Another T1 here, fast-acting insulin wasn't invented until recently. One large dose of mixed insulin and a fixed diet may have been prescribed back in the day.
Before fast acting there was human analog, this is also somewhat short term. What was quite common for a while was the mixed insulins (the cloudy ones you would have to make sure mixed before injecting) which you took twice a day. The same could be achieved with individual doses of course. In general the very long acting insulins are highly variable and not much subscribed (as in they work between 12 and 48h, good luck if it varies a lot).
Long story short, NPH insulins for medium length (about 18h to a day but still lots of variation) was available since the 50's and was usually combined with normal human analog in either a mixture taken twice a day or in separate doses. I was on the twice a day regime of mixtard for most of the 90's.
Thank you for enlightening us, I was diagnosed around 2004. At that time, fast acting insulin was the norm. But I knew that some patients used mixed insulin.
I still know T1Ds who continue to use mixed insulin, because it works for them.
Lantus was approved in 2000. Diagnosed in early 2001, I spent maybe six months on NPH before they got me switched over. There’s also regular which is a mix of nph and fast acting, I still hear of people using that now as it works okay and is very cheap.
Long story short, NPH insulins for medium length (about 18h to a day but still lots of variation) was available since the 50's and was usually combined with normal human analog in either a mixture taken twice a day or in separate doses. I was on the twice a day regime of mixtard for most of the 90's.