10 July 1967.

[Paul in NZ]

I think we have a decimal currency tea towel at home some place with the conversion rates on it. Vicki picked it up some place on one of her fossicking trips. i reckoned it was a classic and we should have framed it but she said i was mad so we just use it...

No vision that woman (probably just as well considering who she married)

Paul N

Jeeze - I just started humming the wee jingle that went with it... One cent, two cent stay in lione for DC day..... etc etc

[Finn]

Finally a post that makes me feel young. I wasn't even born then.

Thanks gramps.

[Beemer]

I used to scrounge pennies off people and I remember being taken to a big toy shop in Hastings with a bag full of pennies and other small denomination coins and paying for my purchase a coin at a time... I was only five... and I bought a teddy bear!

Ah, the memories! I also remember Wahine Day the following year - we were living in Lower Hutt by then and our school was flooded and subsequently closed for a week or so.

As for you Finn, you young whippersnapper!

[Maha]

Started school at the end of July 67'...... remember having saved a jar of pennys that i couldn't spend but other than that it was just another day.

[terbang]

Got my "Dollar Scholar" certificate in 1967 (age 7). Thank god because I hated doing the pounds shillings and pence thing during our arithmetic lessons at school.

[Motu]

Knew knew I was getting old when I came across adults who were born after men walked on the moon! That one will be coming up soon too - we tuned in our radios during class,man,that was a big event!

[yungatart]

Knew knew I was getting old when I came across adults who were born after men walked on the moon! That one will be coming up soon too - we tuned in our radios during class,man,that was a big event!

We got to watch it on TV during class, a real novelty as most of us didn't have tv at that stage, ohh, the excitement...
Beemer, what school did you go to, Mstrs was at Belmont school, it was closed too, he watched the Wahine go down from his Mum's kitchen window..

[Ixion]

One of the great disappointments of my life, that.

When man landed on the moon , I (and so many of my generation) predicted with perfect confidence that within our lifetimes we would be zipping around in personal spacecraft.

Today, the moon. In a couple of years, we'll knock off Mars and Venus. Finish off the solar system by the end of the century - easy, how far off that remote day seemed. And after that - the stars!

We had a optimism and confidence in man that has been lost today. 'Twas joy to be alive, and to be young, very bliss. We gloried in the day, and the promise of a bright and confident morrow.

Rhysling's words summed it up for us then:

Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet ---

I wonder where it all went wrong. And why we are STILL stuck on this damn planet.

[Hitcher]

Knew knew I was getting old when I came across adults who were born after men walked on the moon! That one will be coming up soon too - we tuned in our radios during class,man,that was a big event!

It still is a big event, particularly knowing now what we didn't know then, what computers do now that they didn't then. And they did it all in imperial measurement using slide rules (remember those?) to no more than four decimal places. Three guys in a pressurised dome atop a couple of thousand tonnes of high explosive pointing skywards, all of the components of which had been sourced from the least-cost supplier. And it worked! God bless you, Werner von Braun.

[Paul in NZ]

One of the great disappointments of my life, that.

When man landed on the moon , I (and so many of my generation) predicted with perfect confidence that within our lifetimes we would be zipping around in personal spacecraft.
EDIT
I wonder where it all went wrong. And why we are STILL stuck on this damn planet.

Bah! While that is slightly disappointing - the worst was beong told buy my maths teacher (after being told next years exam would allow calculators) telling me the biggest challange i would face in my life time would be how to fill in my leisure time 'cos everyone was predicting 3 day weeks etc etc... HAH! Whats with that!!!

Still waiting and i work longer than I ever bloody did.. Grrrrr!

Paul N

[mstriumph]

..........................................
I wonder where it all went wrong. And why we are STILL stuck on this damn planet.

.............. if you don't like it here then go back where u came from ......

[Maha]

men walked on the moon! That one will be coming up soon too - we tuned in our radios during class,man,that was a big event!

July 21st 1969 ..... does anyone remember a rocket capsual (dont know if it was off Apollo 11) going from school to school around NZ a few years after?
Or was i short changed......dam that decimal thing.....

[mstriumph]

if it was working why did they mess with it i say ....
... just gives rise to a bunch of confused people and posts like this one

personally i find it much more interesting that the distance from the tip of King Henry 1's nose to the end of his outstretched arm was a yard than i do that a meter is one ten millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator .....

bloody french ... mutter mutter mutter .....never can leave ANYTHING alone ..... mutter mutter .....

[scumdog]

Decimal currency was a rip-off!!

4 bits of chewing gum for two pennies i.e. 24 bits for a shilling which equaled 10 cents

NOW when decimal currency came in it was 4 bits of chewing gum for two CENTS which meant you only got 20 bits for a shilling (10 cents)

Bloody Gubmint!!

[mstriumph]

i blame the french .......