ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

ss angl;ia

ss beer

Image result for gEORGE RAFT

Image result for 1940s uk biscuits

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Bet they don’t do that now!
ss bmw
Look at the price, but then it’s a BMW!

ss henley 1953

ss car4

ss bus 10

Image result for 1940s uk biscuits

Image result for 1940s uk biscuits

ss airship

ss 58 sedan de ville

Image result for 1940s uk biscuits

Image result for 1940s uk biscuits

ss bus 8

ss royal

ss tv

ss van
Couldn’t use that as an advertising feature today!

ss t

Image result for the springfields

ss prefecty

ss fag

ss morris

Image result for lucille ball vivian vance

Thanks, Dave.

As noted in the comments, I forgot to include street scenes… so here they are!

Image result for Wick high street 1960s

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Image result for dumbarton high street 1960s

83 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. As one of your daily readers but rarely commenters, thank you Tris & Munguin for keeping me informed & entertained since I discovered you in 2014. I blogged for a while myself that year but I’d left it too late to make an impact & the blog got shut down a while later. It takes me much time to read the dozen blogs I visit each day & I can only begin to appreciate how much effort it takes you to post good content day in, day out for years. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I hope to buy you a pint one day.

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    1. Thank you, Hugh!

      Most of the time I really enjoy it, and sometimes, I’m satisfied with posts.

      I guess most bloggers are like that.

      It’s become a way of life now, and Munguin has become a character in that life!

      Oh well, on with the next ten years! 🙂

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  2. Pic 3 – George Raft (the ultimate gangster movie star IMHO)? Pic 7 – Austin A30 Van. I have many happy memories of one of those but none that I can share here 🙂 Pic 12 – inside a Zeppelin? Pic 13 – Cadillac Sedan de Ville – late 1950s I’d guess. Pic 21 – The Springfields, before Dusty set out on her solo career – I particularly remember “Island of Dreams”. Pic 22 – Lucille (Ball) and Desi Arnaz of “I Love Lucy” fame.

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    1. As usual, you cracked them… But that’s Vivian Vance with Lucy!

      It just occurred to me that there are no street scenes this week. What was I thinking?

      I’d best remedy that in the morning when I’m back on the pc.

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      1. Hate to contradict, Tris, but if that’s Vivian Vance in the ciggies ad with Lucy she’s had a sex change 😄 Vivian Vance played Ethel in “I Love Lucy”

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        2. Andi…..It’s so surprising to see one of the old cigarette ads today. And especially so when famous stars like Lucy and Desi are featured. Philip Morris was the original sponsor of I Love Lucy. The characters on the show hardly ever smoked, but from time to time in a scene in the living room for example, Lucy will, for no apparent reason in the storyline, light up a cigarette.

          The show went on the air on the CBS network in 1951. TV shows of the time originated out of New York City and were only seen live by people in the big eastern cities and into a little bit of the Midwest through a Chicago connection. In other time zones, and in areas not connected by enough electronic bandwidth to transmit television, people saw television by time delay on blurry Kinescope films taken off a TV screen. Desi wanted to produce the show in Hollywood on 35mm film which would be available for simultaneous high quality transmission by TV stations across the country, but CBS and Philip Morris balked at the additional cost. Desi offered to pay the cost out of his own pocket in return for ownership of the film and residual distribution rights. It was one of the most lucrative deals in TV history. The I Love Lucy films that Lucy and Desi owned have run pretty much continuously in syndication in the USA and world markets for more than 60 years now.

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          1. I hadn’t even realised that that was Lucy and Desi in the cigarette ad.

            I’ve watched some Lucy shows. I think the humour probably didn’t date too well. But I know they were hugely popular at the time.

            She must have split with Desi after a while and she seemed to work with Vivian Vance.

            Didn’t they own a production company together, even after they split? Desilu, or something?

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            1. Tris……I Love Lucy seems dated now after more than half a century. But it’s not as awful as some other shows of the era, and it’s easy to see why it was so popular in its time, and even into the early reruns in syndication.

              Desilu was formed by Desi and Lucy from their company that produced I Love Lucy, and it became one of the most important independent TV production companies in Hollywood. After I Love Lucy and the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, the couple divorced in 1960. In 1962, Lucy bought out Desi’s interest in Desilu, and actively managed the big company herself. She sold Desilu in 1967.

