21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff)

by Steve Stack

  The yard’s rough metric equivalent is the metre which is, wait for it, the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. Practical, huh? To be completely fair, it was originally supposed to be one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, which is a much easier measurement for the ordinary man to check!

  Imperial measurements are full of sensible units:

  An acre is the amount of land one man could plough with one ox in one day.

  A stone is roughly the weight of the largest rock a man could comfortably hold in one hand.

  A mile is about 1,000 paces.

  While the metric system has taken over, being the legal and official measurement of all trade, the imperial measurements are still clinging on to many aspects of our lives. We still measure distance on our roads in miles, and speed in mph. Most people weigh themselves in stones and pounds. Farmers and landowners still refer to how many acres they own.

  And things are likely to stay that way for some time to come. Imperial measurements certainly deserve to be on the endangered list, bureaucracy has seen to that, but their simplicity and practicality should mean that they live on for a while yet.

  Dodo Rating:

  Net Cord Judges

  Professional tennis matches used to have a person sitting in front of the umpire’s chair with one finger and an ear pressed to the net, listening out for any contact between ball and net cord during the serve. Their cry of ‘Let!’ signalled the need for a second service.

  This is another of those jobs that has vanished off the face of the earth, but most people don’t seem to have noticed. If they were reinstated tomorrow, you wouldn’t be able to miss them, but their absence seems unremarkable today.

  It was possibly the most dangerous job on the tennis court. Sure, you got to sit down all day, were only needed for the first stroke of every point, and could eavesdrop on the mutterings of the players as they changed ends, but you were frequently on the receiving end of a tennis ball to the side of the head. Which would hurt. A lot.

  Net cord judges were replaced by electronic devices across the ATP World Tour in 1996, and by the four Grand Slam events shortly afterwards.

  They are now well and truly extinct.

  Dodo Rating:

  Car Chokes

  I’ll be honest, as a non-driver I really don’t understand what a choke does to a car engine. Even after researching the subject, I am not really any the wiser.

  As far as I can ascertain, it controls the ratio of fuel to air that enters the engine. When the car is cold and you need to start it up, the choke helps to reduce the amount of air getting in and (in theory) allows you to start the car without difficulty.

  This used to be a manual process. When starting up many cars manufactured in the last century, you would have to pull the choke out – a button or lever on the dashboard – and then gradually let it back in as you made your way along the road. Release it too early and the car could stall.

  Nowadays, most vehicles have automatic chokes and young drivers are none the wiser as to their existence. They just turn the car on and drive off.

  Such youth won’t even remember the days when you had to run in a new engine. A handwritten sign would go up in the back of the car saying something like ‘RUNNING IN ENGINE, PLEASE PASS’, to avoid getting beeped at for going so slow. You would have to keep the engine below a certain number of revs for the first few hundred miles. For most drivers, it was a flash forward to how they’d be driving when they hit their 60s.

  But again, modern technology means that this sort of tortoise like behaviour is no longer necessary, and pretty soon we’ll have all forgotten it ever happened.

  Dodo Rating:

  Two Spaces after a Full Stop

  Many of us were taught to put two spaces after a full stop when typing any sort of document. At least, we were if we grew up in the day when typewriters proliferated, but this is no longer the case. Actually, it wasn’t the case before typewriters, either.

  Typographers of old went to great lengths to ensure that the printed word was crisp, clear, and readable. To achieve this, they developed a system of proportional type where wide letters took up more space than thin letters, reflecting the way they tended to look when written down by hand.

  Then typewriters came along and really buggered things up. You see, manual typewriters use monospaced type in which every letter and symbol is the same width. This is vital to ensure that they actually work and the keys don’t stick all the time, but one side effect was that you needed to leave two spaces after a full stop for anyone to actually notice it was there.

  The need for monospaced type died out in the 1970s when computers and electric typewriters invaded the office space. Proportional type was restored.

  But generations of people had grown up with the two space rule, and it proliferates to this day, albeit in dwindling numbers. It simply isn’t needed any more. It looks odd, as you can see from this entry which, in tribute to the dying art, has used two spaces throughout.

  Dodo Rating:

  The Word ‘Wireless’

  When radio first entered people’s homes in the 1920s, it was a technological marvel, and the machines used to receive radio broadcasts were given a very modern-sounding name: the ‘wireless’. It received signals through the air, you see, the music and talk and sound didn’t travel along wires. It was a bit like magic.

