The world in 1975 (2007)
ranprieur.com
ranprieur.com
Please. The lack of variety in the public sphere is exactly what led to the "underground" music scenes. In the 70's the new unheard music was punk and the like.
When I left for college in '79 it was an absolutely jaw-dropping, exciting experience to find an entire music store filled with this "alternative" music that no one played (outside of college stations, which played anything. Even then, some of the college stations still played Top 40. What was the point of that?)
>Most Americans had never heard of espresso.
True, although if you were paying attention to the movie, "Shaft" ordered espresso. I noticed this but still didn't understand what it was supposed to be.
>Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect".
To be fair, early in the 70's it seemed to some researchers that the historical trend was downward and we were headed into a new ice age. This was widely reported. Later on more work was done to get better global temperature proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards.
Between '65 and '79 there were 6 times as many research papers predicting warming. That was even despite increasing knowledge of Ice Ages.
"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus" http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
Nor am I saying that this represented a consensus view that later changed to another consensus view. I think, however, that it took time before the ice age faction gave way.
Meanwhile, in reading popular science reporting of the time, I think it is not too subjective to claim that the ice age notion took hold for bit in the public imagination before global warming did.
"Later on more work was done to get better global temperature proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards."
Anecdotal memories of an article or two on Ice ages in the Seventies do nothing to support that claim - It was wrong.
nuff said
There really was a great variety of good music. Check the Top 100 lists through the decade. There was a lot of utter dreck as well. Even that might have been at least somewhat interesting.
Punk wasn't exactly evenly distributed. The only reason I knew about it then at all was from people writing about it, which made it appear to be an artifact of journalism.
I remember hearing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the radio for the first time, and thinking they'd never play it again, 'cause it was just too weird.
The Top 40 crap then was better than today, simply because it used real musicians and vocalists. Music wasn't put together like Lego blocks by some computer geek working with a music workstation. Let's not even get started on pitch correction of vocalists, good grief!
I was just cycling home in the dark and deliberately went the wrong way into a one-way street. The "One Way Ticket" Eruption song came to mind, man. I haven't heard that in over 35 years probably. Completely forgot about it. I didn't even speak English; now I understand what it's about, listening to it on YT.
LED digital watches arrived at my school in 1974/75. LCD watches arrived about a year later.
>Headphones were giant things you used in the basement to listen to Pink Floyd.
I had a pair of 424s in 1975. They sounded pretty good.
http://www.tonepublications.com/old-school/sennheiser-hd-414...
>There was no portable way to listen to music except transistor radios.
Like a lot of people, I had a battery/mains cassette player/recorder. It wasn't an iPod, but it would have done the job. It's more accurate to say there was no tradition of personal music players. In-car players were very common.
>Cashiers punched in all the prices by hand, but it was only a little bit slower.
It was horrendously slow. And every single individual item had to have its own price sticker - which often fell off, holding everyone up.
It's interesting how many of these simply haven't been checked or researched, just patched together to create an "It was better in the old days' narrative.
I don't remember it being better. I remember it being very different. Many things now - smoking bans, health awareness, the public Internet - are huge improvements.
Even today they often type the barcode faster in than it can be recognized.
For inventory control and price accuracy you get the same advantages as with barcode, but you can be faster and work without a barcode reader.
One of my first jobs was at a store where we manually keyed the prices (and produce code numbers). We often got comments from customers surprised that we were quicker than the stores that used scanners. Missing stickers for unusual products could of course cause a slowdown (same as a product that won't scan). But for most things, you typed them in so many times per day that you could just glance over the pile of things as they were being unloaded onto the checkout counter and by the time the customer had put everything on the counter, your hand had already keyed all the prices/codes in by muscle memory. Things that were sold by weight had to be weighed, but otherwise it was quick.
It took longer to wait for the response from the credit card processor than it did to enter prices for a whole cart full of groceries. That gave us time to bag the groceries. When someone paid cash, there was no need to wait for the credit card (or wait for someone to fill out a check), so that's when we had to call one of the clerks over to bag.
