Vintage Things That Will NOT Disappear In Your Lifetime

[Zombie_61]

Hey, thanks a lot. Never thought to look on ebay! D'uh....

Always thought that the white print on red plastic was so classy (yeah, I'm a simple man).

I used my last roll remnant, from the 80s, to print my name to stick on my house door.

I don't know about "classy", but they're easy to read. Too many people, and companies for that matter, try to get "fancy" with their labels and logos and such by playing with the fonts and the end results are often unintelligible or at least difficult to read. I've never once looked at a Dymo label and had trouble reading it. Keep it simple and you can't go wrong.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Radio engineers were big boosters of Dymo labeling -- pretty much every piece of equipment in the first station I worked at was covered in strips of white-lettered red embossed tape. Which was fine, until the adhesive dried up and the strips fell off and you were back where you started.

 

[Edward]

Did any of us say radio yet? As I once again begin the cycle of the academic teaching year ("A word in your shell-like...'), I find myself again commenting, as I do the introductory lecture sessions which include a potted history of the media (I specialise in media law), on the survival of radio. Whereas television is fat on the way out at the hands of the web, radio, its elder sibling, just rolls on. Seems to me that whereas television is giving way to a format better designed to give content on demand, radio audiences rather prize the 'live' element. Then there's the low, low price of admission; a serviceable FM radio can be had for the price of a coffee. It would be interesting to go back and compare what people said about radio when TV was new, as distinct from now...

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a lot of brave talk in the US in the late 1940s that television could never supplant radio because radio was something you could follow while doing something else, and you had to focus all your attention on TV. These observers, of course, never imagined a day when yutzes would walk down the street or ride a bicycle or drive a car while watching TV on their telephones.

Radio has had many ups and downs since then, but American radio today is an entirely different thing from what it was just twenty years ago. The deregulation of station ownership opened the door to the wholesale replacement of local station ownership by giant corporate systems --- this is very different from the "network radio" era of the 1930s-50s in that those network-affiliated stations remained under local ownership and control. But since the late 90s, thousands of stations have fallen under full ownership of six major corporations, and diversity of programming has been replaced by a stultifying sameness across the board. The talk stations all sound exactly alike, the music stations all sound exactly alike, and there is no effort to program at the local level according to "the public interest, convenience, and necessity."

Public and low-power community radio do still exist, but even they are falling under the great uniformity. Our local public radio system long ago gave up all its local music programming in favor of a tedious procession of national talk shows that nobody demanded and nobody particularly likes. But it's a lot cheaper to plug into a feed than it is to use and pay local air talent. And as for low-power radio, well, it's great unless you actually do radio for a living -- they don't pay their talent at all.

 

[2jakes]

It would be interesting to go back and compare what people said about radio when TV was new, as distinct from now...

My father mentioned seeing a tv monitor
displayed in a store window in Hawaii.
He thought of it as a novelty but did not elaborate much. It is my belief that he
didn't think of it as a big deal.
He was probably more concerned about
what was happening at the time.
He was 20 and like many from his hometown had just enlisted in the Army.
The time was 1942 and America was at war.

 

[HanauMan]

I've not lived in the States for many years now so have no idea what radio is like there now. Can't be any worse than British radio though, especially the BBC stations. I tend to keep my radio permanently tuned into a independent classical music station.

Radio did play a big part in my youth and, as a family, we used to listen to radio a lot. It was always on in the background, a kind of background comforter you could tune your ears into when you felt, or just drift out again and continue doing what you were doing.

I still have my ancient Aiwa transistor radio which I used to tune into AFN when living abroad, listening to the likes of Wolfman Jack, when he did shows for AFN, and Casey Kasem doing the top 50 or whatever it was. Always listened out for the news, too. My dad had a Zenith world radio and I'd spend hours tuning into foreign stations when at home and, when in Germany, trying to catch US stations back home (never did except things like VoA). Many times I'd be up at 0100 or suchlike catching the faint radio stations in distant place like India, Europe, even Australia and Japan under very good weather conditions.

I loved TV sure enough but it just didn't have the Romance of radio. Anyhow, many places where military families ended up with, right into the 1970s, didn't have television. Or else you just had the foreign stations and if you didn't understand the language it made it difficult, except for us kids who didn't need to understand German, Japanese or whatever to enjoy a cartoon. But we always had radio, no matter where we were.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's very little left on the shortwaves today for American listeners other than China, Cuba, and a few Eastern European countries, and an assortment of American stations that feature fringe politics and religion. You can't even get the BBC on shortwave here anymore -- pretty much all the former big players in international broadcasting have stopped beaming to North America. Even the hams you can pick up on the 80 meter band do little but exchange belligerent tinfoil-hattery.

