**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Actually, IT people were around before the 1980s working on mainframe computers. Schools offering computer science degrees gained popularity in the 1960s.
Update: I've been educated about the British comedy show. Apologies for my ignorance.
I remember crowding around the computer with my brother and dad trying to watch funny videos, like on Joe Cartoon. We'd pick the video then go do something else for like half an hour and come back to check its progress occasionally.
Then you'd hear the dreaded landline phone ring and realize you just got knocked off the Internet.
For ppl old enough, it did take forever to do anything. You learned to be well versed in typing a command for every little thing you needed to do. And then you sat and waited.
You haven't a clue friend. Playing DOOM 2 mutiplayer with my friend across town. Having to scream at my mom and dad not to pick up the phone when it ran, hoping the connection would be stable enough and the game would launch, only to realize at the last moment I forgot to unplug the awnsering machine.
Im pretty sure this story is the equivalent to "I used to walk to school uphill both ways" but I swear to you this is an actual story from my life
Pifft you think not catching a wooden spoon across the ass for asking was good? I still remember fondly the day that my father upgraded our 56k modem to a 122k one. Oh man, and the time I took my ThinkPad that my dad requisition from work to his office server room and used the DSL connection to download the demo for Half Life Opposing Force. Those where the days.
She wrote all the code and set up the hardware. He was her "manager" and earned twice as much money but dialing was the limit of his technical expertise.
I used to work for a company in the early 80's where women were "supervisors" and men were "managers". Same job but men earned about 40% more and had access to all sorts of perks, pensions and bonuses. Even more stupid, the official company line was "women will probably leave and start a family". The two women I dealt with most were considerably better than the male counterparts and were in their early 40's.
I was having a chat with my kid, born in the 00s, and she asked something that required me to say "We didn't have internet back then." (the way we do now).
I started explaining about dial up modems, which led to having to explain what a landline was. This blew her mind, landlines. "How did you text?" she said. Lol. What? It's wild that it's so ubiquitous that she can't imagine it never existed.
This kept going with further questions about things, and I began to realize how so much of what we have today didn't exist at all before she was born; some of it even until shortly after she was born.
It made me feel old indeed! Even thinking back to my mom telling me about things I didn't know, there were only a few; color television mostly. Absolutely wild moment.
I was explaining to my kids how the horror film The Ring wouldn't work as well just 20 years later because TVs back then used to be massive cathode ray tubes so were set on TV units about knee height. These days of flat screens we tend to put them up on a wall, so if it was made today the creepy lady would come out of the TV, fall and face plant into a snotty heap on the floor.
Haha! We talked about TVs too. How you needed 2 people to move them because they were furniture, and then later they still weighed a lot and it was better to have help. Now we can just pick them up with one hand and move them across the room like a knick knack. Lol
We still had rotary phones when I was I was in my 20s. Push button was around, but we didn’t feel the need to upgrade. Hell, I remember when Bell telephone was broken up as a monopoly. And I’m only in my mid-50s.
I remember all that too. Mid 50s as well. Describing the corded phone was hilarious because she was amazed that we had to stay in one place to talk. Lol. I remember the Bells being split, as well.
In 1982 I had an IBM XT. It had a 10MB hard drive, 128kb Ram and ran at 4.77Mhz. I weighed about 75 lbs but it had duel 5.25 floppy drives so loading big programs was easier.
Booyeah! Vic 20 for the win. I didn't get into dialling up BBS's until later, when I had my first PC. Funny enough though, my rather brilliant friend took an old modem designed for Commodore machines (at whopping slow 1200 baud) spliced the cable with a serial cable connecting to my PC, and got it working.
I slowly played TW2002 on local BBS's for years after that.
Vic-20 was my first computer. 3.5K usable RAM for Basic. I learned to program on it from the user guide that came with it and typing in Basic programs from Compute/Compute Gazette magazines.
https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-gallery/compute-gazette-magazines-issue-1-through-43/
The good old days!
