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In Reply to: RE: If Your System Has a Mono Switch...... posted by PAR on September 12, 2017 at 03:10:09
Of course! That's because the people there were British! ;-)
Follow Ups:
CPI Inflation Calculator
$
1.00
in january 1965
has the same buying power as
$7.85
in july 2017
that was a big factor to a teenager (i was 20yo then)
...regards...tr
Moreover, once stereo got established, large swaths of the mono catalogue were cut out and sold accordingly at cut-out prices. So for a number of years, the price difference between mono and stereo albums (often of the SAME title!) became even greater than one dollar. Sometimes, mono recordings were less than half the price of stereo recordings, depending on whether or not they were cut-outs.
Chris I know that it's meant as a good natured insult but I have been sitting here puzzling what is it about us that would not make stereo catch on as a mass market medium until the late sixties/early seventies?
I can hazard a good guess why it came late but it is an economic reason rather than a national characteristic.
Grateful for your clarification.
> > I can hazard a good guess why it came late but it is an economic reason rather than a national characteristic. < <
That is exactly so, and one of the more shameful episodes of US history that is almost completely unknown the the average American.
After WWII, the US demanded "reparations" - not only from the enemy (eg, the Germans and Italians who started the problem in the first place), but also among our *allies*. Yes, that's right, the US *demanded* that the UK repay the US for our help in fighting the Nazis. There were *billions* of dollars involved, and the bill was not fully repaid until the mid-1990s.
The whole thing is rather disgusting, as while the US was enjoying a huge post-war economic boom during the '50s, the UK was struggling to keep poverty from plunging the entire country into a full blown depression as they shipped off a significant portion of their economic output to the US. Here are just a couple of examples:
1) The UK is the only country in the world that uses "ring wiring" for the AC power in their houses. The *only* reason this was done was to save on the cost of expensive copper wire. From Wikipedia "This design enables the use of smaller-diameter wire than would be used in a radial circuit of equivalent total current".
2) The main reason for IBM's domination of the world of computers was that all of the computer technology developed at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing (and nearly 10,000 others!) was "given" to IBM as part of the war-time "reparations". The UK equivalent was ICL (International Computing Limited), but they were restricted from selling outside of the UK, leaving IBM to have the rest of the world market.
These are just two examples of how the "friendly" US prospered during the '50s and '60s, while in the UK times were *extremely* tight and stereo was a luxury that virtually none could afford. I'm sure that PAR has many more examples.
Best,
Charles Hansen
The Brits were international shakedown artists for two centuries. It was a great disappointment to them that they would lose control and revenue of many of their former colonies following the war. That might have had something to do with their economic decline as well.
My good natured ribbing of Mr. PAR was based on experiences my wife and I had with both the Brits and the folks on the Continent when we've travelled to Europe. For instance, in 1980, we were traveling to Prague (behind the Iron Curtain at that time!) and there was a guy from Norway in our train compartment who was eager to practice his English. So he told us this joke - I don't remember it exactly, but it had something to do with the conversion to indoor plumbing in the rural areas, and the punchline was, "Oh! We would never do that - we're British!"
The nice thing about all this is that the Brits, like Mr. PAR, are very good sports about the ribbing they get. ;-)
Thank you Charles for raising this. All that you say did indeed happen and there were other British innovations given to the USA e.g. jet engine technology. I am not certain it was seen as a reparation, but that the US loaned money to the UK that had to be paid back with interest. Maybe that's just a gloss put on it.We were left almost destitute as a country despite sending one of the great economists, Maynard Keynes, to argue with the US government not to pursue this line of policy.
I was born in 1950, four and a half years after the war had ended yet food was still on ration here . Even staples like bread and meat. I was four years old before all rationing was halted.
Moving to the mid 1960's, while the uSA was enjoying stereo (!), the American record producer Joe Boyd moved to the UK. To paraphrase a section from his book " White Bicycles" from memory: " When I got there I coudn't believe that the people had nothing. Not even refrigerators. If you wanted cold milk you put it outside on the window ledge".
Edits: 09/13/17
> > When I got there I coudn't believe that the people had nothing. Not even refrigerators. If you wanted cold milk you put it outside on the window ledge < <
Hi PAR,
And all of these kinds of things were blamed on Lucas (the UK equivalent of GE), who made everything from automobile electrical parts (relays and switches) to household appliances (refrigerators). I now wonder how much of that was simply because Lucas had to pinch every penny they could to make things that the Brits could afford to actually buy.
We are seeing a return to this situation in the US currently. The average working-class person can only afford to buy low-quality Chinese-made products. The worst thing about it is that they are literally designed to fail shortly after the warranty expires. This ensures that workers will be perpetually working to buy cheap things that need frequent replacement. I call it "capitalism eating itself".
Best,
Charles Hansen
As one also interested in automobiles, including British marques, I've heard a long list of Lucas jokes.
One favorite, which seems appropriate here -
Show me an Englishman who drinks warm beer
and I'll show you a man with a Lucas refrigerator.
But seriously, after owning a few MGs and even an E-Type Jag, it still bothers me whenever I see an older Jag for sale with the motor replaced by a Chevy or Ford engine. The Jag engines were quite reliable, it was mainly the Lucas electronics that failed.
"The piano ain't got no wrong notes." Thelonious Monk
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