I ran across a couple of great ones this week. First, did you know there was a time before laser pointers? What did people even call those things? Probably just “pointers,” I guess. I think it telescoped. I’m not even going to get into what’s going on with the monitor:
And second, one of the most epic obsolete technologies ever–the eight-track player:
They've got the Isley Brothers in the machine. I'm a big, big fan.
Neither of these pictures is identified at all, by the way, so there might be something really important going on in the first one at least. The second one just looks like a couple of guys messing around in their dorm room.
Bonus: Here’s a technology that apparently cannot be improved. (No jokes about administrators, please.) I found it on campus, but I’m not saying where.
That’s Rodrigo Barnes pouring himself some Bacardi. I don’t think that’s Mike Tyler on the left. I’ll have to check my copy of Saturday’s Children by Giles Tippett to find out who was Rodrigo’s roommate.
I’m a scotch drinker myself.
That is a Victor Model V1 Rodent Annihilation Terminal.
I should probably be more careful where I step.
Looks to me like it could be an Apollo Program men-on-the-moon video on the monitor, but I don’t recognize the speaker.
Telescoping, metal pointers were definitely advanced, show-off technology in those days (early 70s).
He does seem kind of proud of it.
Hey,
I still have my “Telescoping, metal pointer”.
Waiting for my chance to use it.
🙂
Nobody asks me to give a lecture though.
🙁
That looks more like the neck label for Hennessy, rather than Bacardi.
Rodrigo was a ’73 draft choice of the Cowboys, so I’ll bet this picture was taken circa 1974. Especially since the other guy looks familiar to me and I didn’t matriculate until ’76.
By the way, Barnes was the first black to ever play linebacker for the Cowboys after becoming the first black to play for Rice (along with Tyler and Stahle Vincent) in ’69.
Telescoping metal pointers were flashy technology then. I remember the plain pointers used in the schools – a dowel about a yard long, with a rubber tip shaped like a cone. The TV may be showing the surface of the Moon, or maybe Mars.
What Wes Hansen said in his note is absolutely correct. The guy in the back of the picture is Rodrigo Barnes. The other guy if Freddie Foster. He went on the become a MD. I think he is deceased now. The picture would have been 1972 or 73. Mike Tyler, Rodrigo Barnes and Stahle Vincent made were All Conference. I also heard that Mike Tyler died last Sunday. He was a true gentlemen and one of the nicest people I met while at Rice.
Laurence (LC) Norman