Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 21:24:43 on Tue, 15 Oct
2019, tim... remarked:

How did one pay for the journey in 1981

almost certainly cash

Coins.

and what cind of ticket did
you get? Magnetic stripe?

Unfortunately my collection doesn't go back that far

but definitely mag stripe

Yes. Introduced for the Victoria Line I think.

the question is would that have been a credit card sized ticket or did
they still have Edmondson sized "Yellow" tickets then?

They were yellow, but somewhat bigger footprint (and none of the
technology of) Edmondson.

The experimental installations were mainly at the District line stations
between Hammersmith and Acton Town
installed in the few years before the Victoria line opened.

I felt a bit personally targeted by some of the publicity surrounding
these , I cannot remember the exact wording but it was roughly “
Londoners ,Impress your country cousins by your mastery of modern
technology
while you show them how to use the gate”.
Due to the death of my father I had recently stopped being a young Londoner
and got moved from the vicinity
of Chiswick to the country bumpkin status of a farm in Devon in withered
arm territory shortly before it became a couple of fingers.
After that visits to London were biannual and I well remember the feeling
of insult on reading that publicity that
appeared to imply Londoners were of superior intelligence.
Still ,judging by the Homes in the Country TV presentation it was Mother
and I who were predicting the future
as 5 decades later half the buggers in London seem to want to move down
there to escape the stress that they themselves have had a part in
creating.


While checking the dates I came across this excellent article on the ticket
machines and automatic gates on LT.

The yellow tickets come in about chapter 5

http://www.metadyne.co.uk/pdf_files/AFC4.pdf


GH