The first time I ever saw....

1967 working in the Pharmacy on Grand Bahama Island told by anAmerican Gentleman who paid by credit card that eventually everyone would pay by cards and no one would carry cash. It was what the Banks wanted. I laughed, but seems he was right .

The first time I sat and watched a television was for the coronation in 1953. Neighbours invited us in to their home to watch. A crowd of us huddled round a tiny black and white screen.

Oh and underfloor heating in the bathroom the year before when we went to Denmark.

Same for us GrandmaKT. We had a holiday in Germany in 1979 and came home and bought a duvet.

Saw my first bidet in a posh French hotel my father took me to when I was fifteen. I filled it up and sat right in and all the water shot out all over the floor. On top of that, I got stuck and couldn't get out of it.

Saw my firt artichokes in 1963, in the French home where I was au pair, with a note instructing me to cook them for lunch. Didn't have a clue: fried all the leaves until brown and crisp and threw away the hearts. Inedible. The family were not amused.

A bidet in a hotel room in Switzerland. It was 1960 and I was on holiday with a friend. Someone in our group said it was for washing your feet!

Someone mentioned bananas. It was 1945 and my uncle brought some over to us. Everyone watched me taking my first bite of this unusual fruit, but I then spat it out in disgust. They all laughed and I ran out of the room in tears! Love them now.

I saw my first computer on a trip to my dad's workplace, the Lawrence Livermore Lab, where work and research was/is done on laser, solar, fission, fusion and electromagnetic technologies some of which required HUGE computing systems. They covered whole walls and had reels turning tape (?), lights, buttons, and machines spitting out dense sheets of info. I just "Googled" it and found this picture. Seemed bigger when i was 10.

Chinese Gooseberry, first seen, bought and eaten in the fruit shop at Piccadilly Underground in 1962.

Now I live in New Zealand where it is grown, sold by the billion (both green and gold) and exported to the world as Kiwifruit.

We're supposed to call it by its trendy buzz name, 'Zespri' - no one does.

Good thread!

I saw my first duvet (continental quilt as we called them then) in Germany in 1972. We had swapped homes for a holiday with a German family and they had them on all their beds. We couldn't believe how light and yet how warm they were, only having had heavy blankets before.

1980 Sydney I saw my first microwave oven and a fridge with an ice dispenser. I could only dream of such luxuries on my return to Blighty

A calculator around 1970.

My husband-to-be insisted he needed one for his studies and I thought they were very expensive and something he could easily do without!

Reminds me of when I babysat for a Lawyer's family in SW London in 1967. They had things in their fruit bowl which I had never tasted before. I tried avocado for the first time.

A green pepper in a Cambridge don's house around 1970. We never had such exotica in South Yorkshire!

The first computer I saw filled a whole room, back in the mid 70s.

About 25 years later our bursar at work swaggered in with a new-dangled memory pen (USB flash drive) on a chain round her neck. It was very expensive - her husband had bought it her for her thirtieth birthday. I was in awe that something so small could hold all that data.

I used to walk up the hill to watch colour TV at my friend's house (her parents were rich) . That must have been in the late 1960s. The betamax recorders were the best but the vhs became more popular (unfortunately) so they became obsolete.

Sharon, I did the same with my first automatic machine (bought after my twin tub electrocuted me). I was so used to 'doing' the washing that watching seemed logical!

I forgot to say, the colour tv we had in 1971

Our mum and dad rented from the Co-Op our first colour television. Hadn't seen one before.
I can't remember the year but would have been in the 1980's we all trudged round my sisters and her husbands house one evening to see our first vhs player. We watched a 'pirate' tape ( it wasn't me constable) of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
I had never seen an automatic washing machine until we moved into our first house and bought one on the never never, mum had had a twin tub. That was in August 1977. It was such a novelty that on a Friday night when it been plumbed in, my sister and I sat in front of it in the kitchen and watched the whole cycle go through. We were amazed.

Not me but my mother.

She'd never seen a banana

She was a child during the war and the delights of bananas had passed her by

A colour tv which must have been around 1961/62. Some friends of my parents who had a lot of money bought one and we were in awe at the wonderful colours.

The first camcorder was when my FIL hired one for a family Christmas party in 1981 - it was absolutely huge and he had to wear it on a strap as it was so heavy. It's lovely to look back on that film now and see so many family members who have gone and our sons aged 9 & 6

I saw my first chest freezer at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1968, just after we got married. I was blown away by the practicality of the whole concept, not that we could afford it then, we were saving like mad for a house

But 5 years later,with second child on the way we got one. I was able to make sure there was a fortnight's supply of home-made ready meals in it before I gave birth so that my mother who would be staying to look after me at home after my discharge only hours after the birth could concentrate on looking after No 1 while I nursed No 2 (no paternity leave in those days).

She was so impressed she went straight out and bought one herself.

EllanVannin that resonates with me too.
Great thread. It's testing my grey cells.

I remember DH bringing home a TV that got ceefax and teletext. 1975?

Wimbledon in colour was the reason my DM decided on a colour TV.

We are usually the last people to get things as I am always sceptical. DM got herself a microwave oven but how we laughed as she showed us how to make scrambled eggs.

Not so much what I saw but what I was told years ago by my brother who worked in telecommunications that one day we would see who we were talking to on the phone.It was late 60's early 70's.

The first time I saw a video was in the shop window of W H Smith in Nottingham - it was a ballet version of a Beatrix Potter story. There were so many people spilling over the pavement it nearly stopped the traffic. The police came and had a word. "Every home will have one," we were told. They were ahead of their time and but now considered old-fashioned. How times change.

I saw my first colour television in the shop window of an electrical shop in Oxford town centre in 1967. Wimbledon was on and it seemed strange to see the green grass and all the other colours. I also remember using a cash machine for the first time in the u.s.a. In or about 1978. When another English family moved into our street I drove her to this cash machine and showed her how it worked. We both stood there waiting for the notes to come out of the dispenser. I suppose people were the same when they saw a car for the first time! Hard to believe there will be more amazing things to see for the first time in future generations as it seems there’s nothing left ....