The SR-71 Blackbird, one of the most advanced aircraft ever built, took its first flight closer in time to the Wright brothers' historic lift-off than to today.
A jet that cruised at over 3 times the speed of sound and flew at altitudes that border space - an engineering marvel that broke records and continues to awe us to this day.
Yet, Blackbird’s first flight in 1964 is closer to the Wright brothers' 1903 Kitty Hawk moment than our current year.
Sad bloke that I am, I worked that out as 27d/hr i.e. 2 and 3 i.e. 2 shillings and thruppence an hour. If that was yours, you’re a good deal older than me! I hitched from NI to Kings Lynn to work in Donald Cooks canning factory when I was 17. We were getting 6 and 6 then, and us students all went on strike on behalf of the girls, who were only on 3 and 3. Half of the blokes pay. Quite normal then. It worked too, as they couldn’t do without the students doing seasonal work.
IIRC it was about £3k a year, when I started working for RBS. Had to have a bank account and get paid into it, but when I worked at Bejam as a Saturday Boy, that was a proper brown, windowed wage envelope with about £20 in it.
£28 a week in a bakery. I had a part time job there and just moved into full time whilst technically still at school. I moved into working in a garage, petrol pumps and tyre fitting etc for £35 a week. As I'd worked at the bakery a week in hand, my first week at the garage saw me with 2 pay packets. Man i was minted!
My first job was doing breakfasts in a hotel and giving the residents their early morning tea/coffee. I can't even remember how much I got paid, except that it was a pittance. Things improved when I managed to get a job as a library assistant in about 1971 - as many books as you could eat and a frankly wonderful £17 a week. I stayed there until 1974, mainly because all the other library assistants were young and female. By that time my weekly wage had risen to £25 a week but it wasn't keeping pace with my increased spending, so I applied for an advert in the local paper for 'trainee computer operators' at the dizzying rate of £35 per week and that started a 45 year career in IT...