How many of these "Obsolete Skills" do you have?

That's quite a list. Although I can do many of them, I'm grateful for all the ones I didn't bother to acquire seeing as how they're obsolete.:couch2:

 

What's so obsolete about cleaning fish? They're not extinct quite yet...
And spelling? That's not obsolete, just ignored. Except for turning it into a competitive sport for kids.

 

I had a chemistry teacher in high school who used to write this on the board before every exam: SPELLING ALWAYS COUNTS

 

Seems like they were just adding things to the list to make it longer.

Cleaning fish obsolete? Hopefully I'll be practicing that skill tomorrow after we come back from a trip to the lake.

 

We've had this list before. It's a stupid list. It's two guys swilling beer and measuring themselves. One is a senior citizen survivalist and one is a 30 something yuppie IT.

I find this one particularly sexist. There are plenty of archaic skills that would be considered the "man's job", but I don't find that many that would be considered a "woman's work."

• Adding water to car batteries
• Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV
• Adjusting a television's horizontal and vertical holds
• Adjusting a television's color and hue adjustments
• Adjusting the levels and song layout for recording to audio tape
• Adjusting the tracking on a VCR (but I'd need to look it up.)
• Adjusting a clock's pendulum
• Analogue radio listening and tuning in

• Balancing the tonearm on a turntable
• Be Kind - Rewind
• Bleeding patients (would that be cupping or leeches?)
• Booting off a floppy disk
• Building a Heathkit?
• Building a log cabin as your primary residence (I've never done it but know the principles.

• Calculating a square root using pencil and paper
• Calculating sales tax
• Calligraphy
• Calling collect on a payphone
• Carbon Copy Paper
• Carving a nib into a quill or pen
• Cash Register used manually entering the prices
• Changing the ball or ribbon on your Selectric Typewriter
• Changing the C120 Film Cartridge in your Instamatic camera
• Changing the ribbon on a typewriter
• Changing tracks on an eight-track tape
• Changing vacuum tubes
• Chipping flint or obsidian tools
• Churn butter
• Cleaning fish
• Cleaning head of a VCR
• Cleaning the balls inside a computer mouse for better traction
• Clearing the party line
• Clicking on the up and down arrows of a vertical scrollbar
• Common sense
• Compressing a HDD to make vital space
• Converting a single-sided floppy disk to double-sided, using a drill
• Counting back change
• Corset - unlace before taking on the dress,gown,frock
• Cranking up or down a car-window
• Crawling under the door of a pay toilet
• Creating useful websites?
• Operate a credit card imprinter (click-clack)
• Cursive handwriting
• Cutting and setting parquet?
• Cuff links - you needed them then to a party

• Darning a sock
• Deletion of obviously non-obsolete skills
• Delivering milk to homes
• Dewey decimal system
• Dialing a rotary phone
• Ditto machine operation & maintenance (Also a Thermofax)
• Double-speed Tape-to-Tape copying
• Drafting with pencils and T-square?
• Drive a manual transmission
• Drying Clothes with a Mangle (Ha Ha. My Grandfather invented a timer for the washer. Bet people don't even know what a mangle is.)
• Dueling with swords, guns, et cetera, to settle differences (only swords)

• Editing audio tape with a razor blade and splicing block (Also film)
• Entering "freeware" programs from a magazine
• Exercise
• Extensions: managing them on Mac OS 9 and earlier

• Filing cards in a library card catalog
• Finding channels on UHF
• Focusing a camera
• Formatting a floppy
• Freethinking

• Getting off the couch to change channels on your TV set
• Getting to know your neighbors?
• Giving a Wood Burning Kit for a kids gift? (Actually, I kept it.)
• Giving driving directions over the phone?
• Grinding grain with a millstone? (Does a mortar and pestle count?)

• Hand lettering large signs
• Handwriting (And this is different from calligraphy and cursive because..?)
• Having your gas pumped for you and your oil checked at a full-service gas station
• Hewing wood with an adze
• Hold And Modify graphics
• How to live
• HyperCard and HyperTalk (only Hypercard)

• Illumination (As in illuminated manuscripts? yes)

• Knowing what part of town someone lives in by their phone exchange
• Knapping flint (This is the same as chipping flint or obsidian tools above)
• Knob and Tube House Wiring
• Letter writing

• Lining up paper on a dot matrix or line printer
• Loading a reel to reel tape drive
• Loading film into a 35 mm camera
• Loading film into a 60 mm camera
• Long division
• Longbow - training
• Look for a job in the classifieds
• Looking up a business on the yellow pages
• Low Format a Harddrive