  But, as technology improved and players became smaller and more portable, the wonder started to wane, and no one really thought the whole wireless thing was a big deal any more. And anyway, ‘radio’ sounded far more modern. So ‘wireless’ was used as a term of endearment, a quaint old-fashioned way of saying ‘radio’.

  But then, almost without anyone noticing, the word ‘wireless’ became cutting edge again. Everyone and his donkey are emailing, tweeting, blogging, and browsing using wireless technology. The word is back, and looks like it is here to stay.

  Which is all well and good, but it does mean that you can’t really say, ‘Shall we have a listen to the wireless?’ or ‘I wonder if the United match is on the wireless this afternoon?’ without youngsters looking at you as if you are insane.

  The word may live on, but its original meaning is all but lost. I think that is rather sad.

  Dodo Rating:

  Coins and Notes

  I was born in 1970, so the first pocket money I ever received (some years later) was most certainly decimal, but mixed in there was the odd coin from the pre-decimal days, still in use under a new denomination.

  Take the shilling, for example, the staple coin of the realm before the 1970s. This carried on being legal tender, but was now worth 5p. I remember the coat of arms on one side and the young Queen’s head on the other. Many was the time I would wander down to the corner shop with two of them in my pocket ready to purchase a 10p mix-up bag. The florin was frequently used as a 10p piece itself. Halcyon days.

  Not every coin survived the move to decimal, however, even though examples could be found in charity collection boxes and down the backs of sofas for years afterwards. These were the crown, half crown, and threepenny bit. The only exception was the sixpence, which was worth 2½p and carried on till 1980, although by then they were few and far between.

  I particularly recall the novelty of coming across a threepenny bit, with its weird 12-sided configuration, and the farthing, which was worth a quarter of a penny and had a wren on the side. We couldn’t spend them, of course, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  But not all the decimal coins survived, either. My kids are dumb-founded by the concept of a halfpenny, so much so that I daren’t tell them about the farthing. ‘But what could you buy with it?’ they ask, and I tell them, ‘A Black Jack or a Mojo.’ But lots of prices included the halfpenny in the 1970s, it was not uncommon to pay 12½p for a can of something at the supermarket, and few shopping trips were carried out without some ha’pennies in the change.

  The halfpence piece was phased out i
n 1984, and some of the other coins were resized. Ten-pence pieces used to be big blighters, and the five pence was also a lot larger back then, so much so that the introduction of the microscopic versions we have now caused much consternation at the time.

  But not as much as the withdrawal of the one pound note, which happened the same year. Having been around for 150 years, it was replaced by the pound coin.

  Of course, we all move on, and once a coin or note ceases to be legal tender, it quickly vanishes from circulation, confined to the collections of a few enthusiasts or the junk drawers of elderly grandparents. Still, that doesn’t mean we don’t have fond memories of the coins we grew up with, the coins in our first week’s pocket money, the coins we bought our sweets and crisps with.

  Dodo Rating:

  The End?

  So there you have it, an endangered list of 134 inanimate objects (and other things). Some are well and truly extinct, others are just moments away from disappearing, a few showing signs of a comeback.

  But does any of this matter? Should we care?

  Well, yes and no.

  Mankind’s eternal quest for progress leaves devastation in its wake. It is the price we pay. I may look back with fondness on the days of teletext and half-day closing, but they are never going to return and, if I am honest, I probably wouldn’t swap my internet and 24-hour shopping for them if you made me the offer.

  This book was never really about trying to save these things, although it might be nice if we wrote a few more letters to each other and Rowntree’s could make some Maverick bars just for me. Instead, I wanted to say cheerio to some important, and other less important, cultural icons, and share with you this fond farewell.

  I hope I triggered a few memories by doing so.

  Further Reading

  If any of the entries in this book have tickled your fancy and given you the notion to read a bit more about them, then here are a few books and websites that I would recommend you check out:

  Books

  Paul Auster, The Story of my Typewriter (DAP, 9781891024320). A beautiful collection of words and drawings. A love letter from this remarkable novelist to the machine he uses to write all of his books.

  Steve Berry, TV Cream Toys (Friday Project, 9781905548279). A nostalgia overload in this cracking coffee table book packed full of the toys we all grew up with. You are guaranteed to find dozens of toys and games that you had completely forgotten existed.

  Steve Berry and Phil Norman, The Great British Tuck Shop (Friday Project 9781906321451). More hardcore nostalgia, this time looking at the sweets, crisps, biscuits, fizzy pop, and ice lollies of yesteryear.

