I don't think anyone born in the 80s or later truly understand what a revelation the VCR was, For the 1st time people could record a show and watch it later and better yet FF thru commercials Not to mention the ability to watch a movie at home whenever you wanted. Truly a device that fundamentally changed how people watch and consume entertainment
And then they became even better when the pause system was introduced. The VHS recorder would pick up a signal when the movie started or commerical began and pauze or start when was needed again. Awesome.
@@DMS-pq8 Could have been a thing in our country only, we had a Phillips and in The Netherlands the broadcasting company's had to attach the signal to the broadcast. Not all did it though. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_Delivery_Control
@@roostermcnoodle5642 yes! Ironically I grew up in the same neighborhood where some of BTK's victims lived, just a little further south. Contrary to what the media reported, Rader was not from, nor born in Wichita, he's originally from Pittsburgh, Kansas, which is SE Kansas near the Missouri line; one town over from Galena, Kansas, where my sister lives! Rader is imprisoned at the El Dorado Correctional Facility, in El Dorado Kansas. OK, got off subject.., so back to that floppy disc..😂🤣🕺👌🍻
I remember when VCR's hit the market they were so expensive that not many people could afford them. So to keep their businesses alive, rental stores began renting out the device itself, and not just the movie in question. So everyone could watch a movie they wanted to see by renting a VCR. That was also in the days before the internet existed.
I've seen an 8 track once or twice, can't say I've ever used one. However, the other day I was listening to Aerosmith on tape in my carburetted car from the 80s. Good times ;)
@@sanvirel6182 you mean over 35 ? :) [I'm 37 for ex.] Things were used even AFTER they came out, most of these things became obsolete just like 20-30 years ago
Not all are totally obsolete. The VCR and audio tape machines are still used. Audiophiles still use reel to reel tape and phonograph records. Rock groups are starting to use vinyl again because they are not getting their royalties for their music because of streaming and pirates. Also audio is much better in analog. 73
As a kid growing up in the 60's, I remember going to a "Homes of the Future" exhibit and seeing video cassettes and other devices in this video that are now obsolete. I remember thinking about how futuristic everything seemed. My dad told me that recorded videos would never catch on, because everyday people would never be able to afford anything that expensive (projected prices were in the range of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars), and because everyone was quite happy with TV as it was back then.
I was a secretary in the 1980s. I remember how excited I was when I got a new IBM Selectric self-correcting typewriter and could finally get rid of the little tabs of correction tape around the typewriter. I just couldn’t imagine then that typing could get much better than that.
I feel so ancient as I have seen and used a number of these.... getting nostalgic again. I hope DVDs and Blu Rays don’t become obsolete as they have advantages that streaming does not have.
What's blu ray?. Worried the technology might pass before I've experienced it. On the aside: The CD was hailed as something incredible & groundbreaking in the day - where did that go?. The CD was the absolute worst dissapointment ever. I'm back to turntables and cassette players & really enjoying my music.
@@commentresurrection1841- Since it's inception l have amassed almost 8,000 DVD and Blu Ray..I hope even at 64 these will stay around another generation..
They lasted until 2006 I guess, it was the time the video rental places got rid of the vhs's to only display dvds, and later to a brief display of blueray.
Magnetic tape is actually still used for a lot of data backup solutions and other things in data centers etc, and it’s advanced enormously over time with some tapes holding up to 15tb
LTO-9 native capacity 18 TB. And continuous 400 MB/s is hardly slow. Locating single file can take couple of minutes, but they are for backup/long term mass storage.
@@manp1039 yeah or metal. The IBM systems used disk packs. That were multiple magnetic disks. I wanted to format one for audio when I was in highschool but no one knew which direction to go with the idea. Same with beta and VHS. Using reel to reel tape heads you could have a dozen travks. Also faster speeds like 3 and 3/4 in per second or 7 1/2 inches per second.73
I remember using my mom’s nail polish to glue together the cassette tape ribbon which got chewed by our stereo. People would get mad if you borrowed their VCR tapes and forgot to rewind… BlockBuster would charge you extra if you returned a movie without rewinding it. Fun times. 😂
That's why the cassettes held together w/ little screws were my favorite; easy to take apart if I needed to splice the tape (using Scotch tape)...Early on, I found the 90 min. cassette tapes were more prone to breaking than the 60 min. (esp. since I bought mostly cheap, on sale cassettes!)
Imagine living in a city with power cuts! I once missed the deadline to return a rental because it was stuck in the VCR! Also you didn’t wanna take a chance rewinding because a power cut would mean you couldn’t eject the tape. 😅
That's a wee bit off to say the least. They were pretty damn expensive in the late 70s though. The camcorders were around that range and even above a grand for some.
