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RC and Moon Pie posted:I feel my elementary school days were closer to my parents' than what kids experienced just five years later. Multipurpose room days were slapping. and we had a kickass computer lab the whole time I was there.
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Jun 25, 2019 03:35
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Anyone remember the smell of the Ditto ("Mimeograph") Machines? The ones that made the purple copies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B979xBnk2Hg Couldn't get caught sniffing the paper like a dipshit but I liked that smell much more than I should ever admit.
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Jun 25, 2019 03:51
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I started elementary school in the 60s. Filmstrips, overhead projectors, those chattering 8mm film cassette players, 16mm movies; were the media for that time. And that mimeograph smell is a smell from my youth all the way to high school.
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Jun 25, 2019 04:14
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mystes posted:That reminds me of the TI Viewscreen for showing the screen from a calculator on an overhead projector.  Vanagoon posted:Anyone remember the smell of the Ditto ("Mimeograph") Machines? 
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Jun 25, 2019 04:16
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Vanagoon posted:Anyone remember the smell of the Ditto ("Mimeograph") Machines? Spirit duplicators are awesome. The way they work is fascinating.
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Jun 25, 2019 04:19
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SubG posted:That's pretty obsolete, but nothing compared to a slide rule designed for use on an overhead projector: OMG. I always assumed slide rules went away long before overhead projectors came in. (I was in the last class that had to learn how to use a slide rule, and at that time my school didn't have projectors for transparencies, only giant clunky "episcopes". This was in Germany, late 70s/early 80s.)
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Jun 25, 2019 05:24
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FilthyImp posted:We had a Laserdisc player with some kind of Karaoke function in like 5th grade and that poo poo was the loving future right there man. Commodores were put into classrooms in first grade. We had one at home and I have vague memories of staying in at recess to show the teachers how to load programs. An actual computer lab was in place maybe in second grade. I think it was Commodores to start, then Apple IIs(?) soon after. At the middle school, they were still using Commodores to run Accelerated Reader in sixth grade, then got all new equipment when a new school was built. Humbug Scoolbus posted:And that mimeograph smell is a smell from my youth all the way to high school. The third grade building had a working mimeograph machine. Glorious purple ink. And this. We had these in elementary school, but not many as they were dying out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXi06xoVlYM System80 ran on hard plastic punch cards. I don't remember the records, but the teacher possibly already had those in the machine before they let us touch them. I seem to remember these things running hot. I also remember them as being much noisier, but that might have been the sound of one in a death throe.
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Jun 25, 2019 05:26
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For about a month when I was in 5th or 6th grade (around 2000 or so) the copier at my school broke so everything was done on an old ditto machine. The principal, who was very old, had a special assembly to celebrate his foresight in not sending it back to the district for scrapping when they replaced it in the late 70s. Say what you will but apparently that thing still worked after two decades of storage.
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Jun 25, 2019 08:57
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The only thing you need to replenish is the ink or substrate materials. We had a machine in 2010 that was just ink, and permeable template roll. The rest was a cylinder and some electronics that would have been at home in 1982. Barring some rubber bands getting brittle or whatever, that thing will run as long as you can find ink for it.
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Jun 25, 2019 09:03
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What were those devices that you put your credit card on it at store register a long rear end time agos? It was kind of like a mandolin slicer. I think it may have just ran a wheel of ink across some paper that rested on top of your card, making a paper copy sort of like making a rubbing of something with paper and the side of a pencil lead. They went away long before I was using credit/debit card and I don't think I ever knew what exactly they did or what they were called. Unperson_47 has a new favorite as of 09:32 on Jun 25, 2019 |
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Jun 25, 2019 09:27
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Grand Prize Winner posted:For about a month when I was in 5th or 6th grade (around 2000 or so) the copier at my school broke so everything was done on an old ditto machine. The principal, who was very old, had a special assembly to celebrate his foresight in not sending it back to the district for scrapping when they replaced it in the late 70s. Say what you will but apparently that thing still worked after two decades of storage. Yeah, I have had bosses like that. Fucks up by not having redundancy or a maintenance contract with an SLA on mission-critical equipment; pats self on back for paying for storage of obsolete tech for 20 years that requires staff training to use and produces inferior output. Reminds me of the time I found a 25-year old minicomputer in an outbuilding. You never know when you might need it!
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Jun 25, 2019 09:30
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Unperson_47 posted:What were those devices that you put your credit card on it at store registers? It was kind of like a mandolin slicer. I don't know the name, but they copied your credit card information. That's why the name and numbers are raised . Lurking Haro has a new favorite as of 09:35 on Jun 25, 2019 |
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Jun 25, 2019 09:30
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Unperson_47 posted:What were those devices that you put your credit card on it at store register a long rear end time agos? It was kind of like a mandolin slicer. Imprinter 
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Jun 25, 2019 09:31
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Lurking Haro posted:=That's why the name and numbers are raised . Wow, I''ve always wondered why they were raised and never put it together.
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Jun 25, 2019 09:37
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There are like no videos of an imprinter being used, it's crazy.
