This thread makes me feel old and young at the same time.

*pokes my head in* Guys only 90s kids will remember- *gets hit with a shoe*
Ow! Ok, ok, I'm leaving.

VHS, Laserdisc, VCRs, standalone rewinding machines for the VHS, audio cassettes, A Walkman, CD, cartridge games, edutainment titles like Explorapedia, Magic School Bus and the rare gem Hyperman; grandpa's Tetris on the first Game Boy (my grandfather's a Tetris champion of Princeton Junction and for some reason, there's a hive mind epicenter in Princeton Junction, resulting in geniuses) where was I? Brick cellphones prior to ringtones, Internet with midi songs, gif or jpeg pictures and the chic factor of having your own website, dial-up, image galleries, MP3 players, game consoles prior to HD...

When you live in a family involved with technology and the science behind it, this is what comes up in my olden days.

You might get baked into a pie on the Magic School Buh-uhs! <3

And it's stupid, but I miss the old dial up tone. I wish I could program my comp to play it every time it started up.

In the 90's facebook was when the teacher shoved your entire head into the textbook so the answer would stamp on your forehead. And this is what you had instead of Photoshop:

At grad school, we had punch tape to record our programs- paper that had holes punched in it to record data or programs. . We ran them on a PDP-11 via a ASCII terminal.

At work, we had a computer that used 8" floppy disks. Ya'all are probably only familiar with the 5 1/4 inch ones.

There were these things called "phone booths". You could actually step inside them and shut the door for privacy and to get out of the weather. Inside, there was a telephone. It cost ten cents to make a call for 3 minutes (?)

Television had three channels - ABC, CBS and NBC.

We read these things called books. They were made out of paper. We didn't have Blu-ray movies, DVDs, or even Video Tape.

We had guns at school.. Real ones. I was captain of the rifle team and one of the best shots in the state (won 3rd place - would have done better except for the sweat dripped down my glasses just as I fired the last shot at the state match) Now schools wet themselves if you eat your Pop Tart into the shape of a pistol.

We nerds used these things called "slide rules" instead of calculators. You wore your slide rule in a case that hung from your belt. You could tell the higher ranking nerds because they were well hung with a huge slide rule.

A nickle candy bar was huge.

They would throw you out of college for academic dishonesty.

On the darker side: homosexuality was a crime, people hated you if you WEREN'T racist, child beating was the norm. If you said you were an atheist, you'd be shunned and fired from work if they found out. Sexual harassment was pretty common; I remember arguing with the other Teaching assistants that it was not okay to woohoo one's students. One of my female profs dropped my grade to a D because I wouldn't put out (okay, that was ahead of it's time...) and in grad school, even a C grade meant failure; a D grade was as good as an F because you had to have a B average (and they curved the class grade around a C).

Being a teenager before mobile phones and the internet existed was so difficult. The only way to communicate with your friends (because sometimes you just HAD TO talk for hours) was via the family phone, which resulted in parents constantly telling you to get off the phone in case someone needs to call, people arguing about who got to use the phone and the little brother picking up the other line to evesdrop on your call.

And the difference that the internet made to the way music is consumed. Pre internet when a new album or concert came out there was so much anticipation because you never knew what to expect. And then even if it turned out to be something you didn't particularly like it was still enjoyable because it felt like a unique experience that couldn't be replicated. I miss that.

I remember roller skates that were not in-line. We used use a "key" to tighten them onto our shoes.
But no amount of tightening ever prevented them from slipping off, causing us to crash to the sidewalk and scrape our knees.

I remember hula hoops.
I remember hula dancing in grass skirts made of crepe streamers at school the year Hawaii and Alaska became our 49th and 50th states.

I remember the Flintstones when it was on in the evenings, like real TV.
I remember JFK's speech informing us that Castro had missiles of mass destruction pointed at the USA. It was canning season.
I remember receiving the polio vaccine on a sugar cube for the first time. (I'd already received the series of Salk vaccines.)
I remember that there was at least one child in every grade who wore a brace, because s/he hadn't received a vaccine in time.
I remember when all of our parents would deliberately have us kiss kids who had the measles or the mumps or the chicken pox,
so we would get the disease out of the way.
I remember that I got extra ill with the measles, way sicker than I "should have." The school nurse acted like it was my fault cuz I was indyun.
I remember that I wasn't allowed to swim at the pubic pool off base, on account of my skin colour. (I was called a red-n***** to my face
by the man at the window. My mom's friend had to bring me back home.) Funny thing, that. It wasn't too many years after that, that my
summer tan became something others admired.