Radio Havana Cuba is intermittently interesting, though -- I enjoy listening to their Spanish-language baseball broadcasts. "Foullllllllll-o!"

 

[2jakes]

Radio did play a big part in my youth and, as a family, we used to listen to radio a lot. It was always on in the background, a kind of background comforter you could tune your ears into when you felt, or just drift out again and continue doing what you were doing.
I loved TV sure enough but it just didn't have the Romance of radio. Anyhow, many places where military families ended up with, right into the 1970s, didn't have television. Or else you just had the foreign stations and if you didn't understand the language it made it difficult, except for us kids who didn't need to understand German, Japanese or whatever to enjoy a cartoon. But we always had radio, no matter where we were.

Yep.
My growing up years with my grandmother and
listening to the huge radio in the evenings.
Loved the odor of radio...wood, speakers and tubes.

My imagination had no limits as I gazed at the glowing dial.
I miss listening to radio as it was presented in
the past with all the "snap,crackle & pop" of the tuner.

There's nothing quite like hearing live bands, sporting events,
a comic book hero flying through the air or
chasing bad desperados on his white horse....
“HI-OH-SILVER...AWAY!”

And he never ran out of bullets!

 

[1967Cougar390]

I’ll pick something from my line of work that won’t disappear anytime soon. The fire hose has been around since the late 1600’s and was first used in the United States of America around the late 1700’s. It’s still going strong today and it’s one of the most simple delivery methods of water needed to extinguish fires. I’ll also throw in the fire truck. Although designs change often the main elements have remained the same. The delivery of firefighters, water and equipment to save lives and property.

Steven

 

[tonyb]

There was a lot of brave talk in the US in the late 1940s that television could never supplant radio because radio was something you could follow while doing something else, and you had to focus all your attention on TV. These observers, of course, never imagined a day when yutzes would walk down the street or ride a bicycle or drive a car while watching TV on their telephones.

Radio has had many ups and downs since then, but American radio today is an entirely different thing from what it was just twenty years ago. The deregulation of station ownership opened the door to the wholesale replacement of local station ownership by giant corporate systems --- this is very different from the "network radio" era of the 1930s-50s in that those network-affiliated stations remained under local ownership and control. But since the late 90s, thousands of stations have fallen under full ownership of six major corporations, and diversity of programming has been replaced by a stultifying sameness across the board. The talk stations all sound exactly alike, the music stations all sound exactly alike, and there is no effort to program at the local level according to "the public interest, convenience, and necessity."

Public and low-power community radio do still exist, but even they are falling under the great uniformity. Our local public radio system long ago gave up all its local music programming in favor of a tedious procession of national talk shows that nobody demanded and nobody particularly likes. But it's a lot cheaper to plug into a feed than
it is to use and pay local air talent. And as for low-power radio, well, it's great unless you actually do radio for a living -- they don't pay their talent at all.

I gotta wonder what podcasts will do to radio.

I often recall a conversation I had over lunch about 20 years ago with a publisher I worked for, a fellow who was quite elderly even then and who had been in the business since the 1940s.

“What do you think the Internet will do to us?” I asked.

He dismissed whatever concerns I might have betrayed. Radio was gonna put us out of business, he said, and so was television. And now they say the Internet will do us in. We’ve never printed more pages, never sold more ads. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be fine, etc.

He was wrong, although I don’t attribute the dramatic decline entirely to the challenges posed by the new medium. The old medium’s response to it has been one major misstep after another.

 

[Edward]

I gotta wonder what podcasts will do to radio.

I often recall a conversation I had over lunch about 20 years ago with a publisher I worked for, a fellow who was quite elderly even then and who had been in the business since the 1940s.

“What do you think the Internet will do to us?” I asked.

He dismissed whatever concerns I might have betrayed. Radio was gonna put us out of business, he said, and so was television. And now they say the Internet will do us in. We’ve never printed more pages, never sold more ads. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be fine, etc.

He was wrong, although I don’t attribute the dramatic decline entirely to the challenges posed by the new medium. The old medium’s response to it has been one major misstep after another.

THe print news industry in the UK is in decline, which appears terminal. Interestingly, though, for all the talked-up threat from the web and eBooks, the print book industry is not only in rude health, but sales are rising. The real test will be, of course, once the generation of those of us who resent the idea of paying the same price for a long term rent of an intangible ebook as for outright ownership of a real book are dead and gone, and the generations that don't mind the intangible take over fully. My instinct is that there will always be a place for physical books that people want to own and hold, but for things like newspapers and ephemeral airport books we'll see the electronic side grow.

