I've already run into something like this, more than once. Makes me feel old. (Click the image for a larger view at the comic's Web site.)
Let's not talk about rotary dial phones, party lines, washing machines with mangles, the complete absence of air-conditioning at home, and so on. Kids today just gape in horror when you describe those things.
Peter
Phone booths, gum stuck to everything and the phone books had about 50% of their pages ripped out
ReplyDeleteWhile we're at it: what's a "dime"?
ReplyDeleteI have a daughter born in the mid 80's who would not watch black and white TV or movies, just wouldn't do it...
ReplyDelete"While we're at it: what's a 'dime?'"
ReplyDeleteIt's what you used to know as a "penny."
I think it would be fun to hand a millennial a slide rule and watch him try to measure things.
ReplyDeleteI remember the dark times...
ReplyDeleteWhen 12:00 would blink at you over and over from the darkness...
I recently used the phrase "drop a dime" in a casual conversation.
ReplyDeleteI got the blankest looks.
Of course I grew up at a time when "Brother, can you spare a dime?" was still fresh in the minds of the adults around me.
I used to have both my fifty year old slide rule, and my father's from three decades before that (I don't know what happened to my mother's slide rule; I think it got lost in one of her office moves). I got rid of mine recently -- by the time was made, K&E had gone to plastic slides, and the plastic sticks, so it was hard to get things lined up properly. But my father's is wood, with veneer, so it still slides perfectly without binding.
ReplyDeleteSlide rules were great because they forced you to think about the numbers (with no orders of magnitude, you needed to know about what the answer was), instead of just punching them in. And they forced you to think about significant digits, since "slide rule accuracy" was a real consideration.
Calculators are wonderful instruments, but I'm really glad I learned on a slide rule before pocket calculators were invented.