
1975 - divia
http://ranprieur.com/misc/1975.html
======
gojomo
This is but one impressionistic view of 1975 whose claims should not be taken
literally. A few examples...

 _no video games except pong_ \-- The Odyssey home system was sold as early as
1972.

 _Word processors were still 10 years away_ \-- WordStar for CP/M came out in
1978; for DOS in 1982. AppleWriter for Apples in 1979.

 _No one thought to make a sequel to a movie just because it made a lot of
money_ \-- Ten Bond films had already been made by 1975.

 _The work week was five hours shorter_ \-- This still varies a lot by region
and industry; there are plenty of people who work 9-5 or less. And long-term
studies of work vs. leisure time suggest Americans were working slightly fewer
hours in 2003 than 1975. (See for example Figure 1 on p. 9 of this survey:
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1233842> .)

~~~
jgfoot
Also, digital watches existed in 1975. In fact, one of those ten Bond films
you mention (Live and Let Die, 1973) featured Bond wearing a digital watch (it
was a cool gadget).

~~~
grouchyOldGuy
I remember a guy I worked for showing me his new digital watch. It was a
matrix of tiny red LEDs that consumed so much current from the batteries, that
the display would only light up when you pushed a button on the side of the
watch. I bought one myself a year or two later.

------
lazyant
I have his same age but things were a little different in my home country in
Europe:

\- No automatic doors in supermarkets. Actually there were no supermarkets,
just little shops. \- Coffe: we had espresso in every bar/restaurant. \- Only
one and a half tv channels, no tv in the mornings, no cable of course. \-
University was free and it's still basically free (small fee) \- We had no
pizzas, (or cereal for breakfast or burgers)

oh well, too many differences, political and social etc

~~~
ewiethoff
Visiting the Irish countryside and smaller cities in 1996, I swore I had
fallen into a time warp to my small-town American childhood of the 1960s.
Spices in grocery shops consisted of salt, pepper, cinnamon, and that's it.
Shops closed at 6 pm. (Hence, no aspirins or antacids after 6 pm.) Restaurants
served food only at specific mealtime hours. No beverages, snacks, or
medicines at gas stations.

------
sethg
_Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or
worked your way through._

The Federal government has been loaning money directly to college students
since 1958 and has been guaranteeing bank-originated student loans since 1965.

 _Phones had disks with holes, not number pads._

I can't find statistics on how quickly Touch-Tone dialing was adopted, but
AT&T started promoting it at the 1964 Worlds' Fair.

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

The Church Committee reported in 1975 and 1976 that the CIA and FBI had been
wiretapping and intercepting mail without warrants. The Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act was not passed until 1978.

------
naich
"Recorded music was a little scratchy, but sounded better because engineers
did not kill dynamic range to make it louder."

I thought they compressed the dynamic range in those days too, in order to
compensate for noise in tapes and vinyl?

~~~
ObieJazz
Not to the extent that they do now, at least in pop music.

~~~
hairsupply
I thought they went to tape to avoid the popping.

------
RobGR
"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 an ecological catastrophe."

Ice age was the preferred senario of the Doomday crowd back then.

[http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-
ab...](http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-about-the-
coming-ice-age)

My grandfather subscribed to Reader's Digest and kept every one of them, in a
tall neat stack that reached to the ceiling next to the toilet. There were
more from as far back as the 50's in a little cubby hole between the toilet
and bathtub. We lived with him for a year in the 80's, and I read a huge
number of those; I was convinced the return of the ice caps was imminent, and
quite excited about the prospect.

I read quite a bit about the nuclear winter debate, and nothing in the popular
press about warming until the 90s. I know from what I have read that papers on
warming were published as early as the 40s, but in the popular immagination,
cooling was expected, and any human effects would be catastrophic cooling from
a nuclear exchange.

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

I picked up a strange anthology from 1971 for classroom use, _Science Fiction:
The Future_ [ISBN 0155786504], from a street vendor a couple days ago. Here is
an excerpt from "The Human Race Has, Maybe, Thirty-Five Years Left" by David
Lyle, originally appearing in 1967 _Esquire_ :

"Dr. Barry Commoner reported recently (in his book, _Science and Survival_ )
that the burning of fuels has caused the carbon-dioxide content of the earth's
atmosphere to rise fourteen percent in the past century. This has produced a
general warming effect on the atmosphere. The President's [Johnson, I suppose]
Science Advisory Committee concludes that this warming may begin melting the
Antarctic ice cap by the year 2000 (raising sea levels four feet a decade and,
of course, finally inundating huge land areas and major cities, like New
York)."

I remember thoughts of global warming floating in my head since the 1970s,
perhaps, vaguely, having to do with chlorofluorocarbons and holes in the ozone
layer. But I don't recollect anything about increased carbon dioxide. Hence, I
was a bit amazed and surprised when I read about carbon dioxide in this old
_Esquire_ article last night.

> Ice age was the preferred senario of the Doomday crowd back then.

I had not heard of nuclear winter until the 1980s. Wikipedia (definitive
source ;-) confirms "nuclear winter" buzz began in the early '80s:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#History>

------
mynameishere
Oh, well. I have faint memories of Laser Discs around 1983-1984. When DVDs
were being heavily marketed in the early 2000s I could hardly believe it...

"Huh? I thought we already proved those were inferior to recordable/affordable
VHS tapes in 1986." (I still think this. DVDs make for horrendous media.) Oh,
well. Fact is, not much has changed in terms of actual day-to-day life beyond
the interactive qualities of the internet.

------
warkaiser
Pong, ahh. I almost wish I had been born sooner so I could have watched
computers become mainstream.

~~~
mcav
Yes, but for all that time we missed, we can see that much more in the future.

