I first started camping in the late 50s with mum and dad. We went most weekends and I even had my own pup tent - wooden poles and no flysheet but room for me and the dog. In '61 or '62 I went up market and was given a tent with a sewn in groundsheet, a bit of a novelty in those days. I had a piece of heavy duty clear plastic cut to the shape of the tent to protect the groundsheet from mud, punctures and worms but we didn't have a posh name for it like "footprint", we just called it "the plastic". The tent itself was not the lightest thing in the world, good metal poles and a decent canvas down to the ground flysheet. My idea of going lightweight was to leave the plastic behind as I needed the rest of it. I also had a lightweight Camping Gaz cartidge stove that could not be disassembled once the cartridge had been fitted without draining all the gas out. I didn't have a camping mat then, I don't think they had been invented, but I had a rubber Lilow. I carried the whole lot in a nice blue steel framed rucksack with leather straps that had a bit of felt on the shoulder straps for padding. I have no idea what it all weighed, basically if you could lift it that was a good enough.
In my teens, apart from weekends, I went on trips to Switzerland, France and Holland with this lot, sometimes on trips organised by the Camping Club and sometimes with a mate but you tell the young people of today that and they don't believe you!