“The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slowest now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
‘Cause the times, they are a-changin’”
Bob Dylan (1963)
My Grandpop Leitmeyer was born in 1900. It’s hard to believe how much things have changed since then. I’m sure my grandparents were amazed with the new inventions they saw over their lifetimes. I just wish I asked them more about what life was like when they were young and how they felt about changing technology, but it just never came up much in our conversations. Now that I’m a grandfather myself, I find that I, too, have witnessed incredible technological advances over my 6 decades. While there are probably no surprises here for blog-readers of my generation, this post is primarily for my descendants- a look back at some of the technological advances that I personally experienced in my lifetime.
Phones
When I was young, we had one phone in the house. It had a rotary dial and a long cord. It was hard to have a private conversation because everyone in the house could hear what you were saying. I remember my grandparents had a “party line”- a shared phone line so that at any point in time when you picked up the phone you might hear some other stranger on the line having a conversation with someone, and you had to wait until they were done to use the phone. (It was always tempting to eavesdrop on their conversation.) Local phone numbers were only 7 digits- you didn’t need to use an area code unless you were dialing long-distance. The phone numbers started with the first two letters of your phone exchange- ours was Pi(lgrim)2-6170. We eventually got modern technology- push button phones, instead of rotary dials! It would be quite a while before I saw cordless phones- but then I could finally have a little privacy! Back then there was no social media, email, or texting. Communication was through the phone. I remember so many times getting nervous about calling a girl for date, practicing what I was going to say, and then anxiously making the call. Phones were such a big part of our life back then. You always needed to carry dimes with you in case you were out and needed to use a pay phone. Eventually cell phones came out, and that changed the whole ballgame. I remember hesitating to buy that first Blackberry phone- people started using them at work to check their messages when they weren’t at their computer. But I couldn’t imagine typing letters on that teeny-tiny keyboard! And I wasn’t that anxious to check my email 24 hours a day, but I eventually gave in and became a Blackberry user. All of those changes would have really impressed my grandparents, but smart phones? They wouldn’t believe it- now our phones take photographs, give us directions, send and receive emails, play music, pay bills, play games, and can pretty much answer any question we have on any topic by accessing a worldwide internet of information. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it!
TV
When I was young, we had a black and white console TV and got 3 stations- 3, 6, and 10. There were no programs late at night- I remember they would play the National Anthem, programming would stop, and then there were no more shows until the morning. It was common to adjust the antenna to get better reception. There was a lot of excitement when color TVs came out. I begged my dad to get one, but it took a while for him to jump on the color TV bandwagon. I remember my grandparents’ favorite shows- Grandmom and Grandpop Leitmeyer loved the Ed Sullivan show. Nana Waters like to watch her soap operas. Nana and PopPop also liked to watch game shows like “The Newlywed Game”, “The Dating Game”, and “Hollywood Squares”. And both my grandfathers liked to watch the Phillies games on TV. I also loved to watch TV when I was young- some of my favorite shows were Batman, the Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, Mannix, and the Mod Squad, and of course the Saturday morning cartoons. We eventually got remote controllers, underground cables instead of antennas, and VCRs to record our favorite programs. Each of those seemed like an incredible achievement at the time. Now we have a seemingly infinite number of streaming channels, and we have our choice of hundreds (if not thousands) of programs to watch whenever we want. Ironically, it seems I can never find anything good to watch on those hundreds of channels, and I frequently revert back to the “oldies” stations that play shows from the 60s and 70s.
Gaming
My oldest son’s profession as a computer game developer wasn’t a thing when I was young. The first arcade video game I remember playing was Pong, which came out in 1972, when I was 15 years old. It was quite an advancement compared to the old pinball machines, which were still popular at the time. Pong machines started popping up everywhere. It was so much fun- basically playing ping-pong on a video screen. You could eventually buy a home version, so 4 years later I was the happy owner of a Magnavox Odyssey 400, which hooked up to your TV and played a few variations of hitting that ball back and forth- Squash (known as Smash), Tennis, and Hockey. It had three control dials for vertical movement, horizontal movement, and spin- high tech stuff! Friends would come over my house and we would play the thing for hours. Arcade games got more and more detailed and complex the next few years. I remember when “Pac-Man” and “Space Invaders” came out, and then everyone forgot about pong. I spent many quarters playing them in the arcade at college. As my kids grew up, computer games became so complex I couldn’t even figure out how to play them anymore- a far cry from my days of hitting a little ball back and forth on the screen.
