Do You Remember the Days before Television?

[-H-]

Do you remember the days before Television became a popular household item?

i do.

it occured to me during my much lamented boredom that i remember as a child ... not having access to TV ! :eek:
and therefore urgo Q.E.D. NO Video Games!!!!!! :faint:

In fact the mainstay of my childhood before the age of 6 was the overgrown back garden at the house we were living in, and a collection of Toys and Games!

So ;) just how old are you entertainment wise ;)

Do you remember those dark and cold days before the vision of tele dawned on our lives ;)

[Faren]

I remember black and white television, but I don't remember a time before.

I also remember that I was my Dad's "remote control" as he always made me get up to change the channel. :D

[Kitsch]

We've always had a TV in our house - at home and uni and when I finally moved out (in one student abode we didn't have a licence all year :shhh: :eek: ) but I do remember the days before remote controls :faint: and having a black and white TV set.

Reminds me of a story Mum told me once when she and Dad were watching the snooker in the 70's. The commentator brightly said "For those of you watching in black and white, the red is next to the brown :roll: :evil: :laugh:

[-H-]

I remember black and white television, but I don't remember a time before.

I also remember that I was my Dad's "remote control" as he always made me get up to change the channel. :D

i know how you feel!

i was always being told as a kid to get up and change the channel for a parent!!!

whoever invented the remote control must have been someone who did this too :devil:



and kitster

your older than me!!!!

does that just mean that i grew up impoverished .... searching for scraps of food ... always begging "please sur ... can i 'ave some more?"

[C_ris]

:p No!

I do remember a time before remote controls though! But as a kid I wasnt allowed to watch much TV anyway. I spent more time outside. Kids just dont do that today. :(

[Keita]

Ditto, Crispy! Where did playing outside and riding bicycles for fun go? I didn't have much interest in TV...until I got hooked on Star Trek! :blush: That was the end for me!

[Keita]

Ditto, Crispy! Where did playing outside and riding bicycles for fun go? I didn't have much interest in TV...until I got hooked on Star Trek! :blush: That was the end for me!

[Bobbsy]

I can (just) remember non-TV days...and due to a historical accident I can even tell you that my family got our first TV in late 1957 or early 1958.

In April 1958, Canada detonated the worlds largest ever non-nuclear explosion, blowing up "Ripple Rock" which sat just under the surface of the sea in a main navigational channel up the West coast. The explosion was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's first ever "coast to coast" outside broadcast. Our family had fairly recently bought a Television and, as it was one of the first in the neighbourhood, I have clear memories of a number of neighbours joining us for a "Ripple Rock Breakfast".

TV has gone downhill since then!

Any historians out there might like to read about Ripple Rock HERE. (http://www.historysociety.ca/out.asp?subsection=fir&page=mem)

Bobbsy

[Jax]

it occured to me during my much lamented boredom that i remember as a child ... not having access to TV !
In fact the mainstay of my childhood before the age of 6 was the overgrown back garden at the house we were living in, and a collection of Toys and Games!

H!! I can't believe that you (though older than me by a few days) didn't have a tv, /I/ had a tv before you in backwater back of anywhere New Zealand! We've had one for as long as I can remember, and probably before I was born too - BUT I /do/ remember only having one channel, and getting up in the morning before tv was on, waiting for it to start, watch the few cartoons that were on in the morning, then turn the tv off very fast before we heard too much of that Praise Be :roll: then it was outside time!

[S'amm]

:eek: Ok this is scary. I DO remember those days. Vividly.

I spent them playing hide & seek till the street lights came on. Playing outside with friends. Riding my balloon-tired bike for hours and travelling thousands of miles, I betcha. Taking a bath in the rain during summer. Ice covered, frozen home made woollen mittens which produced hands so cold I could not feel the water from the tap until they started to burn like fire.

By chance, believe it or not, my Mom won a "stripped" Ford Fairlain back in 1957 from a local grocery store. My Dad got a "lazy-boy" chair, my sister got umpteen wedding things, I got a new radio & the family got our first TV. I never did know if Mom bought herself anything special. Typical of her. :heartbeat :heartbeat

I had a great childhood.

S'amm

[Dux]

I remember the days of black and white and there only being one television in the house and it did NOT have a remote and you 6 stations to choose from.

[AnnMarie]

I'm old...I am NOT THAT old!

Still a lot of the shows I recall in my earliest days WERE in black and white.

[Mausey]

I remember when we got our first tv. EVERYBODY else had them and we didn't. To be honest, we were so busy outside I never missed it. We had a couple sections of land to roam around on and when it was time to come home dad would turn on an old air raid siren he picked up someplace. :laugh: Even the neighbours could hear that thing. :D

[Hans]

Whaddayathink?


But of course!