              Lucy had two more hit television series after Desi was out of the picture. She and Vivian Vance remained close, and Vivian appeared with Lucy in her later shows.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desilu_Productions

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                1. Yes, she was apparently shrewd and tough. Some say that a reputation for arrogance and bitchiness comes from the time of the divorce and her management of Desilu. That she was a “nicer” person back in the I Love Lucy days when she depended on Desi to do the dirty work of the big time Hollywood production biz. Jack Benny was apparently a friend who nevertheless said that he aged several years one week when he appeared as a guest star on one of her later shows.

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  5. Last pic – Dumbarton High Street, looking west. Quay Street on the immediate left with Burtons The Tailor just beyond, then the Glencairn Greit Hoose and Wooolie’s just beyond again. Looks like 1950s. My grannie lived on the right-hand side just out of sight around the curve of the street.

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  8. I can’t get to Aberdeen today, unfortunately. The sun is shining; the sky is blue and the place will be blue with flags.

    Good luck to AUOB and all the people who march there to show the Brits that there indeed IS an appetite for change.

    And, it seems, everyone except Tory voters, want another referendum… even outside of Scotland

    https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-enemies-of-democracy/

    What was that we’ve been hearing, to the point of nausea, from them over the past 3 years about the “will of the British people(s)”.

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    1. Sorry you can’t make it, Tris. Weather is perfect here in Aberdeen. Great warm up event last night with the Wee Ginger Dug. Everyone raring to go.

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  9. Off topic, people, and not very cheerful, so if you don’t fancy a downer, don’t read. It’s entitled “Northern Ireland could return to violence, study shows” from the Irish Times. It rather emphasises the deplorable conduct of Westminster politicians toward Northern Ireland: BoJo’s insistence on dumping the backstop is sheer reckless insanity. Here’s the URL: http://archive.is/XpCM6.

    On a more cheerful note, the text has a couple of delightful Irishisms in it.

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    1. I’ve thought from day 1 that the people who instigated this were so London/Englandcentric, that they never gave the Irish situation a second thought.

      We know that the Secretary of State for Ireland under Maybot (remember her… the good old days) didn’t even know that people in Ireland had a tendency to vote along sectarian lines. Duh.

      But, all that said, there are three letters that come to mind. D and U and P.

      OK, I accept that from what I’ve seen of their politicians, they aren’t overly blessed with brains, but surely they must had some grasp of the situation.

      At the end of a jurisdiction there has to be some sort of border.

      Under the terms of the Belfast Treaty there can be no border.

      Fix that…

      OK, I’ll go rad the piece now, and probably regret writing this! 🙂

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  10. I’ve heard of Spry. Wiki says…”Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening produced by Lever Brothers starting in 1936. It was a competitor for Procter & Gamble’s Crisco.” It was mostly phased out by the 1970’s but you can still get it in Cyprus…… “Spry Vegetable Shortening is still widely available in Cyprus, where it is manufactured by Ambrosia Oils (1976) Ltd for Unilever Foods (UK) Ltd.”

    The old Sylvania TV set is interesting. It has a round CRT screen like early black & white televisions had, but the face is squared off top and bottom by the cabinet mounting. This is the same arrangement that was used in the early round-screen color sets in the USA from 1954 until about 1965. The first American national color TV standard was announced in 1953, and the first sets appeared on the market in the Spring of 1954. Other countries let the Americans make the early mistakes. BBC2 initiated color broadcasting in the UK in 1967 in time for the debut of Lord Clark’s “Civilisation” series.

    The Sylvania set must be from around 1950. This is a 1950 model Zenith round screen B&W, and the first 1954 RCA color set, model CT-100.

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    1. I can only imagine that “Spry” must be pretty bad for your arteries. Although Cyprus is in the EU so it can’t be THAT bad.

      Interesting that America was so far in advance with colour tv, and Europe so far behind.

      I’d never heard of round screens.

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      1. Not really.

        The TVs from 1950 were a wierd (experimental) standard and then it was the early NTSC standard (which has always sucked in terms of quality IMHO) from the mid 1950s. Widespread “prime-time” colour broadcasting didn’t happen until about 1965 so they were a couple of years ahead in terms of broadcasting when compared to most of Europe (67-69 – with the UK as alwys bringing up the rear).

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        1. Vestas……Only the CBS television network in the states ever broadcast in the “Field-sequential color” system that was adopted by the Federal Communications Commission” as the US standard in 1950. It used a rotating color wheel and was non-compatible with existing B&W sets. Then TV production was shut down for the Korean War, and in 1953 the FCC changed its mind and adopted the NTSC standard (compatible with B&W sets) that was promoted by RCA/NBC. RCA NTSC color sets were marketed as early as 1954, but as you said, it was a long time before there was widespread color broadcasting. Early NTSC was said to mean “never the same color,” but it remained the US standard for more than 50 years, until it was finally closed down in favor of the ATSC high definition standard in 2009.

