The Old Folks Home

[Alaskan]

hello @azurbanclucker - do please join us.

that brings back memories! There is a fantastic collection of them in the Deutsche Museum in Berlin, if memory serves. An amazing range of different solutions were tried before it settled down to QWERTY on a square-ish box.

Actually, the German keyboard isn't full qwerty, it is qwertz. Their y is in the bottom left corner, they swap the y with the z.

 

[cheepteach]

Ha! Or party lines... didn't matter where you stood, the entire neighborhood could listen in on the call.

my father in law had a party line in his house up to 1980---weird to ask people to get off phone to make a call.

 

[azurbanclucker]

Friends??? Kids are supposed to have friends?

Yeah. They need that social bonding or they end up living in the basement.

 

[bruceha2000]

Actually, the German keyboard isn't full qwerty, it is qwertz. Their y is in the bottom left corner, they swap the y with the z.

That would be confusing to fingers that "know" where the keys are!

my father in law had a party line in his house up to 1980---weird to ask people to get off phone to make a call.

I had a party line when I moved to VT in '79. I didn't even know such a thing existed. The other person on the line had to educate me, they were 1 ring, I was 2 rings. Didn't last long though, thankfully. Like Pavlov's Dog. I've been trained to get up when a phone rings.

 

[cheepteach]

we only got 3 channels on our TV antenna back then--kids don't believe us when we tell them these things

 

[sourland]

A discussion about typewriters made me think perhaps I should join over here. And rotary dial phones with the loooooooooong cord so you could have a "private" conversation in the next room.

Welcome - you belong.

 

[bruceha2000]

we only got 3 channels on our TV antenna back then--kids don't believe us when we tell them these things

That is because there WERE only 3 channels! We have no TV service of any kind now, I don't think I'm missing anything though.

 

[ronott1]

my father in law had a party line in his house up to 1980---weird to ask people to get off phone to make a call.

We had a party line in the 1970s. We moved to a small town in 1977 and had a single line there

 

[ronott1]

That is because there WERE only 3 channels! We have no TV service of any kind now, I don't think I'm missing anything though.

We had three channels growing up. One was a PBS station so CBS and NBC were on one station showing half of each networks shows.

 

[azurbanclucker]

we had 3 OTA, basic cable was 15 total I think, and then "the box" which was maybe 30? 40?

And I was the remote control for my parents.