  Warwick Cairns, About the Size of It (Pan 9780330450300). A splendidly entertaining history of imperial measurements.

  Warwick Cairns, How to Live Dangerously (Macmillan, 9780230712218). The finest argument you will ever read about why you should let your kids climb trees, play in the street, and generally be a bit more reckless.

  Graham Kibble-White, Look-in: The Best of the Seventies (Prion, 9781853756221). An annual-style collection of the best bits from the heyday of Look-in magazine.

  Thurston Moore, Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture (Universe Publishing, 9780789311993). A collection of handwritten liner notes from old mixtapes, some great works of art among them. Well worth a flick through. It will bring back lots of memories.

  I can also highly recommend spending an hour or so and a few quid on eBay to buy up a few comics or annuals that you remember from your youth, especially if you have kids yourself. My two have loved reading the old Cheeky annuals I picked up while researching this book.

  Websites

  likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com – An online archive of Smash Hits covers and articles.

  www.aquarterof.co.uk – Online sweet shop that has pretty much everything you can remember from your youth.

  www.lookandlearn.com – An online library of pictures and articles from Look and Learn magazine’s long history.

  www.measuringworth.com – A very handy site if you want to find out what £1 in 1970 would be worth in today’s money. Or any other value in any other year.

  www.tvcream.co.uk – The home of all the TV trivia and nostalgia you could possibly need.

  21st Century Dodos is also available as an ebook and audiobook.

  Thanks

  Despite the fact that I wrote this whole bloody thing myself, it is traditional to thank lots of other people so that you don’t seem like an arrogant sod and, fortunately, there are lots of people who are more than deserving of my gratitude when it comes to 21st Century Dodos.

  So, thanks to my family for allowing me to bugger off for ten days to a cabin in the middle of a Scottish forest to write up a big chunk of my research, and for putting up with me during the rest of the six months I have spent piecing this book together.

  I owe a huge debt to Sam McColl for letting me stay in her aforementioned cabin which is something I will never forget, especially the pooing in the woods part. I saw no bears.

  Kat Stephen helped me out with some Scottish research, and is probably somewhere out at sea right now. Assuming she doesn’t sink, I will thank her properly when I next see her.

  A big hug to Corinna Harrod at The Friday Project for making sure this book got made, and also to Jo Walker for the wonderful cover. They are both mighty fine ladies. Dave Cornmell drew the illustrations. He is a splendid chap.

  And finally a very special thank you to the wonderful readers of my blog, Me and my Big Mouth, and all of my Twitter friends who contributed ideas for entries, a whole host of suggested subtitles, and remembered advertising slogans of yesteryear. You guys were a huge help.

  About the Author

  Steve Stack is the pseudonym of a blogger and sometime journalist. He is the author of one previous book, It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit which can probably still be found in bargain bookshops and Poundland if you wanted to add it to your toilet library. It is also available as a specially priced (i.e. very cheap) ebook if you are all very modern and own one of those new fangled devices.

  If you want to contact Steve, you can drop him a line at 21stcenturydodos@gmail.com

  You can also pay a visit to his blog at http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  By the same author

  It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit

  Copyright

  The Friday Project

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  First published in Great Britain by The Friday Project in 2011

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  He does this without the need for an assertiveness training course.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-906321-73-4

  21ST CENTURY DODOS. Copyright © Steve Stack 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-735645-4

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  Introduction

  At the Cutting Edge of Technology

  Audio Cassettes

  Mixtapes

  VHS

  Betamax

  Minidiscs

  Laserdiscs

  Polaroid Cameras

  Home Computers

  Loading Computer Games from Tape

  Printer Paper with Holes

  Dial-up Modems

  Basic

  Compact Discs

  Sony Walkman

  In the Home

  Rotary Dial Telephones

  One Phone in the Home

  Trimphones

  Directory Enquiries

  Toothpaste Tubes Made of Metal

  Jif

  Creamola Foam

  Milkshake Straws

  Duo Cans

  Black and White Television

  In the Neighbourhood

  White Dog Poo

  Whistling

  Bob-a-Job Week

  Raleigh Chopper

  Raleigh Grifter

  Roller Skates

  Ring Pulls

  Cap Guns

  Routemaster Buses

  Bus Conductors

  Playing in the Streets

  Election Vans with Loudspeakers