The credit card machine took less than 30 seconds. You handed over your card. The attendant placed your card on the machine so that its raised characters faced upwards, then placed the pre-printed, multilayered form over your card, then slid the imprinter-head back and forth over the the raised characters. Clack! Clack! Then wrote in the amount of the sale, handed your card and the multilayered form to you which you signed. Then the attendant gave you the carbon copy, keeping the original to bill the credit card company with. It wasn't as fast as today but it really wasn't too bad.
It didn’t actually process the payment, it was basically just a card copier and the info had to be processed by hand later. Very easy for scammers/card thieves to get away with making large purchases and never paying for them. This was why you often had to show your driver’s license so they could compare name and signature.
Processing was another matter entirely. The bank and credit card company took forever to process. Then it went to a digital system where you passed the card through the register about 1989. Much faster but no pins. The store computer would send the transactions every night via external computer modems over phone lines.
Yes Kabir, Cigarettes were 25 cents a pack from the machine. When I was a kid there was an 8 oz size of Coke you could get from a vending machine that was 10 cents, Gas/Petrol was 36 cents/gallon in the US. My parents bought a brand new 1968 Ford Mustang (car) for $1,400. Prices have gone way up but wages have not.
@@beckiru That's just stating the core meaning behind "inflation." The problem is that whenever things such as "Minimum Wage" goes up, so does the costs of goods. Using that methodology the world is going no where fast. In order for things to actually show improvement governments the world over have to do things like increase the minimum wage, while at the same time either freezing the cost of goods or encouraging companies to lower the costs of living. Companies and major corporations would have to take a hit to profits in the beginning, but would allow for inflation to greatly decrease over time turning over a profit in the long run. Companies like SONY have experienced this first hand with their release of the PlayStation 3. When 1st released the unit cost $699.99 USD and barely covered the costs of building the device per the cost of the parts used. SONY cut the price 3 more times taking it down to $299.99 to compete with MircoSoft's Xbox 360 (also $299.99). This cost SONY profits in the beginning, however with time and sales the costs of parts went down and SONY started turning a profit even with the lowered price point. The main problem is that major businesses are greedy and most are not willing to do what is needed to decrease inflation. So as minimum wage increases so does the cost of living and it stagnates.
I remember my mom telling me about how when she was young, she could walk into a gas station with $5 and fill the tank of her Mustang, buy a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Coke, and still have change left. For reference, shes 75 years old.
Many later typewriters used the correction ribbons or whiteout as already mentioned, but correctable film ribbons were also developed that used a second sticky ribbon to actually lift the ink off the page rather than cover it. You could use it with colored paper.
That was too newfangled to me. 😂😂 I still have my old college Olivetti in bright red. I was such a whippersnapper back then! I named it Manuel. (Manual, get it? Ha!)
To correct typewriter mistakes you would eject the paper to the line you want, get a little white out and paint out the mistake, you reinsert the page to the line and start typing again. Later typewriters have the backspace key that does a little white-out patch. It was a process as it was long. Plus no automatic formatting so you had to measure yourself and often it was wrong. I still have a typewriter but it’s more of a display piece for conversation than actual use. It still works though. Some typewriters have the discs of type which is the same idea as the arm system just less crazy.
In one of my first secretarial jobs decades ago, I had to type a paper with a number of tables and columns on it. It took me over an hour to do the calculations, but I finally got it done and typed an acceptable copy. When I removed it from the typewriter and put it on my desk, I saw a big thumb print on the paper from my makeup. I had to retype it. Since I'd done the hard part, it didn't take as long, but I was po'ed to say the least. With a few exceptions (job interviews and the first few weeks after starting a new job) I quit wearing makeup to work afer that day.
TV Guide magazine still exists, even in print form. I use it every day. Useful for me; I have all the digital menus, dvr, streaming, etc. but, like the physical highlighting of main things I want to set dvr for, or just to remind me.
Being a child of the 70s, I feel proud to have played outside everyday with my friends, without cell phones or cameras. We rode our bikes everywhere. We played in the woods. We went home when it got dark. The TV had ABC, NBC, CBS, and public television. That was it. And program ended around midnight, after which only a test pattern was beamed. I think pay phones were 10 cents for a few minutes. I think they still make $2 bills. You ask for them at a bank. If you made a mistake with the typewriter, you either lived with it or maybe used something like Wite-out, if it even existed yet. The last typewriters sometimes included a strip of Witeout under the black and red strips of ink, so you could type out the mistake by backing up and hitting the same letter. That was hi-tech, man! IBM desktop computers were coming, and simple word processors would too. Btw, you mentioned Polaroids, and that was a thing. I learned last year that I'm kin to the guy who invented it, Edwin Land. He also invented polarizing, ie sunglasses and camera filters. He had more than 500 patents and is number 3 on the list of top US inventors behind Edison and Thomson(?). Anyway, wiki Edwin H Land. He was an interesting guy. Admitted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977. Worked on early satellites. Worked for presidents. I digress. Sorry. The Rolodex should never be obsolete-- we need a place to store all that info for when we drop our phones in the ocean by accident. 🙂
My friend kept a tape recording of the tones pay phone makes when you insert coins so he can make free calls. He laments the passing of the phone booth.
Hi Kabir! Good video. I'm 66 and I remember when some of these things were not even introduced yet. As far as the credit card processors, that only took 15 or 20 seconds.
In high school, I worked at a retail store. We used the old CC slide machines and had to call a number for approval for purchases over a certain amount. When we were bored, we would call the approval number and just talk to the people who answered LOL
In the late 90s working retail, we would use the CC machine only for cards that would not swipe correctly. For any transaction where we had to type in numbers, we were required to swipe with the carbon paper to prove the person actually had the card in possession and wasn't just reciting numbers.
Phone books, especially if you lived in a large metropolitan area, were handy for something else: using as a booster seat for small children at the dinner table or at a restaurant.
I remember a story sent in to Reader's Digest when I was a kid - a lady from a large city was visiting family in a smaller town, and they went out to eat. The youngest of the children needed a booster seat, but they were all already in use. So the visiting relative helpfully suggested that the waitress grab a phone book instead. The waitress gave a puzzled look, went back to the front desk, and returned with a local phone book, which lifted the child up a whole 3/8". 😄
When I was a kid (12ish) the local bowling alley was a easy place to buy cigarettes out of a vending machine. The other place to but cigarettes was our neighborhood 7/11 ....but there was a catch. You couldn't buy cigarettes underage unless you had a note from a parent. That's when the 7/11 clerk would hand us a pen and paper to write our own note right there at the counter. 80's were a little different than they are today. ;)
I still use carbon paper, but not for its intended purpose. I use it to trace wing ribs, formers, etc., when scratchbuilding R/C and free-flight airplanes. . . .
My family never bougbt a TV Guide. The channel schedule came out in the Sunday paper in the form of a small magazine. Many newspapers still do this today and include cable and satelite channels !!! Back when there were only 3 or 4 channels, it wasn't difficult to keep up with what you wanted to watch. The real inconvenience was having to go to the tv and turn a knob to change the channel.
Bette Nesmith Graham invented liquid paper. It was a white liquid that came in a little bottle with a brush in the cap. You wipe it on and let it dry; it didn't take long. Then you could type over your mistake. It was also called "white out". I also remember a spooled strip (like tiny tape) you could swipe over the mistake, which transferred white pigment to the paper, covering the typing. Some typewriters had a correction ribbon. You could backspace to the beginning of your mistake, engage the correction ribbon, and retype the erroneous text. The correction ribbon transferred white pigment over the black ink.
Ugh! In the 80's, when cable television became available, the idea was we paid the networks to not have commercials. Now, we pay for cable and still have commercials! They are banking! And it's become a norm to pay for streaming, while you are required to pay extra for the "top" shows or movies! I recently saw that people are paying exorbitant amounts for sports. WTF? I bought an antenna for local stations that air the NFL gamesfor $20.
We have a pizza place where I live that still has a jukebox. I can't speak for every place in the US but where I live in North Carolina you don't ever see them. I still see an occasional phone booth but they are located around poverty-stricken areas. A place I worked at still used a typewriter and we would use whiteout on a mistake and type over it once it dried...lol
You could get TV listings for free in the Sunday paper. You could subscribe to have the paper delivered to your door ever day or just on Sundays. The Sunday paper had loads of extras, rings of advertisements, a huge classified section and comic strips (the funny pages). In the early 80s, I bought my first pack of cigarettes for 75¢ at an amusement park. I still own a Rolodex. It's handier for addresses. In my tiny rural town, there's a pay phone outside the telephone company that's free of charge for local calls. I loved the soda machines when I was a kid because you'd get a 16oz glass bottle instead of cans or plastic bottles. You could get a refund for the bottles at a lot of grocery stores. Typing speed and accuracy used to be a big deal on resumes. You'd take typing tests for any office job and it could make it break your employability. I wish they'd included other items like rabbit ears, 8-track tapes, mimeographs, microfiche, floppy disks, 33s and 45s, pay stalls in restrooms, black and white TVs, VHS tapes, attic fans, and reel mowers. What a fun stroll down memory lane!