          For years, all three major networks proudly proclaimed their color broadcasts with an intro.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-sequential_color_system

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          1. Thankfully PAL/NTSC/SECAM/etc are all things of the past for the most part as H.264/265 takes over.

            That means we all get to see the same shit in the same colours (more or less) 🙂

            /me has been capping videos (old BBC stuff which they actually own & I paid for) for decades so knows the pain of codecs and branches thereof.

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            2. Vestas….The BBC sometimes seems stingy about sharing things that they own, even if people would be OK with paying for them. Back about the time of the bicentennial of the revolution there was a BBC documentary by Alistair Cooke titled “America: A Personal History of the United States.” It had its initial run in the states and as far as I know that was the only time it was shown here. If it was ever rerun, it was a long time ago. I think the BBC finally released a DVD set in Region 2, but as far as I know, they never released it in Region 1, which would make it playable in AMERICA. (This info may not be current. I finally did get to see the program on YouTube…….before the BBC ordered it taken down. 🙂

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                1. Tris……There are still new and used copies on Amazon from third party sellers based in the UK and Europe. They are all in PAL Format, Region 2. So not playable in Region 1, US and Canada.
                  Fortunately, years ago, good quality uploads of all 13 episodes of the series showed up on YouTube. I downloaded them and have them on my computer hard drive now. (Please don’t tell the BBC.) The episodes were no longer on YouTube the last time I looked.
                  It’s maybe not surprising that home video copies are hard to find. The series aired in 1973, which was 3 years before the first VCR’s, and more years before the appearance of TV shows and other home video on pre-recorded cassettes. And it was nearly 30 years before DVD home video appeared. So maybe the BBC can be forgiven for putting it in the vault and forgetting about it for a while. 😉

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                  1. Munguin says that his lips are sealed, Danny, and he was thinking that a case of something tasty… maybe a case of Veuve Clicquot, would serve very nicely to ensure that next time he sees Lord Hall (BBC Boss) they will remain sealed.

                    He’s a mercenary wee animal!

                    🙂

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                2. PS Tris…….Do you remember the first big diplomatic blunder of the Obama administration? It was a visit from Gordon Brown, and one of the diplomatic gifts he was given was a big DVD box set of something or other. It was NTSC Region 1……not playable in England. 😉

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                  1. LOL… I’m sure Gordon would never have noticed.

                    Actually I had a notion that you could actually play them, but maybe only once. I remember buying a documentary about Dusty Springfield which was region 1 and I did play it once… but I only ever wanted to play it once.

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                    1. Ed……I’ve read about “all region” DVD players, but have never looked into that in any detail. Region 1 (includes Canada as well as USA) is about all you encounter in North America. (Mexico and South America are Region 4.) Amazon (the USA website at least) always posts a prominent warning note if an offering is NOT Region 1.

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                    2. Yeah, those DRM things are a menace – most PC DVD drives are all-region, I think, and at one point I learned how to spoof them even if they weren’t but can no longer remember how – in short, the region thing can be got around.

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      1. Thanks Dave……Very interesting! I knew that Baird was a great pioneer in the field, and that the BBC had made some television broadcasts using his system in the 1930’s, but I didn’t realize that he had been that successful with a color system.
        If I had read further about the “Field-sequential color system” that was officially chosen by the Federal Communications Commission as the American color TV standard in 1950, I would have seen that it used the basic principles of Baird’s system. It was the US standard until the NTSC system was adopted in 1953. The NTSC color standard had the advantage of being all-electronic, and it was “compatible” with existing B&W TV receivers. Existing TV sets would seamlessly receive color broadcasts and render them on the screen in B&W.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-sequential_color_system

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        1. The Baird system – i.e., a spinning disk to do the scanning – is, I believe, still used in some specialized applications, such as low-light video – because you have only one light detecting cell (in B&W), you can make it very sensitive, as in charge-coupled devices. Dunno how they rate compared to the latest digital cameras though.

          So Logie Baird invented television in a hybrid mechanical / electronic form, but Americans invented fully electronic TV.

          I wonder if there’s a blue plaque for him in Helensburgh (I think it was Helensburgh anyway).