[Milo]

I'm but a wikkle young'un, but we've never really had a functioning TV. We can watch VHS/DVD's on ours now, and we can get a couple local channels. We get our news from NPR and the news(gofigure)paper. The TV only goes on for the occasional football game, and the olympics.

[Master Harper Andrea]

When I was a kid, the tv was in mom's bedroom, and there were only certain things we watched. We were outside way more! But now, I have one and :blush: have cable.

[Shadow*]

Yep, I remember just having the B & W tv. Not to mention the day I raced home to see 'The day the earth stood still' only to find out we didn't have BBC2 :eek: :faint: Amazing that until that point in time I never even realized.

To be completely honest I don't think we actually missed it in my childhood, most of the kids in the area played social games like British Bulldog, Relievers etc, and it didn't matter what age you were. Altogether kids in those days were probably far more healthy than they are today. People talked to each other, socialised, parents looked out for each others kids and weren't averse to disciplining them either - we probably deserved it. :blush:

What we didn't have we didn't miss. :ok:

[carmella]

Yes, I remember life without TV. However, they were not simple and completely happy times. There was WAR to start with.

We did listen to radio for stories. There was a certain joy to closing ones eyes and letting the imagination do the rest. Except when I was alone in a dark house listening to The Shadow.

When we got TV ( my father discovered sports were on TV) We had one channel in black and white that was on from 5 until 10:00 pm. It all started with Tom Corbett Space Cadet 15 minutes and a 5 minute cartoon about a rabbit. Not bugs. Ah yes, Crusader Rabbit.

[Dawn]

I remember:

~Having only one tv in the house and it was black & white, although we soon had color.
~Turning the dial to get the 4 or 5 channels that we could pick up and if we were lucky, we'd get the UHF channel from Tulsa.
~Antenna's on top of the tv and turning them just the right way so the reception wouldn't get fuzzy. Also wrapping them with aluminum foil.
~Adjusting the color, tint etc...
~Only watching cartoons/kid shows in the early morning, after school, Special Presentations at night and on Saturday morning.
~Being banned from having anything to drink in the living room because I killed two tv's by dumping liquid down the back of them. :O
~Spending more time outside playing because there was nothing on tv that I wanted to watch.

[Nagetier]

No, because I'm too young and it seems like by the time I was born everyone had television.

... Except for us.

I've never owned one.
I'm proud of myself.
Look, it's 1:14 in the morning. What am I doing? Talking online.

[granath]

My parents were never interested in having a TV, so I only watched it sporadically with my grandparents or at some friends' houses. My mother only wanted a TV when I was 15 to do a Spanish course that was on. I was hooked on TV for a while in my twenties, but managed last year completely without one, when the old one broke. I only watched a few times with my sister.

I can live without TV easily enough, but I'd miss my broadband connection and dvd player on my computer if I had to do without those.

It's so sad that kids can't just go outside and play in so many places anymore. I loved being outdoors as a kid, often playing cops and robbers in the dark with flashlights.

[Ez]

There was a time before television? Argh! :)

[j_mercuryuk]

i never remamber not having a tv, but now i mostly use the tv to watch dvds and play on the PS2.

[McClance]

Errr... What's a TV?




:laugh: :laugh:






Just kidding.

No. I'm only 19 Earth years, TV has been around all my life. Though I watch little else on TV these days besides Star Trek, the occasional National Geographic, Nature program, and the veeeeerrrrry occasional good movie.

[AnnMarie]

~Antenna's on top of the tv and turning them just the right way so the reception wouldn't get fuzzy. Also wrapping them with aluminum foil.


Hey Dawn, how about the big antennas on the roof?
My gran had that.... and my mother actually screamed at her once, because Gran made my father lean out a second story window to adjust the thing during a storm so my 14 year old uncle could watch one of his shows. (I was 4 my brother was 2 at the time)

[TamTam]

I was born well after TV became a "neccessary" appliance. We always had TV when I was growing up. When I moved away from home, I went without TV for a year or two. Later, I had a b&w TV and everyone felt sorry for me. :roll: Now I don't have cable, and people feel sorry for me.
:roll: x2

[Dawn]

Hey Dawn, how about the big antennas on the roof?
My gran had that.... and my mother actually screamed at her once, because Gran made my father lean out a second story window to adjust the thing during a storm so my 14 year old uncle could watch one of his shows. (I was 4 my brother was 2 at the time)

Yeah, I remember those too. Ours was super tall because we lived down in a valley. :D In fact, I think my parents still have it up on the roof. :laugh:

[Lady Faizah]

I remember the days of black and white and there only being one television in the house and it did NOT have a remote and you 6 stations to choose from.You remember only having 6 channels? We have 4, now! :roll:

I remember always having a TV, but never more than 5 channels. Does that count?

And that's including the foreign language channel.

We had 3 commercial networks, imaginatively named 7, 9, and 10. But up here, we don't get channel 10.