Podcasts are certainly popular, though I'm not convinced they'll kill radio - live streaming, maybe. I listen to classic FM, RAdio 3 or Radio4 in the office via the web. Thing about radio that most people seem to prize - at least over here in the UK - is the sense that there is a living person talking straight to you, the 'liveness' of it, the immediacy - you don't get that with prerecorded. The price of admission for live streaming is always coming down - a half-decent tablet can be had for £80 - but as long as one can still buy a regular tranny for a fiver that gives a decent signal, I'm not sure people will jump ship for the same content via the web. IT's ultimately that live connection with radio that I think makes the difference.

 

[Fading Fast]

... I tend to keep my radio permanently tuned into a independent classical music station.
I loved TV sure enough but it just didn't have the Romance of radio. ....

THe print news industry in the UK is in decline, which appears terminal. Interestingly, though, for all the talked-up threat from the web and eBooks, the print book industry is not only in rude health, but sales are rising. The real test will be, of course, once the generation of those of us who resent the idea of paying the same price for a long term rent of an intangible ebook as for outright ownership of a real book are dead and gone, and the generations that don't mind the intangible take over fully. My instinct is that there will always be a place for physical books that people want to own and hold, but for things like newspapers and ephemeral airport books we'll see the electronic side grow.

Podcasts are certainly popular, though I'm not convinced they'll kill radio - live streaming, maybe. I listen to classic FM, RAdio 3 or Radio4 in the office via the web. Thing about radio that most people seem to prize - at least over here in the UK - is the sense that there is a living person talking straight to you, the 'liveness' of it, the immediacy - you don't get that with prerecorded. The price of admission for live streaming is always coming down - a half-decent tablet can be had for £80 - but as long as one can still buy a regular tranny for a fiver that gives a decent signal, I'm not sure people will jump ship for the same content via the web. IT's ultimately that live connection with radio that I think makes the difference.

I think print will continue to shrink to be a very niche market - probably not go away entirely, but it will be very small. When you look at who is reading papers in public, you almost never see someone under 40 doing so (away from construction workers who read the NY Post or Daily News - but even there, I see more of the younger - and older - guys drinking their coffee while flipping through their phones without a paper in sight).

The decline has already happened if the metric one uses is the NYC newsstand. They used to be chockablock with daily papers. No exaggeration, a busy one would have hundreds of NYT, WSJ, Post and Daily News copies. Now, the busy ones have ten, twenty or thirty copies of each. There's a lot of variation by stand (the ones outside Penn Station are still pretty stocked, but oddly, the Grand Central ones are much less so), but the decline is dramatic. The same for magazines, but as noted above, much less so for books (if anything, paperbacks in some newsstands seem to have a bigger section today). Heck, I'd say about a quarter (a not scientifically arrived at measure at all) of NYC newsstands don't even sell newspapers any more - just magazines, candy, soda, etc.

As to radio, even growing up in the '70s, in a house with a TV, radio was much more woven into our daily life. It went on when we'd wake up to hear the news, weather, etc. - my dad would listen to the New York stations (we lived in NJ), but later when he went off to work, my mom would listen to the local stations. You'd feel a connect to some of the local businesses owing to their not-that-professional-but-on-a-lot radio commercials. Many times, the radio was just on even if no one was actively listening to it. My grandmother had a 1950s model in her kitchen that went on in the morning and off at bedtime with only the volume adjusted up or down throughout the day - just hearing certain radio sounds today can provoke a memory of her for me.

And not unlike how we "take a quick look at" the internet throughout the day, you'd turn the radio on to catch the ball scores or listen to a game not on TV (or when you needed to be doing something and couldn't sit and watch the game) or you'd flip the radio on "at the top of the hour" to get the headline news. The radio was more like the internet to me growing up than was the TV. I knew when the ball scores, weather and headlines were on / what stations covered what better / when this or that announcer that I liked was on / what music stations played what (and when) / etc. That is much closer to having your favorite web pages than the TV ever was. And as to surfing the web, late at night, I'd sometimes scroll the dial trying to pick up out-of-state stations - which was doable and felt like it was bringing you something, if not exotic, at least distant and different.

When I moved out and started living on my own in my mid teens (in the '80s), the radio was company - I almost always had it on. To this day, when I'm in the apartment by myself for any extended period of time, I'll flip on either the radio or TV - TV because the options on the radio today are - as you all have noted - so terrible / hence, sometimes, I'll just put TCM on knowing it won't have the obnoxious loudness and rapidly flipping images that so many stations have today. I've always been very happy to be alone - it isn't that the radio was/is fixing a negative for me, but when alone, I enjoy the type of "company" radio provides as, as Edward notes, that live connect means something / brings an intimacy or at least a symbiosis that, for me, recorded radio and podcasts don't.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've noticed that issue with the number of papers on the newsstand here as well, especially over the past year. The Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald have lost a ton of circulation, and you might see four or five copies of each on a typical rack at the drug store or convenience store on a typical day. Most stands also carry the Boston Globe and Herald, the NY Times, Daily News, and Post, the WSJ and USA Today -- but typically there's no more than one or two copies of each on any given rack, and if you want any of those you better be the first one in line when they come off the truck. I've been a regular reader of the Globe for most of my adult life, but over the past year I've been lucky to get a copy once or twice a week -- not because I don't want to bother anymore, but because they don't get enough copies out on the street for me to get one. That's, I guess, a consequence of not being able to affort to print or distribute as many copies as they did twenty or thirty or forty years ago, but it's also a sign of a death spiral that's not going to be stoppable.

