Manual lawn-mowers. Mine is, and only a few years old - but my small lawn has become so lush and wet I might need the electric rotating-scythe type first, on it!
Smoking: This has been banned inside all places of work, social/hobby clubs and public buildings, transport etc. for quite some years now; in the UK.
The result of that, especially for we non-smokers, is we can come home having not spent some hours inhaling what's effectively garden-bonfire smoke, and with our clothes and hair not reeking of it! Anyone wanting to smoke has to go outside, and some places do provide shelters for them.
Far fewer people smoke now anyway, certainly not tobacco; though there are enough here hooked on flavoured nicotine vapour for shops to have sprung up selling these.
(I have practically never smoked. One attempt, when I was about 19, and that was enough!)
Movies in theaters were main feature, cartoon, and second feature, all for a dollar. It cost .25 for the bus to downtown, .25 for the movie admission (matinee), and .25 for the return bus. Sometimes, I'd buy a soda or a popcorn.
This post was edited by NYAD at November 9, 2022 6:35 AM MST
Someone once asked my mother this very question. She was born in 1911, went to HS in the 20s. She said that the most significant thing she could think of is that when she was a kid, the streets were filled with horses (drawing wagons full of goods or carriages full of people). How you would have to watch where you stepped crossing the street. Photo of my mom in 1926.
Lunch counter at Woolworths, eh....? Woolworths itself has vanished!
And Home & Colonial, a once major British grocery-shop chain, now extinct. My Grandad was a branch manager for it.
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A correction:
I made an arithmetical error in my example of Compound Arithmetic!
The cost of 2wt 2qr of the goods at £2 15s a ton is of course, 6s 8d.
My arithmetic was always wonky but at least I remembered the basic technique, and the scales of units and currency. They were:
1 (UK) ton = 20cwt =2240lbs. 1cwt = 4 qrs = 112lbs. 1 Stone (still used for personal weight by many Britons) = 14lb.
and
£1 = 20 shillings. 1 shilling = 12d. (d. for penny, from the old Roman coin the 'denarus')
The British Ton is close enough to the metric tonne (1000kg = 2200 pounds) for many everyday practical conversions.
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The public, attendant-operated weighing-machine - rare even in my 1960s boyhood. It was a large, yard-arm type, balance with a seat for the person being weighed; having paid the attendant a small fee. They seem to been most common on seaside resort promenades. Come to think of it, I can't remember when I last saw the user-only, coin-operated balance once common in Public Conveniences.
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I wonder if many English girls still play rope-skipping games? Skipping was often a group activity with its own folk-song tradition of special timing songs and chants passed on orally, from unknown origins.
Or the boys still play "Conkers"? The 'conker' is the large, hard seed of the Horse Chestnut tree. It would be drilled through, threaded onto a string about a foot long. Each player in turn would hold his out, dangling from his hand at arm's length, for the other to try to strike with his own conker by swinging it on the string. The winner was the one to thus break the other's. An old trick was to bake the conkers in the oven, which would supposedly harden them. Unlike the Sweet Chestnut, which can be roasted, the Horse Chestnut is not edible.
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The original question mentioned coloured loo-paper. I think that is still made.
Pharmacies in which dispensing a prescription apparently meant more than putting a label on a box of ready-made medicines, in shops whose windows were decorated with those great big, tear-drop shaped glass bottles filled with coloured liquid.
There is a definite name for those lovely display bottles, but I have long forgotten it!
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Bus conductors selling the tickets from a mechanical printer clipped to a steel plate worn on a leather bandolier.
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Foot X-ray machines in shoe-shops. They were used to examine the fit of shoes on feet, particularly of children. I can just recall using one, once, with its intriguing, green-screen image.
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"Primus" picnic stoves, burning pressurised paraffin vapour. Primus was the leading make, at least in the UK. Also paraffin-vapour blow-lamps for such tasks as soldering metals and stripping paint; replaced by propane gas versions.
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"Proving" this that or the other classical Pure Geometry Theorem, or an artificial question involving one. This was an apparently-essential part of the school maths syllabus. I still know what is a Cyclic Quadrilateral, but not much more.
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Using logarithms to solve easily, otherwise very difficult multiplication, division and power "sums". (Only about twenty years ago I had once to use logs in a calculation thrown up in one of my hobbies; when I could find neither my scientific-calculator nor slide-rule!)
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Dedicated children's programmes, such as Listen With Mother for under-fives, and Children's Hour for older ones, on the wireless.
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Various strange Summer-time fads, each lasting only about one season: "Clackers", "Gonks", "Deely-boppers" and bull-roarer tubes whose selling-name I don't know. The last was just a length of corrugated polythene tube that made an impressive noise when whirled.
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Newspapers printed in monochrome only - with the photographs composed of matrices of tiny but just-visible dots although the printing itself was from metal plates. Scans of these old photos are sometimes very highly pixellated by the dots giving an interference effect.
Dot-matrix printers! (For full page-size work. Small ones are still made for specific purposes like till-receipts.
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Gas-fired or electric "Coppers"; and Mangles. (For washing clothes, then extracting most of the water from the fabric, respectively.)
Later, that most modern of things, the twin-tub, top-loaded washing machine! Though you could also buy individual spin-dryers.
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The "Mechanical Horse" as it was at least nicknamed, usually seen around town railway-stations. I don't know if that was in fact the manufacturer's brand-name, but it was a particularly distinctive, small, articulated lorry made by the Scammell company; generally for deliveries and collections of parcels between the station and local businesses.
Its unique feature was its tractor unit being a three-wheeler. (Single front wheel for steering, two wheels on its rear driving axle.
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"Bubble Cars" - e.g. the Isetta and the Messerschmidt. These were very small, 2-seater three-wheelers typically with small, specially-adapted, air-cooled, two-stroke motorcycle engines and gearboxes. Both had the single wheel at the back, unlike the larger Reliants that also had a conventional, water-cooled, 4-cyl, 4-stroke car-type engine and gearbox.
The Isetta was of a very rounded shape, seating two side-by-side, and with a single front door that also held the steering-column and wheel.
Despite the name and its shape, seating 2 in line below the hinged canopy, the Messerschmidt car was not as was often believed, designed to use a post-War surplus of Me109 cockpit glazing!
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Men's Barbers, usually now calling themselves "hairdressers", who even as late as the 1960s only knew one style - the regulation "short back and sides", for males of any age. Finished by a vigorous rubbing-in, on customer's request, of "Brylcreem"; a white grease that kept the shorn mane in place, imparted a shine to it, and probably made washing pillow-cases harder.
Two essentials for sale adorned the wall next to the mirror: packets of safety-razor blades, and "Styptic Pencils" - a coagulent in a lipstick-like form, for treating cuts made while using the safety-razor.
These masculine enclaves also sold a product not on open display - reputedly creating the sotto voce question to adult customers, "Anything for the weekend, Sir?". The affirmative was said to mean a packet of 'Durex' condoms would be discreetly handed over with the change.
By the time I might have been asked such things, it was becoming a little easier to cater for whatever was this mysterious weekend; and anyway unisex hairdressers were opening. Then and still, largely for women but cutting gents' hair too, I found them highly preferable because apart from the unashamedly sexist enjoyment of being pampered by an attractive woman for ten minutes or so, the conversations are always much more interesting! The men's barbers only ever knew today's weather and last night's boxing or football on the telly.
So many entries, but I've got one more. This AM, our Town Supervisor (that's the equivalent of mayor) posted this photo on Nextdoor. Although I don't go back as far as those autos, in my youth the building referred to was there and is still functioning as a bar. It no longer has the neon sign over the back entrance that said "Ladies Entrance".
This post was edited by NYAD at November 19, 2022 8:29 AM MST
Durdle 