The Dandy
The first issue of children’s comic The Dandy arrived in December 1937. The final printed edition came out on 4 December 2012, the comic’s 75th anniversary.
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Pears’ Cyclopaedia
This week, publisher Penguin Random House confirmed that the 2017-18 edition of the Pears’ Cyclopaedia, which came out on Thursday, will be the last. Indeed, its cover boldly proclaims: The Final Edition. So, not The Final Frontier, then.
Stamps you had to lick
Stamps used to have a glue on the back that you had to breathe into life by adding moisture. You then had to stick the stamp to the paper envelope as the backing dried. Definitely before the backing dried, as then the stamp wouldn’t stick.
Stories for Girls
Stories for girls and stories for boys still exist, but publications are nowadays too canny to announce on the cover which chromosomes they expect their readers to possess.
Slides
The original PowerPoint was first manufactured in the seventeenth century. The magic lantern was a form of image projector that used bright light to project pictures painted on sheets of glass onto a screen, perhaps a white wall or a sheet.
The Children’s Hour
On the BBC, the Children’s Hour lasted from 5pm until 6pm, the time of day when the children might be home from school. During that hour, from 1922 until 1964, the BBC broadcast radio programmes for the younger members of our families.
Radio Luxembourg: Fab 208
Do you remember the static? The crackles? The first fuzzy bars of music could be heard as the evening closed in, the light retreated, and the waves wandered in. The first strains of music from Radio Luxembourg reached the British Isles and the evening began.
