My first pager was huge. It played a voice message. I would be minding my own business when this loud voice would come on that said something like "Slobake, call me at the office." It was embarrassing.
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Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
I can picture that. The old Nextel phones were like that. I had a superintendent call me on one of those and launch into a really good blue streak. Only problem was that I was in the middle of a client meeting and had to subject them to the tirade until the superintendent in question took a breath. It is funny now. Not so much then.We just disconnected from land lines of any kind, but we still have telephones in the house. One's from the 1930s and is really elegant, and one is a 1970s standard issue Western Electric dial telephone, except it's red. It's the hotline. To not much, but there it is.
No comment
Just sayin, the only people I knew who had beepers in the 90s were weed dealers.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
I had a beeper for a month or so in 1990. My wife was due to have our son, and I was trying to finish a project that had me doing concrete work under a bridge. I practically jumped out of my skin every time that thing went off, since she was the only person who had the number for it. We had a code for "get home NOW the baby is on the way!" It was never that code, just something like pick up a loaf of bread. That didn't stop me from going off like a rocket every time it made any noise. For what its worth, the kid was born a couple weeks after the project was done, making it a moot point. The guys I was working with enjoyed the comedy of my panic every time that thing went off.
My grandmother is a nurse and during the 90s she had all sorts of huge pagers and "car phones" which were more like full size briefcases with battery packs etc. We had to take them everywhere as she was always on call.
My first "laptop" was also about the size of a full size briefcase, weighed something like 15 pounds, kept it for many years and got made fun of for it's size.
Still remember our first 20"+ television which must have weighed 80+ pounds. It was about the size of a 410 speaker cabinet, deeper than it was wide. Our entertainment system for it took up an entire wall of our living room which also held our dedicated VHS rewinder (we rented a lot) and VCR.
My first "laptop" was also about the size of a full size briefcase, weighed something like 15 pounds, kept it for many years and got made fun of for it's size.
Still remember our first 20"+ television which must have weighed 80+ pounds. It was about the size of a 410 speaker cabinet, deeper than it was wide. Our entertainment system for it took up an entire wall of our living room which also held our dedicated VHS rewinder (we rented a lot) and VCR.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
Ah, televisions! We had one that took a while to warm up (vacuum tubes). When you turned it off, the picture would shrink to a dot in the middle of the screen. The dot would stay there for a while before it disappeared. Plus, all three channels would go off the air at something like 10 PM, and then there would be a test pattern. My parents got all fancy and rented a color TV to watch the Superbowl one year in the early 1970s. The reception was lousy, and we ended up watching it in black and white anyway, since you could actually kinda tell what was going on if you twiddled the knobs enough. We had the choice of color or coherence, depending on which way the knob went. I had completely forgotten about that until just now.
And, the telephone in my parents' house plugged into the wall with a huge four prong plug. It would randomly ring during storms.
This thread is bringing back some really amusing memories.
And, the telephone in my parents' house plugged into the wall with a huge four prong plug. It would randomly ring during storms.
This thread is bringing back some really amusing memories.
When I was in high school in the early 90's I was on call for my family's trucking company. So, at 16, I had a pager and a bag phone. I was simultaneously cool and not-so-cool at the same time. It was kind of funny when I would get a page during class, and it was my old man wanting me to leave school to fix a truck or trailer. My teachers were furious that I would just get up and walk out and there nothing they could really do since I always did really well with my grades. Being a small town, the school admin didn't want to impact the local businesses like trucking co's, implement companies, or farmers, knowing full well they were all family run.
I had a similar experience once when I went to a crowded Olive Garden. They gave a weird electronic hockey puck and sent me to the bar.
My first laptop had a printer in the basement. I actually needed this feature, as I was in business for myself and needed to be able to print invoices wherever I was - as I was usually without electrical power.
The thing cost a ridiculous amount of money and had four somethings of RAM. Quite sure it wasn't gigs....
The thing cost a ridiculous amount of money and had four somethings of RAM. Quite sure it wasn't gigs....
My first phone put out so much EMF I could anticipate a call coming before it lit up.
My dad designed typewriters for Smith Corona for 30 years. The last dying gasp of the typewriter industry was the Portable Word Processor. It was like having MSWord and a small LCD display built into a daisy wheel typewriter. SCM had an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the personal computer boom but bad management decided computers were a passing fad.
This photo brings back to me a couple of buzz words from the 90"s like "Word Processing" and "Desk Top Publishing". Things we just take for granted today.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Golf clubs. I have what used to be a really good set from about 15 years ago. Right now my driver looks like today's 5 iron (let's not get into when woods were really made from wood).
Oh gosh. Yeah, my laptop with the printer was circa 1995 maybe, but in 1987 I went off to college with... a typewriter. The wealthy relatives had given me a certain amount of money which I had to spend on a typewriter. Radio Shack had a device that they sold at that time that was somehow illegal (and got banned shortly thereafter) because it was 'too much like a computer' or some silly thing. I wanted to get one, but noooooo, the money was for a TYPEWRITER.
Of course, I rarely used it. I spent more time in the computer lab than I did with my typewriter, although to zip out a quick page or two it was easier to use it than wait in line at the lab. I will say, though, that I owned that typewriter until not many years ago, when it finally became acceptable for forms that weren't fillable pdf or such to be neatly hand-printed instead of typed.
I learned to type on a Selectric. And I really wish I still had my first IBM computer keyboard. If I spent any amount of time at a desktop computer, I'd probably have a mechanical keyboard.....
I worked for an electric contractor then, we used them, about the size of a deck of cards.
