Before the Internet

Oh shit ok, I have another one.

ENCARTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Encarta CD-ROMS were so cool!!!! We weren't so old fashioned that we had like a set of encyclopedias at home. I got My Gateway 2000 somewhere around 8th grade so while we did have basic internet it was not like you could look anything up the way we can today.

Encarta was the best! Pop in a disc and search for anything and it popped right up. An article and little accompanying video with a 320x240 at best resolution. That was fucking 4k to me back then. I probably watched the space shuttle take off 1000+ times and it got cooler every time.

Did any of you have the hardback version of Encyclopedia Britannica or whatever? My parents never did even when they were young but I have heard tales about how they were expensive and the books were broken down by letter meaning there were 26 you had to buy to have a full set.

The way I heard about it most people would buy like A-D one year then E-H the next year and so on until they had a full 26 series set. And having all 26 was a point of pride.

I know a bunch of my memories are from having basic internet so I guess I'm cheating but I freaking love this topic Scotch. Well done! :clap2:
 
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MonoStereo said:
The concept of being bored. I don't remember the last time I was really bored. Even if I'm just absent-mindedly scrolling thru Instagram looking at cat videos, I don't think "there's nothing to do" when doing it.
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Nowadays, whenever you're in a waiting room, everyone's looking at their phones.
 
Probably a couple of the biggest things I miss are my old gaming consoles, like the NES, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy. Today’s games are great, and I can play them on my PC or even on my phone because I have an emulator that lets me revisit those old-school classics. Still, nothing quite compares to the old days like blowing on the bottom of an NES cartridge just to get it to work properly. :laugh:
 
JHDK said:
Oh shit ok, I have another one.

ENCARTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Encarta CD-ROMS were so cool!!!! We weren't so old fashioned that we had like a set of encyclopedias at home. I got My Gateway 2000 somewhere around 8th grade so while we did have basic internet it was not like you could look anything up the way we can today.

Encarta was the best! Pop in a disc and search for anything and it popped right up. An article and little accompanying video with a 320x240 at best resolution. That was fucking 4k to me back then. I probably watched the space shuttle take off 1000+ times and it got cooler every time.

Did any of you have the hardback version of Encyclopedia Britannica or whatever? My parents never did even when they were young but I have heard tales about how they were expensive and the books were broken down by letter meaning there were 26 you had to buy to have a full set.

The way I heard about it most people would buy like A-D one year then E-H the next year and so on until they had a full 26 series set. And having all 26 was a point of pride.

I know a bunch of my memories are from having basic internet so I guess I'm cheating but I freaking love this topic Scotch. Well done! :clap2:
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So, I am old enough to have been harassed by an encyclopedia Brittanica salesman, when my kids were young. We bought the whole thing. You'd get one or 2 volumes a month for like 2 years. They were actually nice, with great illustrations and all.

At work, I had a friend whose goal was to get a hard drive big enough to load the entire Encarta CD onto it. And then, boy, you'd be cruisin'!
 
scotchandcigar said:
Nowadays, whenever you're in a waiting room, everyone's looking at their phones.
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When I am at a show or game or whatever I do my very best to not take pictures. I still take a few but I try to keep my phone in my pocket. If it's a Dave or Phish or Eagles or even a Goose event I know there are a ton of professionals there taking better pics than I ever could. I want to enjoy the event without my phone.
 
JHDK said:
When I am at a show or game or whatever I do my very best to not take pictures. I still take a few but I try to keep my phone in my pocket.
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There's nothing worse than sitting in your stadium seat in the dark, and having the people next to you with their blazingly bright white phone screens on.
 
I just thought of something that played a major role in our pre-internet life: answering machines. Any time we were away for the day, or even just on a shopping run, there would be this anxiety about coming home, and seeing what calls we missed. The reason it caused anxiety is because the messages might have been from the utility company, or a credit card company. Even missed calls from friends and family could be stressful. Maybe someone got hurt, or needed help. Maybe you were invited to something, but you weren't there to answer the phone. Maybe your kid was supposed to be doing something they forgot about.

And then there was the protocol about having your 10-year-old kid answer (or not answer) the phone when you were out.
"Someone called about an overdue bill."
"Who called?"
"I couldn't understand what they said."
"Why didn't you just let the answering machine get it?"
"Well, I thought it could've been someone you knew, so I'd let them know you were out."

Or this:
"Your friend Karen called."
"What did she say? Does she want me to call her back?"
"I don't remember."

To this day, we still come home and joke about "Did anyone call?".
 
