When my mother-in-law was born in 1924, no one had yet said, “That’s the best thing since sliced bread!” Reason why? Sliced bread hadn’t been invented yet. Oh, you could slice it in your own kitchen with your own knife, but it wasn’t until Frederick Rohwedder invented the bread-slicing machine in Chillicothe, Missouri in 1928 that you could buy a loaf of sliced Wonder bread.
We just celebrated my mother-in-law’s 95th birthday. In the year she was born, yearly income was $2,196. A new car cost as little as $265, and the gas to make it run cost 11 cents a gallon. A loaf of bread—unsliced—was 9 cents. Indoor plumbing and electricity were found in more and more homes, but certainly not all. Roads were being paved and streetlights were starting to light them up. It was a new and evolving world
So what other innovations has she seen?
The loudspeaker was invented the year she was born and has been crackling and distorting voices ever since.
The car radio was invented in 1929, the same year the stock market crashed and no one could buy a car and jam out to “Making Whoopee” by Ella Fitzgerald.
The electric razor came along in 1931. They sold for $25—or about $360 in today’s dollars. That’s a lot of money to pay for fewer nicks!
In 1938, the ball-point pen began making writing easier and less messy. Imagine having to refill your pen every so often. Actually, some of you may need to imagine using a pen.
Also in 1938, electronic televisions went on the market. Fifteen years later, the first color television sets appeared. In 1955, the first remote control was invented and we’ve been looking for it ever since. (“Where’s the clicker? Has anyone seen the clicker?”)
The slinky was invented in 1943. They invented that before disposable diapers, which came along in 1946. This was a sure indication men were still in charge of the world.
In 1948, the pager was invented. Anyone under the age of 30 might want to Google what that is.
In 1951, cars started becoming equipped with power steering. That was a shame because turning those old steering wheels used to tone the arms.
Hi-fi stereos came along in 1960 but because people were playing vinyl record albums and listening to FM radio, they still didn’t sound as good as the earliest iPods.
In 1968, people could install smoke detectors in their homes. In 1969, they could try to figure out which one of the *@#% things was beeping.
1969 saw an invention that would change the world—the Internet. It would be decades before it would lead to our fascination—possibly our addiction—to fake news articles and kitten videos.
It’s hard to believe that the decade that gave us leisure suits and Richard Nixon also gave us the pocket calculator (1971) and the first VHS video recorder (1978). For you younger folks, the latter was our “streaming” service. But we had to be kind and rewind.
In 1980, the Sony Walkman enabled people to take their music anywhere. It was also the first time people walked around with earphones on. No one had any idea that one day, you couldn’t walk a city street without seeing people plugged into their devices. The headphones are far less bulky now, meaning sometimes in the grocery store aisle, you might think someone is talking to you when they are actually talking to their babysitter. (“Are you free Friday?” “What? Me? I’m so flattered!”)
The 1980s saw a range of improvements in technology: the first noise-canceling headphones (1986), the VHS camcorder (1987), and digital mobile phones (1988). In 1989, the decade drew to a close by opening the Pandora’s Box known as the World Wide Web. To paraphrase the Bible and the first Morse code message ever sent: “What hath men wrought?” The original question asked what God hath wrought, but not sure we should lay the blame at his feet.
In 1992, the Palm Pilot came out (again, you young’uns can use the Google!).
In 1996, the first MP3 player came on the market and it wasn’t an iPod. It was called the Audio Highway Listen Up and held up to 60 minutes of downloaded audio files. For comparison, you can buy an iPod touch (yes, they are still making them) that has 256GB of storage. I think that’s a little more than 60 minutes, though I am not sure. For the record, the iPod came along in 2001.
Facebook burst onto the scene in 2004 and Twitter in 2009, and since then, we haven’t felt much need to talk to each other in person. I expect in 10 years or so, someone will “invent” an RL chat room (Real Life, in case you didn’t get that), where you can go in person and see that your Facebook friends are using photos that are at least 10 years old and 20 pounds slimmer.
We just had a similar in-person get-together to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 95th birthday but it was greatly enhanced by technology. My sister-in-law used the Internet to invite people; my brother-in-law used it to order food for the party; my husband used it to book the venue. We used GPS to drive my fully automatic minivan there (no breaking your arm cranking down windows or turning the steering wheel.) I locked the car door from the porch. Margaret’s sister, Ruth, couldn’t make it to the party so she and her husband Leonard FaceTimed in to sing happy birthday to her big sis. We watched a slide show my daughter and sister-in-law put together that was created on a computer and shown on a big-screen TV with the use of AppleTV. We danced to music streamed from Spotify on an iPhone to a speaker no bigger than a ciabatta loaf. Then we shared pictures on the internet in the blink of an eye.
So happy birthday, Margaret. You’ve come along way and so has the world!