Being a vendor refilling cigarette machines used to be one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Imagine driving a van with hundreds of cartons of cigarettes around all the roughest (and drunkest) parts of town. It was a low risk/high reward robbery target.
My parents replaced our aging Zenith console TV with a fancy new Curtis Mathes console TV circa 1984 - both CRTs, of course. It cost over $600. I could put flatscreen TVs in three rooms for that much money today.
I truly miss reading the newspaper. There was simething soothing about a cup of fresh coffee & reading the news in the morning. I still have a rolodex and address book. If youve ever lost your phone you realize all the phone numbers you no longer have menorized. Its a great back-up.
I used to get a phone book up until about 5 years ago. One day out of the year, there would be a book on my door step. I never used it. You use white-out to make corrections on a typewriter. You paint over the mistake and wait for it to dry, then retype over it.
I used “correction tape”. Position “tape” that had thin layer of white film retype the wrong character to correct it. If you used colored paper, your mistake was obvious.
I’ve had a fax machine every place I’ve worked since 1999. I see juke boxes quite a bit. Vending machines are at offices, schools, clinics, hospitals, and outside of certain businesses. They’re hardly on their way out in my opinion.
I remember when my grandmother would give me a dime (ten cents) to go get a pack of cigarettes out of a machine for her. I was very young and thought the machine was fun. Those little plastic containers that film came in was one very popular for storing a certain herb in. They were the perfect size to put in your pocket. 😉. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. The school put masking tape on all the keys so if you forgot where a letter was, you had to look it up in a book. Sounds cruel but it worked. If you made a mistake you would use a product called Liquid Paper. You painted over the letter and then had to wait for it to dry. It was still faster than starting a letter all over again. Liquid paper is still available today.
There's a such thing as White Out. It was liquid in a bottle with a brush connected to the cap. You would brush cover the mistake with the liquid,let it dry and type over it.
Here are 5 facts casual Monkees fans may not know about Michael Nesmith. 1. Nesmith's mom invented whiteout. Nesmith was raised in Dallas by his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented the first correction fluid in 1956 while working as a typist. She turned her whiteout, Liquid Paper, into an office staple, selling the company to Gillette in 1979 for $47.5 million plus royalties. When Graham died in 1980, Nesmith inherited an estimated $50 million.
My first cassette was The Jackson Five 😆Our parents knew what good music is! Edit: Every office I've ever worked in also has some type of vending machine and most hospitals and schools will as well! All of the bars around here have digital Jukeboxes, you use an app on your phone to pay and pick your song. I also remember using a typewriter in the 3rd grade for my first ever book report, due to us owning a computer but no printer at the time, but it was a fancy one that had White-Out in it so it would delete it for you. You still had to wait a few seconds for it to dry though and it looked like crap. I also used that credit card thing when I worked at Chipotle in 2010, the registers went down so you had to manually add tax to everything and add it all up. Then you had to right on the slip how much it was and THEN take a copy of the card, it was horrible!
I would much rather read a actual newspaper than read the news on my phone. A newspaper doesn't have pop up ads, or disappear if you stop reading for a few minutes.
My first 8-track cassette was Elton John's "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player". I bought it in the Canadian Tire store in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
Being an American, I have only recently learned about the wonders of Canadian Tire, and I must visit one someday. Shoutout to The Autopian for teaching me about this magical place.
There were only 3 TV channels when I was a kid. Then along came cable which was originally so you could watch TV without ads. MTV was all music, now it's no music at all.
Here we had 4 channels way back in the 60s. ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS... then in the late 60s maybe early 70s UHF channels became a thing adding two more locally. This of course required a separate adapter box since TVs did not have the UHF tuner at that time.
My mum used to have an electric typewriter that plugged into AC in the 90s. I think it was a Brother. Basically it was the last of the fancy, technologically advanced models that came in just before home PCs became affordable. If you made a mistake there was an 'erase' key which had a special ribbon cartridge that would stamp a white ribbon over the letter and essentially leave a white film over it. Think 'white-out' or 'tipex' in transfer form. It still had the indent in the paper of the letter beneath, but theoretically you could type over the top and it would be invisible. If you didn't let the white ribbon dry well enough first or it was getting old, it would often flake off the page and reveal the letters beneath, or if you tried to fold the page. I used to write on it all the time and erased whole sentences! My mum would get so mad because apparently the eraser cartridge was really expensive!
That guy's channel is very accurate. I lived through all of that including the very first Apple computers. My generation was the first computer at home for processing generation. Though earlier I learned typing on a selective typewriter that had the built in correction tape. If you made a mistake, you went back over with a special button to raise the correction ribbon then retyped what you misspelled. Then returned to the cleared off spot and typed a corrected spelling. A lot better than the earlier white out. Yes, those cigarettes were 25 cents. My parents would send me to buy them cigarettes from the machine as they were too busy. No one batted an eye. Kids had easy access to cheap cigarettes though through education we never developed the habit.
I have a black metal Underwood typewriter from about 100 years ago in my livingroom as decor. I remember that I actually used it when I was a kid even though by then, it was already a dinosaur and we had a new beige electric one 😂. I remember we could still purchase the double spools of half red and half black ink. I loved the sound it made when you used it, but you had to hit the keys with a lot of force. The electric typewriter had a rotating ball covered in raised letters, numbers and symbols. The old Underwood had long thin arms with individual letters, numbers, and symbols and they would sometimes get stuck together if you could type pretty fast. We had the electric typewriter for maybe only a decade when they began manufacturing big, bulky word processors. The name sounds like an old sci-fi movie😂. In 1984, I was a year out of high school and took a secretarial training course where we learned typing on electric typewriters, on the word processor, short-handed, 10-key, etc. I landed my first office job in 1985 and I still remember when they brought the first PC in and hooked it up on my desk. I actually preferred my typewriter at first because you were practically writing code to compose letters using an old word processing program called "Symphony." The spreadsheet program was "Lotus 1-2-3." Then "Amipro" came out which was a game changer. It was more like "Word," which is still widely used today. You had to be very creative back then to get around things that hadn't caught up technologically yet. Sometimes I think the average person was a lot smarter back then because when you wanted to get something done, you had to figure it out. Now, it's like our phones spoon feed everyone all day long. What kid rides their bike to the library to research a topic anymore? Now you Google anything and get the consensus for an answer. Back when I was a kid, we had more epistemological reasons for our beliefs and understanding of the world. When you read a book, you get the author's linear thought process as to how s/he arrived at the answer so you knew why you believed it did not believe it was so. Now, nobody seems to know why they believe anything to be true. They just Googled it, which doesn't mean it's necessarily right. It's just the most excepted answer, like when hundreds of years ago it was widely accepted that the Earth was flat. People are way more gullible and prone to swallow propaganda because they trust in what tech oligarchs feed them. It's frightening in my opinion. I think everyone should read controversial books and fight censorship so they don't end up brainwashed sheep without even knowing it. I would hate to die a tool ... Worse yet, a blunt instrument.
There was erasable typing paper & you could just use a pencil eraser but it wasn't ideal especially for business because the typing ink could smudge when handling a document. Regular typing paper was preferable and using either White Out (a fluid that covered mistakes) or some later typewriters had corrective ribbons and you could go back and type over the errors having switched to that ribbon. There were also little acetate squares with white out on them that you could use by backspacing to the error, insert it and correct that way. Trivia: White Out was invented by the mother of Michael Nesmith who was one of The Monkees, when he was a teen. She was a secretary and he helped her make it in their kitchen and she'd sell it. Eventually word spread and she sold the rights and became very wealthy.
I had to use a typewriter growing up in the early 80s for book reports and stuff. If you made a mistake on mine, you would go back to the letter, use the correction ribbon and type the same letter, which would basically cover the original with the same letter in white, to make it much less obvious. You'd then go back one more time and type the correct letter. It was a hassle, so I was pretty slow when typing so I wouldn't make many mistakes. Back when I was still working retail about 6 years ago, we still had and used those manual credit card machines when the power would go out in the store. They called it something like "blackout mode", and so we'd have to follow the customer around with a carbon copy order form, and get the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number of each item to write down, so the cashier would know how to ring up the sale when the power came back on. The bottom of the form had the blank area to put the credit card to make the imprint. Thankfully I think we only ever had to do that maybe 3 times in the 12 years I worked there.
White-out… if you made a mistake while typing, you’d grabbed your trusty bottle of white-out. You would try to use a thinly and smoothly layer as possible. Blow on it to dry it and then just type over it. When you were sure it had efficiency dried.