JHDK said:
Did any of you have the hardback version of Encyclopedia Britannica or whatever?
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We had em! National Geographic too. There weren’t as many naked African women as they make it sound.
JHDK said:
When I am at a show or game or whatever I do my very best to not take pictures. I still take a few but I try to keep my phone in my pocket.
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I try to take a couple and then put it away to just enjoy the show. I always make sure that I’m not blocking the view of the people behind me.
scotchandcigar said:
I just thought of something that played a major role in our pre-internet life: answering machines.
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We still have our land line and answering machine. For the longest time, we still used the land number to give t people and businesses that we didn’t want to have bother us on our mobiles.

We decided a while ago to get rid of the land line, but wanted to figure out which people, doctors, etc., that we need to give our updated numbers too.
 
HecticArt said:
We still have our land line and answering machine. For the longest time, we still used the land number to give t people and businesses that we didn’t want to have bother us on our mobiles.
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When we moved into the house here, we got started with cable service, and the "triple-play" package, which lowered the price if you got TV, internet, and a land line together. But we had already dumped the land line in the rental (where we lived during construction), and we weren't going back to actually using one. But like you, we had an old phone and answering machine hooked up to it. It was the only phone we had that was assigned with a local Maine phone number.

So, every so often, we'd get a message from the school that our child was absent that day. Of course, we didn't have a child in the school system. I was always tempted to call them back, and ask what our child's name was. But I never did.
 
Channel98 said:
MAD #41 (September 1958) included a five-page parody of the magazine. National Osographic was written by Tom Koch and drawn by Wally Wood.
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MAD makes me think of National Lampoon and the greatest magazine cover of all time:

1775587743569.webp

:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
 
scotchandcigar said:
We bought the whole thing. You'd get one or 2 volumes a month for like 2 years. They were actually nice, with great illustrations and all.
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When you say we do you mean you and the Mrs? Or you and your parents? Or whatever else.

HecticArt said:
We had em! National Geographic too. There weren’t as many naked African women as they make it sound.
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NatGeo had like a hardcover nature encyclopedia? Or do you mean that your fam would just hang onto the magazines? I remember going to old people's homes as a kid and the bottom few shelves of their various bookshelves would be filled with old NatGeo magazines in order.
 
JHDK said:
When you say we do you mean you and the Mrs? Or you and your parents?
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The ex and I got them for our home, so the kids would have them.

We had them in the house I grew up in. I'm the youngest, so they were just there. My dad got me the World of Automobiles encyclopedia, which was pretty neat.
 
I thought of another one!

My mom used to get TV Guide in the mail. Remember that? IDK if it even had any articles in it but I know she only used it to see what was on when. It was a weird size too. Smaller than a DVD case but of course a lot thicker.

I'd compare it to my Kindle. It was a thicker version of my base model Kindle.
 
TV Guide was huge. Many of the covers are iconic. And yes, they had articles in them. Interviews with actors and directors, and stories about the shows. I knew tons of people who collected them. It also made for great bathroom reading.
 
scotchandcigar said:
And then there was the protocol about having your 10-year-old kid answer (or not answer) the phone when you were out.
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The place where I work used to hire 10 year olds. Some of our past receptionists handled calls the same way.

I asked each one to get name and company from every caller, yet this happened more often than not.....

"I have someone on the line for you"
"Who"
"I think they said Harvey. Or Harry. Something like that."
"What company"
"I didn't ask"
 
Staying with TV, I'm sure some of you remember TV before cable but I was lucky enough to grow up with cable. I did some research into Comcast (a Philly based company) and it started with only about 5 channels.

In the late '80 they had a huge upgrade and offered 30 to 37 channels. This is my earliest memory of TV.

The whole reason I was looking into this is because I wanted to talk about the next big upgrade. Because I remember that being a huge deal to me. Apparently around '95 or so they upgraded their network again and all of a sudden I had 70-75 channels. I remember that being such a big deal and so cool! This was their last step before going digital.

Late '95 was also the first year we started having 28k AOL in the house. So that huge Comcast channel bump was something that actually happened before the internet, unlike a lot of my other posts that happened slightly after we started having AOL.
 
In NH, I lived in an oddball town that had Adelphia cable instead of Comcast/Xfinity. I assumed that Adelphia was from Philly.

All I remember about our living room TV, when I was growing up, was that we did get a cable channel package that included HBO. And that was cool. We also had a non-remote remote. It was a remote controller, but was tethered to the TV.

But the real thing I wanted to talk about is... p0rn (trying not to get this thread blocked). Like pre-internet stuff. I had an older brother, so I'd get into his stash of magazines and (sad to say) books. But unless you're around my age or so, you wouldn't have that experience.
 
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