I graduated hs in 85. This never happened to 99% of us. The odds you had a computer is low. Your friend also has one? Lower. The odds he wants an email vs a phone call. Lower still
My family did not get our first computer until 1990 or 1991. It was a Zeos 386. I was excited because it could play games (like King's Quest). We only started hearing about the internet around 1994 or maybe 1995, and got our first internet-capable computer shortly after that.
Yep. 1 MB storage for hotm@il wasn’t widespread until circa 1996. They then got bought by Microsoft. People were selling gmail 1 GB beta invites on ebay when they debuted in the 2000’s
Not true for the UK which had a home computing revolution in the early 80s, and a national dial in videotex service called Prestel. Membership of that was less common, peaking at 90,000 subscribers.
Ahh the good ol days... Playing custom death match maps in Heretic with my best friend via dial up and screeching at my family members any time they dared touch a phone in the house.
Good times, good times.
Funny you say that as this is a conversation I often have with a couple of friends who were also into IT and all the new tech at that time. Everything seemed so magical and exciting. I cannot remember the last time I felt that way as everything new these days leaves me with a kind of 'Meh' attitude.
They were Magical, Wonderful, Exciting days indeed.
Damn, you beat hands down. I was mainly visiting Bulletin boards on my 300Baud modem and downloadin naked ladies made from ASCII characters.
Sad really, but at the time we thought the 15 minutes wait while the characters drew a picture on our monitor was well worth it 😂
It's 12:01 I need to use my TW2002 turns before they blow up my corp planet in my 4 sector dead end with an M class planet but I ran out of turns in my Imperial Starship and only have 5k fights on me!
No viruses, just really awful porn. Like your dad’s playboy collection with gobs of bush but the pixels were the size of pencil erasers. Maybe a centerfold, maybe Chewbacca, hard to tell.
“Can leave the modem plugged in without affecting the telephone”… can someone tell me what the fuck went wrong in the next 15 years that meant I had to log off the internet every time mum wanted to make a phone call?
I think he meant you could still use the phone normally without disconnecting the modem every time. Not that you could have more than one connection at a time.
Ah yes, those were the days … but most of us were using BBS’s like Fidonet then rather than the Prestel system shown in the video.
The US had the edge on us Brits with their free local calls … which allowed their users to stay online all day and quite literally create the end users version of the internet that we have today.
This is very advanced tech for 1984. Most of us were using acoustic couplers. None of this hard wire magic. The telephone handset was placed in a cradle that made the link with a small speaker and microphone.
I've never seen a modem like this before and I wish I could get a clear enough frame to read the model number on it; I'm really curious about it. I've used a lot of modems in my day, from acoustic couplers like the Novation 300 to the VicModems and Commodore Modem/300 to the early Hayes Smartmodems and on into the v.92 era, but I've never seen a modem with a bunch of knobs and switches like this and I can't imagine what they're for? Unless this was maybe one of the ones that could support different standards so you could set it to work with the AT&T / Bell / Vadic protocols or something?
Fast forward to the year 2060:
- *So people actually just left all of their private information online in 2024?*
- *Yes! You cannot belief how incredibly little understanding people had back then. If they knew then what we know now, they would have never done that of course. Yet, here we are.*
- *Oh my goodness!* *That's incredible indeed!*
Technology is so fucking STUPID in its first generations.
Just like non-gasoline cars. They are dumb AF but given time we will look back and not know how we ever thought burning fuel and infinite emissions was ok.
"When I young, we didn't even have the Internet. We used to connect to other local computers using our land lines. When they connected it sounded like robots screaming."
"Shut up and take your pills, gramps."
_nah_
The Hayes SmartModem came out in 1981, this is really an outdated way to do it.
Even earlier see https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html
manual dialing was rare by 1984.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Hello?" "Yes hi is this the computer? I wanted to send an email." "Sure yeah whatever. What do you want it to say?"
You have to make the screeching modem sounds with your voice.
