Something to celebrate
Not going to be home for your favorite television show?
If you forgot to DVR it, chances are good it’s available on-demand through a cable provider or one of any number of streaming services.
If it isn’t, you can typically buy it – near immediately – for a couple of bucks.
In 2021, we expect that immediacy, but, youngsters, it wasn’t always so simple.
DVRs have only been around for about 20 years.
Those who came before you were stuck with the videocassette recorder.
The VCR, first developed in 1953, hit homes in the 1970s. By the 80s, many homes had one and video rental stores boomed.
VCRs offered a way to bring home the movies we didn’t see in the theater; they also brought a way to record the shows no one wanted to miss. (“Murder, She Wrote,” anyone?)
Reels of tape inside a rather large cassette recorded a manually set program on TV, which typically had to be set to Channel 3 to record properly.
Rewind the tape, press play and voila!
They were a marvel.
Unfortunately, the tapes had a shelf life. Record over them too many times and the quality would plummet; sometimes, the ribbon would break. If your luck was really bad, it broke inside the VCR and you had to carefully dislodge it, hoping not to break the innards of the machine.
Still, it allowed many of us now-40 or 50-somethings to create our own personal video libraries.
Those tapes are little more than paperweights now. VCRs have gone the way of the dodo; finding movies and shows is as simple as a tap of the remote or a request made to a virtual assistant.
On Monday, however, we can celebrate the humble VCR and all the joy it brought to those of us who lived through the time of cassettes carefully marked with the often-ignored “do not tape over.”
Other days to acknowledge this week include:
June 3: National Egg Day, National Repeat Day, National Itch Day
June 4: National Old Maid’s Day, National Hug Your Cat Day, National Doughnut Day
June 5: National Veggie Burger Day, National Black Bear Day, Hot Air Balloon Day
June 6: National Higher Education Day, National Gardening Exercise Day, National Drive-In Movie Day
June 7: National VCR Day, National Oklahoma Day, National Chocolate Ice Cream Day
June 8: National Name Your Poison Day, National Upsy Daisy Day, National Best Friends Day
June 9: National Donald Duck Day, National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day, Writers’ Rights Day