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          2. Utah-born Philo Farnsworth was said to have had the idea of a television image raster by looking at the plowed furrows on the family farm. He demonstrated the idea to his high school science teacher when he was 15 yo. He developed the first fully electronic television system in the 1920’s, and held key patents to the technology that led to the Image Orthicon Tube that became the basis for television as it was developed on a widespread commercial basis. Farnsworth engaged in protracted patent battles with Vladimir Zworykin and RCA (Radio Corporation of America.) (His high school science teacher gave testimony about what he had drawn on the blackboard.)

            Wiki: “In 1932, while in England to raise money for his legal battles with RCA, Farnsworth met with John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor who had given the world’s first public demonstration of a working television system in London in 1926, using an electro-mechanical [rotating wheel] imaging system, and who was seeking to develop electronic television receivers. Baird demonstrated his mechanical system for Farnsworth.”

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  11. I’ve had a long look at the first of your added town pics, Tris. I think it’s Wick. It’s many yeaes since I’ve been there but I think the view is down Bridge Street towards the war memorial which you can just make out in the distance behind the horse and cart. Going on vehicles and clothes – 1920s?

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  12. Tris….I guess that solid vegetable fat shortening may have been a bit healthier than animal fat lard, and Crisco was reformulated some years ago to further reduce unhealthy fats. Not sure about Spry in that regard.

    The large-sized evacuated CRT tubes used for TV screens were easier to manufacture in a uniform round shape. Probably safer from implosion too without the more highly stressed corners. The electron beam scan is also harder to control in the corners of a rectangular screen. None of that is an issue in today’s flat panel displays of course, but it was important in early TV.

    The development of a workable color TV system in the States involved corporate competition between non-compatible systems developed by the two big American TV networks NBC (whose parent company was RCA) and CBS. It reads like a soap opera, with the FCC adopting the CBS system and then changing their mind three years later in favor of the NBC/RCA system. Most of the world was probably content to just wait and watch, in order to see what would finally work. There’s an interesting interview with David Attenborough about “Civilisation” and the BBC’s inauguration of color broadcasting on BBC2. You may have seen it.

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    1. Danny, has America gone all-digital in TV broadcasting yet? Here in the UK we are, and are currently clearing about half the spectrum used for it – the old channels 21 to 68 – to make way for 5G mobile. I guess they figured they could squeeze more into the available space because you don’t need audio sidebands and that sort of thing.

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      1. Ed…..Yes! For all practical purposes, the last remaining television stations in the States still broadcasting on the old NTSC 525 line analog system made the transition to ATSC high-definition digital on June 12, 2009. (A few special low power stations were exempted for a time.) Digital broadcasting is indeed a much more efficient use of the telecommunications spectrum. Each existing station was given a new frequency band on which to operate, and the old bandwidth was turned back to the Federal Communications Commission for re-allocation.

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        1. Danny
          NTSC, know in ruk as Never the same colour Twice.
          As to the scan coils, in ruk the back emf from the scancoils was used in the dreaded TV detector vans, parked close to your TV they could pick up the backstop blank, compare it to what they were picking up Off Air and deduce which station you were watching.
          Flat panel TVs re radiate nothing in comparison so the detector vans are redundant, they use computer databases of addresses to bully people into paying for a license to pick up propaganda.
          The EBC is a State Broadcaster just like RT, though they like to put it about that they’re funded by the people of the ruk.
          The bandwidth of a digital station is very narrow compared to our old 625 line UHF system in PAL.
          We now get over a Hundred Stations of TV plus a large number of Radio stations in Half the band.
          Sound is transmitted in bursts of 30 seconds compressed into less than a second, hence why you have the ability to sync up the sound to the picture.
          Only problem is the 100 channels are mainly repeats from the back catalogue repeated in 8 hour cycles, 24 hours a day. Hence Dad’s Army, Last of the Summer Wine and old films from the 30’s and 40’s. My own personal hate is the opium for the masses, Soap operas.
          Gave up the TV watching, a good book or a wee project is much more satisfying, like AoY.

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          1. They didn’t detect the “scan coils”, they detected the “IF”* which all CRT and early flat panel TVs of the time used when they operated.

            *Intermediate Frequency

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            1. Thanks for the info, on IF, didn’t think that the there would be a large enough signal to pick up outside the house.
              Certainly now with LED/LCD flat panels being used in computers and TVs how could they tell what the device was, the license is to receive live TV transmissions, the latest change to the license was to bring in the use of mobile devices that can stream ‘LIVE’ broadcasts but with a short time delay compared to off air. Does that mean you are not receiving it live on a digital mobile device.
              Try listening to a FM station on analogue and digital (DAB) at the same time, the time delay is quite noticeable.