I remember my dad got a Dodge station wagon with Automatic Transmission and all the other men in our neighborhood came to look.
I remember the B-47 jets at Lincoln Air Base were all silver. They were as shiny as chrome.
I remember that we girls were not allowed to wear pants to school, and therefore could not climb the jungle gym or play on the monkey bars.

I remember trying to climb trees all the way through primary school, and being told off for doing so.
Makeup was something only saved for dressy occasions, and just a touch of powder would do even then.

My science classes used to have live experiments, except animal dissection. Instead, the best animal carcass was preserved and put on display.

I have a vague memory of:
-3 inch floppy disks
-External floppy disk readers (and the magical built in ones)
-Using windows 98 (I was like 2, does it count as "using"?)
-Phones that had the coily cord thing
-Really old phones that had no buttons but a round dial(?)
-Moving the antenna to get a better picture on tv.
-Playing Tetris on my grandparent's tv while watching cartoons or Lost

What I remember my dad telling me he remembers:
-Carbon copies
-Having to draw contour lines using ridiculously thing mechanical pencils (at least I think he said contouring)
-Using Fortran 77
-LPs and 78s
-Concord And TGV
-Che Guevara speech, death of Malcolm X, moon landing
-Driving: Volkswagen Beetle with a sun visor, 1969 Cheverolet El Camino SS, a 1972 Chevy Nova, a Ford Galaxie, a 1967 Mustang, 1985 Subaru Hatchback and a bunch more cars that I'll probably never have the opportunity to drive

There's quite a contrast in the technology from my early teens to today.

Back then MP3 players weren't as easy to get (I don't know when they came into play, but I didn't get one until 2005), and listening to my 'library' on the go consisted of a portable CD player, and a big container of CDs that I had to switch through.

Also, certainly has been mentioned by now, I'm sure: Cell phones. Back in my early teens they were phones. Not cameras, not devices that could connect to the internet, etc., etc. It's shocking to see how much cell phones have evolved since.

Also... Dial-up internet. OMG. It had to be connected to, and when it was the phone line was taken up. I remember before my parents got us high-speed internet in 2004, I was already somewhat addicted to the internet, and gosh, the whole phone line thing was always a conundrum. I'm so glad those days are over.

One thing I really miss from my olden days is Saturday morning cartoons. Back then, it was cartoons from the time I woke up til lunch on pretty much every network. I used to get up early on Saturdays, park myself in front of the TV, and have cartoons going all morning while building some masterful creation out of Legos, or when I got older, soldering on some circuit board. The only thing I can remember playing on Saturday mornings that wasn't a cartoon was Saved By The Bell.

Now, it's hard to find any cartoons on Saturday mornings. They still play kid-oriented TV shows, but not very many are cartoons. What cartoons they do play, seem to be trying to teach some lesson. Nothing wrong with that, but back when I was a kid, I think cartoons were just meant to be fun.

I remember:
Our first computer
WIndows 98
No parental controls on my parents computer (mommy, why are those two people naked and kissing?)
A weird game my mom had that made kittens walk around on your desktop and you could care for them (anyone else remember this?)
Floppy discs
Cassettes
VHS tapes
The Adventures of Pete and Pete
The ice cream man not looking like a crack addict
Halloweens before 9/11 (almost every house was lit up)
Snap bracelets (and snapping someone in the face in the face with them YOU KNOW IM TALKIN ABOUT YOU ANTOINETTE)
The original Pokemon series
Gullah Gullah Island

I learned to type on a manual typewriter that I got for Christmas when I was about 9. It was so hard to press the keys with my little hands, I had to just hammer away at them with my thumbs! I loved that thing. I eventually got an electric typewriter and enjoyed that, too. We didn't get a PC until I was about 12.

I remember:

When 9/11 happened, my family was living right outside DC. Everyone was freaking out of course and the kindergartners were sent home from school, and afterwards we had plans in place at my school and church for what would happened if terrorists bombed the capitol.
I remember the intense patriotism after 9/11, especially where I was living. We always said the pledge every day but in the years afterwards we would also sing a patriotic song, and everyone had flags on their cars.
I remember No Child Left Behind and SOL testing; about half the year was devoted to getting the students to succeed on the standardized tests, and this was throughout my elementary, middle, and high school education. All the teachers were terrified of the students failing.
I remember when my dad got our family's first computer, and brought it home wrapped in a towel. It was a purple Apple computer.
Until I was 16, we only had really slow computers and I didn't have a computer in my room and had no cell phone either. So when I was 14 and had a boyfriend I would use the family phone to talk to him for an hour every day. And when I was a child and preteen, our computer was so slow there wasn't much point in getting on it so my sister and I would play outside or would play with our dolls mainly. One of our favorite games was "outdoors people," where we pretended to live outside.
I remember before school rooms all had computers and smart boards teachers would use slide projectors and regular projectors and would wheel in televisions for the day.
I remember getting my first CD player when I was 10 and I was very excited about that! And I was even more excited to get an iPod when I was 14.

