India Post just recently revealed that its Registered Post service, revered for legal evidence and wholehearted messages, will retire on September 1, combining into Speed Post. In our workplace, the more youthful generation responded with a “what service is that once again?”, even as the oldies thought back about “recommendation cards.”
That brought us here. As soon as upon a time, before swipe-rights and ChatGPT, there was a world where the loudest noise in a family was the screech of dial-up web, where letters came folded in blue aerogrammes, and where a whole household’s weekend strategy depended upon whether the Doordarshan antenna dealt with the ideal instructions. Before emojis, there were pager codes.
Before Spotify, there was the mixtape cassette. Before Google Maps, there were fold-out atlases that never ever folded back in the very same method. Here is a throwback list of things the more youthful lot might never ever understand, however which as soon as ruled the lives of your folks, when they were young.
A Guide to Millennial Childhoods
Plane ticket brochures
Yup, a lot of your folks’ very first flight tickets were actually brochures.
AltaVista online search engine
Browse, peaked before Google
AOL immediate messenger
Another messenger, this time with an unique’door opening’noise.
Ask Jeeves Online search engine with a butler mascot, likewise peaked before Google
ASL pls The icebreaker in chat rooms that broke through web privacy. Represents “age, sex, area please”
Betamax Sony’s stopped working video format Calling cards Scratch to expose a PIN for payphone calls. Purchased for a particular quantity
Carbon paper For replicate copies in types and letters.
Cassette tapes Magnetic reels for music and information. Might be reversed for an entire brand-new lot of tunes
CD tower stacks Spindles of blank CDs
CD-R and CD-RW drives Wished to compose something on a CD? You required to burn it utilizing among these drives
Clippy The coolest virtual assistant ever. Siri, Alexa, consume your hearts out
Need draft When a payment required to be made, and a cheque wasn’t adequate
Removable automobile stereos It assisted prevent vehicle stereo theft. Yup, that utilized to be an issue.
Dot matrix printers Loud, perforated paper printing, still discovered at train ticketing cubicles
Encarta Microsoft’s CD encyclopedia, which was expected to change big volumes of Britannica from library racks
Facsimile machine Curling thermal paper messages scanning letters throughout locations
Movie roll cylinder Kodak or Fuji rolls in black cases, which required a dark space to in some way end up being a photo
Floppies (8″, 5.25″3.5″) Limited MBs — yes, mega byte — storage in a black plastic case. Used to contain entire games
Game Boy (Monochrome) Green-tinted handheld gaming, for those lucky few kids in school
Geocities DIY personal websites with glitter text
Monochrome monitors Heavy, curved glass displays. Early examples had weirdly green text options only
Hotmail Email, pre-Gmail. Was cool because of it was an Indian dude, Sabeer Bhatia, who created it
In just 20 years, the world went from floppy disks to cloud, from trunk calls to FaceTime, from money orders to UPI. What Gen Z and Alpha swipe through in seconds, older generations once waited days, weeks, or even months for:
ICQ Early instant messaging service
Inflight smoking Technically it took till the early 2000s for airlines to ban smoking. Until then, many offered smoking sections at the back
Inland letters Foldable blue paper you could write on, for when envelopes were too expensive
ISD/STD/PCO booths Yellow signs, black boxy phones, and long queues. These were public phones with timed billing slips
LAN parties Hauling PCs for multi-player gaming, connecting them via cables and playing classics like
Need For Speed Lightweight blue aerogrammes International airmail folded paper letters with blue and red coloured edges, because it was meant to go abroad
Money order UPI transfer across geographies that involved the postman carrying money sent from afar
MS-DOS commands Black screens and text input. Introduction to computers for a generation was in commands like DIR and CD
Netscape navigator Web browser with a star logo. The Chrome browser of that era
Orkut The social networking site from Google that became a thing in India and Brazil for some reason. Eventually made uncool by Facebook Pager numeric codes 143 for ‘I love you’, etc
Pager If you’re wondering what a pager is, it’s a small device with a screen where numeric or short texts pop up. No, it’s not at all a mobile phone
Pen pals Strangers, exchanging letters to build friendship or learn about each other’s cultures, often across countries
Phonograms Recorded voice messages sent via post or telecom
Photo negatives Kept in envelopes after the films were developed. People looked funny in ’em
Registered post Signed acceptance and proof of delivery in the form of an acknowledgment card made this the blue tick for snail mail
Rotary dial telephones Finger-wheel dialling of a phone, complete with a whirr sound. Dialling numbers would take as long as entire conversations
T9 predictive text A way for folks to type fast on their alphanumeric mobile phone keyboards
Telegram The original ‘instant message’ delivered via printed slips. They were short, urgent and always ending in STOP
Telephone directory Imagine everyone’s number in your city in one book. It was the thickest book in most households
Telex Pre-fax era long-distance text transmission
Traveller’s cheques Instead of forex cards, these were physical papers with a prepaid fixed amount for when you travelled, and it worked like cash
Trunk calls You booked a call via an operator for long-distance landline calls, who then called back once the call was connected. Yup, you could even take hours
Typewriters Clack-clack and carriage return ding. Typing used to be a skill to be honed in institutes
VHS tapes Video recording cassettes, which had to be rewound every time to get to the start
VCD players The hardware used to play the VHS tapes
Walkman Portable cassette players
Winamp Skinnable music player, for those illegal MP3 songs
Y2K bug scare The year 2000 brought about computer panic and pretty much created India’s IT boom
