
The world in 1975 (2007) - apsec112
http://www.ranprieur.com/misc/1975.html
======
Isamu
>Radio stations played a great variety of really good new music.

Please. The lack of variety in the public sphere is exactly what led to the
"underground" music scenes. In the 70's the new unheard music was punk and the
like.

When I left for college in '79 it was an absolutely jaw-dropping, exciting
experience to find an entire music store filled with this "alternative" music
that no one played (outside of college stations, which played anything. Even
then, some of the college stations still played Top 40. What was the point of
that?)

>Most Americans had never heard of espresso.

True, although if you were paying attention to the movie, "Shaft" ordered
espresso. I noticed this but still didn't understand what it was supposed to
be.

>Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect".

To be fair, early in the 70's it seemed to some researchers that the
historical trend was downward and we were headed into a new ice age. This was
widely reported. Later on more work was done to get better global temperature
proxies and it was decided that the trend was upwards.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
So compare it to present-day Top 40 radio. There is no contest.

There really was a great variety of good music. Check the Top 100 lists
through the decade. There was a lot of utter dreck as well. Even that might
have been at least somewhat interesting.

Punk wasn't exactly evenly distributed. The only reason I knew about it then
at all was from people writing about it, which made it appear to be an
artifact of journalism.

~~~
stevefolta
Also, in 1975, punk was just getting started, and it wasn't yet clear that
radio was not gonna play the Ramones.

I remember hearing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the radio for the first time, and
thinking they'd never play it again, 'cause it was just too weird.

------
TheOtherHobbes
>There were no digital watches. And wind-up watches were cheap.

LED digital watches arrived at my school in 1974/75\. LCD watches arrived
about a year later.

>Headphones were giant things you used in the basement to listen to Pink
Floyd.

I had a pair of 424s in 1975. They sounded pretty good.

[http://www.tonepublications.com/old-school/sennheiser-
hd-414...](http://www.tonepublications.com/old-school/sennheiser-
hd-414-and-424/)

>There was no portable way to listen to music except transistor radios.

Like a lot of people, I had a battery/mains cassette player/recorder. It
wasn't an iPod, but it would have done the job. It's more accurate to say
there was no tradition of personal music players. In-car players were very
common.

>Cashiers punched in all the prices by hand, but it was only a little bit
slower.

It was horrendously slow. And every single individual item had to have its own
price sticker - which often fell off, holding everyone up.

It's interesting how many of these simply haven't been checked or researched,
just patched together to create an "It was better in the old days' narrative.

I don't remember it being better. I remember it being very different. Many
things now - smoking bans, health awareness, the public Internet - are huge
improvements.

~~~
kuschku
Regarding of the speed of cashiers: ALDI is the only store where actual tests
showed that the speed has gone _down_ since the introduction of scanners — but
all prices of all products had to be known by all cashiers, and there was
always only one product of each type.

~~~
intopieces
I have a feeling that inventory control, price accuracy and the ease of
training cashiers are considered reasonable trade-offs for how long it takes
to ring customers.

~~~
kuschku
Well, the cashiers memorized the EAN, the barcode.

Even today they often type the barcode faster in than it can be recognized.

For inventory control and price accuracy you get the same advantages as with
barcode, but you can be faster and work without a barcode reader.

------
11thEarlOfMar
"There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food,
so people had to at least try to cook."

Eau contraire, in 1976 I was delivering J&B's pizza to save up for college.

And our freezer was filled with TV dinners. We had 'TV Trays'. Today, we have
trays for our notebook computers: [http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-
computer-stands.h...](http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/notebook-computer-
stands.html)

~~~
carlob
Nitpick of the day: it's au contraire, eau is just water, au is roughly at
the. ;)

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Thanks! Haha.

------
bootload
In '75, Vietnam had finished. I remember asking my Dad was this the war that'd
been going since I was little? Man no longer went to the moon. Woodstock was
Snoopys friend.

Towns were more compact. There were no traffic lights in my town, no traffic
lights until you hit the inner suburbs. Shops had limited hours. 9-5 weekdays,
9-12 Saturday. Except banks. They opened 10-5 and were closed weekends. No
Sunday shopping existed. Everything was cash only. Supermarkets hardly
existed. Towns had grocery stores, big towns had markets. You got up early on
Saturday and shopped for the week in the limited hours available.

Food had to be prepared. There were no fast food outlets. Fast food was
limited to fish fingers and frozen vegetables. I could never imagine bread
being a dollar a loaf. Milk came in bottles. Milk, bread and the paper were
delivered to the house.

News arrived by radio, newspapers then TV. Newspapers printed several times a
day. TV was limited to four channels and black and white. Radio was AM. There
were a lot of stations but only a few rock stations. Lots of 50's and 60's
music on the air. Vinyl was king. 45's were less popular than LP's. 78's was
old music. Stereo was affordable.

Cars got smaller, a lot smaller due to the oil shocks. Petrol contained lead.
Most families had one car, maybe a second smaller car. Divorce was a new word.
More women were moving into full time or part time work. Finance was
restricted. Most people aspired to buy a house. Housing and land was
affordable. Asbestos was deemed safe to use as building materials.

The difference between the fit and unfit was less. A lot more people smoked.
Drinking was institutional. Fat people hardly existed. Diabeties was an old
people disease. Kids died in droves on the road. The road toll was more than
double what it is now. Men retired at 65 and died soon after.

It was a lot colder and a lot wetter and greener in the winter time.
University was free. The library was the place to find out new ideas in books.
Calculators started appearing. I heard about time-sharing for the first time.
A scientist I knew worked with computers. His username was "Stout".

