Now I am remembering engineering offices in the 1980s filled with cigarette smoke and the deafening clatter of the secretaries banging away at IBM Selectric golf-ball typewriters. And then, the blessed release from tyrannical secretaries brought by a PC in every cubicle and WordPerfect 5.0.
A question on a TV quiz programme today wanted the names of various items no longer in use as they have been replaced by 21st century versions. Think Betamax, Ceefax, floppy disc, sundial……. It struck me that most people under the age of 40(?) would not have a clue.
Those two well known ladies Dot Matrix and Daisy Wheel.
I never thought of it like that. It's like Toy Story, as both were eclipsed by (fizz-bang-peeowww) Lazer Jet
(ETA - I found a big folding pile (you'll know what I mean) of tractor-feed paper at our industrial museum the other day. Not an exhibit, just something being used for making rough notes. I bet a deceased pensioner donated it, having no further use for their Amstrad PC-something-or-the-other WP system).
(ETA again. In my world, Dot and Daisy's friend Pen(ny?) Plotter was also cruelly discarded)
My dad used a PCW9512 with WHITE text on the monitor, and got a fancy 24-pin dot matrix printer. We had to make do with the 8256 for our school work, though my dad did order an extra 256k of RAM which only came out as (I think) 192k after he bent a leg while inserting one of the chips. None of these fancy "memory modules" in those days.
40 years ago I had a PCW 8512, mostly used for word processing (Locoscript anyone?) but I did also convert a Greek vocabulary learning program from BBC Basic to run on Mallard Basic, including mapping all the Greek character forms.
I have just removed a box of stuff from my car, which is almost 19 years old and not very reliable, and which I am replacing with a newer (3 year old) car early next week. I’ve realised I won’t be using half the contents of the box in the new car - i.e. the road atlas, the two local A-Z street maps, and the seventeen CDs!
(I also found two pairs of clean socks, a pair of gloves, a scarf, 8 pens, 6 pencils, two clothes pegs, a cloth face mask, a very squashed box of tissues, a foot pump, an ice scraper and various National Trust leaflets.)
I think there are people still including sundials in their gardens.
Making sundials is still a common enough project in schools, among Scouts and in other contexts with children, at least in my experience.
Yes! My friend (who has many unusual interests) showed me a book of design info, which means I now know what a gnomon is (rather impressed that spellcheck has that one!) Mind he lives near Accrington, which might be even less sunny than here.
(ETA - I found a big folding pile (you'll know what I mean) of tractor-feed paper at our industrial museum the other day.
Great for comedy speeches, that. You walked in clutching a block of it, said you'd just be saying a few words, start reading off the top, and drop the bottom of the stack so it unfolded as it fell.
I did that in a best man speech. I started by saying “Peter has given me a short list of things he doesn’t want me to mention” and then dropped the stack.
Plain - but I remember the green stripey stuff from being a kid and the neighbours 'something big in computers' giving me some to draw on. As I remember it was an odd 'landscape' layout - I wasn't so impressed with the green stripes The machine tool at which my Dad worked at that time used paper tape about an inch wide, full of holes for what I imagine was an optical NC reader. Those tapes saw duty in my Casdon toy till (if you're in your mid 50s from the UK, you probably know what that was) - I'm not sure if I pretended the holes were not there and I was in a shop, or the holes were there and the till was a lathe. Both, probably.
I just read back the post above; bored, and somewhat ill, at home. Normally I don't double-post if I can help it, but in the current circumstances it seems important to clarify that such gratuitous publication of the paternal profession carries no implication of an intention to enter a future contest for the leadership of the labour party.
I remember the green stripey paper from my early days working in a university office in the late 1980s; IIRC it was used for class lists, clipped together in big plastic files and suspended from a metal frame.
I remember reading an article about modern trash archeologists, also called garbologists being able to determine the beginning of the age of computers with the band of paper found in modern dumps. At the same time, as printout paper started to increase, phone books, catalogs, newspapers, handwritten records even carbon copy forms started to decrease.
@Piglet, when I was in a Uni library, all the catalogue records created the previous day were printed out and reviewed by senior librarians. They were printed on the same green and white paper. They may have even been sorted into groups according to the person who had done the cataloguing work. I remember seeing staff sitting with one of the team leaders and discussing the printout in front of them. This was back in the day when we still tried as best to adhere to standards and procedures. Those days ended about 2 years after I started there.
Parents often donated used green stripy paper to a school where I taught. I remember one donor racing back to snatch their donation because it had confidential information printed on it. Whoops!
