Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 31, 2024

Maybe he should step into the booth and change into his Superman costume.

No fax machine or VCR? How about a DVD?

If he sat down at the typewriter, it would be performance art.

Next, Edna found out that taking carbon paper into the phone booth to make a clone doesn’t work very well. Her clone emerged with smudges.

My wife used to type so bloody fast, she could get an overstrike on an IBM Selectric.

They need that carbon paper to get the numbers off their credit cards.

“took an ugly turn” not half as ugly as when thrift stores are selling things I not only still own, but still use frequently.

It could be worse – at least there’s no display case with their names on it.

It’s funny to me that "remnants " of ancient artifacts are still present in today’s tech. I wonder how many younger people know the origins and meanings of “cc” and “bcc”.

My father-in-law refuses to use a computer. All of his letters are still typed on a typewriter.

You mean hieroglyphics aren’t used any more … ?

There once was a List circulating on university campuses advising profs about terms that don’t make sense to their students like “sounding like a broken record” and that Boston, Chicago, and Kansas are places, not rock bands.

We can expand the museum now. Add a newer section for Xerox copy machines that surpassed carbon copying, wall-mounted pay-phone kiosks that replaced enclosed booths, and electric typewriters and early word processors that replaced manual typewriters.

Don’t get me started on the pager era. ;-)

Where’s the mimeograph?

You can have my slide rule when you pry it from my …

Likewise for my logarithm tables …

heck, I even a slide rule used by artillerymen…

Where’s the encyclopedia on VCR repair?

Dr. Who is somewhere around…

I’m safe -keeping my ex-wife’s Smith Corona portable typewriter that her parents gave her up on HS graduation. In excellent condition, to this day.

I saw a camera I still use in a museum

In the 80s, I was on a nationwide roll-out, installing new hardware, in branches of Halifax Building Society, with a team of six engineers. At the end of each work-day, we’d congregate at the centrally located hotel, for a meal and drinks and chat.

Inevitably, we’d compare systems we’d worked on. I listed the CDC 140A, IBM Single element (golf-ball) printer, 4Kb ferrite ring memory, 8" floppy-disks, magnetic reel-to-reel, punched paper tape and IBM 80 column punched cards.

That’s when one of the bright sparks DID mention that he’d seen most of those in the science museum…

Yeah, I remember all those things.

My local museum asked me if I would like to participate in the relic exhibit.

…when they realized that they were part of the exhibit.

slide rules

You can still get manual typewriters and carbon paper at Staples™… I don’t think they sell a lot of them though. You can’t order a telephone booth there.

A Rolodex; the first database.

A credit card imprinter with rotating wheels to change the date, and the sticker with the phone number to call to get an approval number from the financial clearing house if the sale was over the store’s risk limit.

… And why do the Neanderthal couple in the cave diorama bear such a striking resemblance to Earl and Edna?

Coming to reserve their own nook

When I graduated from high school (1971), as a gift, my parents bought me the latest thing in high tech. An electric typewriter.

There is still an actual phone booth in my neighborhood.

Carbon paper and manual typewriters are from when I was a little kid. My family had an office, and I used them as toys. But I remember when they got the electric typewriter. I was a big deal.

At the rate things are changing these days, today’s stuff will be in a museum yesterday. My ten year old antique phone (remember when they lasted forever and were connected to the wall?) is barely supported and will soon be useless. Hundreds more dollars out with the trash.

My opinion. Young people today have less sense of the past because tyhe movies they see are all set in the present or in a fantasy/science fiction realm.

We knew about history because back in the day there were a ton of historical movies. Even the cartoons referenced Napoleon and King Arthur.

I went to the Smithsonian American History’s history of computing exhibit and recognised almost everything as something I knew/owned, much to the delight of my kids. Then I had the same experience at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. sigh.

More than 20 years ago, FSU had outdated office equipment they didn’t know what to do with. Ended up in a glassed display showing the evolution of technology.

In the late 1980’s my wife and I went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI and came upon an exhibit. We stopped, looked at each other and started laughing. There before us was our kitchen on exhibit. We had purchased my grandmother’s house and the kitchen was right out of the 1950’s.

I still have the “portable” manual typewriter that got me through college in the 70s. Every now and then I check what people are buying this model for on eBay, and it’s not worth the hassle to sell it. But I’ll probably get around to it some day.

Cursive writing is absent.

I still use carbon paper, not for it’s original purpose however.

Don’t miss typewriters or carbon paper.

A sheet of blank paper listing all of Cackling Kamala’s accomplishments.

I still have my slide rules.

