What is something you remember from your childhood that a younger generation has probably never seen?

Cell phones had actual buttons.  MP3 players had the buttons arranged in a circle.

 

Black Cat Firecrackers This post was edited by CosmicWunderkind at June 30, 2022 9:07 AM MDT

5 bit computer graphics

Barking doggies (fireworks).

Some of these lists contain items that my kids own. My daughter's car has manual transmission, for example.

How about concrete/asphalt playgrounds? Being hurled off this thing and skinning your elbows and knees was a daily occurrence, and nobody got sued. Mum painted the wounds with iodine (or merthiolate - remember that fire in a bottle?), patched you up with band-aids, and you went straight back to the playground.



Are soapbox cars/billycarts still a thing? All the kids in our neighbourhood used to race them, including me. Steep hills and no brakes, naturally. This post was edited by Slartibartfast at June 30, 2022 9:00 AM MDT

A group of children all playing outside together and none of the children have a "portable phone."

Gas lights, including street lights that had to be lit by a man (Leerie) on a ladder.  This post was edited by Malizz at November 8, 2022 11:29 PM MST

Cloth diapers and diaper services.

And I'm adding an explanation to my other answer -- I meant to make both of those statements more of separate answers. Sort of like:

Seeing a group of young children playing outside together (is now rare for me, compared to how much I did that with others as a child); let alone, a group of children without phones.

I don't know if I'm being clear. Oh, well.  :)

As I'm reading down the list of answers, thinking about the things that were so common but now are no longer around, I found that Welby's groups of children playing around the neighborhoods is probably the most significant. It is almost scary to think about how little supervision we had for the better part of a day. But the corresponding thing that made it possible was that most of the houses in the neighborhood had an adult present (usually a mom or other adults like retirees). Today, the houses in any given neighborhood are pretty much empty all day as both parents work. In other words, the society that supported our carefree days of play, no longer exists.

PS. I also forgot, almost no one had AC when I was a kid. Even our parents spent the evenings outside. Remember porches and their purpose? This post was edited by NYAD at November 9, 2022 8:52 AM MST

Steam locomotives in regular service.

Marbles (aka 'allies') for the boys; "jacks" for the girls (games).

TV sets with simple controls on their own cases.....

.... And when you turned the TV off, the monochrome image shrinking immediately to a bright spot in the centre of the screen, lingering for an appreciable time before going out.

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These:

1/2, 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 24, 30, (and rarely) 50.

What are those? The values in pennies of the British coins up to the end of the £.s.d system in 1971. The 1/4 (farthing) was already gone. Their names by common pronunciation were Ha'penny, Penny, Tuppence,  Thruppence, Sixpence or 'tanner', Shilling or 'bob', Half-Crown, Crown. 

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Social groups of their elder-&-betters (the latter quality, self-alleged) able to converse normally without constantly needing faff with a little slab of electronics.

Dads and other older male relatives routinely seen able to repair almost anything from a broken toy via Mum's sewing-machine to the family car. (Some still can, of course.)

Shop goods described in feet & inches, pounds (weight) or pints/gallons.

"Caps" - strips of paper bearing percussion-explosive mercury-fulminate spots, used in toy guns.

Toy guns, normally silver plastic representations of Colt revolvers a la John Wayne films.

Children playing often well away from home, apparently in no more or less danger than they might be now but inculcated with the road-crossing code and warnings about strangers.

Reel-to-reel tape-recorders. These were quite fashionable home luxuries for a few years in the 1960s.

Mechanical shop tills, with their rather triumphal sound.

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Coal deliveries to the home; the coal-man empting hundredweight sacks of the fuel into a bunker, "coal place" (a sort of small room) or for older homes so built, the cellar, via a chute.

That one reminding me...... Compound Arithmetic. This calculates the costs of a purchased quantity of a commodity coal priced at so-much per bulk quantity. This was taught in primary school - we'd already learnt basic money sums in Infants'.

E.g.  price of 2cwt 2qr of coal at £2 15s a ton. 

I think I can remember the basics....

Oh Lor' now I've written that -

I am not sure if I used the book technique, probably not, but I make the price 5s 7.1/2d  (five shillings & seven pence-ha'penny) if anyone would care to verify my pen-and-paper arithmetic I've not shown and might be incorrect !

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Arithmetic! Before the managerial types decided it's all "Mathematics"! (Maths started in senior-school, aged 11 onwards.)

The Children's Newspaper. This wonderful publication ended in the 1960s. I still have somewhere my copy of the very last edition.

Books like Winnie The Pooh is their original form, before Disney got his paws on them. (There were only ever two written: that, followed by The House At Pooh Corner.)

For older sprogs, books like The Junior Weekend Book, which would probably give modern types The Vapours about letting young children loose with it. Ye Gods, one chapter instructs on making two very simple types of boat (no mention of asking your Dad to saw the wood: you do that!); another is of toffee recipes (what, letting a 10yo stir a pan of boiling butter, sugar and syrup mixture?). 

Garage attendants operating the petrol-pumps. (Still happens but is now very rare.)

Mysterious road-side boxes emblazoned "RAC" or "AA". These were breakdown-assistance telephone-boxes for key-holding members of respectively the Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Association. I think the keys fitted either. Why they used the "automobile" in a country where cars are cars not automobiles, I have no idea! 

Pay-On-Answer, public coin-box telephones. There are now very few public call-boxes in the UK.

Telephones with rotary dials!

The "Trimphone". This was a snazzy bright new 1970 invention by or for Post Office Telephones (pre-British Telecomm.), a home telephone with a luminous push-button pad. It was withdrawn quite quickly over fears about the very slightly radioactive material that triggered the phosphor - the risk was greater for the manufacturers and installers than the subscribers, though.

Clockwork, tin-plate toys.

Buses with a conductor to take the fare and issue the tickets (necessitated by the driver being isolated in the cab).

Trains with "guards" not "conductors", or as often called now, "train managers" or some such rhubarb.

Pet shops displaying cuddly little live animals in the windows - I don't think anyone mourns that practice ending.

Real cameras, from simple "box" to costly SLRs, with real reels of film. (These have revived, for the serious photographer.)

Music shops selling real instruments, sheet-music, tutorial books and accessories: now rare except perhaps in major cities.

Sweets sold by weight from big jars. (Still seen, but rare.)

Sweets shaped as smoking materials (fondant cigarettes with red-dyed tips, chocolates shaped as pipes and ashtrays).

Drinking Fountains (water); the older ones originally had iron cups on chains, later cut off. A new version has appeared, filling-points for water-bottles.

Public horse-troughs in town squares. Of the very few surviving, probably most now hold floral displays or the like; but I do know of one, fed by a tiny spring, still always full of water that nearby residents sometimes use for car-washing.

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I read some of the lists already here and was surprised to see so many items apparently lost and gone; but actually still thriving.

You can still buy fountain-pens, I think both pump-action and cartridge (the former needing separate bottle of ink); propelling-pencils and pocket (electronic) calculators.

Polaroid has resumed making their "instant print" cameras and films.

In the UK at least, cars with manual transmissions (as is mine) are probably a lot more popular than automatics. 

You still see plenty of TV aerials on roof-tops here, though less commonly now, and the modern ones are far more compact than the ungainly big X and H shaped things of the 1960s. Satellite dishes on the house walls might now be more common.

One contributor refers to what are called "nappies" here. After some decades of disposable ones, it seems at least some environmentally-conscious new Mums are starting to use washable towelling nappies again. If nothing else it may mean fewer sewer blockages from people flushing supposedly-disposable items down the toilets!