What has become obsolete

Rotary telephones
8 track tapes
Common sense

 

Typewriters
Cathode Ray Tube TV's
Manual chokes for car engines
Distributors for car engines
Walkie-Talkies

 

Modern walkie talkies are very popular here.

 

Are they cell phones with push to talk function, or separate devices?

 

How very true.

 

common courtesy depends on the situation. Just sometimes a curt response is in order.

By the way, I can calculate with my sliderule faster than many using calculators.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Carbureters (for automobiles, anyway).
Film cameras (on the verge, at least).
Mimeograph machines.
Vacuum tubes (as for televisions...
...as well as black & white televisions).
Going to a sporting event without ridiculous blaring music.
Wholesome comedy (e.g., The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons).
Westerns.
Family doctors who actually treated diseases, rather than just made referrals.
Doctor house calls (at least one still that when I was a kid in the 60's).
45 rpm records (and now, 33.3 albums).
Cigarette commercials on TV & radio (now all tobacco products).
Hymnals (our church finally took them out of the pew racks recently).
Hanging clothes out to dry (hardly ever see clothes on lines any more).

A few I wonder about:
Manual egg beaters-- I still use one because I haven't replaced electric mixer.
Crank-type can opener-- I still have one, but it's hard to use any more.
Wooden crutches-- yep, I still have my 35-year-old pair that I had to use for several months 2 years ago.
"Stingray bicycles"-- butterfly handlebars and 'banana' seats.
Horny toads-- we don't see them in this country like we used to.
TV antennas-- I still have one up, but been on cable for about 15 years.

 

Rainwater tanks
The evening frog chorus (where have all the frogs gone)
Kids in fruit trees
Canefields on fire at night
Family based farms rather than agribusiness
Kids galore

Trams
Trolley buses
Cane trains
Railway men using those hand trucks on the railway
Party telephone lines

I remember the slide rule and how important it was. Dad was a surveyor and he always had his sine,cosin tables in his back pocket'


Pen and ink wells
Ink balls (thrown by naughty kids)
Detention
Chewing gum at 2 cents for 4 pieces
Lollies at 4 to the penny

Really hot summer days....and the parochial school priest buying EVERY kid an icecream.
Knucklebones

mum pulling up her stockings and hitching them to a suspender belt.
brother knock knees being treated with braces
elevators operated by disabled veterans (loss of a limb)


shoe polish
hair oil (grandpa always used Californian poppy oil)
ladies going to church wearing gloves and a hat. A fan of course.

 

Smoking in public places
children at primary school being given a third-of-a-pint bottle of milk
bus conductors
Cooperative Society dividend numbers
ration books (Yes, I was born after the 2nd World War, but some things were still rationed in the mid fifties!)
Trolley buses in London
Steam locomotives on the railways
The pounds, shillings and pence system of currency (12 pence=one shilling; 20 shillings=one pound)
Analogue television broadcasting (some parts of the UK, including where I live, have gone completely digital)
"Semaphore type" traffic indicators
books of logarithms
Scouts wearing shorts as part of their uniform
Rag-and-bone men
Gas street lighting (had almost disappeared when I was born)
Darning woollen clothes
Blotting paper
Carbon paper
Foolscap as a paper size

(The last three have not completely disappeared, but seen very rarely)

I'll probably think of plenty more after I've sent this!

 

David, I left England in 1948. Should I even begin to list the things that have changed.

We went to the gypsies for medicines; gas and electricity was on a coin-deposit box, all our house lamps were gas, and I still have the little booklet the merchant signed for our purchases. The subway was a passage under the motorway, a layby was a rest stop on the motorway and a tailback was the lineup of traffic....Oh, yes, we never went more than about three blocks from home in East London, which was West Ham. When got indoor loos, the sewage went down an open channel near the house to the street drain.

I was lost everytime I came home. Do you still have the cookers with the lids on burners at top and four oven closures??

Cheers, mate,

Jim

 

1948 was just before I was born. Some of the things you mention are still the same today, some are definitely obsolete, and some seem almost unbelievable (not suggesting you were lying of course )

The only things I can remember my mum getting from gypsies were clothes pegs!

Yes, my parents' house was the same. Some homes still have "pre-payment meters", but you don't feed them with coins; you "top up" an electronic payment card or key. About 12% of households have these now.

Apart from certain specialist museums, I don't think gas lighting is in use anywhere in the UK any more.

That sounds like the ration book, used in the 1939-45 War and several years after. It has been obsolete since the mid-1950s.

All those are still the same. A subway is a walkway for pedestrians under any road, not just motorways (M1, M25 etc). But "Subway" is now also a chain of fast food outlets. A lay-by is a short stopping place beside any ordinary road, but not motorways, which have a continuous "hard shoulder" for emergency stops, and service stations (with toilets, petrol, restaurants, shops) for other stops.

Yes many homes in those days had outside toilets. Some still have, but that is in addition to an indoor one. Sewage going down an open channel sounds like the exception rather than the rule.

Do you mean the Aga, a solid fuel burning cooker? Those are still used in farmhouses and some other homes in the countryside, but unlikely to be seen in towns and cities.

 

Ah, the out door lavvie.....and the night soil man what a disgusting job that must of been.

What about the ice man
the grocery boy delivering goods
milk vendors
doctors making home visits. ( almost passe )

women waiting for their men to come out of the pub at closing time

progressive dinners

 

I don't remember the soil man or the iceman.

I do remember the milkman - we do still have them, but most people buy their milk at the supermarket with the rest of the weekly shopping.

I don't agree that doctors making home visits are "almost passe".

 

Analog clocks and wrist watches. You have any idea how few folk 25 and under know how to tell time on an old clock?

 

Roller Skates with Keys

I saw a pair in an antique store a few days ago...

 

Yes, David, that looks like the cooker. Some were coal and others gas. The coal units fired all day. Each compartment maintained a different temperature.

Cor, the room in which I was born became our indoor loo..lol. I still remember the long rope that flushed the loo. By the way, in the Americas, men always walk on the outside of sidewalk (pavement) and in London men walked on inside. They used to dump water out an upper window. They didn't always look first......or did they?

Cheers, and oh for the memories,

Jim

 

How true. In fact, the phrases 'clockwise' and 'counter-clockwise' are in danger of becoming obsolete due to digital readouts of the time on clocks and phones.

 

I have my K&E slip stick within reach. It is much quicker for estimating ratios.