finally got around to upgrading the phone system, the phones were all rotary dial phones! That was already pretty archaic relative to the times, but there was a weird sort of wistful nostalgia about that too.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

I remember those word processors...actually, I think I still own one of those word processor typewriters! Hee.

Oooh. My grandmother had a rotary for the longest time...and wow, I think it was like 1987 when the phone company insisted she change that we realized she'd been *leasing* it all this time.

My father and I ran out and got her a nice touchtone phone soon after (it took her a while to get used to the buttons).

There is something to that pausing while you dial and hearing the clickety click.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Oh! I have an aunt that leased her (rotary) phone for even longer than that.

Much, much longer. My mom and I always assumed that she was the only one. Well, I imagine that she is still the only one that was doing it up until around the turn of the century.

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

I like rotary phones. I bought one at the thriftstore and was using it until a couple of months ago, just because. The cord started being weird, so I started using a 'regular' phone. I never remember to put it back to recharge, so every couple of days, I have no phone for a while. Which is truly the better technology? ; )