It’s crazy how a lot of these things are actually coming back into cultural relevance. A lot of young people, myself included, are very nostalgic for a time they never even experienced.
@@tomloft2000 LOL yea but more recently it was the fidget spinner LOL,,,,AHHHHH the pet rock and mood rings versus the fidget spinner,,,,,,I guess we are even now as then somewhat simple minded in what will make us play with and spend our money on pretty stupidly simple things,,,,,,like a monkey with a shinny object LOL 🤣🤣🤣😂
Born in 1968 too - I remember my tranny (transistor radio) fondly. A little black handheld job that I could listen to sport and music wherever. Batteries were cheap for it too.
I feel so privileged to have grown up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, as I was almost the perfect age to experience all of these different technologies. I was born in ‘77 and vividly remember my grandparents having cameras and radios from the ‘40s and ‘50s, my dad was a pharmacist and started buying tech as soon as he started making decent money. So, we always had really nice stereos, double-deck VCR’s, video cameras, gaming systems (we had an Atari with over 100 games), etc. I got my first cell phone in 1995, I had several pagers over the years, and I’ve had internet since 1997. It’s been a wild ride and it’s only getting better! I’m in awe of what iPhones and computers can do these days.
Yes I grew up in the 80s and 90s also and witnessed so many technological changes too. From walkmans to portable CD players to MP3 etc.. Then it was the star tac flip phones to the blueberry phones to the small digital cameras, and finally the iphone that is still going strong to this day. The last 30 yrs saw so many changes and the time went by so fast..
@@dallasbathtubrefinishing I miss the girlfriends I had in the 80s and 90s I used to go to Blockbuster and rent the movies with. In between GFs that place was just plain depressing for me.
I was also born in 77. I've noticed that younger people prefer to do things on their phones rather than on their computers. I just really prefer the ergonomics of typing/viewing things on a laptop, rather than having to 1-hand everything on my phone..
Ik bc I'm into retro stuff like CRT tvs and computers VHS cassette telephone dial up etc... I'm gonna buy a lot of this retro tech... That's saying I was only born in 2008
AT&T was set up for “long distance “communications. For local , if you were a business you could get only get the Bell system. Residential had to get the “ Home” system. No direct dialing, through an operator only.
Ha! I remember punching a hole in the other side in order to get twice the storage (double density). I also remember the $2,600 5 megabyte hard drive. The drive cost more than the IBM AT or XT PC that it was installed in. The sales rep said we would never fill the drive. LOL!
Yep. I tended to have more advanced hardware than many of my friends, simply because I worked in tech and had friends/roommates who did likewise, so I had managed to upgrade to 3.5" before anyone but Mac users. And had an actual hard drive before any of my non-tech friends did, too... lots of tales of the mid to late 80s, working in what I now call "Silicon Valley 1.0". 🙂
I used platter hard drives (where the term hard drive crash comes from) and they were encased with I believe 4 or 5 platters the size of a regular LP. They held so little data by todays standards. I think it was like 10 megs or something like that. One last thing to remember is that the Apollo space craft that landed on the moon had less technology than your average smart watch has. It was like a VW bug in space...
Correction those old platter drives held 3.75 megs. I learned to program using two 5.25 inch floppy drives. One for data the other for the program. They held 160 KB per side and that was more than ample space.... I feel really old now.
@@kevinrinehart Ha! I know what you mean about feeling old. I did programming at NASA on punchcards and used a twin 10-inch floppy drive in the early 80’s. One disk for OS and one for data. LOL!
Referring to the AOL part, he said that you couldn't use the phone while you were online. This is very true. In fact, if someone was online and you picked up the phone, you got a very impressionable lesson as to why you shouldn't.
We suffered that problem with our first PC (486 with a 14.4k modem). After awhile we decided to get ISDN. Which meant faster Internet, and the phone line could still be used for calls.
I still have some of these items from the past. Even though they no longer in working condition. I love saving obsolete items. I guess I'm a bit of a horder. I'm glad that vinyl records have made a huge comeback.
Before digital/iPhone cameras, there was the Polaroid camera. It was so cool to watch the pictures develop. Thanks for bringing back all these memories.
@@acr21957 I spent about $65 for one in 1974 before starting high school accounting class only to find out they weren't allowed in the classroom...only math in your head!
I had one walkman that I could skateboard with in my pocket and it would rarely skip. I'd carry it in my hoodie pocket at school and hide the headphones in my hood. I think I still have a few of the CDs I had back then
ugh….. the good ole days. Kids now days will never know how fun it was to be growing up in the 80s -90s. It just seemed like life was so much different then and the World did NOT run off Social Media
I kinda miss those times when you had limited choices, you either watched what was on TV (3 or 4 channels) or watch one of the 2 movies you rented, Nowadays I fall asleep scrolling thru an endless choice of things to watch, I have a watch list I never feel like watching and mostly just watch stuff on RU-vid like this video.
