your resume of "obsolete" skills

[ironrite]

IBM Executive typewriter D model...how many units for an "m" and how many for an "i"? It greatly upset my business machines teacher that I could run this monster! She didn't do so well at it. I had help from my older sister that had one at home for her typing business!

Marchant rotary calculator
Full keyboard comptometer, by touch!
of course 10 key and reverse 10 key for those wonderful 029 IBM keypunch machines
Varitype typesetting machine
Wang System 5 word processor
IBM Displaywriter
AND the Xerox 850 and 860 word processor, with that magic domino that held all your formating. And it had the touchpad, forerunner to the mouse. Miserable machine!!

Plus a lot of now old proof machines and check sorters related to banking!

 

[gyrafoam]

Steamboat Gauges indeed-----

Looks more like something Jules Vernes (what, no large brass valves and fittings?)-----must be a DC-9.

 

[pturo]

My Dad was here looking over my shoulder reading "obsolete tasks" and wanted me to add that he was once a machine gun operator on a blimp in WW2, but the Hindenburg disaster took that skill away from him and then he became a pharmacist in the War.

 

[whirlcool]

Gyrafoam

Nope, it's a Convair 580. The Convair twin became the airliner of choice from the early 50's to the early 60's. Just about every airline in the U.S. flew them at one time or another. It was one of the first pressurized cabin planes. When I started with North Central this was the "entry" level aircraft as they had phased out the DC-3 a few years before hand.
North Central Airlines picked up a bunch of them for cheap when the majors started to phase them out. In conjunction with Allison Air Research they added turboprop engines to them. Since the planes were really overbuilt they could easily handle the additional stress of the more powerful engines. The results were better than anyone expected.
The Convairs stayed with North Central, and then Republic all the way until Northwest bought them out. If you hang around an airport long enough, sooner of later you'll see a Convair hauling freight.

 

[petek]

I see lots of familiar things up above.
I took Fortran and Assembler programming which meant we also had to keypunch our own cards on the IBM 029. That's how I got my first real job way back when. I was hired on the spot, they didn't believe me at the employment counter for the company when I walked up with my long hair and was only 18 y.o.. Anyways I started that afternoon and got thrown in the data center so I became very familiar with all the IBM equipment, sorters, readers, MAI accounting machines, Flexowriters ( I always loved those and wished I had one now) Telex, another of my faves.. loved to chat with people in other offices around the country on the sligh. The other amazing thing is how the techs could take one piece of old equipment and morph it into something totally reusable, like old teletypes becoming printers etc. Those would be sent down to the operations area, the good new stuff always stayed upstairs. LOL

 

[washerboy]

Thanks to folks like Ron that taught us those "old" skills...it blows my mind at how many of the "younger" sect comes to me and ask me to type a report...they either cant type on a key board, hunt and peck or just too slow. I never learned short hand but my sister was a wiz at it. We laugh at all the effort went into learning the art and how marketable we thought she was when she finished school; she told me the other day she had'nt used short in forever. Funny story: My 18 year old son shares my love of flea markets..the other day we were "junkin" and he came across a rotary phone...he says "daddy is'nt this a phone"...yes...he looks confused.."I know what this does (the hand set) but how do you make a call?"...talk about feeling old..he was none too impressed when I should him how to sitck his finger in the hole of the approproiate number and turn the wheel.

 

[gadgetgary]

Years ago

When rotary phones were the only ones available, my uncle would very seriously tell the person on the other end of a wrong number....'Sorry, but you stuck your finger in the wrong hole'....noone here by that name(ROFLOL).

It was too funny when he said that to the caller with a completely straight face and totally meant it!

 

[bundtboy]

reed organ repair artist

I suppose knowing how to work on one of these won't do me much good, huh.

I was able to get this one to have a 'full, gusty tone' after only about 20 hours of cleaning and connective tissue replacement. Luckily it was rebuilt about 50 years ago which is why that was possible.

Anybody need their Reed organ tweeked?

Bob

 

[sudsmaster]

This morning on "The Bone" (FM 106.9), Lamont and Tenelli did more of their crank calls (they call it "Dirty Friday"). This one was to a podiatrist's office, and Lamont claimed that his wife had a serious problem that needed a podiatrist's attention: "Camel Toe". The receptionist was rather naive and didn't know the slang meaning of this term... She was very professional but couldn't figure out what the condition might be. She finally wound up advising the caller to have his wife see her primary physician and have a referral if necessary... it wasn't until Lamont called back later that she'd been clued in by others... her best friend had suggested the call in the first place... Their Tanzainian sidekick, Sully, said that in his country it's called "Goat Chin". LOL.

 

[gyrafoam]

a Convair----of course----

Complete with the bird-splitter center post----I should be more observant!

 

[74simon]

Replacing the foam strip on 8-tracks (except on RCA carts, of course!).

The ability to pick a chewed 8-track tape out of the machine without snapping it.

Adjusting points on a car with a mechanical distributor

Driving a 30 year old car with a top speed of 82 MPH at motorway speeds without it swerving over lanes or overheating

Fixing electrical gremlins on said vehicles (anyone who owns a British car with Lucas components will know what I mean)

Remembering to not wear shorts on a hot day while driving a car with vinyl seats!

Power wringing without snapping off buttons.

Changing a plug!

Operating the TV/VCR/stereo by actually having to get off one's seat to push buttons on the unit.

Backcombing and lacquering! As a teen I was on a bit of a Dusty Springfield trip, so perhaps it's for the best that I'm balding now...

Tie-dyeing

Using a camera film developing machine

Adding multiple figures without a calculator (although I do struggle with subtraction and division nowadays)

 

[rinso]

OK, here are my obsolete skill sets, and remember it's not nice to laugh at senior citizens. Please ask if there are some you don't understand.

