I suppose it would be mostly practical skills, cooking, fixing things. Usually had to be done by people themselves.
Maybe also mental things like navigating (with or without paper map) and remembering their daily and weekly agendas.
What other things would be a big difference with the people today?
Critical thinking.
Morse code.
Cursive writing
Definitely more than 50 years ago, but this little piece of Americana is interesting
Families often had small nail-manufacturing setups in their homes; during bad weather and at night, the entire family might work at making nails for their own use and for barter. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: “In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail maker.”
Photo retouching as a physical trade. Colour photography and instant development killed the art of retouching black and white photos almost from one day to the next, because nobody could retouch colour photos and nobody wanted to pay for retouching black and white photos anymore, when Polaroids were easy to reshoot. My grandparents did it, but had to close the shop in the 1980s. I still have a few of their pens, but most of it ended up in a museum.
50 years ago was in the 1970s. I actually think more skills were lost just in the 20 years prior to that than after. This is due to mass production and plastic, which created the consumer products since the 1960s. Prior to that, you’d actually consider all products (except food) to be a purchase for life.
Idling away the time, being bored.
Doing nothing. That might be the biggest loss in the last decades.
There is just this overtone of restlessness and tension that didn’t seem to be present prior.Also connection with your local community. 50 years ago, it was basically a given. It was part of life.
Now, not so much.
Writing thank you cards and letters.
People should definitely do this more often. Makes it so much nicer to receive an actual physical card from someone.
Postcrossing also still exists, nice to send some postcards to random people around the world.
Reading cursive writing (especially from the 18th century or earlier).
Navigating a paper map.
You want to drive to a suburb of a big city. You have an address. The internet doesn’t exist.
How do you get there? Well. You use a map. Almost every glove box would have a local and state map, if not a full map book like a Thomas brothers.
Even more scarce is the ability to navigate a city by simply understanding it’s road system. Give me an address in my home city (a labyrinthine nightmare to visitors) and I can just drive there without looking at a map. It’s practically a party trick now that I can tell where people live by just hearing their address. Which sounds absurd until you realize they no one ever needs to do that anymore.
Road networks in most cities in my country are like someone just dropped a pot of spaghetti. The oldest urban areas here are at most 150 years old too, so it’s not like we can blame the Romans.
Me living in a city with Roman walls:
Are you saying I can blame the Romans for not knowing an address? Cool.Actually, it’s a rather small city. It’s hard to get lost when you can easily walk from one end to the other.
I used to do this when I delivered pizza.bMy phone wasn’t playing well with the GPS because I had put a custom ROM on it that happened to be too much for the thing, plus aging, but the ROM was too good in every other aspect. So I just studied the map on the same computer we clicked through orders on, remembered my route, and in a couple of weeks I didn’t even need to look at the map before going around our zone.
Still helps me navigate cities to this day, even now that I don’t drive at all.
Although living in a post-Soviet country helps with city/road design, making it rather predictable in ways lol
Actually a much better way was to use a street directory if you know your way around the town even a bit.
Better even, and how we actually did it was giving instructions. “200m after the large tree by the field, drive on for about 400m, there’s 2 junctions before and mines the third one.”
But I also know orienteering ofc as a Finn
Actually a much better way was to use a street directory if you know your way around the town even a bit.
You generally only had a street directory of your OWN town, outside of specific professional settings.
Swede here, how would using a street directory help you navigate without a map?
Sure, I know that at least here in Stockholm and it’s suburbs that when a new area is being developed, they name the streets after a similar theme.
But knowing that Sommarvägen in Täby is located within the district of Hägernäs doesn’t get you very far.
You look up a street name. That entry tells you which street it begins from. If you don’t know that, then you look up one further. And repeat until you get to such a main road you’d know it even after looking at a map.
So basically you’d look up the street and then browse back and after you’d have a sort of gps like instructions. “main road until you see X street, then turn there, then drive until you see Y road” etc.