I think if you handed a Walkman to a kid today, they'd figure it out very quickly. The play, rewind, and fast forward buttons have very recognizable icons on them.
They'd have to understand how to work tapes. Side A vs side B. Manually fixing and winding tapes when they got tangled up. I both miss and don't miss tapes.
I miss most of these. I was a kid in the 60s. Personally I think the 70s and 80s were the best years. I wish I could go back. Love to raise my grandchildren in those years. Better tech, entertainment and way of life no matter how you look at it better times
I'm glad I lived during the time of record and video stores. Browsing the isles of Tower Records or Blockbuster with your friends was part of the excitement.
The principle is the same - if you have to put forth effort to get something you want, you appreciate it more. Both those stores were standard fare, and it was always a rush to discover something new while browsing! Just not the same when everything is available instantly.
DVD's are still relevant, there low overall cost makes them a good option for people who live in areas where the internet is lousy, also useful for TV series as most streaming services have limited options.
I still use them, the most bang for your buck and they can handle an EM pulse and ignore it. They could replace the hard drive for cheap laptops and the rest running Linux distro of some sorts easily as well.
Not only that but they also take down shows a lot too. If you're a fan of older shows like threes company or family matters, good luck finding them. The glorious thing about owning either physical media or having it downloaded, no one can take it from you without physically taking it
Movies on discs are still favored by videophiles today. A typical streaming HD movie is compressed to around 5 GB resulting in noticeable artifacts, and the audio is also heavily compressed. On the other hand, a Blu-ray disc can hold 25 GB minimum, up to 100 GB for 4K discs, and can hold uncompressed or losslessly compressed audio.
I still use a vcr! It took me forever to find a working one but eventually I found one that an elementary school didn't use anymore. I still have a collection of vhs tapes from my childhood. I just wish there was still a vhs section at thrift stores.
At last count, I had 20 VHS machines--mostly Panasonic, a Sony, and two Go Videos----one dual VHS and a VHS with DVD burner / player. I bought most in the mid-90s, when DVDs came in, and people were dumping good machines for $5 - $20. I have nearly 1000 tapes, but can't fix the machine if it breaks, so I hoarded a few extras just in case.
@erasableData Picture quality of prerecorded films and analog TV is way better straight off VHS into a CRT. What struck this home to me was when I was watching classic film Sound Of Music on TV a decade ago - there was something weird about the lipsync and picture movement on the screen that was bugging me. Things like the actors eyes and mouth moving in different directions to the cheeks on face on a scene I'd last saw on VHS. I then went and found the actual VHS tape plugged it in to watch the same scene and the VHS picture quality was completely natural no peculiar movement effects like are on DTV. I switched back and forth between DTV and VHS to confirm so much was the difference that DTV started to give me a migrane so I watched the rest of the film on VHS until it cleared.
@@jagmarc The Digital or streaming of Sound of Music issues is typical of Cable services because they compress so much with sub-par hardware. Try the DVD or BluRay version over a steamed/cable version. Even Disney has some oddities with their shows sometimes. VHS is timed for CRTs. CRTs are harder to find. I loved my last SONY TVs (CRTs) which were among the best. But I'd take a modern LCD over those old TVs any day.
I remember my computer classes in High School (2001-2005). We still used floppies to save our work. Which became a problem when I wanted to do stuff at home and neither the desktop or my laptop had a floppy drive.
I remember my first eight track tape player given to me by my parents as a graduation gift May 1972. It was very basic but it was stereo music being heard for the first time. When compared to the old AM radio I had been listening to it was wonderful. It sounded so great cruising down the road in that old 1957 Oldsmobile Super 88 with stereo music cranking out of those two little wedge speakers mounted on the rear window deck. At eighteen driving my first car listing to stereo rock I felt like one cool cat.
I took a computer class in high school in 1978 and you had to pick up the phone receiver, dial the number and when it started ringing you put the receiver down on the modem that connected to the central server downtown. I also remember going into a music store a couple of years later looking for an 8 track of a Stevie Nicks album and the guy said, "Sir, we don't sell 8 tracks anymore, but we do have that album on these compact discs." Me: "Nobody's gonna buy those stupid things." ~Leaves in a huff~ 🤣 Thirty ish years later, Apple proves me right. 😁
My first year in college in 1978 I had a computer class where we had to write a flow chart and then program a pile of punch cards. Then you had to wait in line with all of the other students to run the cards through this gigantic machine too see if your program ran successfully - and then you got your grade on the project. And it would all be to add together a bunch of numbers as the objective.