I'm typing this in as of the time stamp 9:32 so I do not know if it gets mentioned further into the video, but I remember coin-op arcade and midway games. There were (some still exist but are few and far between) arcade buildings with pinball, video and midway style gaming machines that would operate using quarters here in the U.S. Later many establishments traded out quarters for custom made tokens whereas the more you purchased (the larger bill amount used) the more tokens you received. Some more successful businesses even had special sales on tokens (usually on the weekends to encourage children to participate) that would double the total amount of tokens purchased. Nowadays modern arcade establishments use a sort of debit card system to pre-sell whole blocks of time that cut off gameplay once the time has expired (whether or not you have died or failed repeatedly at the current attempt at play) in order to give players a chance to purchase another block of playing time. This is both a boon and a downside for gamers. This system allows weaker skilled game players a guaranteed time slot of play (if they died too much or fail constantly they get to start over for free as long as said player has time remaining on their paid block of time). However, for excellent gamers with master skill levels in gaming this is a severe rip-off that often cuts off players that have either never died or have not failed enough times to warrant a complete restart of the level, task and/or objective at hand. This is where home consoles (Nintendo, PlayStation & Xbox) and PC gaming become more convenient for the modern gamer, despite their skill level in gaming. Not being stuck behind a predetermined paywall for set time limits allows home gamers to play at their digression (even giving important features not found in modern arcades, such as pausing the game to get snacks or use the bathroom).
When you use a typewriter and you made a mistake, you had a whiteout strip that you would use to whiteout the error. You would have to backup the carriage (many typewriters allowed you to backup the carriage one space at a time), then you would insert the whiteout strip and strike the incorrect character again. Then you would have to backup the carriage again and strike the right character. Some typewriters would even allow you to disable moving forward when you strike the character so that it would remain in the space.
1) When I was kid in the 1970s, a local call cost 10 cents at a payphone. It then jumped all the way to 25 cents, I believe during the 1980s. (I think back to 1988-1992, when I attended college/university to study engineering. It's remarkable how many fewer distractions we had back then. In my dormitory room I had no Internet, no e-mail, no cell/mobile phone, no cable TV, and no TV at all initially. If I hadn't studied 6-8 hours per day, I would have been bored.) 2) I remember cigarette vending machines, which of course required no proof of age. Toward the end of their existence, they were found only in bars. My father told me that at one point in the 1960s it was 23 cents for a pack. He would put a quarter (25 cents) into the machine and would receive a pack with two pennies in change that someone had hand-inserted into each pack. How would you like to have that job? 3) When the TV Guide arrived in the mail at my house, I would go through it and take note of any non-regular programming I wanted to see. The on-screen guide of upcoming programming is what made TV Guide obsolete. It does still exist, and in paper form, as an entertainment magazine like People or Entertainment Weekly. 4) It's a myth that the Internet is the sole reason the newspaper industry is dying in the U.S. Most young people were not reading them years before online news became available (at 53, I'm the youngest person I know who reads one daily, either in print or online). I suspect newspapers just assumed that young people would automatically develop the habit of reading them, just as previous generations had. I switched years ago to a digital newspaper subscription, become the cost of home delivery was dramatically raised. 5) Where I live, everyone received free phone books automatically for years after they became obsolete. Since most were thrown away, that practice was finally stopped several years ago. I googled whether they even still exist: some sources say online only, others say you can request a paper book. An online phone book is absurd, because the only people who want a paper phone book never or rarely go online. Businesses were listed alphabetically by type in the Yellow Pages, so there are many in the U.S. whose names begin with "A," or even "AA" or "AAA." 6) The two-dollar bill became a collector's item precisely because so few were produced, and this was long before using cash became less common. It's not the only denomination that the U.S. Mint has created but produced in small quantities. They did the same with the "Sacagawea" dollar coin in the early 2000s. Why bother making any at all? 7) The original video overstates how obsolete vending machines are. Those that sell sandwich and other perishable foods have become rare. They were mostly found in "automats" (the first automat open in Berlin in 1895). I vaguely remember them in the 1970s when they were dying out. Today, 24-7 convenience stores provide the same service. 8) I took a typing class in 1984 or 1985 in high school. Even though the school had a few early PCs and Apple computers, and the electric typewriter existed, we used manual typewriters. I remember my fingers being sore from the amount of force required to press the keys. Typewriters are still used in some offices for specialized uses--addressing envelopes, duplicate/triplicate forms, non-standard paper sizes. 9) If anyone wonders what good have we gotten from spending billions of dollars on space exploration, digital photography is one of the answers. 10) Fax machines are still used in the U.S. The printer I have at home for my computer can send and receive faxes. I've had to use that feature, but not for a long time. 11) I have a credit card that still has raised numbers, which were necessary for making carbon copies.
Funny note about the $2 bill. They were always kinda rare to see but, working in retail, I noticed a resurgence in their use. A lot of " gentlemen's clubs" have taken to giving men 2s instead of singles for change to tip the girls with. I could always tell if a girl that came in to shop was a dancer because they would often pay with an unusual number of $2 bills lol.
I took a photography art class when I was 16. I really enjoyed the process of developing film. It’s really something the first time that you do it. You put the photo paper into the developer liquid and suddenly an image appears.
The credit card thing didn't take too long. 15 seconds or so, but it was so much less secure. That carbon copy receipt thing got submitted to the bank, so the business wouldn't actually get payment on it for a couple of days.
There were three broad methods for dealing with typos on typewriters. If neatness wasn’t that important just strike out the word or words and continue afterward, white it out (with liquid paper or some form of correction tape)and type over it, or some later typewriters used a dry ink tape and had a correction ribbon that could pull the dry ink film back off the paper for neater corrections, especially on colored paper.
Man.... I had my mini boom box in the 80s, popping in a blank cassette, listening to the top 40 on the radio, recording my favorite songs, then doing it again the following Sunday! I remember every one of these. ❤😢
We still have printed TV programs in Germany. There are still people, especially older ones, that don’t use the internet. Same goes for telephone books and newspapers.
I owned a typewriter in college. It was during college (1985- 1989) that IBM made a portable clunky computer processor. My college friend had one I borrowed because her Dad worked for IBM. Using a typewriter you used white out liquid you placed over mistakes or you retyped the whole page. To edit, add or move paragraphs the same.
In the 1980s and 1990s, some models of typewriters had a reel of white-out tape. If the typist made a mistake, he/she would move the typewriter back to the spot of the mistake, hold down the “correction” key, and retype the mistake to cover up the mistake with whiteout from the tape. The typist would then return to the spot of the mistake, type in the correct key, and then resume typing.
I actually had a typewriter as a kid that I got from my mom. And when you made a mistake you actually could fix it, but you needed a separate ribbon of ink that was white and you basically typed over your mistake with it.
This was fun to watch. I really enjoyed your reaction to the old ways. Makes me wonder what things will be in another 20 years! I'll be watching from up above by then!!
25 cents indicates the coin the machine accepted not the price which was about 3.50 a pack from the machine back then but store price was about 2.00 a pack then . I remember Marlboro priced at . 86 cents a pack
mistakes using type writers were corrected using a piece of correction paper- a small piece of paper with a white transfer coating on it. Back space to the beginning of the mistake, place the correction paper over it, and retype the mistake, thus covering it up. Or you could get a bottle of white out, and brush the white liquid on the paper covering over the mistake.
I took typing my entire 9th grade year of high school. I used White Out (which is a thick white correction fluid) to erase typos. It was quite time consuming because I'd have to use the White Out over the typo, wait for it to dry and then type over the mistake. Computer keyboards with a backspace are much more convenient.
@@angelagraves865 for me as well. I'm so glad I was required to take it in HS. It has been quite helpful to know how to touch type. But I am happy to be able to type on a keyboard where I can easily backspace to correct typos instead of using White Out.
This should be titled, 'Everyday Objects from the 20th Century. . .' Lots & lots of old stuff from previous centuries & millennia that aren't here, of course. There was a fluid developed back in the day called, 'liquid paper'. It was used to paint over mistakes that typists made while using the typewriter. It was invented by a woman named, 'Betty Nesmith', whose son, 'Michael Nesmith', was an actor/musician/writer/director/producer/singer who rose to fame on his own as a member of the band, the Monkees.
We always used the typewriter eraser wheel, that had the brush on one end. In high school, we had a typewriter class. I hated trying to do the math when you had to center something on the page.
My typewriter had correction ribbon. So, the bottom half of the ribbon was white, and the top half was black. Normal typing hit the black part of the ribbon. When you wanted to do a correction, you pushed down a key which raised the white ribbon into position and then you would type the incorrect letters again and it would print the letter again only in white essentially "whiting out" the mistake. You'd then go back and type the correct letters. It was a royal pain!
Weekly TV guides that were printed by newspapers also came with the Sunday newspaper. My parents always preferred the one that came with the Chicago Tribune over the one from the Chicago Sun-Times.
a pack of smokes in the states depends on the taxes in that state. popular brands run about $6 to $8 depending on the brand. NY and some of the other blue areas they are $10 or more
That 25 cents was per pack. That machine must have been in the 1970s because in the 1980s, the price was a dollar something per pack in NY. Now the average price per pack in NY is $10.45, and in Florida it is $5.50.
@@ESUSAMEX Oh yes when I started driving in 72 gas was like 45 cents a gallon so $5 was quite a fair bit of gas. Heck a handful of change could get me home from anywhere locally. And that was when (my used beater) cars were gas guzzlers that got maybe 18 miles to the gallon.
We didn’t get TV Guide (because you had to pay for that), but our local paper had an equivalent. I used to go through it when it came and figure out what I wanted to watch for the whole week.