Then we had the ABC (A for Australian) which was the low-budget mostly-educational channel, also with almost all Australian-made and British-made shows.

And then SBS, the foreign language channel.

[Nefermiw]

I can remember having a colour tv as far back as my memory will cooperate (I'm born in 1977), but I also remember that my brother and I had a black 'n' white tv in our playroom when we were 10+; it had a homemade antenna made out of cardboard wrapped in aluminumfoil :D - it actually worked.
I do remember the time before we had a remote control and we only could get 1 Danish and 2 Swedish channels (and that was living in Denmark!).

But - I do remember not having computers :faint: (we got internet in 1993 or 1994).

[Crysania]

I don't remember the days before television but I do remember the days before I was allowed to actually watch it. There was very, very little TV watching when I was young. Maybe that's why I don't really watch it now except for a movie now and then.

[Kalli]

Wow people who don't remember TV. Heck, that's back in the olden days. :razz: :redfruit:

[-H-]

H!! I can't believe that you (though older than me by a few days) didn't have a tv, /I/ had a tv before you in backwater back of anywhere New Zealand! We've had one for as long as I can remember, and probably before I was born too - BUT I /do/ remember only having one channel, and getting up in the morning before tv was on, waiting for it to start, watch the few cartoons that were on in the morning, then turn the tv off very fast before we heard too much of that Praise Be :roll: then it was outside time!


I had a discussion with my mum the other week about this very subject ... apparently the reason i don't remember having a TV as a small child is because my mum didnt have a TV license and therefore had the old Black and white TV hidden permanently underneath a box in her wardrobe :roll:

she got caught out using it when i was at nursery as a toddler and was fined .. which was about the time she bought a license and i remember watching TV for the first time ;)

but even then until i was about 8 years old it was black and white only !!!!!!

Jax ... i remember waiting for the decent shows (kids shows) when TV was young ;) i remember the test card with the girl and the blackboard :rofl: oh those were the days :D

[Selene]

I do but as I lived abroad I got to see TV before it came to Sweden.
When Father got a job at the staff (Navy) the Tv was here but B/W and not so much to see.A couple of hours per night and some odd childrens programs with a doll hanging from wires. I think the doll was named Andy or something.
I was outside in the forrest or playing with the dogs.
Riding my imaginary horses and pestering the frogs in our pond. :bouncy:

[JayEgo]

I can recal having a small black and white television set that used to take about an hour to warm up enough for the picture to show... If we didn't turn it on in time, we'd not get to see the show!

But then, there was very little back then that we were that bothered about watching... We spent most of our time making our own fun and games and actually being creative and energetic... A sadly missing element from the youth of today IMO!

Ja¥son xx

[skysong]

there was life before TV??

[-H-]

there was life before TV??

yup!

i believe that the older KTers referred to it as "the wireless!" :devil:

[C_ris]

We spent most of our time making our own fun and games and actually being creative and energetic...

*considers removing mind from gutter* :evil:

[Lady Faizah]

*considers removing mind from gutter* :evil:My step-father and mother had an 11 year age gap... Both had older and younger siblings. The step-father was an uncle before birth, and he was the older of the two. But the thing both families had in common? The youngest in each was born around the same time TV came to Australia.

Coincidence?
I think not.

[bisb]

Yeah, I remember those too. Ours was super tall because we lived down in a valley. :D In fact, I think my parents still have it up on the roof. :laugh:

My mom still uses hers--she refuses to get cable.
When I was little we would go to my grandparents to watch TV. She refused to have one in the house until the early 60's.

[Sharon]

I remember B & W television. I remember the thrill of our family's first color television.

I remember my sister and I hurrying home from elementary school to watch Dark Shadows, then afterward going out to play, riding our bikes or roller skating pretending to be in "Roller Derby".

[McClance]

there was life before TV??

Shocking, isn't it?

[Priscilla]

We didn't own a tv until I was about 8, though I think they'd been invented a bit before that. Our first one was black and white, and only got 2 stations, one of which was mostly white "fuzz". Anyone remember the stations "signing off" at midnight (or was it earlier?) and playing the national anthem, after which you got nothing but a test pattern? We may have lots of channels today, but the quality of shows is so bad that my favorite button on the remote is the "off", followed by the "mute"! :redfruit:

[C_ris]

We didn't own a tv until I was about 8, though I think they'd been invented a bit before that. Our first one was black and white, and only got 2 stations, one of which was mostly white "fuzz". Anyone remember the stations "signing off" at midnight (or was it earlier?) and playing the national anthem, after which you got nothing but a test pattern? We may have lots of channels today, but the quality of shows is so bad that my favorite button on the remote is the "off", followed by the "mute"! :redfruit:
i remember the test apattern. and that damn screeching! :eek: