re: #87 Jay C

And faxes! /probably even more Old (1952 vintage)

Anecdote: (you know us Olds!): in the late ’60s, my father’s brokerage firm invested in one those science-fictiony gadgets known as a “facsimile transmitter”. The office typed* up stock lists (or whatever) on a sheet of paper, wrapped it around a metal cylinder on the transmitter; dialed (on a rotary dial, no less) the number in New York: and, after 90 seconds or so of connection protocol (today’s 7-second “handshake”), the thing would rotate away, scanning and transmitting the image across country in the then-amazing time of only 10 minutes for a standard 8-1/2 x 11 page. Wow! Technology!

* On a “typewriter”, i.e. what we would now call a “manually actuated impact printer”

Our village hall, library, and general store all have fax machines (not the rotary cylinder kind though). We still use our mimeograph machine for handouts (and the office typewriter).

The general store still has a coin-op pay phone, and the phones in town are dial.

Come for the small town, stay for the Fifties.