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You know you're old when.....

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harerod:
Mmmh, can't seem to find any punch cards at the moment. However, here is some unpunched "ticker tape". My mother worked as a programmer in the 1970s, therefore as a kid I had more punch cards, tape and drawing paper than I would could ever use.
That roll has been with me since then and somehow keeps ending up in the lab. The background is barely thirty years old, though, printed by some 9-nozzle inkjet (before it was terminally clogged).

Gregg:
I remember the school as well as the city libraries used a system of cards to keep track of all the books.  Real paper books, no digital rubbish existed.  It was the Dewey decimal system.  There were stacks of narrow wooden drawers with a card for each book.  Also each book had a separate card in a little sleeve fastened to the back cover that was removed when a book was checked out and the name or library card number of the person checking it out was hand written on that card which was filed by date for when the book was due to be returned. 
It was quite efficient and the system seldom had any down time unless somebody really screwed up.  Keeping such a system backed up would have been a monumental task.

You know you are getting old when you read through this thread and remember long forgotten things that no longer have significance but were very relevant at the time.

AaronLee:

--- Quote from: Gregg on July 25, 2021, 03:56:15 pm ---You know you are getting old when you read through this thread and remember long forgotten things that no longer have significance but were very relevant at the time.

--- End quote ---

Yes, and your library example is a prime example of that. I can't even remember the last time I was in a library, but for sure it was several decades ago. Haven't thought of the Dewey decimal system nor those wooden drawers since that time, until reading your post. Throw a kid or young adult into one of those old libraries and have them try to find a book, and they'd be totally lost. And probably some of us older people would need to dig deep to energize long abandoned brain cells to find what we're looking for.

ozcar:

--- Quote from: Gregg on July 25, 2021, 03:56:15 pm ---You know you are getting old when you read through this thread and remember long forgotten things that no longer have significance but were very relevant at the time.

--- End quote ---

When I was a university student, I remember reading somewhere (obviously, not “online”), of a prank that I thought was great:

Two young blokes get on a bus (or maybe it was a train), each carrying a well-filled briefcase (just as I used to do every weekday). After a while there is a noise – the very distinctive sound of a phone ringing. The two blokes look at each other, but ignore it for a short while, but then one open his case and takes out a telephone handset and says “hello”. After a short delay, he hands it to his companion, and says “It’s for you”.

You know you are old when you struggle to explain that to somebody.

TimFox:
That joke was exploited beautifully on stage in Stoppard’s play “The Real Inspector Hound”.

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