Acoustic modems good riddance...loads of errors. Then we got a direct modem that sat on the floor and was the size of a large box and weighed about 40 lbs. Blazing speed of 300 baud!!! Hooked to a decwriter printer termnal Circa 1982
Cassettes blew 8-track out of the water early on, much like VHS killed off Beta. I used to have hundreds of cassette tapes, but never once owned an 8-track player or tape. Well; that's not entirely true - I once bought a used car that had an 8-track stereo installed. I tore it out and replaced it with a cassette unit as soon as I got it home (I always had a handful of beat-up old car stereo units lying around the apartment until about 20 years ago).
To clarify a couple of things: There was a Sony reel to reel video recorder that was only B&W but there was never a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) that was only B&W. The first commercial VHS VCR was color. And while most people think VHS means "video home system", that was a change made by some marketing person. VHS actually stood for Video Helical Scan which described the method of transferring the video signal to tape. It described the way the tape wrapped around the video head.
Thank you for the clarification an being so much better and more accurate than this Rhetty For History channel. That dunce always gets lots of stuff wrong in his videos.
My dad bought an RCA Selectavision VHS recorder back in 1980, i think.. That boat anchor sized thing was awesome! A year later, he bought a portable Magnavox VCR with a camera. I own two VCR's. I use them to digitize video tapes.
Well, you mentioned the gramophone was replaced by the record player almost in passing at about 5:10. Vinyl records were a big deal. People lined their home walls with vinyl records. They were an functional and collection item at the same time. Folks prided themselves on their collection and variety.
I stapled the LP album covers to the wall of our rec room in a checkerboard pattern - my friends were very impressed with how cool the room looked that way.
Records are making a slight comeback. The local walmarts etc sell them again. Some would argue records still have a superior edge to sound quality to this day
Back in the days when having a music collection meant something, Now everybody has a music collection, It's just on the internet, Kinda like My sea shell collection, that I have scattered on beaches all over the world.
I remember always bringing a transistor radio to the beach with friends in the mid-seventies and listening to top-forty music while we sun tanned and smoked cigarettes.
Lived through many of these. Took typing class in high school and am glad I had. I got quite a few jobs knowing how to type. You could almost add the iPod to this.
Yep! I, too, took the dreaded typing classes in Jr. and Sr. High School, at first on those old manual typewriters with the keys that took all your "finger strength" to work (this was back in the early-mid 70's). We were over the moon when Selectric (electric typewriters) made their debut in our Sr. year. Still used that dreaded carbon paper though. One could never have secured any type of office job without those typing skills back then (the faster the better). Dictaphone (ever hear of that contraption, kids?) and stenographic (steno) skills also guaranteed you a lucrative office job too. So glad I acquired those skills, even though the last two are no longer relevant today...
I once had a Panasonic walkman back in 1996. I love that device, the headphone and sound quality was actually good. I would listen to my walkman in buffet restaurants getting in line selecting food items while listen to music. What an experience
And the japanese versions you can also skip to the next track and remote control with display !! I still have 2 pieces of the legendary Walkman in my collection !
How fast technology has changed. Definitely improved. Will never forget the sound the of the internet dial up. I had a small Sony tv and took it with me on many deployments while in the military. Ha!!
This video is great! It’s hard to believe how many of these inventions were replaced by today’s smart phones! I still have that exact Sony VHS/DVD player shown at 5:18 in my living room! Good job 👍
Does yours play burned DVDs? I have an elderly aunt/uncle who own a Cinevision brand and it fails at that task. Uncle loves to rewatch his VHS copies of the time he was a ballroom and theater dancer in the early 90s so it serves some purpose.
If it was not for Simon.maybe no smartphone would of been in use today.i am glad that people never gave up.there is always room for improvement for better and easier lives ,today!i just got a hunch feeling that one day,every household is going to own a robot.i got a feeling that you all have a feeling too.right now with my smart technology.i do almost everything on it.except...the shopping part...i still go to the malls,stores and supermarket.i hella love the self checkout lane/vending machines....some workers don't want to deal with customers,customers don't have to deal with workers,problem solved.one less headache for everybody.so put away the asprin😂
More info - the Sony Walkman happened because Sennheiser invented the open-back headphones, which meant that headphones could be made much smaller and still have very high quality. Sony were the first company to take out a licence for "open aire" headphones and the Walkman followed soon after. On the cassettes bit you showed a picture of an "ELcassette" this was a different format that ran ¼" tape at 3¾ ips instead of the ⅛" tape at 1⅞ ips of a compact cassette to give a sound quality equal to an open reel recorder. Open reel recording is still alive and kicking at many recording studios for people who like the sort of audio distortion that are inherent in analogue tape recording and LP records. Betamax was technically much better than VHS which is why it stayed around for longer than people may have thought - Sony also used the same tape for the professional Betacam format, which lasted until quality solid-state digital cameras came around. The same tape was also used in the Sony PCM-F1 format to record digital audio with a converter and betamax recorder - this was very high quality audio and was the best way of recording 16-bit digital audio until DAT came around. But you seemed to have forgotten about DAT and MiniDisk in the video. And, yes, I do remember all of these and was around at the time that this was all "hi-tech". My profession is in Professional Audio, so I was in at the start of most of the audio items mentioned - though 8-track was only popular in the US and never really made it over to Europe; though a professional cartridge, based on the 8-track but with the pinch-wheel as part of the recorder rather than in the cartridge, was popular with radio stations for playing jingles and adverts for many years until digital systems came along. As the cartridge was "never ending" you had to be careful and "find the splice" before starting recording as you did not want to record over the join as it would caud a drop-out when played.