When did anyone here last use a fax machine? I am sure I haven't used one for twenty years. But who remembers the first ones? Working in Edinburgh we collaborated with a company near London on an avionics project (I say 'collaborated' loosely, but that's another story). We had an early fax set-up in, I think, 1973, that consisted of the scanner and printer at each end, with an open telephone. When the sender yelled out "Now!" the recipient pressed the start button, hoping to synchronise the machines. It often took several tries.
I would have used a fax last about 2005 when the place I worked went over to a computerised system - about 3 years late, as it was inflicted on us by the government, and no government IT project ever runs on time.
Prior to that we wrote out a purchase order in a duplicate book, faxed the top copy, and often got the goods next day.
This was replaced by a system that was complex, clunky, had several layers of approval and at the end... generated a piece of paper that someone then had to put in a fax machine! You can imagine how much it slowed stuff up. It was called FAMIS. We immediately christened it FUBAR.
I don't think I've ever sent a "true" fax (I might have sent one or two via modem a long time ago). When I did some work for my F-i-L's business about 20 years ago I did pick up some faxes, I think. In my current role I do have to review archive material that includes faxes, and you can imagine how old fax paper kept in a file box for 30-40 years and then scanned does for readability.
Stercus Tauri, I remember the first fax machine we got at the place where I worked at the time - late 70s, I reckon. It was about the size of a filing cabinet. The company was very proud of it. The problem was that nobody we dealt with at the time had one! Later on, of course, it became a bit more useful…
Last used a fax when still employed just over 12 months ago. Personally I don’t like them: there is always the risk that the other end has not put paper in or the fax has fallen on the floor, been accidentally chucked out or the fax number is wrong ( as I found out when various services had their numbers changed and failed to alert anyone). The National Broadband Network ( aka NBN) also stuffed up fax numbers for a lot of users ( such as GP surgeries and pharmacies) as I found out.
Less than a year ago--medical institutes especially here live in the past.
I think I read not so long ago that they are still used in the NHS (maybe @Doublethink will know?). I do know the legal profession still like them, as fax is less open to post-hoc 'modifications' than most forms of electronic communication - that was my impression from an article I read, anyway.
I still used faxes at work up until about 2008. I would often fax things from the client's office to my own. The latest innovation they had then was that if I put in my own direct dial phone number as the address for the fax, then a scan of the document appeared as a pdf in my email inbox. I thought it was quite nifty.
When did anyone here last use a fax machine? I am sure I haven't used one for twenty years. But who remembers the first ones? Working in Edinburgh we collaborated with a company near London on an avionics project (I say 'collaborated' loosely, but that's another story). We had an early fax set-up in, I think, 1973, that consisted of the scanner and printer at each end, with an open telephone. When the sender yelled out "Now!" the recipient pressed the start button, hoping to synchronise the machines. It often took several tries.
I remember the days when talking to a customer and needed to send them something I would ask “do you have a fax?”. After a few years it became “what’s your fax number?” and then “what’s a fax?”
The exception to this is the NHS who until recently still sent prescriptions to the pharmacy by fax.
Quite a lot of correspondence with the NHS lately, all by phone or text message (same number for both). Internally - eg hospital to GP - seemed to be by actual physical letter.
One of the first Principals I worked for placed a hand-written sign in the school office that read: "Please get permission before using the FACTS machine."
I remember when my year-one college roommate returned from Christmas Break with a newfangled typewriter called a Word Processor. That tiny LED window seemed so magical.
I last sent a fax in the fall of 2025. Some provincial government agencies are still living in the 20c. The student who asked me to send a fax for them, didn't even know what a fax was; they had just been instructed to do so by a government agency.
We used to fax a number of times for signed contracts over the years, but now that one can use a sign document feature in most file sharing programs, the old machine we have at home is gathering dust.
Before I retired we used the fax machine occasionally. It was only for staff use, when the public asked to send a fax, which happened occasionally too, we would send them to a place down the street that sent faxes commercially.
I remember the green stripey paper from my early days working in a university office in the late 1980s; IIRC it was used for class lists, clipped together in big plastic files and suspended from a metal frame.
Accountants used to be awash in the stuff. You'd use it for any kind of tabular data - the striped paper helped guide the eye so you could read the tables more clearly.
I think the last time I used a fax was when I worked for the university in Newfoundland.
Having said that, there is still a facility for sending faxes in the office where I work, and they had no end of hassle recently from the phone provider who wanted them to get rid of it.
They couldn't, because there's some aspect of the work that requires communication by fax - it may be something to do with finance - but thankfully doesn't involve me!
I believe fax machines are still used in some sectors, notably in Japan to ensure security of legal documents written using pictograms. Other hand written documents may require them elsewhere.