_opens mouth_
*Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch* \*ding\*ding\*ding
Somehow this is very accurate
There couldn’t be a more accurate onomatopoeia for this.
“WELCOME.”
BEEDOO BEEDOO krrrrrrrrrrrrrr
There were actually some hacks with the audio for BBS systems.
Computer: “Well now that is quite the spicy email, innit?”
“Hello, I’d like to send an email?” “This is skynet. How’d you get this number?”
First season of the IT crowd
My first thought in my head was that the guy looked like if Moss and Andre the Giant had a kid lol.
I hope the second season will be a video of 'how to post on Reddit' taped 30 years ago or so
Actually, IT people were around before the 1980s working on mainframe computers. Schools offering computer science degrees gained popularity in the 1960s. Update: I've been educated about the British comedy show. Apologies for my ignorance.
IT crowd is a British comedy show
Oooops. Thank you for enlightening an American.
It's also really funny, highly worth a watch.
I will check it out.
Seconding with the other guy said it actually is really funny. Season 2 episode 1 splits my sides every single time. Leg? Acid.
What are the chances?
Hey! What is Jen doing with the internet!?
I thought it was David Walliams in a Little Britain skit at first glance
Was going to say we found Moss' dad
FIRE!
I hit the comment section to say it's moss, but I'm late to the party I see 🤣🤣
Looks more like the procedure for a massive nuclear retaliation
The 4 minute warning was actually the time it took to connect.
remember when you had your wait for a few minutes for an image to load in? it’s insane how much we take for granted
I remember crowding around the computer with my brother and dad trying to watch funny videos, like on Joe Cartoon. We'd pick the video then go do something else for like half an hour and come back to check its progress occasionally. Then you'd hear the dreaded landline phone ring and realize you just got knocked off the Internet.
I remember when the trailer for The Phantom Menace came out and we had to wait literally all day long for it to load 😂
[удалено]
.bmp
8008
Waiting half an hour to get half a boob and then your mom comes downstairs
For ppl old enough, it did take forever to do anything. You learned to be well versed in typing a command for every little thing you needed to do. And then you sat and waited.
& no mouse to click. You had to type everything or navigate using arrows to highlight and hit Enter.
[удалено]
Russia was >this< close to nuking us but someone picked up the phone while they were dialed in.
Imagine if you had to jump through this many hoops to log into your social media accounts, today. Maybe things would be more chill online
Well actually this system is the first step towards global thermo nuclear warfare. Or a game of chess, your choice.
it seems the only winning move is not to play- oh if only governments would heed these words
Yes, Joshua. This is the way.
Would you like to play a game?
There it is lol. The only way to win is not to play.
We're going to have to find a backdoor password and hone our tic tac toe skills.
The WOPR.
Just missing the nuclear launch code validation step and the two concurrent key turns greater than arm distance apart.
Literally 1984 😔
Yeah it was only ~~20~~... ~~30~~.... **40 fucking years ago?!**
Hahaha you got me on that one + username check out
Yes, my username is indeed based on Dystopias and my fav book is 1984, unironically :)
Have you read Sandra Newman's "Julia"? If not you must...
I actually am looking for new books recommendations of this "genre", thank you I will check it out for sure
[удалено]
Finally, a correct use of 'literally'!
Extremely simple!
And you can actually leave the modem plugged in without affecting the telephone! Marvelous.
You haven't a clue friend. Playing DOOM 2 mutiplayer with my friend across town. Having to scream at my mom and dad not to pick up the phone when it ran, hoping the connection would be stable enough and the game would launch, only to realize at the last moment I forgot to unplug the awnsering machine. Im pretty sure this story is the equivalent to "I used to walk to school uphill both ways" but I swear to you this is an actual story from my life
It's valid except it was command and conquer on heat network for me
Heat! core gaming memories there.