You could even add MP3 Players/iPods as most people either use their phones as one or just stream music entirely. I still have a Discman, buy CDs, and have an iPod touch. I DID sell my turntable and vinyls though. It was fun at first but I’m rarely home nowadays.
I love these videos! They take me back to when I was young. I remember many of these things and owned several. It is fun to see how they evolved. I still have a few of them around the house even tho I don't actually use them much. Thanks Rhett, this was enjoyable as usual.
One thing that you skipped over when talking about reel to reel tape. Back in the 70s Teac, Panasonic and others made 4 track quadraphonic reel to reel players. My friend’s dad had one. With 4 speakers at each corner of the room it was incredible! He had Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon recorded in 4 track. During parts of the recording the sound would fly around the room in a circle, in an X pattern and so on giving an unrivaled and as far as I know an unparalleled listening experience. Can’t do that with a CD!
Playing different channels on differing speakers has been done on most recording mediums. CD's were no different in that respect. It's done by controlling recorded "channel" output.
@D.Card Except that CDs are stereo which implies 2 speakers 2 channels whereas true quadraphonic you have 4 channels 4 speakers each with their own individual track.
You could if the media were formatted for that. "Quad" was a brief fad in the 1970s which died out quickly; I remember the local album rock station in Orlando, FL advertised..."In Quad" for a few years. Yes, the sound separation and the ability of the recording artist(s) to achieve a more concert-like experience or perform special effects was enhanced, as Pink Floyd or Alan Parsons might do. Here was the problem: Only the most serious audiophiles with a lot of discretionary cash to spend could not only invest in the rather expensive, for the times, quadrophonic equipment, but also restock with all their titles that were re-issued in Quad. There was too much market resistance to take advantage of the superior sound experience, but at least it did drop the prices of the lesser grades of stereo equipment which made them more commonplace. It's the same reason that LP sales were still strong well after the 8-tracks and then cassettes were all over the place; folks simply had decent, functional turntables and liked the sound from them better than the tapes. Another issue was that 8-track recording decks and later cassette decks were just getting started, and already the record labels were suing both the hardware manufacturers like Sony, JVC, and Panasonic, and the media providers like Maxell, claiming they were profiting off of "copyright infringement", even though the makers and the media warned that their equipment and products were for private use only. This limited the sale of home recording equipment to the more expensive lines for stereo only while the various lawsuits were fought out in the courts, as none of the makers wanted to gamble on more widespread production and be liable for that many more "illegal" copies. They "won", but by then, Quad had already gone the way of the Dodo, a footnote of audiophile history.
Did anyone else have the converter for the 8-tracks to cassettes? It was used to play a cassette in an 8-track player. Game changing at the time when cassettes first came out since most people still had 8-track players in their cars. Oh, the 80s…😊
I have one of those adapters in my pile of stuff !!!! Was going to try it on my old yorx stereo with some of my collection of cassettes lol and 8tracks
I will buy physical media for as long as it is still available. I've lost track of more digital files than you could count. My discs are all nicely arranged on a bookcase and will likely outlive me.
My father bought me a walkman when we were kids and i would listen to his Bon Jovi collection while riding my bicycle in the morning. It felt like you are the coolest kid in town. My fav. song was 'Always' and side A and as soon as it ends i flip it over and Saturday night plays on side B. Those were the days
Rehetty - I only had a portable CD player for a short time , as soon as MINI-disc was Released in Japan , I bought EVERYTHING . I still listen to my MINI-disc today over my Generic Android mp3 player in my Smartphone. when I bought iTouch mp3 , I transfered my CD and mini-disc Libarys to iTouch. I bought the very LAST generation iTouch.