I had several in the car I drove, for all the nearby cities/towns. Many in same covers. So it’d cover the main city and outlying towns. Never had to use a map. (Although again, I can if needed.)
Ugh I hate those new suburbs with themed street names. They are always a maze and I get turned around in them. My mate Martin used to live in one of those where all of the streets were some variation of grass. We would be in the car and ask amongst ourselves: “Where does Martin live again? What was the street? Wasn’t it grass something or other?”. Only to get to that suburb and get really confused as all of those streets were named grass something and then we really couldn’t remember.
But back then before GPS was a common thing and before we had cellphones, we had a sort of vibe navigation system. Getting to the correct city was easy, even if you didn’t know where it was, there would always be signs. But then when we got near our destination, you’d sorta drive in a direction that felt right. You’d be amazed how often we just found the right place like that. Only rarely did we have to check our navigation book tucked under the seat or fold out a big map on the dash. Never did we need to ask for directions, that simply wasn’t done.
I wonder if it took quite a bit longer for people to reach their destination. Because not everyone would be as good at reading maps (compared to simply following gps instructions) Maybe that made it more common for people to arrive at different times. or plan longer trips because the driving would take up a bigger part of it.
Also, when driving alone, I can’t imagine holding your map. So you would still have to stop from time to time for long trips. And actually memorize the big lines of how to get to your destination.
The main maps I used for driving (back in the day, UK, 1986) were ‘books’ rather than large fold out maps. At local level, an A to Z. At national level, an AA road map, this has the format of a small newspaper, however in thicker paper.
Going along with reading a map most people don’t know how roads and exits are numbered. It’s not a random jumble. This makes reading a map and just knowing what direction you’re traveling in general much easier. This is for the US.
Interstates
1 or 2 Digits: Main routes. North-South routes have odd numbers, increasing from west to east (e.g., I-5 to I-95). East-West routes have even numbers, increasing from south to north (e.g., I-10 to I-90).
3 Digits (Even First Number): A loop or beltway that connects to the main interstate at both ends.
3 Digits (Odd First Number): A spur route that connects to the main interstate at only one end.
Exit numbers
They mirror the mile markers which show up on maps. Numbers increase from south to north or west to east. So you could basically make a ‘cheat sheet’ of your exit numbers. Then while driving you know how far till your next exit.
I’ve seen this not be true on occasion but it should be mostly true. If the exit sign is on the right of the road sign then the exit is to the right. If it’s on the left then it exits to the left.
All knowledge that I feel got lost to time for the most part. They should teach it in drivers ed but I don’t think they do.
I wonder if it took quite a bit longer for people to reach their destination. Because not everyone would be as good at reading maps (compared to simply following gps instructions) Maybe that made it more common for people to arrive at different times. or plan longer trips because the driving would take up a bigger part of it.
Oh it absolutely did. You would regularly have to stop (often after a turn or if you felt like you missed one) and reconsult the map. You just accounted for that additional time. Longer trips are often less of an issue, because its usually, you get to a big main highway and its cruise most of the rest of the way.
And plenty of times, you might get lost/ not be able to find yourself on the map. You’d have to pull over and ask for help/ directions. You might write the directions down on a piece of paper, but that doesn’t do you much good if you missed a turn and didn’t know it.
Depends on the area and how familiar it is and how hostile it is to navigation. I can beat the Google maps time 9 out if 10 times in Seattle because Google sends you through some seriously dumb intersections.
In Minneapolis, Google maps almost always tells me to leave the parking lot from work, go down the road, and turn left onto a highway during rush hour. No lights.
The way I actually go is to turn 1 block “early” and wait at the stoplight.
Sure, in theory it would be faster to take Google’s way if there’s no traffic, but again – this is when I’m leaving work!
I still carry a state map in my truck
That reminds me that I never moved the map from old car to the
newcurrent one.