Suddenly this made me feel a little bit old. While I grew up with a family computer, it was pre-internet. In school, I learned to type on a typewriter (including how to whiteout mistakes). I also learned how to develop film and make prints, though that was more about a hobby than a necessity. I even worked in a theater as a projectionist with film cameras. That involved changing camera lenses sometimes between previews and the movie, as well as splicing film when it broke or was otherwise damaged.
My grandparents got together to buy me a typewriter for graduation to take to college. There turned out to be computer labs on campus, but they were extremely slow. After hitting "print" it was 30 minute to an hour for the print out. 😄 My first cassette tape was Bobby Brown "My Prerogative."
I remember when color tv and the resulting shows came out that the tv guide started indicating if a show was in color or black and white. It was a number of years before this feature was useful to our family😮
You asked how to erase words with a typewriter. There were three methods: there were little thin circular rubber erasers with a small brush attached to whisk away the rubbings off the paper. There was white out tape where you would back space and slip a piece of the tape against the paper and retype the incorrect word. The letters would be filled in white and you can then retype the correct word over the top in black again. Then there was white out, a white liquid you dabbed over the incorrect letters or words with a sort of nail polish brush. Then you could retype over it after it dried. But that made it look messy.
TV listings were also included in the daily newspapers. Typewriter corrections were done using a special white sheet or white liquids. Many businesses still have the credit card imprint machines in case of power or internet outages. However, more and more cards are flat and will not work in them.
Back in the mid 60s, when I went with my mom to the supermarket, sometimes she would let me get a soda from the vending machine. It was 10 or 15 cents for a drink. After you put the coins in the slot and made your selection, a paper cup would come down the chute, followed by the ice and then the soda. You walked around the store with this cup of soda that had no lid. I'm sure there were a lot of spills. Once the cup came down the chute sideways, and I watched in horror as the ice and soda spilled all over the place. Cigarettes were 25 cents a pack in the early 60s. I remember being a cashier in a grocery store in 1979-82, when people asked the cashier for a pack of cigarettes, which were in a big rotating display behind the cashier. There was a lot of grumbling when cigarettes went to $1 a pack.
It took a few minutes to process credit card payments at the register. It was NOT electronic at all. They just had to hope your CC was good. The store would take the receipts and file those with the credit card companies, and it could be weeks before it showed on your statement.
When I worked at Chipotle in 2010, if the registers went down they still accepted credit cards the old way with the sliding CC thing. I was born in 1990, the last one of those I had seen was in the Home Alone 2 movie, I was shocked and thrilled at the same time to get to use one!
@@fayebell4716 Yes, I'm sure they're fun every now and then. They were such a pain when it was all we had. I'm glad you got to use one, though, to see how it works. :)
The typewriters -- when you made a mistake. Initially, you would just have to type the page over. Later, you could remove the sheet and use white out (both liquid or ribbon) that would put white over the area to "blank out" the mistake. Later typewriters had white out roll built in and you could just hit a correct button and it would "remove" the last word.
To erase an error on a typewriter you had to use a special whiteout strip that you stuck into the thing holding the paper and hit a key to make it stick then you pulled it back out and resume typing after it dried. 9:50 A woman shot her husband in their kitchen. Then submerged him, in the basement, under water for an hour. And then hung him up. Afterwards they both enjoyed a delightful dinner that he had cooked. How is this possible? ( She took his picture 📸 and developed the film in their personal dark room.)
Credit cards processed the old way meant you had to keep up with your checkbook. Without writing down all of your outstanding checks (which, in some cases could take weeks to clear), you'd run the risk of bouncing checks. Nothing was instantaneous.
At 12:29, the narrator says these items have seemed to have disappeared completely. That seems way off, at least in my world. $2.00 bills may be uncommon, but not rare. You always need a fax machine in the back of the office to transfer documents to some company that prefers the security it provides; you always need a typewrite (with correction ribbon) to fill out oddball labels or forms so they look professional and don't have to be done by hand. There are definitely fewer vending machines but there are still a lot of them. TV Guide was much more helpful than the listing you get on the TV through the cable company. It covered, I believe, a month at a time. You could look, for instance, through all evenings and see if there was a particular movie you'd like to see, at what time, on what channel and you could arrange a movie night or party or whatever.
The thing about the fax machine is it oftentimes it didn’t really go away but became an incorporated function in the copier. In my work I sometimes have to send faxes. If I try to email sometimes the Internet security system will block it because it has PII. Sometimes it’s not PII but the system thinks it is and won’t let me send it. I know other offices have them too because sometimes I accidentally call a fax number and get a terrible sound in my ear. For example if a doctors office needs your medical records from your old doctor that is probably a fax.
I remember having a cassette player when i was a kid. It was a cassette player with a radio on it and that was all. Mom took a bunch of Garth Brooks songs and put them on tape for me. I wore out the tape. I also had a portable cassette player and portable CD player
I remember my mother sending me to a convenience store to get her a pack of cigarettes around 1970, when I was 12. They were 35 cents a pack back then.
When I lived in New Orleans in the ‘80’s, pay phones were 5 cents, while everywhere else they were 25 cents. One of my uncles stopped smoking when cigarettes went up to 5 cents a pack.
My parents never used email to send a letter to their relatives in another language abroad. But when faxes came, they could just write something in their own handwriting and send it. It ws much easier for them.
Credit card machines with carbon took seconds. The longest bit of the process was the signature. Newer typewriters had autocorrect ribbons that took the ink off the page, but before that was a thing, you went back over mistakes and x'd them out - literally typing a series of capital letter Xs through the word.
Stores would use the credit card machine to get a copy of the credit card and then give you the product you were buying. A few days later the charge would appear on your credit card. The stores did not make wait for your approval.
One of the last typewriters my mom had for work had an erase mode where you could go back to the letter you wanted erased, hold the button, and use the same key to re-stamp with white, essentially erasing said letter. Run-on sentence much. lol
The bar/pub I go to on a regular basis, here in California, has an internet jukebox. You basically put your money in and chose any song you want. It's like Spotify but you pay per song.
There was a product known as whiteout. Picture a bottle of nail polish, you simply brushed over your mistake. You would then type over where the mistake was and all was good.
Have you ever noticed the abbreviation "cc" and "bcc" in your emails? cc stands for carbon copy and bcc is for blind carbon copy. The way a computer keyboard is laid out is based on the typewriter. Some of the archaic stuff is still around in some way.
I have used literally everything on this list. Yes cigarettes where .25 cents when I was a kid (a pack) When I became old enough to smoke they were .64 cents. We had the TV Guide delivered with the mail. I still have a $2 bill with a postage stamp (actual stamp) from the rerelease in the 70's dated the day of release. I learned to type on a typewriter...lol. You used to get something called white out, it was a type of paint you painted on the paper with or some typewriters had a correction ribbon that covered the letter or word with white so you could type over it. The easiest way of course was not to make mistakes. My first couple jobs used the carbon credit card machine. Usually you also had to call the number on the card to verify the card purchase. I still have a typewriter and an 8 track tape player with tapes. Yes I'm old ...lol. Be blessed Karbir.
I’m 42, and I’ve seen or used every single one of these in my lifetime.
Technology moves so quickly, it’s crazy.
I'm 71 and have seen a lot more things go by the wayside!
The credit card machine took less than 30 seconds. You handed over your card. The attendant placed your card on the machine so that its raised characters faced upwards, then placed the pre-printed, multilayered form over your card, then slid the imprinter-head back and forth over the the raised characters. Clack! Clack! Then wrote in the amount of the sale, handed your card and the multilayered form to you which you signed. Then the attendant gave you the carbon copy, keeping the original to bill the credit card company with. It wasn't as fast as today but it really wasn't too bad.
It didn’t actually process the payment, it was basically just a card copier and the info had to be processed by hand later. Very easy for scammers/card thieves to get away with making large purchases and never paying for them. This was why you often had to show your driver’s license so they could compare name and signature.
We used to call those ‘Knuckle Busters’ because you could accidentally scrape your knuckles on it.
And looked your card number up in a book to check validity, as well as collect the card, and typically later dialed in for authorization
Processing was another matter entirely. The bank and credit card company took forever to process.
Then it went to a digital system where you passed the card through the register about 1989. Much faster but no pins. The store computer would send the transactions every night via external computer modems over phone lines.
The credit card receipt took almost as long as waiting for a personal check to clear. Nothing digital there.
Yes Kabir, Cigarettes were 25 cents a pack from the machine. When I was a kid there was an 8 oz size of Coke you could get from a vending machine that was 10 cents, Gas/Petrol was 36 cents/gallon in the US. My parents bought a brand new 1968 Ford Mustang (car) for $1,400. Prices have gone way up but wages have not.
Well, wages have gone up - just not as much as prices. When cigs were 25 cents, minimum wage was a whopping $1.60 an hour.
@@beckiru That's just stating the core meaning behind "inflation." The problem is that whenever things such as "Minimum Wage" goes up, so does the costs of goods. Using that methodology the world is going no where fast.