I really enjoyed this video. At 57 years old, I remember most of what you shared. I had to laugh at 8:30 when you referred to the audio cassette as "durable" are you kidding me? Throughout the early 1980s the bulk of my music was stored on audio cassettes, most of which would eventually get eaten by one of my cassette players. Almost anyone nearing their 60s will remember pulling wads of audio tape from a cassette player and trying to wind it back into the cassette with a pencil. Beta video tapes got a bum rap back in the day. My family's first VCR was a Beta and the picture quality was crystal clear. I think their only draw back was their limited recording time. VHS eventually won that battle but I still believe the Beta offered superior picture quality. Maybe we just got lucky and owned a very good Beta VCR. Speaking of supetior quality, my Mom was in a band in the 1960s, their music was recorded on a reel to reel player she owned until the 1980s. The sound quality was beyond anything else I have heard. Perhaps I am partial to anaog recordings. While listening to the band's rehearsals and demo, every sound was captured with such clarity it almost feels like I am sitting inside the studio. Mom had the tapes transferred onto CD and it never sounded the same. What I would give to have those reel to reel tapes again. Finally, the old transistor radio. Santa Claus got each of us kids one for Christmas of 1971. That was our big gift then, and it was the best gift I could dream of. Santa's budget was a lot less than with kids today, but that little radio was worth a million bucks to me. I carried that radio everywhere I went, except school. Today it sets inside a shadow box my wife made for our living room wall
What I miss most about THOSE days;Aside from being young,we spent a lot more time outdoors,and around friends.8 track tapes..I remember their short life span.They would start to drag,then you had to stuff a small piece of folded cardboard on the side of the cartridge,to make it function properly,but only for a short time!And,You'd try to catch the beginning of the next track,but it would sometimes SKIP over!😱.So,you had to wait,listen(tolerate!)to 4 or 5 songs you weren't planning on hearing!,then try again!I don't THINK?8 tracks will ever come back again!Good ridance!!Of course,that's what I thought about LP's!AND Converse sneakers!...haha!
I remember when cds first came out and they were amazing. No more rewinding, always hated that. Sound quality was so much better. In my opinion they are still the best format for listening to music.
Great video, I'm 76 years old now, and I owned most of the products in your video. The only thing I never owned was the LaserDisc player, it was definitely out of my price range. Now I do everything and anything on my smart phone, but when I go out I still wear a wristwatch, is easy to look at my wrist for the time, instead of pulling out my phone. One more thing I have a cabinet full of hundreds of DVDs, which are worthless , because I subscribe to streaming service, on-demand content, and I love it.
Ah, the memories!! I had a Walkman first, then a Discman!! I also remember playing with my Mum's typewriter as a kid!! I never could learn typing!! Thanks for the nostalgic video, Rhetty!! XXXX 👍💗
As a high school student in the late 1960s, I took a typing class. We used 'manual' machines--not electric typewriters. [I don't remember if it lasted an entire semester, or just a few months.]
Nadia you may not have learnt to type, but you can not be too bad as I assume you typed a comment. In the 1970 I took typing as a school subject. Only a couple of males in a class of about 30. I did manage to learn to touch type and while I no longer have a typewriter, guess what? Every computer has a typewriter keyboard!
My handwriting is such that now I’m glad for typing. My handwriting is not legible due to hand tremors. SCM had a portable typewriter that had the letters on a little wheel. This was similar to the IBM Selectric typewriter that was used in offices for years in that it was quiet and didn’t have the letters mounted on little hammers. And the carriage was stationary and the little wheel moved across the page as you typed.
@@carch7243 You better know it! My dear mom was a vinyl collector and she started me collecting when I was 15 years in age. I now have somewhere in the house of, as a guess, 4000 or more vinyl recordings. Aaaand, I have a 1974 model Sansui 9090DB receiver with a Audio Technica turntable to play my vinyl on. I am now 75 years in age and I'll take my vinyl any day of the week!
@@johnnypool2206 While I have replaced my amp from my younger days, I still have my JVC turntable that I love. 2 sets of 3-way speakers work out just fine. I do not have a count of my vinyl, but I know it is no where near 4000. I still have the first 2 albums I purchased back in the early 70s. Black Sabbath Paranoid, and Supertramp Crime of the Century (their greatest album!).
I always hated getting up to change records every half hour or less so I got a Technics direct drive changer that could play six records consecutively. About three hours worth at a time. Along with a 125 watt per channel receiver I could loosen nails in the house if I wanted to. I don’t know whether the receiver works well enough for that now but I won’t sell either one since they’re impossible to find. The benefit is they can be repaired instead of being thrown out. No IC’s, just basic high quality electronic parts. Quality was something that was sacrificed to be inexpensive in the eighties on. Between my parents and siblings there’s a lot of these we still have where they’re practically indestructible, unless they got taken apart by the wrong hands.
