Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[John in Covina]

10 full ounces

The Inter-Office mail has diappeared in some places replaced by inter-office e-mail. It remains in places where paper copies are still a prime item especially if you have to sign off on a memo or moving actual contracts that need signatures.

It is amasing that many items have disappeared from their usual places but out there in the world are people holding on to these traditions in a steadfast way. Those soda machines that held the little 10 ounce bottles was every where, now is not in use by hardly any businesses. BUT! There are many people that have collected and refurbished those old machines or need to keep some sodas in their icebox, so that with just a little looking you can usually find the 10 ounce bottles available probably not to far from where you live.

There are some people that say Coca-Cola tastes best in the 10 oz bottle.

 

[brylcreem boy]

Like these?

You can get a set of 6 for $20 at http://www.taylorgifts.com/prodetail~itemNo~20447.asp

Yep that's them exactly. I may have to get some of those.... thanks!

 

[BegintheBeguine]

When's the last time anyone used an interoffice envelope?

I use this every day I'm at my library job.

 

[Miss Sis]

I remember there being a special Sunday Loaf of bread that seemed to taste completely different from other bread and it came in a waxed paper wrapper. It was puffy, white bread. No doubt not that good for you!

Thinking about it now, I miss my hot water bottle. I'm sure they still exist (and I know my grandma still has them at her house), but I haven't seen them in any retail stores in *years*.

Boots in England sell them. You can probably buy them on-line. I have a couple for mid-winter.

 

[Nathan Flowers]

I thought this was a neat advertisement that would fit well in this thread.

http://www.hovisbakery.co.uk/our-ads/

 

[Miss Sis]

The new Hovis ad aired for the first time on UK TV last night. Some friends of ours are the WW1 Tommies but you can't exactly tell who's who!

Test patterns on televisions.
Horizontal and vertical adjustment knobs on TV's.
Towns where all the tv stations go off the air at midnight.

Yes, when I was young, Television New Zealand had a little animated clip called Goodnight Kiwi with quiet music, where the Kiwi shut down the tv station, put out the glass milk bottle, climbed up to the satalite dish with his cat and tucked himself into bed. I can still hear the announcer's voice "Goodnight from Television New Zealand". Then the test pattern appeared until the next morning. I loved staying up to see that! (Pre-video recorders for most of my childhood) They stopped it in 1994, according to all the peope who've posted it. That long ago????

(Just looked it up on You Tube! Lots of versions!!! So happy, I almost cried)

 

[Baron Kurtz]

When's the last time anyone used an interoffice envelope?

Every University i've been in still uses these.

bk

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Every University i've been in still uses these.

bk

In my business, commercial banking, we use those constantly.

 

[Barbigirl]

~

When's the last time anyone used an interoffice envelope?

3 of 'em about 8 minutes ago, hospitals use them all the time.

Many doctors still don't get "print the attachment and complete"

 

[Mike in Seattle]

Just thinking off the top of my head in the last 30+ years in the family business - Ledgers. Typewriter ribbons. Dictaphones, and the forerunner to that, shorthand. Clerks who can make change without the computerized "terminal" (cash register) telling them how much change to give. Bank account passbooks with all of your deposits listed for YEARS instead of having to keep a bunch of paper tape receipts, one for each deposit, until the bank statements roll in at the end of the month. And the biggie - carbon paper. Hardly anyone has a clue what THAT is anymore.

 

[Mike in Seattle]

War surplus stores.

 

[cookie]

3 of 'em about 8 minutes ago, hospitals use them all the time.

Many doctors still don't get "print the attachment and complete"

They are used all the time at my office.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And the biggie - carbon paper. Hardly anyone has a clue what THAT is anymore.

And for that matter, when's the last time anyone cut a mimeograph stencil.

 

[Sunny]

In my business, commercial banking, we use those constantly.

In mine - aeronautics - we use both envelopes and email. I use email mostly, since all I'm needing is proof of concurrence on a draft letter, contract, etc. But some things are easier to hand-carry. Email makes it faster when I'm coordinating with my team in another building, but I use the envelopes for hard-copy signoffs.

For what it's worth, I'm 25.

 

[Rachael]

And for that matter, when's the last time anyone cut a mimeograph stencil.

LizzieMaine, maybe you can explain how those gadgets worked. All I remember is that you put the purple ink jug upside down and turned the crank. It all seemed like magic to me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, there were two different types of machine, actually -- the mimeograph and the "spirit duplicator." The mimeograph forced the ink thru lettering cut in the stencil by typing on it without a ribbon, while the spirit duplicator -- commonly called a "Ditto machine" -- used a sort of offset-printing system where the back of the master had a colored waxy coating that would be transferred to the paper after being dampened by a wick saturated with a very pleasent smelling solvent. A *very* pleasant smelling solvent, as those of us who volunteered to operate these machines in school can well attest...

 

[carter]

A mere shadow of their former selves.

Banana Republic when it was a seller of surplus from all over the globe.

Abercrombie & Fitch when they really were an outfitter for the adventurous.

 

[John in Covina]

The Spirits are about to Speak!

While the spirit duplicator -- commonly called a "Ditto machine" -- used a sort of offset-printing system where the back of the master had a colored waxy coating that would be transferred to the paper after being dampened by a wick saturated with a very pleasent smelling solvent. A *very* pleasant smelling solvent, as those of us who volunteered to operate these machines in school can well attest...

***********
The Spirit Duplicator was refered to as the mimeograph machine in my school system. A fresh off the machine sheet was often damp and fraigrent.

In one of the school or college comedies like Ferris bueler , Fast Times or Animal House there is a scene where the test is passed out to the students and the entire class picks up the sheets to their nose and gives a long lovingly sniff of the solvent followed by a satisfy ahhh. I and many of my fellow students did exactly the same thing from grade school thru high school. Sniiiifff-Ahhhh!:eusa_clap

 

[olive bleu]

I THOUGHT that was the stuff Lizzie was referring to LOL. We all did the same thing, too.So funny.It's a good thing that went out of fashion, can you imagine the uproar if kids were exposed to that these days?I spent years sniffing the stuff and Iway assureway ouyay iway avehay experiencedway onay illway effectsway

 

[dhermann1]

Outhouses!

Has anyone mentioned outhouses yet? There are a very very few out there now that people keep for I guess nostalgic reasons, but generally they are totally a thing of the past. When I was about 4 years old my grandparents had a little vacation home in Pennsylvania. It was an old farm they had bought during the depression. In 1951 it still didn't have indoor plumbing. There was an old fashioned hand pump in the kitchen, so there was at least indoor running cold water, but the only place to "relieve yourself" was the little wood structure out back. It was a two holer, as I recall. When we visited them in 1959, they had just gotten a septic tank built, and indoor toilets and hot water heater.