In order for things to actually show improvement governments the world over have to do things like increase the minimum wage, while at the same time either freezing the cost of goods or encouraging companies to lower the costs of living.
Companies and major corporations would have to take a hit to profits in the beginning, but would allow for inflation to greatly decrease over time turning over a profit in the long run.
Companies like SONY have experienced this first hand with their release of the PlayStation 3. When 1st released the unit cost $699.99 USD and barely covered the costs of building the device per the cost of the parts used. SONY cut the price 3 more times taking it down to $299.99 to compete with MircoSoft's Xbox 360 (also $299.99). This cost SONY profits in the beginning, however with time and sales the costs of parts went down and SONY started turning a profit even with the lowered price point.
The main problem is that major businesses are greedy and most are not willing to do what is needed to decrease inflation. So as minimum wage increases so does the cost of living and it stagnates.
I remember my mom telling me about how when she was young, she could walk into a gas station with $5 and fill the tank of her Mustang, buy a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Coke, and still have change left. For reference, shes 75 years old.
Memories of so much of my 77 years…sigh…❤️
Many later typewriters used the correction ribbons or whiteout as already mentioned, but correctable film ribbons were also developed that used a second sticky ribbon to actually lift the ink off the page rather than cover it. You could use it with colored paper.
I still use an old Chevron Typewriter for writing birthday cards for people because they like them more than printed ones
@@tfrowlett8752
That shows your love and how much you truly care! ❤️
And of course before white out there were special erasers, usually wheel shaped, with a brush attached
That was too newfangled to me. 😂😂 I still have my old college Olivetti in bright red. I was such a whippersnapper back then! I named it Manuel. (Manual, get it? Ha!)
Technology Connections has a video on that correcting typewriter.
To correct typewriter mistakes you would eject the paper to the line you want, get a little white out and paint out the mistake, you reinsert the page to the line and start typing again. Later typewriters have the backspace key that does a little white-out patch. It was a process as it was long. Plus no automatic formatting so you had to measure yourself and often it was wrong. I still have a typewriter but it’s more of a display piece for conversation than actual use. It still works though. Some typewriters have the discs of type which is the same idea as the arm system just less crazy.
In one of my first secretarial jobs decades ago, I had to type a paper with a number of tables and columns on it. It took me over an hour to do the calculations, but I finally got it done and typed an acceptable copy. When I removed it from the typewriter and put it on my desk, I saw a big thumb print on the paper from my makeup. I had to retype it. Since I'd done the hard part, it didn't take as long, but I was po'ed to say the least. With a few exceptions (job interviews and the first few weeks after starting a new job) I quit wearing makeup to work afer that day.
TV Guide magazine still exists, even in print form. I use it every day. Useful for me; I have all the digital menus, dvr, streaming, etc. but, like the physical highlighting of main things I want to set dvr for, or just to remind me.
My family bought it for articles and reviews
Being a child of the 70s, I feel proud to have played outside everyday with my friends, without cell phones or cameras. We rode our bikes everywhere. We played in the woods. We went home when it got dark. The TV had ABC, NBC, CBS, and public television. That was it. And program ended around midnight, after which only a test pattern was beamed.
I think pay phones were 10 cents for a few minutes. I think they still make $2 bills. You ask for them at a bank.
If you made a mistake with the typewriter, you either lived with it or maybe used something like Wite-out, if it even existed yet. The last typewriters sometimes included a strip of Witeout under the black and red strips of ink, so you could type out the mistake by backing up and hitting the same letter. That was hi-tech, man! IBM desktop computers were coming, and simple word processors would too.
Btw, you mentioned Polaroids, and that was a thing. I learned last year that I'm kin to the guy who invented it, Edwin Land. He also invented polarizing, ie sunglasses and camera filters. He had more than 500 patents and is number 3 on the list of top US inventors behind Edison and Thomson(?). Anyway, wiki Edwin H Land. He was an interesting guy. Admitted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977. Worked on early satellites. Worked for presidents. I digress. Sorry.
The Rolodex should never be obsolete-- we need a place to store all that info for when we drop our phones in the ocean by accident. 🙂
My friend kept a tape recording of the tones pay phone makes when you insert coins so he can make free calls. He laments the passing of the phone booth.
Hi Kabir! Good video. I'm 66 and I remember when some of these things were not even introduced yet. As far as the credit card processors, that only took 15 or 20 seconds.
In high school, I worked at a retail store. We used the old CC slide machines and had to call a number for approval for purchases over a certain amount. When we were bored, we would call the approval number and just talk to the people who answered LOL
In the late 90s working retail, we would use the CC machine only for cards that would not swipe correctly. For any transaction where we had to type in numbers, we were required to swipe with the carbon paper to prove the person actually had the card in possession and wasn't just reciting numbers.
The Jukebox players shown, actually had 45 rpm records in them. Like a record player with a needle.
Phone books, especially if you lived in a large metropolitan area, were handy for something else: using as a booster seat for small children at the dinner table or at a restaurant.
I remember a story sent in to Reader's Digest when I was a kid - a lady from a large city was visiting family in a smaller town, and they went out to eat. The youngest of the children needed a booster seat, but they were all already in use. So the visiting relative helpfully suggested that the waitress grab a phone book instead. The waitress gave a puzzled look, went back to the front desk, and returned with a local phone book, which lifted the child up a whole 3/8". 😄
When I was a kid (12ish) the local bowling alley was a easy place to buy cigarettes out of a vending machine. The other place to but cigarettes was our neighborhood 7/11 ....but there was a catch. You couldn't buy cigarettes underage unless you had a note from a parent. That's when the 7/11 clerk would hand us a pen and paper to write our own note right there at the counter. 80's were a little different than they are today. ;)
I still use carbon paper, but not for its intended purpose. I use it to trace wing ribs, formers, etc., when scratchbuilding R/C and free-flight airplanes. . . .
My family never bougbt a TV Guide. The channel schedule came out in the Sunday paper in the form of a small magazine. Many newspapers still do this today and include cable and satelite channels !!! Back when there were only 3 or 4 channels, it wasn't difficult to keep up with what you wanted to watch. The real inconvenience was having to go to the tv and turn a knob to change the channel.
My family bought it but more for articles and reviews. Soap Opera Digest is still published
Bette Nesmith Graham invented liquid paper. It was a white liquid that came in a little bottle with a brush in the cap. You wipe it on and let it dry; it didn't take long. Then you could type over your mistake. It was also called "white out". I also remember a spooled strip (like tiny tape) you could swipe over the mistake, which transferred white pigment to the paper, covering the typing. Some typewriters had a correction ribbon. You could backspace to the beginning of your mistake, engage the correction ribbon, and retype the erroneous text. The correction ribbon transferred white pigment over the black ink.
She was the mom of Mike Nesmith from The Monkees.
@@annajosullivan Was she now?! Well that's a cool factoid!
I had an 8 track and a CB in my 1st car
I feel ya on the film... just feels real... CG and Digital lost my interest in film... I miss real costume art and set decorating..
Ugh! In the 80's, when cable television became available, the idea was we paid the networks to not have commercials. Now, we pay for cable and still have commercials! They are banking! And it's become a norm to pay for streaming, while you are required to pay extra for the "top" shows or movies! I recently saw that people are paying exorbitant amounts for sports. WTF? I bought an antenna for local stations that air the NFL gamesfor $20.
We have a pizza place where I live that still has a jukebox. I can't speak for every place in the US but where I live in North Carolina you don't ever see them. I still see an occasional phone booth but they are located around poverty-stricken areas.
A place I worked at still used a typewriter and we would use whiteout on a mistake and type over it once it dried...lol
You could get TV listings for free in the Sunday paper. You could subscribe to have the paper delivered to your door ever day or just on Sundays. The Sunday paper had loads of extras, rings of advertisements, a huge classified section and comic strips (the funny pages).
In the early 80s, I bought my first pack of cigarettes for 75¢ at an amusement park.
I still own a Rolodex. It's handier for addresses.
In my tiny rural town, there's a pay phone outside the telephone company that's free of charge for local calls.
I loved the soda machines when I was a kid because you'd get a 16oz glass bottle instead of cans or plastic bottles. You could get a refund for the bottles at a lot of grocery stores.
Typing speed and accuracy used to be a big deal on resumes. You'd take typing tests for any office job and it could make it break your employability.
I wish they'd included other items like rabbit ears, 8-track tapes, mimeographs, microfiche, floppy disks, 33s and 45s, pay stalls in restrooms, black and white TVs, VHS tapes, attic fans, and reel mowers.
What a fun stroll down memory lane!
Being a vendor refilling cigarette machines used to be one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Imagine driving a van with hundreds of cartons of cigarettes around all the roughest (and drunkest) parts of town. It was a low risk/high reward robbery target.
Payphones in the US were 10 cent.i think they eventually went up to a quarter
That's where the phrase "Drop a Dime" on someone came from .... Lated shortened to "Dime" someone out! ..... Rat on them!
The last time I used a payphone it was 35 cents.
Last time I used a payphone was in 1986/87. It was 25¢ for me to make a call to my parents from the Greyhound bus station.