• Mailing in the order form of a catalog?
• Making a chain of pop-tops?
• Making a nail art picture
• Making an operator assisted phone call
• Making Ice-Cream with a hand-crank freezer?
• Making ink
• Making paint?
• Manners
• Manually loading ink on a fountain pen from an bottle
• Map Reading
• Meeting people by answering personal ads in a newspaper or magazine?
• Memorizing Multiplication Tables
• Mimeograph or Gestetner machine operating
• Mounting photographic slides in slide mounts?
• Mummification? (Haven't done humans, only fish)

• Navigating using a compass
• Nested table web design
• Numbering your punch cards with a pencil, in case you drop your program

• Obsolete Skills, Identification of
• Opening a can of beer or soda with a church key
• Operating an agitator washing machine and clothes ringer (See mangle)
• Operating an Overhead Projector
• Operating a 35mm movie projector and setting the carbons

• Painting cave walls
• Paying with cash
• Peeling the developer layer off a Polaroid
• Peeling back a lid from an sardine can with a key?
• Peering through a keyhole (Also listening through the wall with a glass)
• Percolating coffee
• Plastering by hand with lath (Not on lath)
• Pickle (eggs or cucumbers?)
• Placing a coin on a tonearm to prevent skipping
• Playing marbles?
• Polaroid photography
• Popping corn in a pot with oil
• Preparing a goose quill for writing with an inkwell? (redundant see above)
• Programming a VCR to record a show?
• Programming an analogue car radio
• Punching a drum card for a keypunch machine
• Punching a hole in the shell of a single-sided 5.25" floppy disc to make it double-sided (redundant see above)
• Pulse dialing
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record

• Quill Sharpening (redundant 3rd time)

• Raising an antenna
• Reading a dictionary or encyclopedia
• Reading a Sundial?
• Reading Gothic letters in newspapers and enclopædias (I can also read German cursive handwriting)
• Reckoning arithmetic without aid?
• Recording television with a VCR (redundant)
• Remembering passwords
• Remembering telephone numbers
• Removing perforations off fanfold paper so it looks like normal typing paper
• Repairing an 8-track tape cartridge
• Repairing small appliances
• Resaccing a fountain pen
• Respooling a chewed-up VCR tape or audio cassette
• Rewinding VCR tapes (redundant)
• Rewinding an audio cassette using a Bic pen*
• Riding a skateboard with wooden wheels? (Also lace up roller skates with wooden wheels...for rinks)
• Ripping the little holes off the sides of the computer paper (redundant)
• Rolling down the car window (redundant)
• Routing email by hand?
• Running a mimeograph machine? (redundant)

• SCSI HD configuration - SCSI ID select, Termination enable disable
• Searching a card catalog
• Selling something in the Classified Ads
• Sending a letter
• Setting up a screen saver to avoid burned in image on the CRT
• Setting the correct time on a VCR
• Setting the timer on a VCR (redundant)
• Setting the choke or pumping the accelerator to start a car
• Sharpening a mechanical pencil with fine-grit sandpaper
• Smelling a freshly mimeographed test paper?
• Starching a removable collar? (Also Elizabethan ruffs)
• Soldering dry joints in the circuit board of a VGA monitor?
• Spelling
• Splicing audio recording tape (redundant)
• Splicing out damaged portions of a VHS Cassette tape
• Swapping floppy disks
• Swapping plates in a hard drive
• Switching to high beams by stomping on a button in the floor
• Sword fighting (That would be fencing; foil, epee or sabre?)

• Taking the tape out of an answering machine
• Talking face-to-face
• Tape to Tape Video Editing
• Telling the time by a sundial? (redundant)
• Testing radio and TV tubes
• Threading a Filmstrip?
• Threading a 8mm or 16mm film projector? (redundant)
• Ties (bow or windsor?)
• Operating a Treadle Sewing Machine
• Trimming a quill pen? (redundant like the 4th time?)
• Tuning a radio (redundant)
• Tuning in TV stations by using an antenna rotor
• Tying shoes with hook laces (My wooden wheeled roller skates!)

• Understanding Roman Numbers (you mean Roman numerals...right?)
• Untangling a typewriter's typebars?
• Untangling the cord of a telephone
• Using a 16 mm film projector (redundant)
• Using a beer can opener
• Using an ink blotter
• Using an abacus
• Using carbon paper to make copies (redundant)
• Using a card catalogue (redundant)
• Using correction fluid
• Using a compass (redundant)
• Using a filmstrip projector (redundant)
• Using a flash bulb?
• Using a flash cube
• Using a flipflash?
• Using a fountain pen (redundant)
• Using a light pen
• Using a microfiche
• Using a party-line telephone (redundant)
• Using a pay telephone (redundant)
• Using a pay toilet
• Using a track ball mouse?
• Using a scythe
• Using a Typewriter?
• Using an adding machine?
• Using carbon paper to make copies (redundant)
• Using correction fluid (redundant)
• Using punch cards
• Using the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature
• Using a mangle to dry clothes? (redundant)
• Using telephone exchange names
• Using a mechanical calculator?
• Using white carbon paper to type over typographical errors on a typewriter?
• Using a skate key to adjust clamp-on roller skates?