Shoot you just made me feel as old as Methuselah.

Telephones did indeed have the hand set attached to the phone base with a curly cord. This was so you could walk a little way away from the base but didn't have a long cord that could catch on things. The dial was round clear plastic with holes for your finger and under or next to it were the numbers. You would put your finger in the hole above the number and turn the dial and then let it go. You did that for each number.

Curly corded phones haven't exactly gone away, you can still get them.
http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/corded-phone
These days, I think they're mostly used in offices. All the office phones at my work have old school curly cords.

The rotary dial phones predate me, but my wife's grandparents had one. It took a lot of patience to use it because dialing took a long time. You'd probably have a hard time using one these days since almost every business has an automated system now where you have to press 1 for this, 2 for that, etc.

I got my first CD player when I was 10, but that was way before CDs caught on. Back when I got a CD player, I didn't have very many CDs because they cost $15.99. One of the first CDs I ever bought was Milli Vanilli. Too bad how that turned out, but I liked the music and still do! CDs didn't really catch on till the 90s, so it's hard to believe how long they've been around. My dad got his first CD player in 1983, kept it the rest of his life and I have it now. It still works too!

I also remember in the 90s that my friends were really into that BMG music club thing where you could get something like 10 CDs for a penny and you had to buy so many at regular price. I used to get their ads in the mail all the time, but I never joined because they didn't ever have any of the obscure music that I liked.

I also remember getting AOL floppy disks in the mail all the time, then later they started sending CDs all the time. I liked the floppies better because I could reuse them.

Back when I first started using the web, NCSA Mosaic was the browser everyone used. Most of the web consisted of personal web pages and half of them were always "Under construction" and full of animated GIF icons. Remember Geocities and Angelfire?

Oops I forgot to mention the discman and then the walkman that we had!

-Opening up a map when going on a trip in the car! We still do that occasionally because out car's gps isn't up to date, and updating is too much effort.
-Schengen wasn't a thing until 1985, border control must have been fun. But its not a problem I've ever faced since I didn't exist then :D
-Euros weren't a thing either, and everything was closed on sundays here.
-Mass hysteria over HIV/Aids
-Not all houses had toilets, which explains why in terraced houses people walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom.
-Polystyrene ceiling tiles and asbestos EVERYWHERE!

Even in the late 80s there were some houses in Ireland that didn't have indoor bathrooms, running water or electricity. I had a great uncle who lived in a tiny cottage with no modern conveniences at all - he still cooked his meals on a coal fire open range. He drew his water every day from the neighbor's well and at night the cottage was lit with paraffin lamps and candles. His bathroom was outside and I'm not going to dwell further on *those* arrangements. He grew all his his own vegetables and hunted rabbit for meat even at the age of 80 - and he lived to 94. He could have had every modern convenience, but he just didn't want the change. Too old and too set in his ways. But living such a simple life, I have to wonder if that contributed to him living to such an old age.

What horrifies my kids: That we didn't have a color TV until I was in high school and we used to have to *GET UP to change the channel. They throw a fit if the remote gets misplaced. :D

*I didn't *have* to get up to change the channel if I was in my room. My TV was right at the foot of my bed and I could change the channels with my toes, lol. Just grabbed the dial between my toes and turned my foot, worked like a charm.

As soon as we get a new convenience what we used to do is too much work, like dialing a phone number and getting up to change a TV channel was just normal for me as a kid. These days loosing the remote is a huge deal, although a bigger deal because there is no other way of changing channels on our TV, something that I find incredible stupid since remotes get misplaced all the time and now we have so many remotes all with different things, I am so confused! My husband is away and I had to ring and ask him how do I watch a pre recorded program?! It used to be easy, you would tape it onto a video tape, pop it in and watch it, oh no now you have to have this thing selected, turn this thing on, use this and that button which I can't even see if I don't have my glasses on and as for things like 'face time' I haven't got a clue. Sucks getting old. :/

as a single parent to my son (his mother gave me full custody) I'd get very tired when he was very small (night feeds and all) and one day in my sleep-deprived state I couldn't find the remote anywhere .. turns out that I'd put it in the fridge .....

Man, that's just cold.

Funny!
Not really related to the actual topic, just to a post or two but: I once put the toilet paper in the freezer and the ice cream in the linen closet. Lately I tend to put something in the microwave to heat it up and either forget to actually do that OR forget to go back and get the food and eat it. (I blame that on getting older..OLDER..not old!)

We had most everything way back in the day, it was just different.