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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,186,228 times
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Yes, I still have a box of them, and a closet full of LPs, but nothing to play any of them. My kids grew up with Walkmen, but the grandkids are using Ipads at age 2.
This video doesn't make me feel old; it makes me realize how fortunate I've been.
When I was perhaps eight years old I encountered a magneto telephone. I knew what it was; I'd read about them and heard about them; I'd seen them in movies. I was positively charmed to be using something from the past. About ten years later I encountered another; it was a payphone perhaps a hundred miles from Chicago. Just a few months later I saw a display in the window of a small telephone company office. The latest magneto phones were there; they had cranks in place of the dial in a thoroughly modern phone.
I knew about crank-starting a car, about turning a grinding wheel with a treadle, and so much more. I recall my grandmother's unused treadle sewing machine; I remember finding a darning egg and my grandmother's explanation. My parents had told me about these things and shown them to me whenever possible. I recall my mother's telling me what a chamber pot was when we saw a broken specimen in a ghost town. Don't parents and other family members talk to children anymore? Do they leave it up to the government school system entirely because they're so involved with their own activities that they can't be bothered with their children?
I knew what a "speak" was, not to mention a "honey wagon".
I'm glad that I was born in 1943.
Oh yes, I also learned to speak articulate English at an early age.
Last edited by Happy in Wyoming; 04-16-2014 at 02:58 PM..
Yes, I still have a box of them, and a closet full of LPs, but nothing to play any of them. My kids grew up with Walkmen, but the grandkids are using Ipads at age 2.
Those LPs are still good! Don't get rid of them. You are on a computer, so you are obviously computer savvy. What you can do is purchase a USB turntable. They are only about a hundred bucks, give or take. What you do is plug it into your computer...kick off an audio recording program, (there are a lot of free ones out there, I'm partial to Audacity)...and play the LP while it is recorded to an audio track on your computer.
You can play the whole side, or track-by-track. I just let the whole side play, then afterward, use Audacity to break them up into different tracks/files. From there, you can play them through your computer...upload them to your iPhone, iPad, iTouch, or any other portable audio player...or even burn an audio CD and play them in a car or home audio system.
I've picked up more than one album from a garage sale because the seller didn't have a way of playing them anymore and figured nobody else did either. Got them for a 'song and a dance'...well, almost.
p.s. I'm also converting/digitizing my cassette library using my high-end Sony dual cassette, home audio player hooked up to one of my netbook computers. Same process as above, just different play equipment.
Went back and watched the video. Wow! Things sure have changed. No wonder some of my students in my class have a blank face when I talk about some things. They just can't relate.
Walkman? 8 tracks? When I was a kid I built a crystal set, records had one song per side and broke if you dropped them, and radios took a couple of minutes to warm up the vacumn tubes and play after you turned them on.
Those LPs are still good! Don't get rid of them. You are on a computer, so you are obviously computer savvy. What you can do is purchase a USB turntable. They are only about a hundred bucks, give or take. What you do is plug it into your computer...kick off an audio recording program, (there are a lot of free ones out there, I'm partial to Audacity)...and play the LP while it is recorded to an audio track on your computer.
You can play the whole side, or track-by-track. I just let the whole side play, then afterward, use Audacity to break them up into different tracks/files. From there, you can play them through your computer...upload them to your iPhone, iPad, iTouch, or any other portable audio player...or even burn an audio CD and play them in a car or home audio system.
Wow, interesting. I still have some albums sitting in the attic so they might not be in great shape. I think I will turn this information over to one of my techie friends (I'm useless) and see what he thinks. Thanks mucho for this.
Try suggesting to somebody to crosscut a board with a hand saw. Or cut a tree down with an ax. All this technology may be appropriate but what makes me feel old is a attractive woman under forty.
Confession: In regard to music-listening technology, I have been lost since the Walkman came out. When it was all about speakers and the tracking weight of styli, I was right there. After the Walkman was old news I finally bought one with the intention of using it while riding my stationary bike. Hated it. Didn't like wearing headphones, missed that whole-body experience of the music that I got from a pair of good speakers; and to me it was cumbersome. That was the beginning of my distaste for seeing people walking around attached to devices.
I still have no idea what MP3 is and that's gone bye-bye. I suppose that if I had kids and grandkids I'd be more current. I detest cell phones especially the 'smart' ones, so I've never heard what music sounds like through one of those things, but this commenter to the video says what I imagine would be true:
If someone in 1980 heard an ipod music player, they would be like "why does this sound like ****, you can't hear all the music?" Truth is today's music is compressed, and you don't get the all sonic fidelity that you use to get with analog music. It's convenient but that's about it!
When it comes to music, I want to hear it all.
I'd like to know what a 'music system' is these days. If you are having a party, how does the music get transmitted?
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