I know that the modern way to align a vehicle involves mounting optical sensors to the wheels and reading the computer screen to tell you how far to adjust the caster/Camber/toe etc, I've done it a hundred times. But how was alignment checked before computers? Toe I can imagine using some sort of metered stick and eyeballing it, but how caster and camber were measured I can't figure out.

Toe was often done like you describe.

Camber could easily have been done with something like this & a bubble level:

Caster I believe used something akin to a giant 2-tong fork agains the BJs.

When I was starting out as a mechanic we would use a bubble level that attached to the front hub. We would zero the level, turn the wheel to one side, zero it again then turn the weheel to the other side. That would give you your caster angle. At least that's how I remember it, that was over 20 years ago now and I haven't been in the industry for over 5 years now.

LOL! I'm OLD!!!!!

I'm not used to the NEW ways!

I was at a guy's house the other day and he couldn't get his car running. I opened up the points, cranked it over and it fired right away. He had NO point gap.

The kids hanging around asked how I got it running, so I told them it had no point gap.

Not ONE of them knew what points were! None had ever heard of them!

I find that very odd!!!