The bad old days

Too often we glorify the past. To a point, this kind of reverence is helpful to teach ourselves humility, in that we do not consider ourselves greater than our ancestors. However, extreme nostalgia clouds our judgment of all previous periods: we voluntarily abandon the ability to objectively identify what changes are actually improvements.

It is my hope that readers of various ages and demographics permit themselves to be gently reminded how so many of the things they might take for granted were nonexistent within the lifespan of our parents or grandparents. The goal of this post is to help spread the spirit of contentment for the present and optimism for the future. 

The criteria for this list are:

1. There was a well-defined problem in the past which may remain relevant today. It may have had no solution at all at the time. It should not be excessively obscure or too far in the past (in the view of the author).
2. If the problem had a process, tool, or material to manage it, this is considered inconvenient or undesirable by today's standards (and in the view of the author).
3. By modern standards, the problem has been dealt with so effectively by other means, and the technology so prevalent, that there are reasonably mature human beings alive today who have never heard of the older alternative.

I want this to be an organic, growing list which takes into account trends that others point out. Please leave a comment if you have an idea that meshes with my three criteria for inclusion. Leave a comment with the following two components:

• A general subject (e.g. "Internet access", "Music", or a topic not yet started)
• One or two sentences to describe the problem in the context of how it is to be detailed in one paragraph.

Internet access

• Before the mid-2000s, most US families had dial-up internet. This required internet users to wait for a connection over their phone line rather than having a continuous internet connection available to them. It also meant that phone usage over the same line was impossible, and anyone who picked up any phone in the house was likely to boot you offline. The connection over dial-up is accompanied by a fairly noisy connection signal involving actual dial signals over the public switched telephone network. It is demonstrably worse in every single way compared to DSL, cable, or satellite internet.

Phone access

• At one time, payphones were ubiquitous as a way to place a call when outside the home or office. In my earliest memories from c. 1990, a local call was 25 cents; long-distance calls were substantially more. The prevalence of cell phones in the 2010s make payphones increasingly difficult to find except in poorer neighborhoods and very old facilities. As of this writing, most Americans of my age (25) will probably remember using a payphone at some point, but the children who are currently in elementary and middle school may go through their entire lives without having to use a payphone.
• Before the early 1980s, most phones in use in the United States were rotary-dial phones. This required the user to place a finger in the hole for the appropriate number, twist the dial, and let it return to the default position. Doing this for each digit is rather time-consuming by modern standards. I only have the faintest memories of seeing a rotary telephone in use, and it was at my great grandmother's house in rural Indiana perhaps 18-20 years ago. Even at the time, it was uncommon to see the old-fashioned Ma Bell rotary phones.

Music

• Electric power generation on a large scale was invented in the last quarter of the 19th century, and its processes were surprisingly mature by 1900, but most households did not have electrical power, even well into the early 20th century. The Victrola, a popular phonograph of the 1910s-1930s, was available in a hand-cranked version, which was substantially less expensive. Until the onset of the 1930s, most phonographs were hand-cranked.
• The vinyl LP record was released in 1948 and was the primary high-fidelity means of playback all the way until the Compact Disc (CD) of the early 1980s. LPs are not actually obsolete, since they are still used for vinyl recordings on rare occasions. Before CDs, vinyl could be either cheap and extremely low quality, or very expensive and high quality. The amount of care and attention that vinyl records required to maintain their sound is a bit fastidious by modern standards.
• The first viable competitor for the record was the cassette tape, which was extremely popular in cars due to its greater resistance to vibration. Unfortunately, cassettes are very vulnerable to prolonged temperature differences. The degradation of sound quality after leaving tapes in a car throughout a hot summer is very pronounced. Most surviving cassette tapes from the 1980s or 1990s that spent their lives in a glove compartment or center console are almost unplayable. There is still more maintenance required than CDs, since cassette decks do need to have their head cleaned by playing a "cleaning" tape. In practice, I have never actually seen these used; most motorists did not keep their cars long enough for the cassette deck to degrade noticeably.