Gregg Shorthand
Palmer Oval
Maintaining and tuning tube-type 2-way radio equipment (ex: G.E. Progress Line)
refrigerator defrosting
manual typing
Punched card data processing/IBM keypunch
double-clutching
suicide knob steering
stroger switch repair and maitenance
repairing beepers
operating a mimeograph
hand candling eggs
adjusting drum brakes
Writing a personal letter by hand

 

[tolivac]

Yes:Stroger type stepper switches and Stroger type dial up program monitoring systems-worked on such a system at the last place I worked at-was interesting and fun-and a master control program switcher that used stepper switches-have such a system at the transmitter for program monitoring.Have to work on that one too.

 

[kenmore58]

Hey, Rinso, maybe we should get together and brush up on our shorthand. Then we can show these "youngins" what it's really like to work for a living!!

Ron

 

[drhardee]

I think that the quote in my "Bear411" profile (daveinsc) sums me up succinctly: "I own power tools AND bone china and know how to use both".

 

[rp2813]

Do you remember your brief forms?

If so Gene and Ron, you guys are Tem Chay!

And for those unfamiliar with shorthand, I will allow you the opportunity to draw your own conclusions re: the name of the character for the "ch" sound being "chay" so the name of the character for the hard "g" sound was . . .

No, I am not kidding.

I thought I'd be smart and take shorthand in high school in prep for college note taking. What I failed to recognize is that I had to budget for transcription time, and once I was in college I quickly abandoned the entire effort. I did get up to a frantic 90 WPM but that didn't last long.

I do recall when I was first giving this a shot in anthropology class, one airhead coed (it was a private university) asked me seriously as I was taking my notes, "Can you read that?" LOL

Another somewhat obsolete skill I learned in shorthand class was the proper way to fold a letter so it would fit in a small sized envelope.

Ditto for the Ditto Master tricks for fixing typos. Mimeographs masters were far less forgiving, if at all. Ah, the smells from our past. It was almost choreographic the way the teacher would hand out the Dittos that were freshly run off down in the school basement--on a hand crank machine as old as the school was--and as each student received their copy, the sheet would go straight to their nose. What was it about the Ditto process that made everybody like that smell? Or are there some boomers out there who didn't like the smell of a fresh Ditto copy?

And I too was a Palmer Method kid at my first Catholic elementary school. Trust me, if the nuns didn't like your ovals you'd have hell to pay! The amount of Palmer inspired handwriting out there is getting more difficult to come by with each passing day but it's easy to recognize to anyone who has "been there."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. My brain is too full of obsolete skills to sort through them all!

Ralph

 

[sudsmaster]

The Ditto process uses alcohol as a solvent for the ink. Probably mostly denatured ethanol, but all the same not bad to sniff.

When I was in high school in the 60's, some friends and I published a little newspaper that had exactly one edition. One's mother worked for the school district and had access to a ditto machine after hours... apparently she complained about it but we got our copies anyway. It was a huge flop, but we weren't into sales anyway. Still have a copy... kind of scary in its juvenile semi-genius weirdness, lol.

 

[rinso]

Ralph, people have told me I was tem chay all my life. Also along that line, the word glasses comes out "gay el asses." I've been called something that sounds like that as well.

And would you believe that the nuns didn't like my Palmer Ovals? Mine slated to the left, which was a no-no even though I am left-handed. So immediately they began a campaign to swithch my handedness to the right. To this day, I write equally poor with either hand. The most recongnizable feature of the Palmer method was its lower case r's which differ substantially from the ones most people use.

I too loved the smell of the mimeograph fluid. I have a suspicion that the early fluids were quite intoxicating when sniffed, which may have been the only way the nuns could have settled down all the brats. It was very much easier to do that than have to exert energy doing their physical abuse program. I hated it all so much, I begged my parents to let me become a Mormon.

Oh, another obsolete skill: adjusting the horizontal and vertical hold on the television.

 

[whirlcool]

Ah, the ditto machine!
I remember my 5th grade teacher always gave a pop quiz immediately after lunch on Tues & Thurs. And sure enough, they were on freshly ran ditto copy. Still wet from the machine! Of course we all sniffed the paper. It did have a strange kind of intoxicating smell.
The teacher used to yell at us for sniffing the paper. She said it would give us all brain damage.

Here is an interesting story about those mimeograph machines:

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blogs.chicagotribune.com

 

[rp2813]

Gene, now that you mention it, "glasses" would be a fun word to write in shorthand. I, too recall the nuns' intolerance for anyone who wrote left handed. I also ran into trouble when I switched schools in 4th grade. I went from a "Palmer" school with Notre Dame nuns to a "Noble & Noble" school with BVM nuns and both my sister and I kept getting harassed by the nuns at the new school to use wider ruled binder paper and to write bigger. It was all in vain. For years my handwriting has looked like nothing they ever taught in any school. Oh, and at the new school we were not allowed to use ball point pens. They would ruin the desktops, you know. Everybody had to use cartridge pens, usually Schaeffer's. I probably still have one lying around somewhere. White shirts with deep blue stains in the pockets were a common sight. BTW, the Notre Dame nuns were a much more fun bunch, although I have to say that 4th grade teacher Sister Mary Francis Ellen at St. Leo's School, a BVM nun, was more fun than any other nun instructor I had during those eight grueling years in Catholic school, and she let us get away with murder. The 5th grade lay teacher couldn't manage us the next year, and she ended up quitting at the end of the year. Years later at church she advised my mom that we were the worst class she had ever had.