I'm a doctor and still use my pager every day! Hate using cell phone texting for messages, I don't hear the phone sometimes when it goes off, but the pager is unmistakeable and beeps for like a minute so I don't accidentally ignore it
All necessary to come up with innovative ideas and inventions. But hey when it's not used so much it opens the door for those that want to get ahead! Thank you for watching!
Old inventions unused today consists of love,honesty,and respect. Children run the home now,not the parents. Stern discipline in the home and at school, Christian values, Automatic record changers are now gone as it was discovered that stacking records on the machine can easily scratch them. Good manners have fallen by the way side. Loud music has become an epidemic in this country. Grownups now don’t act like grownups like they used to.
@Rhetty, thanks for the walk down memory lane. I had a Sony Discman in my car, that used a cassette tape converter - I put it on the passenger seat, and yes it jumped anytime I hit a pothole. I started my first professional job in 1988 and was amazed at how you could send entire documents instantly via Profs (IBM) and faxes. My family had a remote control TV as early as the late 70s...my father would announce a channel change and I would get up and make it so.
Rehetty - today in 2022 , I still use a Radio Receiver, but its a DIGITAL Communications Receiver , and I can Listen to any kind of Analog and Digital transmission , including LW, SW, HF, VHF, UHF and SHF, also LSB & USB. it can Listen to Multiple Analog and Digital modes.
Oh yes, a trip down memory lane! Thank you for all these fun videos and the hard work that went into making them. I certainly enjoy them and they bring a smile to my face every time!
Yeah, obsolete is a relative term. For example, it is best practice to keep a battery powered radio in your basement for access to emergency broadcast service. In a tornado. Cell coverage might replace this .. but better to be redundant. For things like sports broadcasts, even less obsolete. I sit here on a smartphone using unlimited data to type this. But I am not going to chase down multiple subscription services.
@@rhiannonk9030 I don't disagree for backpacking. But for a bike trip maps are just not convenient. Another problem is... It used to be easy to buy topographic survey maps. These days they are becoming hard to get current maps in some Countries. Not obsolete, but no longer reliably available.
I think the greatest invention was caller ID. People now days don't know what it was like for years we got stuck answering telemarketing calls or that one guy who talks non stop for 4 hours straight. The dilemma... do I answer and risk getting stuck in a long time consuming conversation, or do I not answer and risk missing something very important?
I am am a millennial born in 1991. When I was in middle school I remember my dad had a mini disc player in the early 2000s. Also remember my mom had a blue sky pager that matched her sky blue car in the 1990s, she was in the nursing field. My grandma got me a radio with a tape cassette player when I was in elementary school in the early 90s.
I was in one room when I heard my daughter let out a shreik. Turns out she was going through my " back in the day" collection. I went to check and she had found my old vinyls from the early 1970's. "Dad, these are so cool!!! Can I have them?" Needless to say she owned them before I could answer and still has them to this day.
As a pensioner, I love a bit of nostalgia, so thanks for the video. I had quite a lot of the items you showed. I'd probably add the atari console to your list, my first introduction to gaming and I've never looked back. At 68 I have both Xbox series X and a good gaming PC which I enjoy daily in my retirement lol
My mother used to play space invaders on the 48K spectrum when us kids where at school and not using it, Pretty sure she would have whipped ours asses if you could same the score.
@@markdavis4754 Does anyone remember that Atari game, Montazuma's Revenge? 🤩 I still remember my first all-night, solo gaming experience, trying to get to the end of the game. I still have my console and all the games too. Thank y'all for the awesome memories! 💞
Yep! An 8-track mounted under the dash and an FM converter in the glove box. Of course, the surface-mount speakers were placed on the package shelf, inside the rear window. Ah, the good old days!
Rehetty - the really GREAT thing about MINI-disc is you had Storage that was compatable with an Entire CD worth of Tracks , unlike with Analog tapes, and DCC .
I liked this video very much. I am personally familiar with all that from the 50’s and forward to today. Loved seeing the old electronics of which I am still guilty of owning.
Facinating slice of techno history. No wonder so many likes. I remember building a transistor radio back in the late 1950s with my Dad's help. The transistors had to have a heat-sink clipped to the 3 terminal wires to solder them as heat could destroy them. The head boy at my school in 1959 had a PYE pocket transistor radio and it was almost the size of half a brick! I envied the fact that he would listen to cricket scores during "break" in the Playground. What an astonishingly fast evolution to today.
I still use cassette tapes and VHS tapes. I've even been able to record from Freeview to a VHS tape so I don't miss my shows when I'm out. I had an old VHS copy of a movie I didn't even like so I used a bit of sticky tape over the notch to turn it into essentially a recordable tape.