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Jun 25, 2019 09:46
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7wutgAlNHk I swear the one I used had some kind of lever on the top though, and you'd just slam it down and it'd move the ink roller over the card automatically.
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Jun 25, 2019 09:50
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Ink roller? Didn’t most of them use carbon paper?
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Jun 25, 2019 09:53
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Platystemon posted:Ink roller? No, just all of them.
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Jun 25, 2019 09:55
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Fun fact: a popular form of fraud replied on companies not taking care with the used carbon paper and leaving a perfect copy of your credit card lying around. Always take the carbons.
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Jun 25, 2019 10:04
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I started elementary school in the 60s. Filmstrips, overhead projectors, those chattering 8mm film cassette players, 16mm movies; were the media for that time. Did any of your school desks have holes designed to take inkwells? Mine did in a small / rural (read: broke as gently caress) NZ school in the '90s and I remember thinking that was really odd / retro but I have just realised I have absolutely no idea what time scales were actually involved in something as simple as writing technology.
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Jun 25, 2019 10:16
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Zopotantor posted:OMG. I always assumed slide rules went away long before overhead projectors came in. (I was in the last class that had to learn how to use a slide rule, and at that time my school didn't have projectors for transparencies, only giant clunky "episcopes". This was in Germany, late 70s/early 80s.) The first handheld calculator to really challenge slide rules was the HP-35, the first scientific handheld calculator, in 1972. It could do trig, log and exponential functions in addition to multiplication and division, which up to that point other (handheld) calculators couldn't do but slide rules could. And of course every pocket calculator can do addition and subtraction, which most slide rules don't do. On the other hand the HP-35 was prohibitively expensive for the early '70s; they cost around US$400 when released, or over two grand in inflation-adjusted dollars. But within a couple years you had calculators like the TI-30 and TI-55 and HP-31E that had more and more features and were a shitload cheaper---all under US$100. Slide rules persisted in several fields where special-purpose slide rules were still better for specific kinds of calculations, but otherwise became uncommon. By the '80s they were effectively gone. So you had a good solid overlap of thirty or forty years where both were common enough that you'd expect to find both of them in a lot of classrooms. That said, the slide rule transparency was a less common device for classroom slide rule instruction than the comically large classroom slide rule:   
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Jun 25, 2019 10:56
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aardwolf posted:Did any of your school desks have holes designed to take inkwells? Mine did in a small / rural (read: broke as gently caress) NZ school in the '90s and I remember thinking that was really odd / retro but I have just realised I have absolutely no idea what time scales were actually involved in something as simple as writing technology. My UK middle school still had old style desks with lift-up tops and inkwells (long disused and stuffed full of pencil shavings and 10 year old gum). This would have been 1988-92. The "fun" class project on the first day of the school year was to give the kids sandpaper and tell them to remove last year's graffiti.   The high-school I started in 1992 still had a typing classroom full of typewriters, although they were just putting the last group of girls (no boys allowed) through and turned it into another history classroom the next year. The headmaster was also very old fashioned and used to walk around in his mortarboard and gown swishing the cane he wasn't allowed to use any more.
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Jun 25, 2019 11:21
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Sorry, boys, but you just don't measure up.
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Jun 25, 2019 11:32
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Sweevo posted:My UK middle school still had old style desks with lift-up tops and inkwells (long disused and stuffed full of pencil shavings and 10 year old gum). This would have been 1988-92. The "fun" class project on the first day of the school year was to give the kids sandpaper and tell them to remove last year's graffiti. Whoa, what's with the centrally-placed inkwells? What kind of left-wing, namby-pamby, airy-fairy school did you go to where left-handed weaklings were tolerated instead of being rapped across the knuckles until they learnt to write with the correct hand and also gain a stutter?
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Jun 25, 2019 11:38
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Sweevo posted:The headmaster was also very old fashioned and used to walk around in his mortarboard and gown swishing the cane he wasn't allowed to use any more. Did you grow up on Bash Street?
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Jun 25, 2019 12:04
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I was in the last age group to learn "beauty writing" (cursive) in Finland so we all wrote "beauty" but every new teacher fresh from Uni wrote some hosed-up script.
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Jun 25, 2019 12:08
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Shut up Meg posted:Imprinter We had an outage 6 years ago when I was working retail and the boss and myself were the only ones that knew how to use the drat things. Also the comment about stealing creds. Yeah Dumpster Diving was a big thing when those Imprinters were around.
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Jun 25, 2019 12:18
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ryonguy posted:Speaking of obsolete classroom equipment, filmstrip machines. No, not 16mm or whatever film projectors, individual frames of film used as slideshows. I loved filmstrips. They're an artform that hasn't really been digitally preserved in any real capacity. There are several from my childhood I remember quite vividly, and would love to see again, but most libraries have (rightly) weeded them from their collections and I've got enough weird obsessions and hobbies without starting a god damned filmstrip collection from odd lots on eBay.
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Jun 25, 2019 12:23
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Shut up Meg posted:Yeah, I have had bosses like that. At this point there's a fair chance someone would pay to take a minicomputer off your hands, especially if it was still working or easily repaired - but I get the impression this was a little while ago?
