Driving London to Bath 60 years ago | Hacker News Reader

Driving London to Bath 60 years ago

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There's also a fascinating and super detailed video how to drive from West Germany to Berlin as member of British military during Cold War times https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS1xvtLV8Xw

Thanks to this I've learnt that Heathrow Airport had a terminal in central London at the time! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_London_Air_Terminal

It's also interesting to see how many things this "advanced motorist" does that would result in a test fail or fine nowadays. Like at 8:21 when he flashes his lights and honks at traffic to get out of the way(!) A pointless manoeuvre at 12:14 and a very poor overtake at 15:05 that forces oncoming traffic to slow down. Baseline standards have certainly improved since then..

Not having an “in town checkin” system like Hong Kong (or, indeed, the London Airport of the past!) is one of the most miserable things about flying out of there. Imagine how much easier it would be to take the Piccadilly line without a suitcase…

You're not wrong, however we now finally have the Elizabeth Line which gets rid of that entire headache and you get air conditioning too! :)

True, I haven’t been back since that opened, it might be sufficient improvement!

That overtaking sequence at 8:20!

The narrator in a gentle documentary voice:

> Just keep on my lane, check my mirror; nothing behind me that wants to overtake.

> And now I shall start to close up, and first of all signal him with my headlights.

> And again.

> It hasn't closed that I'm here so I shall sound the horn. [HONK]

> And again. [IMPATIENT HONKING]

> Yes; he's pulling in, and I can go past.

> […] giving me the V-sign. I can't think why he should think that I'm interested in his politics.

(The V-sign being the conventional British hand sign for 'Oi, sod off you twat!', or something along those lines.)

I quite like the French autoroute approach to this situation. They sit in the outside lane with their indicator on to indicate they want to go around you but can't. Somewhat less aggressive but makes the point.

The British "V-sign" is equivalent to the US "middle finger." The only difference is the former represents open legs, while the latter represents the male member.

If the "V-sign" is given with the palm forward, then it could be either of the (antiquated) "peace" or "victory" signs, but if it is given with the back of the hand forward, it's the "legs open" version.

That's the first time I ever heard that explanation (open legs) -the most common is it is a sign of defiance from English archers to French who it was said would cut off the two right fingers from any captured archers.

That is pretty rigorously debunked but is still popular

I think ultimately it's an arbitrary rude gesture that became popular and stuck.

As my seven year old is delighted to learn, it's rude enough to shock but nowhere near as rude as a middle finger.

Interesting. I've heard the archers version too, but what I related above was taught to me by an acquaintance from Birmingham nearly 50 years ago. (Obviously I'm a yank and it's certainly possible that I was misinformed.)

> Baseline standards have certainly improved since then..

You should see what they were doing in programming - it was FORTRAN with GOTOs all over the place ...

If you enjoy that kind of peek into the past, there is a video of a tram ride through 1931 Leipzig on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CETIdLkJM4k

Funny the blinker was still called "trafficator".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafficators

We call them indicators in the UK now.

Similar vein: Great North Road in 1939 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPhkZSWxt_I

It's amazing to see these old videos. The roads were busy than I expected, I thought cars were incredibly expensive back then? (not that they aren't now).

In 60 years time when we're all driving hover cars like the Jetsons imagine how much footage they'll have of us. Dashcams everywhere

Cars were already mass-produced 60 years ago and, compared to contemporary cars, rather simple. (No electronics, no airbags etc.) So they couldn't have been that expensive.

Also, parking was mostly free, no congestion duties when driving into London... IDK if there were taxes on gasoline and how high.

And before the ‘70’s oil embargo

Depends on the country. In Italy there's still to this day a tax on gasoline originally imposed to finance the Italo-Ethiopian war in 1935.

Naturally that wasn't even the last tax of this sort, the latest addition being from 2012.

> In 60 years time when we're all driving hover cars…

Don’t get your hopes up. In the seventies we were promised personal jet packs by now.

About 5 million cars in 1960s vs over 30 million now. But that journey done today would be practically all on the M4, a 3 lane uninterrupted motorway, so capacity has massively increased.

Not quite the same time period :) but I enjoyed it when it happened: Sigur Rós doing a whole day loop around Icelandic Route 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G54tllj-SKI (with their soundtrack)

IAM uses IPSGA today - information, position, speed, gear, acceleration. Information is further broken down to Take, Use, Give.

In the video, it's a little different, but not by much: course, mirror, signal, brake, gear, accelerator.

I didn't watch it all, but I was struck by the absence of traffic lights - both at junctions and pedestrian crossings, where they're ubiquitous in urban areas now.

The soundtrack is definitely from the 1960s. Can someone say what genre (of jazz?) that is?

I'd call it easy listening 60s jazz. Some of the tracks in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJuqUErChmM are very similar.

Chippenham and Calne are so different :O

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