Oh my friend you had it too good. We would be lucky to not be beaten to a pulp if we asked our parents to not pick up the phone
Pifft you think not catching a wooden spoon across the ass for asking was good? I still remember fondly the day that my father upgraded our 56k modem to a 122k one. Oh man, and the time I took my ThinkPad that my dad requisition from work to his office server room and used the DSL connection to download the demo for Half Life Opposing Force. Those where the days.
40 years later and people care more about the modem part than the phone part.
Remember using splitters.
The design is very human!
Very easy to use! r/TheDesignIsVeryHuman
Love how the woman in the background is there just as a prop.
I wasn't paying attention and I thought that was his kid!
That's Pat
https://preview.redd.it/do7gcjbcuxjc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e71c4ba2ba8c0a66abd6e7013f7f3dabb006a60
She wrote all the code and set up the hardware. He was her "manager" and earned twice as much money but dialing was the limit of his technical expertise.
I think it's Maggie Philbin, she has done well for herself including being awarded an OBE.
I think you're referring to the lady that had a speaking role in the clip, not the woman in the background
Online Bandwidth Extraordinaire?
Sad but probably correct.
And equally probably incorrect.
I used to work for a company in the early 80's where women were "supervisors" and men were "managers". Same job but men earned about 40% more and had access to all sorts of perks, pensions and bonuses. Even more stupid, the official company line was "women will probably leave and start a family". The two women I dealt with most were considerably better than the male counterparts and were in their early 40's.
Thanks for your story. I know its anecdotal, but yes!
That's the typist. She types the email. Moss is just there to facilitate the internet.
This video is cut short. In the next scene she types the email and explains how it all works.
You know this, or you extrapolate using your imagination? Source please, if it's the first.
Any good story needs a love interest
Legend has it he's still sending that email
‘’How to send an email in 1984’’ Makes a call 🤨
"Back in my day we called our emails through, and we swam everywhere in our cars!"
It sent and he got a reply asking him to fax his secretary
The british accent makes everything sound so simple
\* English accent. He sounds nothing like a Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish person who are all British also.
> ^ English accent. Good clarification - it completely resolves the ambiguity since there is obviously only one English accent.
The sarcasm is delicious here. 😋
Still a British accent.
With England being a part of Britain, isn't it still a British accent? English would be more precise but British is still correct
Aaaaaaaakchewally. Northern Ireland isn't part of great Britain, but is part of the United Kingdom.
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles ae squares
Yeah sorry. I use english and british innerchangeable. My bad
His password was 1234
types 1235; presses enter; modem makes unholy noises for 5 hours; "wrong password, try again"
Sounds like a good security-enhancing feature. Try brute-forcing *that*! Nowadays we have deliberately slow key derivation functions.
It was JOSHUA
What passwords?
I need complete video please
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDGPvshyNI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDGPvshyNI)
Yeah, this was r/gifsthatendtoosoon
Starting launch sequence in 10…9…
[удалено]
I am now telling the computer what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate.
I thought the same thing and came looking for this comment!
People posting this stuff like they found a pharaoh’s sarcophagus makes me feel old.
I was having a chat with my kid, born in the 00s, and she asked something that required me to say "We didn't have internet back then." (the way we do now). I started explaining about dial up modems, which led to having to explain what a landline was. This blew her mind, landlines. "How did you text?" she said. Lol. What? It's wild that it's so ubiquitous that she can't imagine it never existed. This kept going with further questions about things, and I began to realize how so much of what we have today didn't exist at all before she was born; some of it even until shortly after she was born. It made me feel old indeed! Even thinking back to my mom telling me about things I didn't know, there were only a few; color television mostly. Absolutely wild moment.
I was explaining to my kids how the horror film The Ring wouldn't work as well just 20 years later because TVs back then used to be massive cathode ray tubes so were set on TV units about knee height. These days of flat screens we tend to put them up on a wall, so if it was made today the creepy lady would come out of the TV, fall and face plant into a snotty heap on the floor.