As for radio, it's been part of my life as long as I've been breathing, and I bitterly lament what's happened to it -- not so much thru natural causes as by the vicious cutthroat practices of an industry that's lost all public accountability. I would love to listen to and support a local station -- but I can't stomach the steady diet of bland, pointless drivel-pop office-worker-background music and mentally-stunted talk-show swill that the local stations spew out. There's no longer anything there for me to listen to -- which is what led me to buy some 100mw transmitters and some secondhand computers and set up my own little broadcasting facilities, just so I'd have something worth listening to when I turn on the radio. I'll still tune to WBZ or WCBS to get the news, but the rest of the day I'm tuned to my own mini-stations putting out content I can stand to hear.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm sure I'm missing the obvious and while I understand (or think I understand) that you're taking streaming stations from your computer and transmitting them through speakers in your house to mimic radio, what I'm not getting is what good programing have you found this way / what do you mean by "my own mini-stations putting out content I can stand to hear"?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I use automation software to broadcast a daily schedule of radio programs and music -- most of it from my own archives, but also picking up live inserts from the National Weather Service and such. It's a regular weekly schedule, and I have three different setups with three distinct schedules, all transmitting on their own AM frequencies -- 990kc, 1230kc and 1330kc. As long as the signal stays below 100mw and you follow specifications on the antenna size, it's legal to broadcast this way, and it sure beats listening to the sad remains of "local radio."

 

[tonyb]

I use automation software to broadcast a daily schedule of radio programs and music -- most of it from my own archives, but also picking up live inserts from the National Weather Service and such. It's a regular weekly schedule, and I have three different setups with three distinct schedules, all transmitting on their own AM frequencies -- 990kc, 1230kc and 1330kc. As long as the signal stays below 100mw and you follow specifications on the antenna size, it's legal to broadcast this way, and it sure beats listening to the sad remains of "local radio."

I trust you have at least a handful of loyal listeners? How distant do your signals reach?

 

[LizzieMaine]

About a block. My house is on the slope of a hill, so most of the signal goes downhill and out. You can't get it all at the upper end of the street, but it's pretty clear down to the lower end.

 

[3fingers]

I’ll pick something from my line of work that won’t disappear anytime soon. The fire hose has been around since the late 1600’s and was first used in the United States of America around the late 1700’s. It’s still going strong today and it’s one of the most simple delivery methods of water needed to extinguish fires. I’ll also throw in the fire truck. Although designs change often the main elements have remained the same. The delivery of firefighters, water and equipment to save lives and property.

Steven

It has been a while since anybody has had to bore a plug though.

 

[3fingers]

There's very little left on the shortwaves today for American listeners other than China, Cuba, and a few Eastern European countries, and an assortment of American stations that feature fringe politics and religion. You can't even get the BBC on shortwave here anymore -- pretty much all the former big players in international broadcasting have stopped beaming to North America. Even the hams you can pick up on the 80 meter band do little but exchange belligerent tinfoil-hattery.

Radio Havana Cuba is intermittently interesting, though -- I enjoy listening to their Spanish-language baseball broadcasts. "Foullllllllll-o!"

The death of shortwave broadcasting was almost as much of a loss to me as when MW went in the ditch. I am one of those people who listens to radio to go to sleep and I also liked listening to perspectives on our news here from other parts of the world. My longwire from my attic to the tree on the other side of the yard was my ticket to traveling the world. I knew that Princess Diana had passed away before most anybody in the United States heard of it. I listened to the Russians, the Germans, the BBC, the Africans and a whole list of people talk of things I knew nothing about. When my last modern shortwave receiver conked out after many years of service most of my stations were gone and I did not bother to replace it. I now listen online, but for whatever reason it is much less satisfying.

 

[sheeplady]

Teaching college students, 75% of them prefer paper textbooks heavily. They are willing to pay almost twice as much over an ebook.

When I tell them about how some say "print is dead" half of them look at me like I've grown two heads. Television is far more dead to them than print... and they still consume a lot of television through streaming.