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          2. Dave, Vestas……..I’ve never looked into the matter as to how the TV licensing fee (or whatever they call it) works in the UK. Is it a tax on any TV receiver you own, or just a tax on viewing BBC content?…………and if it’s just a tax on BBC content, how would they know the difference? For that matter, what if you have a TV that you don’t use to receive broadcast signals at all? Maybe you just have it hooked to a DVD player, and all you watch is video disk media that you own.

            Before commercial television began in the UK, and long before you might be receiving a hundred channels over a commercial cable connection for example, the decision in 1946 to fund television according to a taxation model seemed to have a BIG advantage over the American commercial model. Television is almost unwatchable in the states, where fully ONE-THIRD of the time is given over to “commercials.” (The total commercial time is even more than than that in non-prime viewing hours.)

            I see there is a Wiki article titled “Television licensing in the United Kingdom.” Perhaps I should read that before opining on the subject. 😉

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            1. The license is to operate a tv receiver to show off air transmissions from the BBC and ITV networks.
              You would be hard pressed to see the difference between the bbc and the itv network stations that transmit commercials, the BBC also show tasters of programmes to come, commercials in all but name.
              Recent changes include the use of mobile devices that can access these stations.
              The bbc recently sold the rights to Attenborough’s Blue Planet series to Netflix for a share in one of Netfix’s commercial channels.
              The bbc broadcast World Service programmes all around the World, LIVE, and can’t charge the receiving person a fee. Much the same as Voice of America or RT.
              Recently the bbc have announced the removal of free licenses given to the over 75’s, from May next year they will have to purchase a license at some £250 IF they want to legally view the bbc.You can be jailed for non payment of the fee if you also fail to pay the fine after a court case against you. It’s a CRIMINAL offence not a civil one.
              Yes seen the 20 minutes of adverts in the hour stations, they’re arriving here as well.
              I don’t have either.

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              1. Id just add that if your tv is not connected to an aerial, and you use it for dvd/video then you don’t have to pay.

                They have to be able to prove that you were watching live tv to charge you.

                Same with the catch up things.

                You can watch catch up from any of the channels, except the BBC.

                It’s outrageous that you have to pay the fee (It’s £155, I think) to watch a tiny proportion of what is available to watch.

                Why would I pay BBC so that I can watch re-runs on Gold, or Dave, or ITV3?

                Well, I don’t and I won’t.

                The quality of the tv programming is, generally and with some notable exceptions, really low.

                Much of it is now reality tv, dancing and singing competitions, shows about doing up your house, or garden, or poking fun at poor people.

                Seriously poor stuff. But there are 150 channels or so, probably more, and most of them operate 24/7, so the talent that is available is very thinly spread.

                The idea of paying £155 for it is simply laughable.

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                1. Ah…..OK…..I see it now about not being connected to an aerial and watching DVD/video.

                  What are “catch up things?”

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                2. I too refuse to pay the TV tax, and I’d just add that confidence in the BBC (news and opinion, I suppose) is really low in Scotland now. It was always low, I think, but now the bias is so extreme it’s really turning people off. I say good, let them push the bias and the propaganda to the extreme – because then more people will realize exactly what it is.

                  In Scotland, people pay the TV tax and the BBC spend far less in Scotland than they receive from us. Then they use it to pump out political propaganda against us. Not exactly good value for money – in so many ways!

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                  1. It amuses me that the woman who was appointed head of BBC in Scotland promised that her main job was going to be to restore the public’s faith in the public broadcaster.

                    Failed!

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              2. Dave……Yes, the 20 minutes of commercials per hour of programming PLUS a license fee would be a bummer.
                So apparently they do have a way of differentiating between a computer monitor…..or a home entertainment monitor connected to a DVD player…….and a live television receiver.

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  14. The dark dark blue Austin Seven is a 2 seat Doctor’s Coupe, very rare and Factory built in 1928 or there about. One Still exists in Edinburgh last time I saw it.
    Think the body was a copy of a Rover of the same style.
    Love the Smith’s Air Conditioning, a hot water coil and a fan, yes air heating rather than our modern idea of cool air with low humidity. No wonder the Japanese cars sold so well in the 70’s, fitted with heaters and radios, that all worked.
    Motor cycles were virtually oil leak free from the same source.
    Leslie Philips in the colour picture, probably Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machine, might be wrong.

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