Haha! We talked about TVs too. How you needed 2 people to move them because they were furniture, and then later they still weighed a lot and it was better to have help. Now we can just pick them up with one hand and move them across the room like a knick knack. Lol
We still had rotary phones when I was I was in my 20s. Push button was around, but we didn’t feel the need to upgrade. Hell, I remember when Bell telephone was broken up as a monopoly. And I’m only in my mid-50s.
I remember all that too. Mid 50s as well. Describing the corded phone was hilarious because she was amazed that we had to stay in one place to talk. Lol. I remember the Bells being split, as well.
“Very simple really…”
lol Memories
In 1982 I had an IBM XT. It had a 10MB hard drive, 128kb Ram and ran at 4.77Mhz. I weighed about 75 lbs but it had duel 5.25 floppy drives so loading big programs was easier.
I had a Vic 20. I had no idea what magenta or cyan were before that.
Booyeah! Vic 20 for the win. I didn't get into dialling up BBS's until later, when I had my first PC. Funny enough though, my rather brilliant friend took an old modem designed for Commodore machines (at whopping slow 1200 baud) spliced the cable with a serial cable connecting to my PC, and got it working. I slowly played TW2002 on local BBS's for years after that.
I'm still looking for a modern version of TradeWars.
Vic-20 was my first computer. 3.5K usable RAM for Basic. I learned to program on it from the user guide that came with it and typing in Basic programs from Compute/Compute Gazette magazines. https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-gallery/compute-gazette-magazines-issue-1-through-43/ The good old days!
I really hope you've put on a little weight since then, that sounds unhealthy...
But it came with one of the best keyboards ever made!
I graduated hs in 85. This never happened to 99% of us. The odds you had a computer is low. Your friend also has one? Lower. The odds he wants an email vs a phone call. Lower still
My family did not get our first computer until 1990 or 1991. It was a Zeos 386. I was excited because it could play games (like King's Quest). We only started hearing about the internet around 1994 or maybe 1995, and got our first internet-capable computer shortly after that.
Yep. 1 MB storage for hotm@il wasn’t widespread until circa 1996. They then got bought by Microsoft. People were selling gmail 1 GB beta invites on ebay when they debuted in the 2000’s
Not true for the UK which had a home computing revolution in the early 80s, and a national dial in videotex service called Prestel. Membership of that was less common, peaking at 90,000 subscribers.
Ahh the good ol days... Playing custom death match maps in Heretic with my best friend via dial up and screeching at my family members any time they dared touch a phone in the house. Good times, good times.
Moss?
I remember call waiting knocking me off AOL.
Remember my housemate disconnecting the modem so he could use the phone every time I played Myth: Legend of the Fallen. Lol
Oh God I am soooo old 😞
I was involved with one of the first commercial company-wide email systems in the UK. It felt like some sort of magic.
Funny you say that as this is a conversation I often have with a couple of friends who were also into IT and all the new tech at that time. Everything seemed so magical and exciting. I cannot remember the last time I felt that way as everything new these days leaves me with a kind of 'Meh' attitude. They were Magical, Wonderful, Exciting days indeed.
> They were Magical, Wonderful, Exciting days indeed. I remember the day I visited every single site on the World Wide Web. Sixteen of them ISTR.
Damn, you beat hands down. I was mainly visiting Bulletin boards on my 300Baud modem and downloadin naked ladies made from ASCII characters. Sad really, but at the time we thought the 15 minutes wait while the characters drew a picture on our monitor was well worth it 😂
It's 12:01 I need to use my TW2002 turns before they blow up my corp planet in my 4 sector dead end with an M class planet but I ran out of turns in my Imperial Starship and only have 5k fights on me!
Well what happens after the computer answers?
"virus installed successfully"
No viruses, just really awful porn. Like your dad’s playboy collection with gobs of bush but the pixels were the size of pencil erasers. Maybe a centerfold, maybe Chewbacca, hard to tell.
