The 1970’S – How did we communicate?

Leaving the sixties behind.

The 1970’s are famous for bell-bottom trousers and the rise of the insanely popular disco dancing. It was also the time when the sensational TV series about rich people behaving badly, ‘Dallas’ and ‘Dynasty’ were launched. The Rambo action films which became something of a cult, also made an appearance.

Richard Nixon, the first and so far only American president to resign from office, stepped down in 1974, thanks to the Watergate scandal.

During the seventies, the US economy went in a recession as interest rates and inflation rose to new highs. Because of Middle East tensions, there was a shortage of imported oil, which had the potential to lead to drama on the highways and byways!

The sixties were full of hippies and protestors, and hippie fashions and values had a major effect on the culture of the time. Hippie culture has never died out completely, but by the mid-seventies it was no longer as prominent.

The civil rights, women’s rights and gay activists who campaigned throughout the sixties, also saw real progress towards their goals as the sixties were left behind, and we moved on into the seventies.

Communication in the seventies.

Long before the rise of the internet and all the current social media platforms, people found some innovative ways to use technology to communicate with each other. An early example of this is a long distance marriage ceremony conducted over the telegraph. With the bride in Boston and the groom in New York, telegraph operators transmitted the couple’s vows and the words of the magistrate performing the ceremony, over the wires. This took place in 1849 and was certainly the world’s first ever electronic network connecting people in an intimate way!

Here are some popular means of communication used in the decade of the 1970’s.

• Letters. People wrote letters to each other, even when they lived in the same city or town. They wrote full words and sentences, without current abbreviations such as OMG or LOL! The post office was fantastic and mail was delivered within a day or two of sending it.
• Telephone. There were no mobile phones, so callers used landlines and answering machines. But the push-button phone came into vogue in the ’70’s, very stylish!
• Telex and telegram. These were used for urgent messages.
• Fax machine. The arrival of the fax machine in 1973 revolutionised electronic communication services. Similar to the e mail of today, delivery was immediate. It was touted by some as being the eighth wonder of the world!
• Typewriters. Those clanky old machines were the high-tech business machine of the decade. Away with the manual typewriters, in with electric ones! It was a big advance.
• Computers. There were personal computers in the 1970’s, and even modems for communication, usually on “Bulletin Boards”. It could take ten minutes for your modem to transfer a comment from your computer to a board, so patience was a virtue.
• Of course, people still visited family and friends, to impart news face to face!

A magical time!

The seventies was indeed a magical period. It  led us into the awesome technological advances of the next 20 years.

The communication wheel has certainly turned since the lazy, uncomplicated days of communicating with people in the seventies. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?