~~~
markc
Where? Much of this stuff you describe was true in the mid-60s where I lived
(suburban MN), but not in 75.

>Woodstock was Snoopys friend.

And a famous '69 music festival.

In 75 my parents had credit cards (as did all of their friends). We shopped at
a supermarket and shopping malls. We ate tons of pre-packaged food like TV
dinners and spaghetti O's - far more than people do today. Fast food was
MacDonalds, BK, etc. Milk came in cartons from the supermarket.

Newspaper once a day. TV had been color for many years and we got at least a
dozen channels. Radio was FM for music AM for news/sports. 8 track tapes and
cassettes were everywhere. Most people had touch-tone phones.

University was not free. I had been programming computers at school (junior
high) for several years via dial-up time sharing.

I guess changes come to different parts of the country at very different
rates.

~~~
bootload
_" Where? Much of this stuff you describe was true in the mid-60s where I
lived (suburban MN), but not in 75."_

Aus. In a lot of ways the US was far more advanced than the rest of the world
in '75\. You can see that in the every day technology. There's another cause,
I lived right on the outer fringes of Melbourne [0] and to give you an idea
how small, most of the kids I went to school were delivered by one of two
local doctors. [1] The thing that strikes me re-reading my post, then yours is
how shockingly fast the Australian caught up and passed the US in a lot of
ways.

As a kid the US sounded like a large and interesting place. Somewhere you
might be aspire to move too. Now? not a chance. Aus has mostly free medical
care and education, little gun violence, less advertising, advanced technology
[2] and I'm asking myself, _" what the hell happened in the US from '75 to now
to make it as it is now?"_

Btw, this isn't a criticism of the people of the US. What caused the
structural tangle of politics, violence and religion that makes the country a
place to avoid?

 _" And a famous '69 music festival."_

Duh, where do you think Shultz got the name? The point I'm making is the
concert here was better known by a weekly comic strip than the music on the
radio. Certainly available on LP though.

[0] Remember _" Melbourne is the artichoke end of the world"_ ~
[http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/](http://goonmail.customer.netspace.net.au/)

[1] [http://seldomlogical.com/profile/](http://seldomlogical.com/profile/)

[2] Unaffordable housing, world #2 obesity rate, higher working hours, some
political instability.

~~~
floaters
>What caused the structural tangle of politics, violence and religion that
makes the country a place to avoid?

I'd say the cause is largely availability heuristic. You could Google it, but
with Australian Internet speeds that might take several days.

~~~
bootload
_" availability heuristic"_, not a bad stab, yes Internet is slow today.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic)

------
dang
A discussion from 2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503640).

------
jegoodwin3
Mostly on base -- but no mention of the exit from Saigon? 1975 was the year
the '60s ended.

Also, in 1975, one heard a lot more about 'the coming ice age' than global
warming. The concept had a brief reprise in the 80s with 'the Cold and the
Dark' (Nuclear Winter).

------
mcculley
> To fly on an airplane, you just had to walk through a metal detector, and if
> someone was there to meet you or say goodbye, they could go all the way to
> the gate without a ticket.

Also, you could meet somebody for lunch at the terminal during a layover or
have a meeting right in the terminal at a restaurant. I had a boss before 9/11
that had direct reports all over the country. He would sometimes fly out and
have lunch with one of his reports at a restaurant in the terminal and fly
right back out. None of this is practical now with the security hassles.

~~~
smikhanov

        None of this is practical now with the security hassles
    

In North America with TSA, absolutely. When I need to do a stopover in one of
the efficient airports in Central or Northern Europe, I often go out to
arrivals area (even if it involves going through passport control) and then
back through departures. This way I can spend time doing some shopping for
brands I don't have at home. CPH and ZRH are very good for that, CGN less so,
ARN is not worth the hassle. Security in the departure area is always
incomparably better than the same in America and with a layover of 1.5-2 hours
you can do it at almost a leisurely pace.

