UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Festive vintage technology traditions/memories.

G6Tanuki · 6th Dec 2018, 9:19 pm

Just wondering, what bits of vintage-technology were 'christmas traditions' in your childhood?

In the 1960s/1970s, for us December meant movie-time! We had relatives in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany - and given the rates BOAC/QANTAS/PAN-AM charged for flights back then there was no way it made sense to travel to see your relatives over the festive season (a return-flight from UK to Oz cost about as much as a new Mini). So we traditionally swapped Super-8 home-movies as a way to keep in touch.
The start of December would see the arrival of the first "recorded delivery" package containing a spool of film - then we'd load it up on the Eumig projector and watch it while one of us read out the accompanying notes - of the "This is Jo and Malcolm petting a kangaroo..... this is our new house.... here is Kim falling into a snowdrift" nature.

Then when we'd watched it a few times we packaged it up and sent it on to the next family on the list. (there was of course no easy/cheap way to duplicate Super-8 so each spool had to be sent round all the family-members on all continents).

Then on Christmas day - remembering the timezones - we'd phone each-other for a short chat (again, when you were paying a pound a minute you kept calls short!).

We kept up the Super-8 round-robins until the very-late-70s by which time everyone had got VCRs and horribly-bulky cameras. Colour! Sound!! But "We can't play your videos properly!" and "You're using Beta, we're VHS" standards-issues led to this being really unsuccessful.

In parallel to the festive-season Super-8 interchange, us youngsters who'd got cassette-recorders in the early-70s kept up a regular interchange of tapes - usually random teenage-angst-type of stuff interspersed with off-the-radio recordings of our current favourite music. I remember that back then you could buy special cardboard "tape-mailer" envelopes from places like Tandy, so you could send your cassettes to Australia without needing to include the plastic storage-case.

Do any of you have similar family festive-vintage-technology traditions?

6th Dec 2018, 9:19 pm	#1
G6Tanuki Dekatron Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 13,996	Festive vintage technology traditions/memories. Just wondering, what bits of vintage-technology were 'christmas traditions' in your childhood? In the 1960s/1970s, for us December meant movie-time! We had relatives in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany - and given the rates BOAC/QANTAS/PAN-AM charged for flights back then there was no way it made sense to travel to see your relatives over the festive season (a return-flight from UK to Oz cost about as much as a new Mini). So we traditionally swapped Super-8 home-movies as a way to keep in touch. The start of December would see the arrival of the first "recorded delivery" package containing a spool of film - then we'd load it up on the Eumig projector and watch it while one of us read out the accompanying notes - of the "This is Jo and Malcolm petting a kangaroo..... this is our new house.... here is Kim falling into a snowdrift" nature. Then when we'd watched it a few times we packaged it up and sent it on to the next family on the list. (there was of course no easy/cheap way to duplicate Super-8 so each spool had to be sent round all the family-members on all continents). Then on Christmas day - remembering the timezones - we'd phone each-other for a short chat (again, when you were paying a pound a minute you kept calls short!). We kept up the Super-8 round-robins until the very-late-70s by which time everyone had got VCRs and horribly-bulky cameras. Colour! Sound!! But "We can't play your videos properly!" and "You're using Beta, we're VHS" standards-issues led to this being really unsuccessful. In parallel to the festive-season Super-8 interchange, us youngsters who'd got cassette-recorders in the early-70s kept up a regular interchange of tapes - usually random teenage-angst-type of stuff interspersed with off-the-radio recordings of our current favourite music. I remember that back then you could buy special cardboard "tape-mailer" envelopes from places like Tandy, so you could send your cassettes to Australia without needing to include the plastic storage-case. Do any of you have similar family festive-vintage-technology traditions?