IMHO smoking bans have been a terrible thing. It's nowhere near as pleasant to listen to music or hang out in a bar or pub without the blue haze of tobacco smoke making the place feel comfortable and happy. I miss it terribly — and I don't smoke cigarettes!
Eau contraire, in 1976 I was delivering J&B's pizza to save up for college.
And our freezer was filled with TV dinners. We had 'TV Trays'. Today, we have trays for our notebook computers: http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-computer-stands.h...
Towns were more compact. There were no traffic lights in my town, no traffic lights until you hit the inner suburbs. Shops had limited hours. 9-5 weekdays, 9-12 Saturday. Except banks. They opened 10-5 and were closed weekends. No Sunday shopping existed. Everything was cash only. Supermarkets hardly existed. Towns had grocery stores, big towns had markets. You got up early on Saturday and shopped for the week in the limited hours available.
Food had to be prepared. There were no fast food outlets. Fast food was limited to fish fingers and frozen vegetables. I could never imagine bread being a dollar a loaf. Milk came in bottles. Milk, bread and the paper were delivered to the house.
News arrived by radio, newspapers then TV. Newspapers printed several times a day. TV was limited to four channels and black and white. Radio was AM. There were a lot of stations but only a few rock stations. Lots of 50's and 60's music on the air. Vinyl was king. 45's were less popular than LP's. 78's was old music. Stereo was affordable.
Cars got smaller, a lot smaller due to the oil shocks. Petrol contained lead. Most families had one car, maybe a second smaller car. Divorce was a new word. More women were moving into full time or part time work. Finance was restricted. Most people aspired to buy a house. Housing and land was affordable. Asbestos was deemed safe to use as building materials.
The difference between the fit and unfit was less. A lot more people smoked. Drinking was institutional. Fat people hardly existed. Diabeties was an old people disease. Kids died in droves on the road. The road toll was more than double what it is now. Men retired at 65 and died soon after.
It was a lot colder and a lot wetter and greener in the winter time. University was free. The library was the place to find out new ideas in books. Calculators started appearing. I heard about time-sharing for the first time. A scientist I knew worked with computers. His username was "Stout".
>Woodstock was Snoopys friend.
And a famous '69 music festival.
In 75 my parents had credit cards (as did all of their friends). We shopped at a supermarket and shopping malls. We ate tons of pre-packaged food like TV dinners and spaghetti O's - far more than people do today. Fast food was MacDonalds, BK, etc. Milk came in cartons from the supermarket.
Newspaper once a day. TV had been color for many years and we got at least a dozen channels. Radio was FM for music AM for news/sports. 8 track tapes and cassettes were everywhere. Most people had touch-tone phones.
University was not free. I had been programming computers at school (junior high) for several years via dial-up time sharing.
I guess changes come to different parts of the country at very different rates.
Aus. In a lot of ways the US was far more advanced than the rest of the world in '75. You can see that in the every day technology. There's another cause, I lived right on the outer fringes of Melbourne [0] and to give you an idea how small, most of the kids I went to school were delivered by one of two local doctors. [1] The thing that strikes me re-reading my post, then yours is how shockingly fast the Australian caught up and passed the US in a lot of ways.
As a kid the US sounded like a large and interesting place. Somewhere you might be aspire to move too. Now? not a chance. Aus has mostly free medical care and education, little gun violence, less advertising, advanced technology [2] and I'm asking myself, "what the hell happened in the US from '75 to now to make it as it is now?"
Btw, this isn't a criticism of the people of the US. What caused the structural tangle of politics, violence and religion that makes the country a place to avoid?
"And a famous '69 music festival."
Duh, where do you think Shultz got the name? The point I'm making is the concert here was better known by a weekly comic strip than the music on the radio. Certainly available on LP though.
[0] Remember "Melbourne is the artichoke end of the world" ~ http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/
[1] http://seldomlogical.com/profile/
[2] Unaffordable housing, world #2 obesity rate, higher working hours, some political instability.
I'd say the cause is largely availability heuristic. You could Google it, but with Australian Internet speeds that might take several days.
I just barely remember something called "Watergate" (but I was 6 in 1974).
