"Children will always be blissfully unaware of the lives their parents or grandparents lived before them."
On a typical day in the 1970s, a guy like me might put on my Earth Shoes and drive an El Camino to school, opening the vent window on the way.
I may have listened to a teacher discuss the Jonathan Livingston Seagull novel and then climbed a rack of thick wooden dowels in gym class. Members of the A/V club might have wheeled a projector into a classroom for a film presentation.
After school, I might work on a term paper on an electric typewriter, keeping a bottle of Wite-Out correction fluid ready to employ.
I might listen to music on a boom box, or decide what to watch on TV after consulting TV guide. Naturally, I would change the channel by turning the knob on the set and I would hope the picture was decent after adjusting the vertical hold.
You know what this was used for, right? As much as this might sound like someone speaking a foreign language to millennials, all of this was part of daily life not terribly long ago.
Many of the items in this gallery were technical wonders of their day ... and seem almost funny today. An article on vox.com notes that "It's easy to argue that generations of people no longer exist in neat baby-boomer time periods. Instead of years, we should label generations by the dominant technology they use. Children will always be blissfully unaware of the lives their parents or grandparents lived before them."
MORE: Vintage photos around New Jersey
Which is why collections like this one are both entertaining ... and educational.
Here's a gallery of things you may have forgotten about, or put a great deal of effort into intentionally forgetting about. And here are links to some other galleries you might enjoy.
Vintage photos of things that have changed - for better or worse
Vintage photos of how things have changed in N.J.
Vintage photos of New Jerseyans engaged in 'dicey' activities
Greg Hatala may be reached at ghatala@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregHatala. Find Greg Hatala on Facebook.