------
proc0
Also, there population of earth was 50% less (3.8 bill according to my quick
search). Everywhere you go there would be 50% less people. Imagine that.

~~~
hueving
Not really. Some places would be completely undeveloped while others would
have been about the same size or even larger (think of industrial mid west
cities).

------
api
I read it with an eye to what got worse, since most things got better. The
thing that truly leapt out to me was how awful pop music and the radio are
today. There is good music, but nowhere near a radio. You really have to dig
in obscure places for it. Pop is with very few exceptions loudness enhanced
vapid junk that all sounds the same and that and oldies are all the radio will
play.

Only a bit of actual inspired music has broken through in the past decade...
basically m83 and a bit of decent hip hop. Compare this to the early 90s, the
last time popular music was decent. There were literally dozens of amazing new
bands and several whole new styles in a span of 5 years. That was I suppose
before the marketers took over and figured out how to endlessly push junk.

I don't always cheer for disruption, but boy would I celebrate the total ruin
of that industry. What a joke.

------
jgh
>Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could
safely assume your phone calls and letters were private.

Wait, couldn't you just listen in on someone's line from the telephone box
outside their house?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Depending on the exchange, in the UK, I think the "operator" may have been
able to listen in too?

Crossed lines were a thing I think [in movies they were!] - induced signals in
a different line that allowed you to hear someone else's call?

------
chiaro
>To fly on an airplane, you just had to walk through a metal detector, and if
someone was there to meet you or say goodbye, they could go all the way to the
gate without a ticket. >If a flight was longer than a couple hours, you got a
free meal, sometimes two, and it wasn't bad.

Still largely true in Australia.

------
harel
I still don't get the whole 9 to 6 thing. 9 to 5 seems more reasonable
(considering past norms. I don't believe were productive 8 hours a day
sttaight). I think, at the very least the song lyrics should change, or better
yet, we go back to past norms.

------
oldmanjay
This is not a very good article. inaccuracies aside it is also not well
written and I'm not sure what the point is supposed to be. Misremembering the
past isn't really an end unto itself in my eyes.

------
vermooten
> There were no DVD's or even VCR's -- movies could only be seen in theaters,
> or older movies on TV. You could also buy a super 8mm film version, probably
> not the entire film though.

~~~
Allegrippus
We did have video tape recorders, though. Setting up and running them for
classes was part of my college work-study job around 1971-72. The units I
operated were made by Ampex and were about the size of a suitcase. They used a
wide tape which had to be threaded onto the take-up reel, similar to an audio
reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tape head had to be cleaned with alcohol
between each use, and there was a tracking control which you often adjusted to
avoid getting a stripe across the picture.

~~~
flyinghamster
Not only that, but there were definitely VCRs in 1975. In particular, the Sony
U-Matic was released in 1971, and Betamax dates to 1975 (with a November
release in the US). Of course, the early VCRs were either used in educational
or industrial environments, or else were toys for the rich.

There are plenty of other nits to pick with this article, as well. Pong wasn't
the only video game, even if it was by far the most common (and yes, pinball
dominated the arcades then). Dynamic range compression on LPs was certainly a
thing, but producers didn't go overboard with it back then the way they do
now.

Still, it's funny how some things never change (like media fearmongering).

------
jhallenworld
Pretend you are shopping for Christmas...

[http://www.wishbookweb.com/](http://www.wishbookweb.com/)

------
sabujp
> You payed by cash or check

You can still do this using a debit card. I'm not 100% sure how your credit is
affected if you never get a credit card though. I know there are other ways to
build up credit. Also, credit cards make products more expensive, there's
probably a transaction fee for debit cards too.

> There were no ATM's. To get cash out of your account, you went to a bank
> teller, and there was no fee.

But you could only get money out of your own bank? You can now get an account
at many banks/credit unions that waive atm transaction fees.

> Only rich people had credit cards. If you had debts, a credit card was
> harder to get.

100% agree that we need to bring this back. If you don't have good credit,
760+ you shouldn't be allowed to have a credit card with high interest rates.

> Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or
> worked your way through.

Why is college so much more expensive now? Even online/"low cost" programs.

> There was no pizza delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food,
> so people had to at least try to cook.

Really, no pizza delivery?! Well I guess with oil shortages that's believable.

> The work week was five hours shorter. You can still see this in the old
> phrase "nine to five." People actually did work nine to five, with a paid
> hour for lunch.

There are many people who work multiple jobs to make ends meet and the vast
majority aren't doing what they want.

> Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could
> safely assume your phone calls and letters were private.

:(

> Everybody was afraid of "crime" (illegal acts by people of lower social
> class) and "terrorism" (political violence outside a state monopoly).

Yup, more of that now even though we're safer now than at any other time in
history.

> Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect".
> They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would
> heat up and we would have ecological disasters.

Not just doomsayers, but looks like oil companies knew about it too but
decided to keep it hidden.

> There was an oil shortage, and people responded by driving less, in more
> fuel-efficient cars.

I saw the first Hummer H2 I'd seen in years a few weeks ago costco pump in the
bay area when oil prices were ~$2.15/gallon. It all boils down to economics.

~~~
mcculley
>> You payed by cash or check > You can still do this using a debit card.

His point wasn't debit versus credit. It was that one had to have the actual
paper cash or a checkbook handy when stopping at the store. It's a lot more
convenient now.

~~~
macintux
I still remember my mother using a credit card (probably ~1980) and the
cashier pulled out a phone-book-sized list of known stolen CC numbers. I told
my mom "I hope she finds it in the book" (not knowing its purpose) and she
replied "I hope she doesn't".

Anyway, even credit cards were slower then.

~~~
aidenn0
Yeah, I remember the express lines in the 80s often were "cash only" since
check and credit were so much slower than cash.

------
martin1b
Great trip down memory lane. Thanks!!