I have the big metal one that I used for serious calculations.

I have the big plastic one for everyday use.

I have the small pocket one for when an argument breaks out among my engineering friends at lunch.

My wife and I visited the battleship North Carolina which is now a museum in Wilmington, NC. As a nurse, she was eager to see the new exhibit of the sick bay.

She took some pictures and sent them to my sister who is also a nurse and who went to the same nursing school as my wife. The caption with the picture was, “It’s official. We are older than dirt. This is the same equipment we trained on.” The artifacts were World War II vintage.

Back in the 1980s, there was an earthquake in the then Soviet Union. The Soviets were willing to accept American aid and sent a huge transport aircraft to McChord AFB to pick up some recently obsolete medical equipment. The base called my wife to help them categorize what the equipment was and how to use it.

My then teen son disappeared into the aircraft. He was conversing with the crew. Their English was limited and his Russian was non-existent, but they found common ground in German. As a pilot, I envied his visit.

They forgot a statue of a milk man placing glass milk bottles in a metal box located on your front porch.

just when one thinks he/she is aging out of the normal world, aging in becomes a thing.

Yup, yup, yup. Tell me about it. The list keeps getting longer. The first time it hit me, I was talking to a class of high school students about watching the moon landing (live) as if of course everyone had done it, until I saw this odd look on their faces and realized I was historical.

I find it a bit inconceivable that there is at least one generation that has no idea what these items are. Sad, but I know true.

Man, do I feel old!!!

Hard to believe how few analog devices are left that haven’t been replaced by digital.

One of my emergency management courses included the instruction on knowing where payphones are. They are almost indestructible, usually hardwired to the central office and keep working when cell service craps out.

Wow…..completely forgot about carbon paper! My mom was a secretary for several bowling leagues & had to type multiple standings sheets every week….she went thru carbon paper like water‼️

Those items are obsolete!? Who knew?

I already know how old I am. Cartoons such as this don’t make me feel any older… I’m actually proud of my age, and hope to add a bunch more years to it!

Where’s the Doctor? Who?

The blue mail box that was on the corner every few blocks.

overhead projector? For analog power point presentations?

Doctors and hospitals still use fax machines

Where’s the card file from the library?

One day at work I used the phrase “quarter past” when a younger coworker asked the time. I had to explain what I meant.

People see the phone handset daily, as the icon on their pocket computer for the voice communication app. I wonder how many know what it represents.

Ha, try walking into an antique shop and finding one of your own paintings for sale!! Happened to me in Narberth.

“Look, there’s a newspaper!”

So, where’s Donald Trump? Incomplete exhibition…

Not just things change over time, also words. Once trademarked, now generic: Aspirin, Band-Aid, Escalator, Formica, Frisbee, Jacuzzi, Kerosene, Kleenex, Laundromat, Linoleum, Mace, Ping-Pong, Popsicle, Q-Tips, Scotch tape, Spam, Styrofoam, Taser, Teflon, Thermos, Trampoline, Velcro, Xerox, Yo-Yo, Zipper

Thinking of something and then remembering it was decades ago.

Yeah, Clark Kent was a little bummed by the exhibit as well.

The person against the wall? What does that represent?

Rolodex, radio, greenstamps, Fuller Brush man, mimeograph ,

They don’t have a comptometer, which was the first kind of calculator. Also, the ten-key isn’t there.

My wife and I used to attend a “Family Trivia Night” with my two teenaged children along with a couple of other families. One night, I brought in a sheet of carbon paper (I still have a box of it in my home office). The kids had an absolute blast with it.

Is that a ’59 Corvair in the corner?

Where’s the fax machine?

Record players with 33,45 and 78 speed

Of all the cartoons I viewed on GoComics the last 12 years, THIS one hits home HARD!

Time marches on. Right over my Boomer toes.

No computer punch cards?

Wow, I bet you guys used to read the funny pages in the newspaper. My Grandpa told me all about them, but, I don’t know where you’d find a newspaper today.

I remember those.

Very few people “roll down” their windows or “crank” their cars anymore. And “give me a ring” must refer to jewelry.

Where’s the rotary phone?

Carbon paper and typewriters still exist. They have plenty of both on Amazon.

Bottle / Can opener – AKA “Church Key.”

I’ll tell you, carbon really, really sucked! Not kidding.

Where’s the Mimeograph machine?

Background music provided by Lawrence Welk on a gramophone.

When I filed certain IRS forms on paper, up until four years ago, I used to have fun using my black/gold Underwood typewriter to type in my email address. The Underwood has an “@” symbol.