I loved to do the crossword puzzles in the TV Guides.
I still have some $2 bills.
I still remember back in the 60's when my Daddy bought a color TV
My parents replaced our aging Zenith console TV with a fancy new Curtis Mathes console TV circa 1984 - both CRTs, of course. It cost over $600. I could put flatscreen TVs in three rooms for that much money today.
With 30+ cameras, you could say I'm a film fan. . .
I truly miss reading the newspaper. There was simething soothing about a cup of fresh coffee & reading the news in the morning. I still have a rolodex and address book. If youve ever lost your phone you realize all the phone numbers you no longer have menorized. Its a great back-up.
I used to get a phone book up until about 5 years ago. One day out of the year, there would be a book on my door step. I never used it. You use white-out to make corrections on a typewriter. You paint over the mistake and wait for it to dry, then retype over it.
Actually they also sold white ribbon ink you could use to type over your mistake. That's what I used with my typewriter.
I used “correction tape”. Position “tape” that had thin layer of white film retype the wrong character to correct it. If you used colored paper, your mistake was obvious.
Someone is still distributing phone books in our area. Find them either in mailbox or on the driveway near the mailbox.
At some point in my life, the phone book went from one of the most useful things in the house, to litter in the yard.
I’ve had a fax machine every place I’ve worked since 1999. I see juke boxes quite a bit. Vending machines are at offices, schools, clinics, hospitals, and outside of certain businesses. They’re hardly on their way out in my opinion.
I remember when my grandmother would give me a dime (ten cents) to go get a pack of cigarettes out of a machine for her. I was very young and thought the machine was fun. Those little plastic containers that film came in was one very popular for storing a certain herb in. They were the perfect size to put in your pocket. 😉. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. The school put masking tape on all the keys so if you forgot where a letter was, you had to look it up in a book. Sounds cruel but it worked. If you made a mistake you would use a product called Liquid Paper. You painted over the letter and then had to wait for it to dry. It was still faster than starting a letter all over again. Liquid paper is still available today.
Yes Kabir, 25 cents for a package of cigarettes was a real thing. Now that was back in the early 60s when I was in my late teens.
Even in the late '60s, and I lived in L.A.
My first " cell phone" was a Nextel.
My first one was the size of a brick. I was the envy of the office!
Mine was a Motorola and def larger than those now.
There's a such thing as White Out. It was liquid in a bottle with a brush connected to the cap. You would brush cover the mistake with the liquid,let it dry and type over it.
Here are 5 facts casual Monkees fans may not know about Michael Nesmith.
1. Nesmith's mom invented whiteout.
Nesmith was raised in Dallas by his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented the first correction fluid in 1956 while working as a typist. She turned her whiteout, Liquid Paper, into an office staple, selling the company to Gillette in 1979 for $47.5 million plus royalties. When Graham died in 1980, Nesmith inherited an estimated $50 million.
There were also the correction papers. No waiting to dry; they were covered in something like chalk.
My first cassette was The Jackson Five 😆Our parents knew what good music is!
Edit: Every office I've ever worked in also has some type of vending machine and most hospitals and schools will as well! All of the bars around here have digital Jukeboxes, you use an app on your phone to pay and pick your song. I also remember using a typewriter in the 3rd grade for my first ever book report, due to us owning a computer but no printer at the time, but it was a fancy one that had White-Out in it so it would delete it for you. You still had to wait a few seconds for it to dry though and it looked like crap. I also used that credit card thing when I worked at Chipotle in 2010, the registers went down so you had to manually add tax to everything and add it all up. Then you had to right on the slip how much it was and THEN take a copy of the card, it was horrible!
Okay, how many people immediately thought of the first "Superman" movie when looking at those pay phones? 😂😂😂
I would much rather read a actual newspaper than read the news on my phone. A newspaper doesn't have pop up ads, or disappear if you stop reading for a few minutes.
My first 8-track cassette was Elton John's "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Piano Player". I bought it in the Canadian Tire store in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
Being an American, I have only recently learned about the wonders of Canadian Tire, and I must visit one someday. Shoutout to The Autopian for teaching me about this magical place.
There were only 3 TV channels when I was a kid. Then along came cable which was originally so you could watch TV without ads. MTV was all music, now it's no music at all.
Here we had 4 channels way back in the 60s. ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS... then in the late 60s maybe early 70s UHF channels became a thing adding two more locally. This of course required a separate adapter box since TVs did not have the UHF tuner at that time.
@@lennyo5165 5 channels when I was a kid. Then again I was born during the 80's cable era.
My mum used to have an electric typewriter that plugged into AC in the 90s. I think it was a Brother. Basically it was the last of the fancy, technologically advanced models that came in just before home PCs became affordable.
If you made a mistake there was an 'erase' key which had a special ribbon cartridge that would stamp a white ribbon over the letter and essentially leave a white film over it. Think 'white-out' or 'tipex' in transfer form. It still had the indent in the paper of the letter beneath, but theoretically you could type over the top and it would be invisible. If you didn't let the white ribbon dry well enough first or it was getting old, it would often flake off the page and reveal the letters beneath, or if you tried to fold the page.
I used to write on it all the time and erased whole sentences! My mum would get so mad because apparently the eraser cartridge was really expensive!
When you say "Juke Box", are you talking about something that plays digital music, or something that is playing vinyl?
That guy's channel is very accurate. I lived through all of that including the very first Apple computers. My generation was the first computer at home for processing generation. Though earlier I learned typing on a selective typewriter that had the built in correction tape. If you made a mistake, you went back over with a special button to raise the correction ribbon then retyped what you misspelled. Then returned to the cleared off spot and typed a corrected spelling. A lot better than the earlier white out. Yes, those cigarettes were 25 cents. My parents would send me to buy them cigarettes from the machine as they were too busy. No one batted an eye. Kids had easy access to cheap cigarettes though through education we never developed the habit.
I have a black metal Underwood typewriter from about 100 years ago in my livingroom as decor. I remember that I actually used it when I was a kid even though by then, it was already a dinosaur and we had a new beige electric one 😂. I remember we could still purchase the double spools of half red and half black ink. I loved the sound it made when you used it, but you had to hit the keys with a lot of force. The electric typewriter had a rotating ball covered in raised letters, numbers and symbols. The old Underwood had long thin arms with individual letters, numbers, and symbols and they would sometimes get stuck together if you could type pretty fast. We had the electric typewriter for maybe only a decade when they began manufacturing big, bulky word processors. The name sounds like an old sci-fi movie😂. In 1984, I was a year out of high school and took a secretarial training course where we learned typing on electric typewriters, on the word processor, short-handed, 10-key, etc. I landed my first office job in 1985 and I still remember when they brought the first PC in and hooked it up on my desk. I actually preferred my typewriter at first because you were practically writing code to compose letters using an old word processing program called "Symphony." The spreadsheet program was "Lotus 1-2-3." Then "Amipro" came out which was a game changer. It was more like "Word," which is still widely used today. You had to be very creative back then to get around things that hadn't caught up technologically yet. Sometimes I think the average person was a lot smarter back then because when you wanted to get something done, you had to figure it out. Now, it's like our phones spoon feed everyone all day long. What kid rides their bike to the library to research a topic anymore? Now you Google anything and get the consensus for an answer. Back when I was a kid, we had more epistemological reasons for our beliefs and understanding of the world. When you read a book, you get the author's linear thought process as to how s/he arrived at the answer so you knew why you believed it did not believe it was so. Now, nobody seems to know why they believe anything to be true. They just Googled it, which doesn't mean it's necessarily right. It's just the most excepted answer, like when hundreds of years ago it was widely accepted that the Earth was flat. People are way more gullible and prone to swallow propaganda because they trust in what tech oligarchs feed them. It's frightening in my opinion. I think everyone should read controversial books and fight censorship so they don't end up brainwashed sheep without even knowing it. I would hate to die a tool ... Worse yet, a blunt instrument.
There was erasable typing paper & you could just use a pencil eraser but it wasn't ideal especially for business because the typing ink could smudge when handling a document. Regular typing paper was preferable and using either White Out (a fluid that covered mistakes) or some later typewriters had corrective ribbons and you could go back and type over the errors having switched to that ribbon. There were also little acetate squares with white out on them that you could use by backspacing to the error, insert it and correct that way. Trivia: White Out was invented by the mother of Michael Nesmith who was one of The Monkees, when he was a teen. She was a secretary and he helped her make it in their kitchen and she'd sell it. Eventually word spread and she sold the rights and became very wealthy.
I had to use a typewriter growing up in the early 80s for book reports and stuff. If you made a mistake on mine, you would go back to the letter, use the correction ribbon and type the same letter, which would basically cover the original with the same letter in white, to make it much less obvious. You'd then go back one more time and type the correct letter. It was a hassle, so I was pretty slow when typing so I wouldn't make many mistakes.
Back when I was still working retail about 6 years ago, we still had and used those manual credit card machines when the power would go out in the store. They called it something like "blackout mode", and so we'd have to follow the customer around with a carbon copy order form, and get the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number of each item to write down, so the cashier would know how to ring up the sale when the power came back on. The bottom of the form had the blank area to put the credit card to make the imprint. Thankfully I think we only ever had to do that maybe 3 times in the 12 years I worked there.
