Topic: For the old timers

[Marc'Antonio Alessi]

I have this:

[rkmcswain]

[Jeff H]

^ Those words look like English but...

LOL

[Greg B]

^ Those words look like English but...

LOL

Please don't encourage him.

[Jeremy Dunn]

Don't worry Dinosaur, we remember the days when manly men, men of valor had to switch to a 2nd electric eraser or even a 3rd because the first one was starting to burn your hand. These softies haven't had hand cramps from hand lettering a notes page all day long or been knocked over from the smell of dilute acid solution to erase an ink drawing. They haven't known the frustration of having to copy something over and over without the help of software or enduring the ammonia smell of the blueprint machine for hours or the pain of having your elbow bumped after ink lettering for hours. Oh yes, the happiness of watching your newly completed drawing being crunched up in the blueprint machine or having an engineer slop his coffee onto it while he is jawing at your desk. The young-uns have missed out on so many things,

[rkmcswain]

I'll just leave this here...

[JohnK]

$820 a month? That’s less then $5 an hour. ...And no layoffs?!

[cmwade77]

Well then, what about those little sandpaper pads for pointing pencil leads or perhaps a drop bow compass when the little Timely templates were not yet available.  My Ames lettering guide is a bit long in the tooth as well along with the old Leroy lettering system that had a sleeve for open ink wells instead of the Rapidograph style pens.  I used all of these on diazo paper and linen media except early on when there was this oil based reprographic sytem.

Don't forget non-repro blue pencils.

[cmwade77]

$820 a month? That’s less then $5 an hour. ...And no layoffs?!

The question is what year was that? Ok, I  found that it appears to be 1970, let's break this down a bit:
Income was from $350 to $820 per month. The average work week in 1970 was 43.1 hours per week. I am assuming two weeks of paid vacation is included in these numbers, so that works out to about 180 hours a month.
At $350 per month, that comes out to about $1.95 per hour, adjusting for inflation, that is $12.74 per hour in today's money.
At $820 per month, that comes out to about $4.56 per hour, adjusting for inflation, that is $29.79 per hour in today's money.

At the higher end, it means many of us are not making the equivalent of what we would have been considered to be worth back in 1970. I think this needs to change.

[Dlanor]

I love the smiley template 

[Dinosaur]

I should have been so lucky ... my first full time gig paid 2.75/hour.  The ammonia fumes from the diazo 5 ft from my desk were free, however.  I still have my 53 yr old set of instruments similar to those in that ad in my go bag of favorite tools that I didn't want to unpack

[JohnK]

I’ve already decided my kids are not going to follow me in this field. I’ll be damned if they have to deal with the crap we’ve had to put up with these last few years.

[Dinosaur]

I’ve already decided my kids are not going to follow me in this field. I’ll be damned if they have to deal with the crap we’ve had to put up with these last few years.

Last FEW years?  Kerry was correct, you ARE a young whippersnapper ...

[JohnK]

Yeah, but most people are young to Kerry. He goes to the museum for his class reunion.

[Dinosaur]

I love the smiley template 

I preferred the style with the series of small holes down the middle rather than the long slot.  That style was the original LTSCALE - just draw a line, overlay the shield and erase the gaps for the appropriate line type.