Vehicle starting

• Before electric starters, motorists had to start a vehicle by turning a hand crank which was connected directly to the crankshaft. The sudden forward motion of the crank when the engine started meant you had to cup your hand rather than firmly grasp it; the punishment for poor hand posture was a broken thumb. If the engine kicked back, the punishment was a broken wrist or arm. As the technique for starting these cars becomes more obscure, but the cars themselves still remain, its danger becomes even more real. Members of historical societies who lack the proper technique will be far more likely to break their arm in starting a Locomobile than veteran drivers of 1905, who were more accustomed to the process (and probably had bigger arms as a result).
• In cold weather, modern vehicles will probably start up on the first crank and require very little warm-up time before they can be safely operated. For very cold climates, vehicles are sometimes fitted with block heaters, a plug-in electrical device that heats the engine block directly to aid in starting. All early vehicles were unlikely to start at all in such conditions. Any of these were common in very cold climates at various points in time.
• Draining the engine's oil overnight so it could be poured back into the engine when warm
• Placing hot coals on the engine block
• Pouring boiling water over the engine block

Vehicle maintenance

• Batteries once needed to be topped off regularly with water. Today few automotive owners even know of any battery maintenance.
• Motor oil has gotten a lot more expensive over the years, but the engine's requirement has greatly diminished. Almost all vehicles of 50 years ago would consume oil in regular amounts, and need to be topped up with oil. It was impossible to treat an engine of 1963 with the same careless abandon as an engine of 2013.

Vehicle safety

• Vehicles generally lacked seatbelts until the 1950s. Even then, the seatbelt used was a lap belt which did not cover the shoulder, so it did not stop a passenger from hitting the dashboard.
• Vehicles before the 1970s generally did not have collapsible steering columns. If the driver did not have a shoulder belt, an accident at high speed was likely to cause a massive impact right in the chest area, with disproportionate likelihood of causing lethal injuries to the heart and/or lungs.
• Vehicles before the 1970s generally did not have shoulder belts. As stated before, lap belts offer much less protection than the combined lap/shoulder combination. By modern standards, lap belts alone would be considered practically useless. Shoulder belts and lap belts in combination are still the most important safety feature ever added to vehicles, and should be worn 100% of the time when in a non-parked motor vehicle.
• Vehicles generally lacked airbags until the early to mid-1990s. Until the turn of the 21st century, two airbags was the common number (one for driver, one for passenger.) In the first decade of the 21st century, side-curtain airbags became common, and other airbag placements would proliferate throughout the interior of modern vehicles. Vehicles made from 2010 onward are massively safer than those made even 15 years earlier.
• US vehicles of the 1940s-1960s had a very large amount of chrome on their dashboards, which could reflect light directly into the motorist's eyes in the wrong conditions, making him or her momentarily blind. Largely due to changing styles rather than a concern for safety, this trend was on the decrease by 1965, and by 1969 there was almost no dashboard chrome left.
• Automatic seat belts were extremely common on US cars from 1990 to 1995. As a result of US federal legislation, automakers had to ensure that all new cars were equipped with at least one form of active safety, and the choices were automatic seat belts or airbags. Airbags would be much better, but automatic seat belts were cheaper. Rather than doing nothing at all, the government decided to form a meaningless compromise that resulted in automatic seat belts becoming ubiquitous. The depressing thing is that automatic seat belts merely automate the process of buckling the shoulder belt, and don't do anything better than ordinary seat belts. As a result, airbags were obviously the superior solution for safety, and they became mandated by 1995, making automatic seat belts obsolete. My parents had two Ford Escort wagons from 1993 that had automatic seat belts. My grandfather's 1989 Honda Civic did not have it, but I did own a 1991 Honda Civic that did have this installed. I remember them as being perfectly ordinary as a child, but as the years went on I found them very restrictive and irritating. If you don't ride in a car made from 1990-1995 in your life, you may never know what an automatic seat belt is. It's a jarring experience if you're new to it!

Building safety

• Asbestos was used universally in building construction during the early 20th century. Usage remained steady until it began to fall off in the 1970s, and during the 1980s it was banned in certain building insulation applications. Asbestos is an amazing material, with extraordinary resistance to fire, electricity, and chemical damage. For centuries, it was a peerless insulator. But once a building reaches the end of its lifecycle, tearing it down will cause asbestos fibers to become airborne. Repeated scientific studies have verified that continued exposure to asbestos causes life-threatening respiratory conditions. Asbestosis is a highly painful way to die. The lack of asbestos in modern buildings actually makes them substantially cheaper to clean up after demolition, which makes them more economical over their lifetime.