I learnt how to use a fax when we began to offer that service in the local public library in the early 1990's. When I was working in a Uni we used to contact our vendors in remote places without email, by fax. I think the last one was removed from our area in the mid to late 2010's. Too bad for the vendors we used to contact ...
Cheery son's pathology results used to be faxed to the interstate treating hospital, and to the Paediatrician who didn't have an internet connection in her office (she was not impressed). I used to organise the blood tests for the morning of the day we travelled interstate, knowing the fax would be received and if we were going to be cancelled there was time to notify us, or if they wanted us there they had time to organise a transfusion if needed. Oh the good old days of the early 2000's!!
I was thinking how nice it is not to have to work, or go to work. I always thought it was over-rated, whereas my dad, for example loved it. I like staring out the window, but nobody would pay me for that, bastards.
I learnt how to use a fax when we began to offer that service in the local public library in the early 1990's. When I was working in a Uni we used to contact our vendors in remote places without email, by fax. I think the last one was removed from our area in the mid to late 2010's. Too bad for the vendors we used to contact ...
Cheery son's pathology results used to be faxed to the interstate treating hospital, and to the Paediatrician who didn't have an internet connection in her office (she was not impressed). I used to organise the blood tests for the morning of the day we travelled interstate, knowing the fax would be received and if we were going to be cancelled there was time to notify us, or if they wanted us there they had time to organise a transfusion if needed. Oh the good old days of the early 2000's!!
Several years ago, the library University of Colorado in Ft. Collins CO was inundated by a flash flood that came out of the hills above them destroying a number of books. Many universities banded together to replace the books by faxing copies from their individual collections. Mrs. Gramps was part of that effort. They installed special scanning machines and faxed whole books to the university. Mrs. Gramps retired just a few years ago. They were still using these scanners to help bring up the collections of other libraries across the world. Helps the smaller universities to maintain their accreditation.
I have completed some professional surveys lately where my age is in the top group listed as 60+. Most of the surveys then proceed to ask how long you have been in your profession, topping out at 20+. I remember the days when my answers were in the lower end of the drop down menu.
My French group’s topic tomorrow is which things are better and which worse than when we were younger.
My mind ranges over several periods- childhood? Early parenthood? Mid life? Or even just post-Covid?
My answers are a mixed bag. So many technical and practical improvements, but much that is less definable is worse.
Scrolling through Facebook friends and noticing some of them are dead
I have started unfriending those people. Don't expect to hear from them again at least on this side. That way I do not feel foolish sending birthday greetings only to have son or daughter come back and say the person died five years ago.
Something positive about life today: I think I have reached the point I can stop worrying about dying young anymore.
Scrolling through Facebook friends and noticing some of them are dead
I have started unfriending those people. Don't expect to hear from them again at least on this side. That way I do not feel foolish sending birthday greetings only to have son or daughter come back and say the person died five years ago.
Something positive about life today: I think I have reached the point I can stop worrying about dying young anymore.
I don't know whether it is positive or not but I am now thankful that I'm not any younger.
Also that I have no children or grandchildren to worry about their future.
Scrolling through Facebook friends and noticing some of them are dead
I have started unfriending those people. Don't expect to hear from them again at least on this side. That way I do not feel foolish sending birthday greetings only to have son or daughter come back and say the person died five years ago.
Something positive about life today: I think I have reached the point I can stop worrying about dying young anymore.
I eventually left FB a little while ago, and I'm still processing that, but yeah. That always gave me weird feelings. The birthday reminders felt like visiting a grave. Part of me is afraid of forgetting people. But part of me thinks...if this is the only thing holding a memory together, is it that important?
I used a fax machine at my first computer job in 1976. Even though we were running an early computer network, we used it to send changes from Engineering to the main data center. I remember having to come in early in the morning to take advantage of the lower long distance telephone rates. The code updates were then hand-typed into the machine at the other end.
And lots of green-striped paper! We had filing cabinets to keep track of all the recent revisions of each code module - some modules were 5cm thick. I would keep track of them in the stacks on my desk by writing the name on the side of the listing - that worked great until some new programmer had learned about "structured programming", and his modules were only a couple of pages. I resorted to marking them in Morse Code along the edge. We made a change once that rippled thorough the entire system: that resulted in 4 stacks of paper each nearly 2m tall in one manager's office before they got filed in their cabinets.
While the developers could use dial-up terminals for their work, all official changes still had to be submitted on punch cards.
Comments
I like that :-) My first encounters with a computer were on a Dragon 32. There's (S.Wales accent) powerful :-)
My dad used a PCW9512 with WHITE text on the monitor, and got a fancy 24-pin dot matrix printer. We had to make do with the 8256 for our school work, though my dad did order an extra 256k of RAM which only came out as (I think) 192k after he bent a leg while inserting one of the chips. None of these fancy "memory modules" in those days.