White-out… if you made a mistake while typing, you’d grabbed your trusty bottle of white-out. You would try to use a thinly and smoothly layer as possible. Blow on it to dry it and then just type over it. When you were sure it had efficiency dried.
I'm typing this in as of the time stamp 9:32 so I do not know if it gets mentioned further into the video, but I remember coin-op arcade and midway games. There were (some still exist but are few and far between) arcade buildings with pinball, video and midway style gaming machines that would operate using quarters here in the U.S.
Later many establishments traded out quarters for custom made tokens whereas the more you purchased (the larger bill amount used) the more tokens you received. Some more successful businesses even had special sales on tokens (usually on the weekends to encourage children to participate) that would double the total amount of tokens purchased.
Nowadays modern arcade establishments use a sort of debit card system to pre-sell whole blocks of time that cut off gameplay once the time has expired (whether or not you have died or failed repeatedly at the current attempt at play) in order to give players a chance to purchase another block of playing time.
This is both a boon and a downside for gamers. This system allows weaker skilled game players a guaranteed time slot of play (if they died too much or fail constantly they get to start over for free as long as said player has time remaining on their paid block of time).
However, for excellent gamers with master skill levels in gaming this is a severe rip-off that often cuts off players that have either never died or have not failed enough times to warrant a complete restart of the level, task and/or objective at hand.
This is where home consoles (Nintendo, PlayStation & Xbox) and PC gaming become more convenient for the modern gamer, despite their skill level in gaming. Not being stuck behind a predetermined paywall for set time limits allows home gamers to play at their digression (even giving important features not found in modern arcades, such as pausing the game to get snacks or use the bathroom).
When you use a typewriter and you made a mistake, you had a whiteout strip that you would use to whiteout the error. You would have to backup the carriage (many typewriters allowed you to backup the carriage one space at a time), then you would insert the whiteout strip and strike the incorrect character again. Then you would have to backup the carriage again and strike the right character. Some typewriters would even allow you to disable moving forward when you strike the character so that it would remain in the space.
When I was really young, typewriters had white correction ribbon. Basically white out for typewriters.
1) When I was kid in the 1970s, a local call cost 10 cents at a payphone. It then jumped all the way to 25 cents, I believe during the 1980s. (I think back to 1988-1992, when I attended college/university to study engineering. It's remarkable how many fewer distractions we had back then. In my dormitory room I had no Internet, no e-mail, no cell/mobile phone, no cable TV, and no TV at all initially. If I hadn't studied 6-8 hours per day, I would have been bored.)
2) I remember cigarette vending machines, which of course required no proof of age. Toward the end of their existence, they were found only in bars. My father told me that at one point in the 1960s it was 23 cents for a pack. He would put a quarter (25 cents) into the machine and would receive a pack with two pennies in change that someone had hand-inserted into each pack. How would you like to have that job?
3) When the TV Guide arrived in the mail at my house, I would go through it and take note of any non-regular programming I wanted to see. The on-screen guide of upcoming programming is what made TV Guide obsolete. It does still exist, and in paper form, as an entertainment magazine like People or Entertainment Weekly.
4) It's a myth that the Internet is the sole reason the newspaper industry is dying in the U.S. Most young people were not reading them years before online news became available (at 53, I'm the youngest person I know who reads one daily, either in print or online). I suspect newspapers just assumed that young people would automatically develop the habit of reading them, just as previous generations had. I switched years ago to a digital newspaper subscription, become the cost of home delivery was dramatically raised.
5) Where I live, everyone received free phone books automatically for years after they became obsolete. Since most were thrown away, that practice was finally stopped several years ago. I googled whether they even still exist: some sources say online only, others say you can request a paper book. An online phone book is absurd, because the only people who want a paper phone book never or rarely go online. Businesses were listed alphabetically by type in the Yellow Pages, so there are many in the U.S. whose names begin with "A," or even "AA" or "AAA."
6) The two-dollar bill became a collector's item precisely because so few were produced, and this was long before using cash became less common. It's not the only denomination that the U.S. Mint has created but produced in small quantities. They did the same with the "Sacagawea" dollar coin in the early 2000s. Why bother making any at all?
7) The original video overstates how obsolete vending machines are. Those that sell sandwich and other perishable foods have become rare. They were mostly found in "automats" (the first automat open in Berlin in 1895). I vaguely remember them in the 1970s when they were dying out. Today, 24-7 convenience stores provide the same service.
8) I took a typing class in 1984 or 1985 in high school. Even though the school had a few early PCs and Apple computers, and the electric typewriter existed, we used manual typewriters. I remember my fingers being sore from the amount of force required to press the keys. Typewriters are still used in some offices for specialized uses--addressing envelopes, duplicate/triplicate forms, non-standard paper sizes.
9) If anyone wonders what good have we gotten from spending billions of dollars on space exploration, digital photography is one of the answers.
10) Fax machines are still used in the U.S. The printer I have at home for my computer can send and receive faxes. I've had to use that feature, but not for a long time.
11) I have a credit card that still has raised numbers, which were necessary for making carbon copies.
Funny note about the $2 bill. They were always kinda rare to see but, working in retail, I noticed a resurgence in their use. A lot of " gentlemen's clubs" have taken to giving men 2s instead of singles for change to tip the girls with. I could always tell if a girl that came in to shop was a dancer because they would often pay with an unusual number of $2 bills lol.
This video reminded me how old I am I used all of these in my daily life lol
That 25 cents a pack had to in the early 60's
I took a photography art class when I was 16. I really enjoyed the process of developing film. It’s really something the first time that you do it. You put the photo paper into the developer liquid and suddenly an image appears.
The credit card thing didn't take too long. 15 seconds or so, but it was so much less secure. That carbon copy receipt thing got submitted to the bank, so the business wouldn't actually get payment on it for a couple of days.
There were three broad methods for dealing with typos on typewriters. If neatness wasn’t that important just strike out the word or words and continue afterward, white it out (with liquid paper or some form of correction tape)and type over it, or some later typewriters used a dry ink tape and had a correction ribbon that could pull the dry ink film back off the paper for neater corrections, especially on colored paper.
Man.... I had my mini boom box in the 80s, popping in a blank cassette, listening to the top 40 on the radio, recording my favorite songs, then doing it again the following Sunday! I remember every one of these. ❤😢
We still have printed TV programs in Germany. There are still people, especially older ones, that don’t use the internet. Same goes for telephone books and newspapers.
I owned a typewriter in college. It was during college (1985- 1989) that IBM made a portable clunky computer processor. My college friend had one I borrowed because her Dad worked for IBM.
Using a typewriter you used white out liquid you placed over mistakes or you retyped the whole page. To edit, add or move paragraphs the same.
In the 1980s and 1990s, some models of typewriters had a reel of white-out tape. If the typist made a mistake, he/she would move the typewriter back to the spot of the mistake, hold down the “correction” key, and retype the mistake to cover up the mistake with whiteout from the tape. The typist would then return to the spot of the mistake, type in the correct key, and then resume typing.
I actually had a typewriter as a kid that I got from my mom. And when you made a mistake you actually could fix it, but you needed a separate ribbon of ink that was white and you basically typed over your mistake with it.
This was fun to watch. I really enjoyed your reaction to the old ways. Makes me wonder what things will be in another 20 years! I'll be watching from up above by then!!
25 cents indicates the coin the machine accepted not the price which was about 3.50 a pack from the machine back then but store price was about 2.00 a pack then . I remember Marlboro priced at . 86 cents a pack
mistakes using type writers were corrected using a piece of correction paper-
a small piece of paper with a white transfer coating on it.
Back space to the beginning of the mistake, place the correction paper over it,
and retype the mistake, thus covering it up.
Or you could get a bottle of white out, and brush the white liquid on the paper
covering over the mistake.
I took typing my entire 9th grade year of high school. I used White Out (which is a thick white correction fluid) to erase typos. It was quite time consuming because I'd have to use the White Out over the typo, wait for it to dry and then type over the mistake. Computer keyboards with a backspace are much more convenient.
Typing was probably the most valuable class I took in HS.
@@angelagraves865 for me as well. I'm so glad I was required to take it in HS. It has been quite helpful to know how to touch type. But I am happy to be able to type on a keyboard where I can easily backspace to correct typos instead of using White Out.
@@jenniferrichardson8474 💯
This should be titled, 'Everyday Objects from the 20th Century. . .' Lots & lots of old stuff from previous centuries & millennia that aren't here, of course. There was a fluid developed back in the day called, 'liquid paper'. It was used to paint over mistakes that typists made while using the typewriter. It was invented by a woman named, 'Betty Nesmith', whose son, 'Michael Nesmith', was an actor/musician/writer/director/producer/singer who rose to fame on his own as a member of the band, the Monkees.
We always used the typewriter eraser wheel, that had the brush on one end.
In high school, we had a typewriter class. I hated trying to do the math when you had to center something on the page.