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Jun 25, 2019 12:41
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Computer viking posted:At this point there's a fair chance someone would pay to take a minicomputer off your hands, especially if it was still working or easily repaired - but I get the impression this was a little while ago? Yeah, it was a dozen years ago and it turns out that storing sensitive electronics in an outbuilding with a leaky roof leaves you with something that you can't even convert into a cocktail cabinet for nerds. It was more a laugh at the idea that someone thought to store it for such a long time in case it became useful - which wasn't helped by not storing any peripherals or documentation along with it.
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Jun 25, 2019 12:49
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Sweevo posted:My UK middle school still had old style desks with lift-up tops and inkwells (long disused and stuffed full of pencil shavings and 10 year old gum). This would have been 1988-92. The "fun" class project on the first day of the school year was to give the kids sandpaper and tell them to remove last year's graffiti. My (also UK) primary school replaced these desks during my last year there. The replacement flat desks were massively inferior. Suddenly everyone had lost their storage space so kids were always wandering around the classroom to retrieve things from their drawers. Commonly used books had to be collected in and distributed every use instead of being left in the desks. The inkwells, which had been used for pencil shavings, were gone, which meant more kids wandering around to sharpen pencils over the bin. The useful ridge was gone, so pens rolled onto the floor easier. It was when I first learnt the valuable lesson that newer does not automatically mean better.
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Jun 25, 2019 13:10
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aardwolf posted:Did any of your school desks have holes designed to take inkwells? Mine did in a small / rural (read: broke as gently caress) NZ school in the '90s and I remember thinking that was really odd / retro but I have just realised I have absolutely no idea what time scales were actually involved in something as simple as writing technology. Ballpoint pens didn’t become a big thing until after WW2 thanks to Biro, so your only two options until the 1950s were usually fountain pens or dip pens. It’s not inconceivable that dip pens continued seeing use in underfunded rural colony schools through the 50s and 60s; there were places around the world decades later still using slates.
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Jun 25, 2019 13:24
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Unperson_47 posted:Wow, I''ve always wondered why they were raised and never put it together. Prior to electronic authorization of credit cards, anytime you used a card in a store, they would put your credit card into this machine, along with the store's imprinter plate. (that had the store's account number, address, etc..) Then they would lay a 3 part carbon copy form over top the entire thing. When they ran the slider across, it would imprint the raised numbers off your card and the store's imprinter plate onto the form. You would receive a copy of this, and the store would mail a copy off to the credit card company so they could actually get paid. Imprinting your card in this manner was a form of fraud protection as it proved your card was present for the transaction. Up until recently actually, every merchant that could take credit cards was technically required to have one of these imprinter machines and a set of imprinter plates. However most didn't. The card companies finally abandoned this requirement not to long ago actually. Because of this cards are no longer required to have raised numbers. (in the US anyways)
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Jun 25, 2019 13:25
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My bank just started issuing cards without the raised numbers. They're horrible! They look like those fake cards you get with a new wallet.
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Jun 25, 2019 13:35
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Humphreys posted:We had an outage 6 years ago when I was working retail and the boss and myself were the only ones that knew how to use the drat things. My memory of them is that everything but the customer copy went to the bank in one piece, carbon paper included. Were there different styles of paper for them?
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Jun 25, 2019 13:36
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The Deion Sanders Hot Dog Express. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZyGaVNihK0 I do so dearly wish this video existed in higher quality, but it seems this is it, internet-wise. Pancakes! Yes, pancakes.
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Jun 25, 2019 13:38
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:There are like no videos of an imprinter being used, it's crazy. You can see a few of them used when Clark goes to the department store in Christmas Vacation.
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Jun 25, 2019 14:15
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Shut up Meg posted:Yeah, I have had bosses like that. A principal has no control over the maintenance contract or the number of copiers, generally. They get exactly one, maintained and supplied poorly and at 1500% retail by somebody locally influential's failson/brother/cousin
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Jun 25, 2019 14:20
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chitoryu12 posted:Ballpoint pens didn’t become a big thing until after WW2 thanks to Biro, so your only two options until the 1950s were usually fountain pens or dip pens. It’s not inconceivable that dip pens continued seeing use in underfunded rural colony schools through the 50s and 60s; there were places around the world decades later still using slates. Mine was probably one of the last generations whose default school writing instruments (in mid-80s former Yugoslavia) were fountain pens. We used the ones with cartridges and they sucked. Leaky, inconsistent, unreliable crap. I would've honestly preferred the inkwell. I don't remember when we switched to ballpoints but what a life improvement that was.
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Jun 25, 2019 14:35
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Horace posted:My bank just started issuing cards without the raised numbers. They're horrible! They look like those fake cards you get with a new wallet. A new thing that has started because of the requirement for raised numbers going away, is that many banks can now print debit cards on-site. So if you loose your card, or the number is compromised, you can walk into the branch and they can give you a new card immediately. No more having to wait for a new one in the mail.
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Jun 25, 2019 14:53
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