Public health

• Smoking of cigarettes was once conducted by a decided majority of American males, and a much larger percentage of American females than today. Smoking was popular from the outset of the 20th century, and continued to gain in popularity up to WWII and into the 1950s. The first major condemnation of smoking for its health hazards was the landmark 1964 Surgeon General's report. The Surgeon General's Office has periodically released reports that inevitably describe smoking as a serious risk to the health of the smoker and all others around the smoker. In today's society, smoking of tobacco is much less common, and its popularity continues to decrease every year. Despite libertarian objections, no-smoking zones have been implemented in many public areas of the United States.
• Fluoridation of water is something that most Americans deal with every single day when they drink tap water. Fluoride is added to most of the US public water supply to improve dental health and fight cavities. In the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, fluoridation was considered a Communist plot by the primary antagonist, the insane General Ripper. Although a minority objected to fluoridation, the general public placed a great deal of faith in the scientific establishment in the 1950s and 1960s, and did not object to the widespread application of fluoridation. Prior to the widespread use of fluoride toothpaste in the 1970s, fluoridated water was the only way to raise the dental health standards of the nation collectively.
• There was once a time not long ago when parents feared very seriously for the lives and livelihoods of their children. Polio affected tens of thousands of children per year prior to 1954, and those who survived the disease were often handicapped for life. The polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by the famous Dr. Jonas Salk, and immediately entered intense testing on a small scale prior to its announcement in 1953. In 1954, the polio vaccine was subject to the largest-scale human experimentation in US history, eventually involving 1.8 children across the United States. The favorable conclusion of the test was announced on April 12, 1955- the polio vaccine was found to be safe and extremely effective, and at unprecedented speed almost complete vaccination was undertaken. More than 100 million doses were administered in the US over the next four years. By 1961, only 161 cases were reported. Polio took much longer to eradicate worldwide, but it was finally declared eradicated in 2012.
• Even greater a threat than polio was smallpox. The bane of civilization for centuries, smallpox has killed countless millions of people of all ages and classes. Various outbreaks have totally depopulated great cities throughout history. Because of the intense contagiousness and worldwide scope of the disease, it was impossible to eradicate it immediately. In fact, Edward Jenner's invention of the smallpox vaccine in 1796 is considered the first-ever vaccine, but the more-dangerous technique of innoculation persisted well into the 20th century, and smallpox continued to remain a threat in Africa and Asia. Worldwide, from 1800 to 1950, there was insufficient willpower and funds to destroy the disease, so it remained a threat to all people. Starting in 1950, the Pan American Health Organization undertook an eradication of the disease from the Western Hemisphere. Beginning in 1958, worldwide efforts were managed by the World Health Organization. WHO's Smallpox Eradication Team was led by Donald Henderson from 1966 onwards- at this point, millions still contracted the disease every year. Working on a global scale and with close cooperation with local authorities, they fought every single outbreak until the disease was declared eradicated globally in 1979.

Libraries

• Although the Dewey decimal system remains in place for physical order of a library, there was once a physical card catalog system to assist lookup of books. Each book had a card that located it. If you wanted to find a book, you had to look up an actual piece of paper that contained the code where you could find it. If you see the movie Ghostbusters from 1984, the opening scene shows huge cabinets full of cards that correspond to the inventory of the library. If such pieces of furniture still exist in modern libraries, they are mostly ceremonial. The real organization is handled by a computerized database in almost all libraries.
• Public libraries were once considered primarily valuable because of the books they contained. Although 20 years ago most libraries did have computers, the computers were usually just green-screen terminals that linked the user to a card catalog of the books in the library. By the early 2000s, internet service in libraries was becoming relatively common. Libraries have continued to remain relevant because they are a place where free internet is available. In poorer neighborhoods, as I have seen in Houston and Cleveland, as well as in small towns, the public libraries are full of kids playing online games and checking Facebook, job seekers printing out resumes, and elderly persons acquainting themselves with new technology. In this way, the public library has actually become more valuable to society than ever.

Cooking

• For those without much culinary expertise, it may come as a surprise that the old-fashioned way to obtain a non-stick surface was to season a cast iron pan with a layer of oil which would be baked in at high temperature; continued use over the years would keep up a jet black and silky smooth surface, but a brand new cast iron pan will disintegrate your eggs very easily. The solution came on two fronts: stainless steel in the mid 20th century, and Teflon, first marketed in France in 1954 and the US in 1961. The great majority of cookware surfaces on products sold in the 21st century are nonstick, but cast iron and carbon steel continue to be sold for niche markets.