Things have really changed!

I know I am among the oldest in our Read 600 class, if not the oldest. I am not complaining. I am proud of each of my years. I simply mention this because there are things I will remember from my youth that will seem foreign to some. For example, I can remember watching Black and White television as a young child. It was really a big deal to everyone when programs began to be aired in color. Wow! We had one television in the living room for the entire family, as did most of my friends. Today I have four televions in my home. Television antennas were attached outside to the roof of homes. Then we evolved to rabbit ears inside the home. Today we rely on cable and satellite dishes to transmit signals for our reception. As a youngster, I had just 7 local stations to watch. Imagine! We now have hundreds of regional stations around the world.
We listened to AM radio; don’t think there was FM at that point. We had Record players that played both albums and single 45’s. Again, it was a big deal when 8 track tapes held all our music. We no longer had to worry about stepping on our favorite album and breaking it. It would have been hard for me to imagine a CD that held 22 different songs.
Tape recorders back in the day were reel to reel; unlike the miniature compact digital ones of today that record on microchip. I think word processing on laptop computers with spell check would have been great as well if available to me as a student. Instead we were stuck with large bulky typewriters that needed ink ribbons changed frequently and white out for spelling errors. When we visited the library to get books for reading pleasure, or to get help with schoolwork, we used card catalogs to locate what we needed. Once again the beauty of technology makes this obsolete.

In the supermarket and department stores our bills were tallied on large adding machines. At that time it was actually necessary for cashiers to be good at math, ready to calculate the correct percentage off and compute the necessary change to return to customers. Often they had to rely on their use of mental math. Fancy computer registers of today seem to do everything for you with just the click of a button. God help the cashiers if the system goes down. By the way, we didn’t have Mega malls back then either.
And who knew that I would be able to take a picture of my new puppy and show it to my sister-in-law living in Oklahoma within the hour? Years ago when we took pictures with the family camera, we had to put them in the shop for developing and had to wait at least a week for them to be returned. Today I get impatient if I double click and the image doesn’t appear on the computer screen fast enough. Imagine!
Finally for years we used tabletop rotary telephones with party lines that serviced up to 3 or 4 homes. If someone told me then that I would be riding in my car talking on a thing called a cell phone I probably would have had him or her committed.
Technology and media has come a long way with many changes that have yet to come. I’m sure I will marvel at the world my grandchildren will be raised in.