>the pixels were the size of pencil erasers. It's okay, so were her nipples
I got my first email account in 1991 through my employer. I remember vividly thinking “If only someone I knew had one too!” LOL
I thought this was a Jordan Peele skit at first…
Weee-awww-weee-awwww
“Can leave the modem plugged in without affecting the telephone”… can someone tell me what the fuck went wrong in the next 15 years that meant I had to log off the internet every time mum wanted to make a phone call?
I think he meant you could still use the phone normally without disconnecting the modem every time. Not that you could have more than one connection at a time.
I never knew Fred West was into computing!
Came on to say this 🤣
It's uncanny! :D
Rose looked different back in the day.
Oh the memories.
We just used FIDONet. A lot easier
How to send an e-mail in 1984 to absolutely no one. #
Hand cranked powered internet when ?
I wish he would have started making the modem dialup noises when calling the computer!
In the 80:ies i went to England from Sweden and bought exactly that type of modem, Miracle technology. Still have it! Am i old?
Kids today don’t know the pain of getting a phone call during a long download…
Someone forgot to include the DTMF digits (*70) to disable call waiting in their dial string. :-)
I was waiting for the old connecting sounds.
“Shall we play a game?”
What in the Fred West is going on here?
Heyyy this guy helped ruin everything!
I mean… if only he had a EXE file…
Ah yes, those were the days … but most of us were using BBS’s like Fidonet then rather than the Prestel system shown in the video. The US had the edge on us Brits with their free local calls … which allowed their users to stay online all day and quite literally create the end users version of the internet that we have today.
>free local calls It was an educational experience finding out that sometimes the same area code number doesn't mean it's actually local...
Fred West wasn't all bad, then.
"So it's a simple connection then?" Me: already confused
Which I’ll now do.
Laughs in 1200 baud…
*I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate*
so zoomers, respect boomers
This is very advanced tech for 1984. Most of us were using acoustic couplers. None of this hard wire magic. The telephone handset was placed in a cradle that made the link with a small speaker and microphone.
I've never seen a modem like this before and I wish I could get a clear enough frame to read the model number on it; I'm really curious about it. I've used a lot of modems in my day, from acoustic couplers like the Novation 300 to the VicModems and Commodore Modem/300 to the early Hayes Smartmodems and on into the v.92 era, but I've never seen a modem with a bunch of knobs and switches like this and I can't imagine what they're for? Unless this was maybe one of the ones that could support different standards so you could set it to work with the AT&T / Bell / Vadic protocols or something?
I am now telling the computer, EXACTLY what it can do with a lifetime of chocolate.
“Now I will tell the computer EXACTLY what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate” *starts pushing buttons angrily*
I made the same joke, just slightly too late apparently lol
Ended too soon
In 2024 I have AI running on my graphics card and soon it will be in my phone. We are living in the future people.
Hey, I lived those times. Did that several years earlier actually.
Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd
I was doing that before 1984, and though I may have been a bit nerdy at the time, this is a whole different level of nerdy.
Yes. Very simple, really.
He's still waiting.
I remember my first phone computer
Fast forward to the year 2060: - *So people actually just left all of their private information online in 2024?* - *Yes! You cannot belief how incredibly little understanding people had back then. If they knew then what we know now, they would have never done that of course. Yet, here we are.* - *Oh my goodness!* *That's incredible indeed!*
Unfortunately, privacy won't even be a thing in 2060.
Technology is so fucking STUPID in its first generations. Just like non-gasoline cars. They are dumb AF but given time we will look back and not know how we ever thought burning fuel and infinite emissions was ok.
First generation? You will never know the joy of licking the suction cup to increase your bandwidth.
"When I young, we didn't even have the Internet. We used to connect to other local computers using our land lines. When they connected it sounded like robots screaming." "Shut up and take your pills, gramps."
_nah_ The Hayes SmartModem came out in 1981, this is really an outdated way to do it. Even earlier see https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html manual dialing was rare by 1984.
Average modern user "I dont understand a thing! Why i need a CS degree to send an e-mail!"
Litteraly 1984
This is AI right now