• Vantive
• VCR Programming (redundant)

• Walking stick for your Sunday stroll in the park
• Washing clothes with a washboard
• Washing Clothes using a wringer washing machine (redundant; see mangle)
• Watching a slide show with a slide projector
• Wearing a girdle (what about a bustle?)
• Wearing a hat
• Whipping cream with a whisk
• White Out (redundant)
• Wilderness Survival
• Winding a watch or clock (redundant)
• Winding up loose cassette tape with a pencil eraser before putting the cassette in the deck
• Writing email whilst offline and going online to send
• Writing using a dip pen and powder to dry up the ink?

Since when is calling a phone sex line an essential skill?

Where is seating a toilet? Sweating a copper pipe? Laying ceramic tile? Plastering a ceiling? Mud and tape drywall? Building a brick in sand patio? Threading a fishing pole, hook, bait? Setting mouse traps. Cleaning trap under the sink? Resetting garbage disposal? Drywall, mud and tape?

Hand quilting a bedspread?

Making spaezle from scratch?

Separating an egg?

Beating egg whites with a whisk and copper bowl?

Baking bread from scratch?

Making pie crust from scratch?

I churned butter when I was 5. I cleaned a fish as a class demonstration when I was 12.

Hmm. I didn't see cleaning the carbon out of the circuit breakers for the house's main breaker box because you can't replace them and the arcing is building up carbon in the gap.

What about changing a fuse in the house's breaker box?

Mostly it's a sexist, redundant list with a lot of useless "skills" and leaving out some pretty essential skills.

 

Using a sliderule may be an obsolete skill (I actually taught sliderule use to high school juniors in my student teaching assignment), but using a sliderule required that you estimate the answer before the calculation, that you know about significant figures, and that you know a "bad" answer when you see one. As a former math teacher, I can tell you that the loss of these skills means our calculator-committed kids approach math like so many monkeys blindly pushing keys. :ranger:

 

There are plenty of things on that list that are not obsolete, and plenty of obsolete skills that are not on the list.

Some skills are obsolete simply because we now hire people to do them and so don't need to know them ourselves. Try baking your own crackers. Try finding a recipe to bake your own crackers. We've been buying crackers for so long, we don't know how to make them anymore. I recently tried to find pattern and directions for proper academic regalia for my graduation. I'm using a pdf of the cutter's guide of 1898. I'm lucky I can read archaic tailor's patterns. But I'd never hand this off to a local dressmaker. Academic Regalia companies do it all for us now (and cheaply and badly.)

Other skills are obsolete simply because the technology doesn't exist anymore. Anyone loaded and fired a trebuchet lately? They still exist and a few still fire them. But all in all, a pretty obsolete skill.

 

A friend of mine has an ocean going sailboat with all the modern GPS and radio equipment. He also carries a sliderule, sextant, and paper charts. He says that the technology is great when it works, but he's not betting his life on it. Technology requires access to service, and some places he goes don't exactly have rapid access to that service.

One skill that seems to have been lost with the availability of calculators is estimation. Given some of the bloopers that computers come up with, perhaps there should be a separate math class dedicated to estimation.

 

In California, estimation is part of the sixth grade math standards. I used to hammer on it when I taught sixth grade. I would give them real life scenarios, like going to the store with $20.00 and estimating the stuff in the cart not to exceed $20.00 because you don't want to hold up the line and have all of the shoppers behind you irate and looking to jump you in the parking lot.

But I suspect by the time they graduate they can't even spell the word.

 

I am shocked at how many I have. I am old.

 

I'm shocked at what appear to be so many bizarre skills I've picked up over my life. Some not even on the list.

 

Is there a list of things we've forgotten that we shouldn't have? Like, tending a plot of vegetables? Culturing relationships with our neighbours? What fresh air smells like?

 

Bollocks. How else are you gonna fling a golf ball 65 metres? That's about all mine could do, and quite accurately I might add. The diver's lead for the counter weight was massively expensive. I really should see those on Craig's list.

 

hey, i designed, built AND fired one back senior year of high school... it wasn't that long ago!

That being said, the only truly obsolete skills now a days are those that depend on technology that has been replaced/is no longer available. for example, 8-track tapes - i have no idea how to use them, nor will i ever need to. They aren't in production, and only exist in personal collections any more. Knowing how to properly load them into a player is, i would think, an obsolete skill.

Any skill that is still needed today, but that we farm out to others (say plumbing, for example) isn't obsolete, it's just specialized. There's no reason to expect that everyone do everything for themselves, specialization allows us to do a few things better than everyone else, and make use of others abilities as well.