House had asbestos shingles. "Regular" leaded gasoline was a convenient cleaning solvent: you just siphoned some from your car (suck with your mouth to get the gas going through the hose).
Chlordane was used to control termites- it worked great!
In 1975 people were really starting to dump their tube electronics. This was a great source of parts. Also Lafayette electronics was awesome. TV service was still common.
You helped your dad with replacing brake shoes on the 1972 "Super Beetle".
We still had milk and eggs delivered. But you could also pick some up from the drive through Dairy Barn: http://patch.com/new-york/portwashington/the-barn-a-new-spin...
Grandparents soon moved out of the city to avoid the crime.
Touch tone phone service cost more!
Girls had strange spherical radios: http://long70s.tumblr.com/post/86188100212/the-panasonic-pan...
Also, in 1975, one heard a lot more about 'the coming ice age' than global warming. The concept had a brief reprise in the 80s with 'the Cold and the Dark' (Nuclear Winter).
Also, you could meet somebody for lunch at the terminal during a layover or have a meeting right in the terminal at a restaurant. I had a boss before 9/11 that had direct reports all over the country. He would sometimes fly out and have lunch with one of his reports at a restaurant in the terminal and fly right back out. None of this is practical now with the security hassles.
None of this is practical now with the security hassles
Only a bit of actual inspired music has broken through in the past decade... basically m83 and a bit of decent hip hop. Compare this to the early 90s, the last time popular music was decent. There were literally dozens of amazing new bands and several whole new styles in a span of 5 years. That was I suppose before the marketers took over and figured out how to endlessly push junk.
I don't always cheer for disruption, but boy would I celebrate the total ruin of that industry. What a joke.
Wait, couldn't you just listen in on someone's line from the telephone box outside their house?
Crossed lines were a thing I think [in movies they were!] - induced signals in a different line that allowed you to hear someone else's call?
Still largely true in Australia.
Also they're clearly saying "no" in the context of a seven year old's view of domestic life. Obviously TV stations had recording equipment.
There are plenty of other nits to pick with this article, as well. Pong wasn't the only video game, even if it was by far the most common (and yes, pinball dominated the arcades then). Dynamic range compression on LPs was certainly a thing, but producers didn't go overboard with it back then the way they do now.
Still, it's funny how some things never change (like media fearmongering).
You can still do this using a debit card. I'm not 100% sure how your credit is affected if you never get a credit card though. I know there are other ways to build up credit. Also, credit cards make products more expensive, there's probably a transaction fee for debit cards too.
> There were no ATM's. To get cash out of your account, you went to a bank teller, and there was no fee.
But you could only get money out of your own bank? You can now get an account at many banks/credit unions that waive atm transaction fees.
> Only rich people had credit cards. If you had debts, a credit card was harder to get.
100% agree that we need to bring this back. If you don't have good credit, 760+ you shouldn't be allowed to have a credit card with high interest rates.
> Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or worked your way through.
Why is college so much more expensive now? Even online/"low cost" programs.
> There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food, so people had to at least try to cook.
Really, no pizza delivery?! Well I guess with oil shortages that's believable.
> The work week was five hours shorter. You can still see this in the old phrase "nine to five." People actually did work nine to five, with a paid hour for lunch.
There are many people who work multiple jobs to make ends meet and the vast majority aren't doing what they want.
> Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private.
:(
> Everybody was afraid of "crime" (illegal acts by people of lower social class) and "terrorism" (political violence outside a state monopoly).
Yup, more of that now even though we're safer now than at any other time in history.
> Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect". They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would heat up and we would have ecological disasters.
Not just doomsayers, but looks like oil companies knew about it too but decided to keep it hidden.
> There was an oil shortage, and people responded by driving less, in more fuel-efficient cars.
I saw the first Hummer H2 I'd seen in years a few weeks ago costco pump in the bay area when oil prices were ~$2.15/gallon. It all boils down to economics.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-s...
His point wasn't debit versus credit. It was that one had to have the actual paper cash or a checkbook handy when stopping at the store. It's a lot more convenient now.
Anyway, even credit cards were slower then.