I was so obsessed with NYC subway maps lol (circa 2010)
When I was a kid, I used to just draw my interpretation of the subway routes + streets and like make my own “map”
Remembering phone numbers.
0118999881990119725
3That’s just because we don’t dial them anymore, fuck, we barely make phone calls anymore.
i got you.
281-330-8004
867-5309!
Learning how to do things yourself because you had to. Now people have an app for getting somone out to hang a picture
Memorizing phone numbers
We didn’t memorise numbers! We just remembered them after having to manually dial them a hundred times.
Why wife’s phone number is ‘babe’ and ill die on that hill.
I feel like it’s still important to remember the numbers of some important contacts, so you can actually call them using somebody elses phone if yours dies or breaks. But I suppose not many people would bother
Lol, not only do I memorize phone numbers of family members, I did my parents taxes so often, I can memorize the social security numbers of all my household members and all their birthdates.
Also I still remember addresses I used to live in.
Mmmm, interesting, can you list off that data along with your mother’s maiden name? It’s uh for a friend…
Sure it’s [data expunged] and [data expunged] and [Error: Security Clearence not found]
Lol, sorry, you seem to lack the credentials. It’s “need-to-know basis” only. :P
Seriously tho, my family is so like… idk I guess “emmeshed”? Like everything is so entangled.
Like my mom literally use my brother’s legal identity to take out loans… and also some assets are put under his name
Also like mom used to not even have a screen lock on the phone until someone robbed her so now there’a a screen lock.
And like I have access to their phones… and sometimes messed with settings and mom got mad at me.
I don’t even have any legal papers in my physical posession except like my state ID, cuz my mom wanted to “keep it safe” for me…
To be fair: I held on to my first US passport as a teen, and I kinda damaged it lol (got it just to make sure my Citizenship status is properly documented in the legal system), never even had a chance to actually use it since parents were so busy all the time.
If there is ever a family issue… oh shit we all know each other’s info, we could theoretically do so much damage to each other like a family “civil war”.
Skill most people had:
- Sewing, at least basic sewing. Tailors were expensive, and if you just needed to shorten a pant leg, or fix a hole, you just sewed it. Nowadays mending clothes is almost pointless, given they’re basically made to get holes in them immediately.
- Speaking quickly to avoid collect call fees. People would call home from a hospital phone, which would charge the receiver’s bill if they accepted the call. The phone would ask for your name, and you’d say your message quickly, which lead to your parents at home getting a call from “Baby’s a healthy boy” and then hanging up.
Difference: The whole world doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke anymore. Even when I was a kid in the early 00s, it still smelled of cigarettes basically everywhere.
So y’know. We can’t sew a patch on, or speed rap to avoid collect call fees, but at least drunk driving is illegal, and we have seatbelts
State your name:
Bob, the Adababyeetza boy.
Using a card catalog at the library to look up books.
I worked in a private library that still had it’s card catalogue up until 2005. People were always ripping out the cards (there was something like a metal knitting needle that passed through a punched hole in each card to stop idiots from destroying the catalogue, so the gobshites ripped them out instead).
The early digital catalogues weren’t great so the old card system persisted.
I never learned this. I always just browsed around and read what caught my attention. Maybe if I was doing research, I would have had to learn it.
It was a fairly regular part of our public school education
If you knew how to drive, you most likely knew how to use a manual transmission.
In Germany nowadays everybody who has a license also know how to drive manual.
This one depends on where you live, I suppose. In some european countries it’s still quite common to learn to drive with a manual.
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I still have a manual
Lots of semi truck drivers know how to drive a manual and semi truck driver is one of the most common occupations in the US. Everyone at my company’s location knows how even though we have an all automatic fleet.
Edit: Just to address the premise of the question only a couple of us were driving 50 years ago.
You likely already know this but if anybody else reading is interested, this is because if you test for your commercial license in an automatic then you’re restricted to only automatics. The schools are still teaching manual, so it doesn’t make any sense to learn that then test in an automatic and get that restriction.
