Living in the Cyber Age, it’s easy to forget that personal computers only came into existence for the mass market in 1981 (and even then, didn’t become common household items until the early 1990s), with the launch of the IBM Personal Computer (they coined that term, and the shortened “PC”). We got our first personal computer in 1993, and it had the astounding RAM of 256 MB!
As far as telephones went, I grew up with several: My grandparents’ farm had a box phone on the wall, with the separate ear piece; then they modernized to a heavy black beast of a rotary phone – the kind you could really slam down if the need arose; in fact, you had to be careful how you set it down when you weren’t upset, because it was so heavy that it might sound like a slam in the receiver! My family had wireless land-line phones, but the signal was poor if you moved much farther away than a long cable would have allowed. Remember the impatience of dialling a number on the rotary dial, especially if it contained nines or zeros? And remember that curly cable that got tangled on itself from being over-stretched? Cell phones didn’t really come into their own until the late 1990s as a mass-market item; kids today would find that hard to imagine, as they seem to think they’ll fall off the edge of the known universe and die if they leave the house without their cells.
Before Spotify, iTunes or MP3s, and even before CDs were common, cassette tapes and LP (long-play) records were all the rage. Remember winding cassettes with a pencil? Now that films like “Guardians of the Galaxy” have highlighted cassettes, this generation thinks they’re a novel gadget, and history begins to repeat itself with the labels of “retro” or “vintage” attached to make “old” sound “cool”! We had an 8-track player in our car, with a cumbersome disc the size of an old Beta movie cassette case. My father was always at the cutting edge of technology, and in the late 70s we had a laser disc player; the DVDs were the size of LP records (yet looked just like a CD or DVD of today), and we had films like “Logan’s Run” and “Heaven Can Wait”. The technology didn’t catch on, so I’ve never known anyone else who had that contraption (an image below shows the size comparison to a modern DVD). Another gadget we had was a set of picture frames hanging on our living room wall; they were filled with psychedelic lights that reacted to sounds, changing colours as you talked, sang, or watched television. The topic of TVs is a whole other kettle of fish! As the way of dinosaurs, cassettes and 8-tracks, CDs are nearly a thing of the past now, with digital clouds; even television stations will struggle to survive in the changing technology with on-demand digital providers becoming more popular. Here are a few images to stir your nostalgia for stone-age technology:
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With so many changes happening just within a few decades, it’s easy to imagine that a century ago, things were even more different. I wish I had statistics for Europe, but here are a few US stats for the year 1906 – 110 years ago. Some of these items came in the form of a chain e-mail several years ago, and I didn’t forward it; even so, I’ve made new friends, I haven’t been hit by a meteorite, and I’ve been perfectly happy, despite the threats that come from breaking such a chain…
- 18% of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
- 2 out of every 10 adults were illiterate; only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.
- 90% of all doctors had NO college education; they rather attended “medical schools,” many of which were condemned by the press and the government as sub-standard.
- A 3-minute call from Denver to New York City cost 11 dollars.
- A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
- Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.
- Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
- Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
- Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores; pharmacists claimed that, “Heroin clears complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”
- More than 95% of all births in the US took place at home.
- Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
- Sugar cost 4 cents per pound; eggs were 14 cents for a dozen; coffee was 15 cents a pound.
- The American flag had 45 stars: Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska had not yet been admitted into the Union.
- The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30.
- The average life expectancy was 47.
- The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
- The average wage in the US was 22 cents per hour.
- The maximum speed limit for most cities was 10 mph.
- The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
- There was no official Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
- There were about 230 reported murders in the entire US.
- There were only 8,000 cars in the US, and only 144 miles of paved roads.
- With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st-most populous state.
- The five leading causes of death in the US:
- Pneumonia and influenza
- Tuberculosis
- Diarrhea
- Heart Disease
- Stroke
- The top news articles of the time:
- Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, located the Magnetic North Pole.
- Ethiopia declared independent in a tripartite pact; the country was divided into British, French, and Italian spheres of influence.
- Finland was the first European country to give women the vote.
- President Roosevelt sailed to the Panama Canal Zone. It was the first time a U.S. president travelled outside the country while in office.
- Reginald Fessenden invented wireless telephony, a means for radio waves to carry signals a significant distance. On December 24, he made the first radio broadcast: a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech.
- In Economy, federal spending was $0.57 billion; unemployment was 1.7%, and the cost of a first-class stamp was 2 cents.
- On 18 April, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit San Francisco, California, killing over 3,000. Though many have heard of the famous quake, a less-publicized 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Ecuador and Columbia earlier in the year, on 31 January, causing a tsunami. On 16 August, a magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile left approximately 20,000 dead, while on 18 September, a typhoon and tsunami killed an estimated 10,000 in Hong Kong. The media all but ignored such events, making the San Fran earthquake the best-known, though it was the least of all these events in the loss of lives. [Note the warning about shooting looters, from the San Fran mayor, in the images below.]
- A few famous births in 1906: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 Feb.); Hans Asperger (18 Feb.); Lou Costello (6 March).
Below are a few ads and gadgets from 1906 (gleaned around Pinterest), for your amusement:
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Have you ever heard of a butler (or male servant, in general) referred to as “Gieves” or “Jeeves”? This might just be where it all started: The Gieves Gentlemen’s Tailor Company was founded in 1771, and became a limited company in 1785; their dress wheel aided naval officers in choosing what to wear at any particular occasion, for any part of the world they might have found themselves in at the time. Dressing, even for men, was an extremely complex social signal in bygone eras. By 1935 there were twelve styles of dress, including tropical options. By turning the wheel, an officer could see just what to wear on any occasion. A handy little marketing device, it gained Gieves loyal royal naval customers, and the company has thrived ever since, with loyal customers including members of the British royal family today. For an interesting history of the company, click here.