I found making charts, lists, & centering thing rwlatively easy. Yeah, I know--I'm weird.
My typewriter had correction ribbon. So, the bottom half of the ribbon was white, and the top half was black. Normal typing hit the black part of the ribbon. When you wanted to do a correction, you pushed down a key which raised the white ribbon into position and then you would type the incorrect letters again and it would print the letter again only in white essentially "whiting out" the mistake. You'd then go back and type the correct letters. It was a royal pain!
Weekly TV guides that were printed by newspapers also came with the Sunday newspaper. My parents always preferred the one that came with the Chicago Tribune over the one from the Chicago Sun-Times.
a pack of smokes in the states depends on the taxes in that state. popular brands run about $6 to $8 depending on the brand. NY and some of the other blue areas they are $10 or more
That 25 cents was per pack. That machine must have been in the 1970s because in the 1980s, the price was a dollar something per pack in NY. Now the average price per pack in NY is $10.45, and in Florida it is $5.50.
yes early 70s because by the end of the 70s they were an (at the time) outrageous 75 cents.
@@lennyo5165 I remember a gallon of gas was just $1 in the late 1980s as well. I had $5 in my glovebox for emergencies.
@@ESUSAMEX Oh yes when I started driving in 72 gas was like 45 cents a gallon so $5 was quite a fair bit of gas. Heck a handful of change could get me home from anywhere locally. And that was when (my used beater) cars were gas guzzlers that got maybe 18 miles to the gallon.
We didn’t get TV Guide (because you had to pay for that), but our local paper had an equivalent. I used to go through it when it came and figure out what I wanted to watch for the whole week.
Suddenly this made me feel a little bit old. While I grew up with a family computer, it was pre-internet. In school, I learned to type on a typewriter (including how to whiteout mistakes). I also learned how to develop film and make prints, though that was more about a hobby than a necessity. I even worked in a theater as a projectionist with film cameras. That involved changing camera lenses sometimes between previews and the movie, as well as splicing film when it broke or was otherwise damaged.
My grandparents got together to buy me a typewriter for graduation to take to college. There turned out to be computer labs on campus, but they were extremely slow. After hitting "print" it was 30 minute to an hour for the print out. 😄 My first cassette tape was Bobby Brown "My Prerogative."
I remember when color tv and the resulting shows came out that the tv guide started indicating if a show was in color or black and white. It was a number of years before this feature was useful to our family😮
You asked how to erase words with a typewriter. There were three methods: there were little thin circular rubber erasers with a small brush attached to whisk away the rubbings off the paper. There was white out tape where you would back space and slip a piece of the tape against the paper and retype the incorrect word. The letters would be filled in white and you can then retype the correct word over the top in black again. Then there was white out, a white liquid you dabbed over the incorrect letters or words with a sort of nail polish brush. Then you could retype over it after it dried. But that made it look messy.
TV listings were also included in the daily newspapers.
Typewriter corrections were done using a special white sheet or white liquids.
Many businesses still have the credit card imprint machines in case of power or internet outages. However, more and more cards are flat and will not work in them.
Back in the mid 60s, when I went with my mom to the supermarket, sometimes she would let me get a soda from the vending machine. It was 10 or 15 cents for a drink. After you put the coins in the slot and made your selection, a paper cup would come down the chute, followed by the ice and then the soda. You walked around the store with this cup of soda that had no lid. I'm sure there were a lot of spills. Once the cup came down the chute sideways, and I watched in horror as the ice and soda spilled all over the place.
Cigarettes were 25 cents a pack in the early 60s. I remember being a cashier in a grocery store in 1979-82, when people asked the cashier for a pack of cigarettes, which were in a big rotating display behind the cashier. There was a lot of grumbling when cigarettes went to $1 a pack.
It took a few minutes to process credit card payments at the register. It was NOT electronic at all. They just had to hope your CC was good. The store would take the receipts and file those with the credit card companies, and it could be weeks before it showed on your statement.
When I worked at Chipotle in 2010, if the registers went down they still accepted credit cards the old way with the sliding CC thing. I was born in 1990, the last one of those I had seen was in the Home Alone 2 movie, I was shocked and thrilled at the same time to get to use one!
@@fayebell4716 Yes, I'm sure they're fun every now and then. They were such a pain when it was all we had. I'm glad you got to use one, though, to see how it works. :)
The typewriters -- when you made a mistake. Initially, you would just have to type the page over. Later, you could remove the sheet and use white out (both liquid or ribbon) that would put white over the area to "blank out" the mistake. Later typewriters had white out roll built in and you could just hit a correct button and it would "remove" the last word.
To erase an error on a typewriter you had to use a special whiteout strip that you stuck into the thing holding the paper and hit a key to make it stick then you pulled it back out and resume typing after it dried.
9:50 A woman shot her husband in their kitchen. Then submerged him, in the basement, under water for an hour. And then hung him up. Afterwards they both enjoyed a delightful dinner that he had cooked.
How is this possible?
( She took his picture 📸 and developed the film in their personal dark room.)
Credit cards processed the old way meant you had to keep up with your checkbook. Without writing down all of your outstanding checks (which, in some cases could take weeks to clear), you'd run the risk of bouncing checks. Nothing was instantaneous.
So basically this should have been called: "Everything the computer and cell phone replaced."🤣
Except the jukebox. 😂
What does this guy think is allowing customers to pay to hear songs?
At 12:29, the narrator says these items have seemed to have disappeared completely. That seems way off, at least in my world. $2.00 bills may be uncommon, but not rare. You always need a fax machine in the back of the office to transfer documents to some company that prefers the security it provides; you always need a typewrite (with correction ribbon) to fill out oddball labels or forms so they look professional and don't have to be done by hand. There are definitely fewer vending machines but there are still a lot of them. TV Guide was much more helpful than the listing you get on the TV through the cable company. It covered, I believe, a month at a time. You could look, for instance, through all evenings and see if there was a particular movie you'd like to see, at what time, on what channel and you could arrange a movie night or party or whatever.
4:10 The TV guide used to be printed in the newspaper as well
The thing about the fax machine is it oftentimes it didn’t really go away but became an incorporated function in the copier. In my work I sometimes have to send faxes. If I try to email sometimes the Internet security system will block it because it has PII. Sometimes it’s not PII but the system thinks it is and won’t let me send it. I know other offices have them too because sometimes I accidentally call a fax number and get a terrible sound in my ear. For example if a doctors office needs your medical records from your old doctor that is probably a fax.
I remember having a cassette player when i was a kid. It was a cassette player with a radio on it and that was all. Mom took a bunch of Garth Brooks songs and put them on tape for me. I wore out the tape. I also had a portable cassette player and portable CD player
I remember my mother sending me to a convenience store to get her a pack of cigarettes around 1970, when I was 12. They were 35 cents a pack back then.
When I lived in New Orleans in the ‘80’s, pay phones were 5 cents, while everywhere else they were 25 cents. One of my uncles stopped smoking when cigarettes went up to 5 cents a pack.
My parents never used email to send a letter to their relatives in another language abroad. But when faxes came, they could just write something in their own handwriting and send it. It ws much easier for them.
At Waffle House Restaurants in the US South and Great Lakes States, jukeboxes can still be found in their restaurants.
Credit card machines with carbon took seconds. The longest bit of the process was the signature.
Newer typewriters had autocorrect ribbons that took the ink off the page, but before that was a thing, you went back over mistakes and x'd them out - literally typing a series of capital letter Xs through the word.
Stores would use the credit card machine to get a copy of the credit card and then give you the product you were buying. A few days later the charge would appear on your credit card. The stores did not make wait for your approval.
One of the last typewriters my mom had for work had an erase mode where you could go back to the letter you wanted erased, hold the button, and use the same key to re-stamp with white, essentially erasing said letter. Run-on sentence much. lol
I used a non electric typewriter for all of my work at university in the early 80s. Very few people had home computers at that point.
The bar/pub I go to on a regular basis, here in California, has an internet jukebox. You basically put your money in and chose any song you want. It's like Spotify but you pay per song.
There was a product known as whiteout. Picture a bottle of nail polish, you simply brushed over your mistake. You would then type over where the mistake was and all was good.
Have you ever noticed the abbreviation "cc" and "bcc" in your emails?
cc stands for carbon copy and bcc is for blind carbon copy.
The way a computer keyboard is laid out is based on the typewriter.
Some of the archaic stuff is still around in some way.
I have used literally everything on this list. Yes cigarettes where .25 cents when I was a kid (a pack) When I became old enough to smoke they were .64 cents. We had the TV Guide delivered with the mail. I still have a $2 bill with a postage stamp (actual stamp) from the rerelease in the 70's dated the day of release. I learned to type on a typewriter...lol. You used to get something called white out, it was a type of paint you painted on the paper with or some typewriters had a correction ribbon that covered the letter or word with white so you could type over it. The easiest way of course was not to make mistakes. My first couple jobs used the carbon credit card machine. Usually you also had to call the number on the card to verify the card purchase. I still have a typewriter and an 8 track tape player with tapes. Yes I'm old ...lol. Be blessed Karbir.