[Friends_of_SSASTROS] A Short Trip in the Wayback Machine

[Mike McCabe]

Greetings Members and Friends of the SSAStros,
I was rummaging through some stuff the other day when I happened across an old sales flyer for astronomical equipment. It was from the year 1990, a time when the South Shore Astronomical Society was essentially in its youth at just 32 years old. It was also a time when the internet was in its infancy but not yet a mainstreamthing. It would still be few years before we could all take advantage of anadvanced technology called Dial-Up Internet Service. It would take some gettingused to. If you were poor you were restricted to an exchange speed of 14.4kilobits per second. Well-to-do folks could double that to 28.8 kilobits persecond. Now that was living. Still, everyone had to deal with the same awkwardsquawking sound that the hooking up process made. Legend has it that quite afew less intellectually robust folks were driven mad by it. Even more mad werethe other folks in the house that wanted to use the phone. It was tough phooeyfor them.

In 1990 the club published this thing called a newsletter, which somebody was actually responsible for typing, printing, copying and mailing. The SSAS version of a club newsletter even included what looks like paid advertisements! Check out the phone number for the F.C. Meichsner Co.!


Another thing happening with the SSAS in 1990 was a proposed addition to an existing observatory. I'd need help from some of our grizzled veterans to understand exactly what was going on here.
And how did we ever shop for anything back then? What was one to do ifa brick-and-mortar establishment that hawked the wares we wanted didn't existwithin a reasonable distance, or an existing brick-and-mortar establishment didn't carry what we wanted? Why, there were these things called catalogs ofcourse! We perused them and we drooled over them, and we sent our checks in themail in anticipation of receiving our goods. My first real exposure to catalogshopping was the Sears Big Book, which I'm sure many folks here are familiarwith. You could get practically anything through that catalog, and if you werelucky enough to live close to one you might remember the whole family pilinginto the station wagon and going to the catalog store to pick up your goods.Those were good days, and I miss them.

This is the front page of flyer that I mentioned earlier in this post. If you're interested in seeing the other three pages of goodies as they were advertised in 1990, download the attached PDF to read them.
Keep Looking Up!
Sincerely,
Mike McCabe


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