Home Computers
When I was young, my father was at the forefront of the computer age, working for IBM. He serviced large mainframe computers. Back then computers took up a lot of space- they would occupy entire rooms. I remember when “home computers” first came out. My dad was amazed that anyone could buy a computer and use it in their home. I bought my first computer in 1981, the year we got married. It was a Texas Instrument 99/4A computer. It had cartridges you could insert to play various games- my favorites were “TI Invaders”, “Munch Man”, and “Tombstone City”. You could also buy software for simple home management things like budgets and calendars and spreadsheets. It was a lot of fun exploring this new technology. My setup is pictured below- an old TV for the monitor, the TI Computer, an “Expansion Box” for memory cards and peripheral attachments, a printer, a cassette player for storing data files, and my box of software cartridges. With time, the home computers got fancier and fancier, with an exponential growth in memory that blew my dad away. When I first started working at Merck, we each had a computer for entering data, but we didn’t do any word processing- typing was too difficult; that was a job for the secretaries. When we were preparing lengthy medical reports of adverse reactions for submission to the FDA, we would dictate what we wanted to say into a tape recorder, and then hand the tape to a secretary to type it into a word processor for us. But over time, just about everyone became proficient at typing as computers became a common tool for everyday life. It’s hard to believe that this whole computer world we have today didn’t exist when I was young.
Watches
When I was young, you had to have a watch. How else would you know what time it was? Back then you had to wind up your watch by twisting a little dial back and forth- they didn’t have batteries. Battery powered watches were a great new development- no more winding up your watch! In my lifetime, watches went away to be replaced by cell phones which also had a clock on them. But then watches made a come-back, as they became “smart watches”, mini-computers on your wrist. Hey Grandpop, can you believe I can now take an EKG of my heart just by using my watch?
Cars
When I was young I remember watching flying cars on the Jetsons, and thought that might be in our future. Well, we haven’t come quite that far yet, but the modern car technology still would have blown away the 16-year-old me. When I started driving, the windows were rolled up and down with a hand crank. You actually had to put the key in the keyhole to unlock the door. Cars had radios, although the reception was often shaky at best. I started driving when cassette tapes were becoming popular and 8-tracks were phasing out. My first car was a 1966 Chevy Impala Super Sport, handed down to me from my dad. The interior looked just like the photo below- boy, does that bring back memories! My dad later installed a portable cassette player in the car, and I would always play cassette tapes wherever I went. Whenever I hit a bump, the tape would jam and get stuck, so it was a pain, but I loved it when it worked correctly. And now we have electric cars that don’t need gas or oil, our cars speak to us with directions for wherever we want to go, and they can warn you when there are other cars getting too close to you. My Tesla can even drive by itself. Grandpop wouldn’t believe it!
Kitchen
When I was young, there were no microwaves. The closest thing to a quick meal was the popular frozen Swanson “TV DInner”, which came in an aluminum tray that you heated in the oven. The microwave was a huge invention for my generation- what a time-saver! The other appliance we didn’t have in our home back then was an automatic dishwasher. They existed, but were more of a luxury item that most working class families didn’t have at first. I remember at our big family get-togethers for the holidays, after dinner the women would all go into the kitchen to wash and dry the dishes, while the men generally watched TV. (I know, I know- but that’s just the way it was back then.) Sometimes us kids would be called on to help dry the dishes.
I can’t imagine what the future will look like for future generations. It’s looking like “artificial intelligence” will have a major role. And I wouldn’t be surprised if people had computer microchips implanted in them with personal data like medical information. What is your vision of the future?
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