I still have an 8-track collection and a player that I use to listen to them now and again. Some great stuff: Stones, Michael Jackson, Cheap Trick, etc...
I remember my uncle showing us family trips and events on the projector. He had slides that he would inject in the projector and the photos were shown on a screen he would pull up. I also remember and still have a view master.
Who remembers the six feet long wooden stereo furniture that had an AM/FM radio, turntable that played 45, 33, and 78 and sometimes 16 RPM and also had (sometimes) a new fangled eight track tape slot? There were record clubs that you could specify what kind of recorded music you required. Also book clubs. Pre-Amazon.
3:00 pagers are FAR from extinct. They are used heavily in the medical field. Pagers will receive pretty much EVERYWHERE. The transmitters push out a LOT of power and penetrate buildings very well.
I was about to type this as well- I worked in a medical institution a few years ago and pagers were still used in full force for the doctors that were on-call.
Just like magnetic tape for computers deemed unused in the video - but backups are still pretty widely stored on tapes - sure not directly used to access specific data all the time, but whole database migration to tape and back in case there's a problem - daily, weekly and occasionally used in many data centers.
@@CobraFat2000 Was just going to mention the the cassette tape as storage. Writing down the the tape counter numbers so you could find the start of a program. God help you if you forgot to. Or forgot to reset it first. 😅 Computer Programing in BASIC was bad enough, But we were using TRS-DOS from TANDY instead of MS-DOS.
In recent years both the cassette and the Walkman (well, just portable cassette players) are making a comeback (nostalgia craze most likely). Also remember being on call in the 90's in my 1st IT gig and getting a pager.
There's only one company still manufacturing cassette mechanisms (the inside part) and any retro player you find has it. The sound quality/wow and flutter is very poor. Renewed interest is in vintage equipment and those portable players didn't last as well as the full sized decks. If tapes ever truly make a comeback it will have to be deemed profitable enough by a mega corporation capable of producing quality internals and that isn't likely to happen. That's the trouble with nostalgia tech- even if there are a million people lined up to buy it, the market is driven towards profit.
I'm a millenial, and i used most of these devices, or at least held it in my hands. I'm tech junkie tho, and i live in Ukraine, so the technology lagged a bit while getting to my country. In ninetieth we used technology of your eighties, and it was new to us. Now, with globalisation kicking in and USSR long gone it already catched up.
I always wanted one of those but never had one. My grandparents had one for camping in their RV qnd then they couldn't ever pick up anything where they went. Thank you for watching!
I'm surprise you didn't include the vinyl record somehow. That said, this was a wonderful piece, and it brought back many memories. Thank you. Good video.
@@RETROTV1394 i dont understand the hype. Why would you use an far inferior, outdated format? I get that some people do this out of nostalgia. But not everyone.
I'm an old guy. I still have quite a few cassettes, DVD movies, record albums, and a Walkman and Discman. Some items you didn't mention are film cameras, the Polaroid Land camera, movie cameras, film projectors, overhead projectors in the classroom, and slide projectors, just to name a few.
Wow, what a great nostalgic channel. I was born in the late 80s but I remember a lot of these items from growing up, or my parents or grandparents having them. I am happily binge watching these lol!
Marvelous.I own Two V.C.R and aselected collection of 600 VHS Tapes.I own 5Nos.Tape Recorders and selected collection of 800 Audio Tapes.All are still working well.I am 77 Years old.This has taken me to that Era now whenever I am using these.
A wonderful trip down memory lane. Remember Sunday nights after you went to bed, listening to Dr Demento on your transistor radio with the earphone?! Or ordering things from a catalog? Before 800 numbers, you had to mail your order blank to the catalog company, then wait four to six weeks for your merchandise to arrive. Sometimes, the anticipation was absolutely grueling; and there was no package tracking. Today's age of instant gratification has made so many folks impatient and short-tempered. ☮️
Great info! I was a teenager in the 80s and had lots of these devices. I was into CD players in the late 80s through late 90s. They introduced a feature in the late 90s that stored 3-30 seconds of data so the music you were hearing wouldn't skip. I actually ran laps around the track with one of these players on my hip.
I'm 19. My family was a bit backward. I am studying and working as a computer technician. But I still use a Full Size VHS Camera, a Walkman, a Printing Calculator, a Pager, VHS recorder, Dot Matrix Printer and a black and white portable TV. I also have a radiogram that I'm working on - needs a few new valves. I may be odd but hey - everyone has their little addiction.
I had the blue Walkman cd player, but in yellow. It came with the headphones that wrapped around the back of the head. It fit in a special pocket in my winter jacket. I was very happy when my first flip phone could hold mp3s and replaced it