(I also found two pairs of clean socks, a pair of gloves, a scarf, 8 pens, 6 pencils, two clothes pegs, a cloth face mask, a very squashed box of tissues, a foot pump, an ice scraper and various National Trust leaflets.)
Yes! My friend (who has many unusual interests) showed me a book of design info, which means I now know what a gnomon is (rather impressed that spellcheck has that one!) Mind he lives near Accrington, which might be even less sunny than here.
I did that in a best man speech. I started by saying “Peter has given me a short list of things he doesn’t want me to mention” and then dropped the stack.
(@mark_in_manchester: was your tractor feed paper plain, or the green stripy kind?)
I remember the green stripey paper from my early days working in a university office in the late 1980s; IIRC it was used for class lists, clipped together in big plastic files and suspended from a metal frame.
Prior to that we wrote out a purchase order in a duplicate book, faxed the top copy, and often got the goods next day.
This was replaced by a system that was complex, clunky, had several layers of approval and at the end... generated a piece of paper that someone then had to put in a fax machine! You can imagine how much it slowed stuff up. It was called FAMIS. We immediately christened it FUBAR.
MMM
I think I read not so long ago that they are still used in the NHS (maybe @Doublethink will know?). I do know the legal profession still like them, as fax is less open to post-hoc 'modifications' than most forms of electronic communication - that was my impression from an article I read, anyway.
I remember the days when talking to a customer and needed to send them something I would ask “do you have a fax?”. After a few years it became “what’s your fax number?” and then “what’s a fax?”
The exception to this is the NHS who until recently still sent prescriptions to the pharmacy by fax.
I remember when my year-one college roommate returned from Christmas Break with a newfangled typewriter called a Word Processor. That tiny LED window seemed so magical.
Accountants used to be awash in the stuff. You'd use it for any kind of tabular data - the striped paper helped guide the eye so you could read the tables more clearly.
Probably.
Having said that, there is still a facility for sending faxes in the office where I work, and they had no end of hassle recently from the phone provider who wanted them to get rid of it.
They couldn't, because there's some aspect of the work that requires communication by fax - it may be something to do with finance - but thankfully doesn't involve me!
IANAL
Cheery son's pathology results used to be faxed to the interstate treating hospital, and to the Paediatrician who didn't have an internet connection in her office (she was not impressed). I used to organise the blood tests for the morning of the day we travelled interstate, knowing the fax would be received and if we were going to be cancelled there was time to notify us, or if they wanted us there they had time to organise a transfusion if needed. Oh the good old days of the early 2000's!!
Several years ago, the library University of Colorado in Ft. Collins CO was inundated by a flash flood that came out of the hills above them destroying a number of books. Many universities banded together to replace the books by faxing copies from their individual collections. Mrs. Gramps was part of that effort. They installed special scanning machines and faxed whole books to the university. Mrs. Gramps retired just a few years ago. They were still using these scanners to help bring up the collections of other libraries across the world. Helps the smaller universities to maintain their accreditation.
Spending a couple of minutes scrolling down the years when you have to enter your date of birth does it for me!
My mind ranges over several periods- childhood? Early parenthood? Mid life? Or even just post-Covid?
My answers are a mixed bag. So many technical and practical improvements, but much that is less definable is worse.
(Yes, that implies younger froglings, which is about where I am right now.)
I have started unfriending those people. Don't expect to hear from them again at least on this side. That way I do not feel foolish sending birthday greetings only to have son or daughter come back and say the person died five years ago.
Something positive about life today: I think I have reached the point I can stop worrying about dying young anymore.
I don't know whether it is positive or not but I am now thankful that I'm not any younger.
Also that I have no children or grandchildren to worry about their future.
I eventually left FB a little while ago, and I'm still processing that, but yeah. That always gave me weird feelings. The birthday reminders felt like visiting a grave. Part of me is afraid of forgetting people. But part of me thinks...if this is the only thing holding a memory together, is it that important?
And lots of green-striped paper! We had filing cabinets to keep track of all the recent revisions of each code module - some modules were 5cm thick. I would keep track of them in the stacks on my desk by writing the name on the side of the listing - that worked great until some new programmer had learned about "structured programming", and his modules were only a couple of pages. I resorted to marking them in Morse Code along the edge. We made a change once that rippled thorough the entire system: that resulted in 4 stacks of paper each nearly 2m tall in one manager's office before they got filed in their cabinets.
While the developers could use dial-up terminals for their work, all official changes still had to be submitted on punch cards.