New inventions in our lifetime........

[Katie77]

I decided to start this thread, after reading a post in David's, Heartland thread...

he mentions how in the "old days" when he had pen friends and used to actually "WRITE" letters to them, and then have to wait four weeks till he got a reply to that letter....comparing it to now, with email and chat, where "its like we are all in the same room".......

I replied, about the boss who told me 20-25 years ago, telling me that one day there would be a machine at the bank where we could deposit and withdraw money.......

Am curious, what other stuff do you remember hearing about that just seemed un-imaginable at the time, and yet now, we just take for granted.

Another thing I remember, the advent of CD's.....I remember walking past the first CD shop I had ever seen, with very few CD's in there, and thought, "that will never take off".........

[David]

Great idea for a thread Katie!

     How about personal Cell phones?     When I was a kid (ahem, not that long ago)  you had to find a phone booth or pay phone to make a call if you were not home.      Cell phones were only fantasy items like Star Trek's communicators or Dick Tracys wristwatch!     

    Speaking of which, some people don't wear watches anymore because their phones have a clock on them too!     

     We now have a generation of kids that don't know the sounds of coins clinking into a pay phone or using a rotary dial phone either!   

[delalluvia]

"Paying at the pump."

I thought, how were they going to keep people from just driving off without paying for the gas?

Duh.

[opinionista]

The fax machines. I remember when everyone was in awe when the fax became trendy.

[Kelda]

Great idea for a thread Katie!

     How about personal Cell phones?     When I was a kid (ahem, not that long ago)  you had to find a phone booth or pay phone to make a call if you were not home.      Cell phones were only fantasy items like Star Trek's communicators or Dick Tracys wristwatch!     

and how the hell did we make arrnagments to meet without the phone calls saying
where are you? or texts saying 'I'm running 5 mins late - just get me at the bar' etc etc

But shouldn't the real question be how would we live without the internet!?
Its only been about 8 years since I actually used the internet on a regualr basis. before I staryted uni in 98 I had maybe used the internet about 5 times for a couple of minutes at a time.

[Katie77]

Oh God yes, the internet.......

I had worked for a credit union, and used a computer all day long...one that was programmed to do the work for the credit union....I did not have Windows or internet facilities on it....I used to click away at the computer with clients sitting there watching me and they would say "Gee, you know a lot about computers"......

Then Hubby and I retired, and we got our own personal computer, so I could type up legal documents which at the time was necessary as my sons were representing themselves in family court.....and apart from all this document typing, I was just so happy to play solitaire in my spare time.

It was hubby who kept saying....."We should get the internet".....and I kept saying "what the hell do we need that for"......

Five years ago we finally got "hooked up"......well, a friend joined me up to ICQ, and I started getting on here and chatting to people all over the world.....thats all I knew how to do......I bought a book called "the Idiots Guide to the Internet", and couldnt understand it, so just plodded along, made some mistakes, and found out new stuff every day on here......

The rest is history......now I couldnt live without it....I do all my banking on here...have all my business on here,download music, make cd's, book tickets for shows, book airline tickets, plus I communicate with people all over the world......and guess what......apart from looking at a bit of real estate, the only thing my hubby still does on here, is "play solitaire"......but hes happy.

Makes me wonder just what will be available in another 10 years time.........

[coffeecat33]

E-mail ! I can't live without it. (And the internet)

[David In Indy]

Great idea for a thread Katie!

     How about personal Cell phones?     When I was a kid (ahem, not that long ago)  you had to find a phone booth or pay phone to make a call if you were not home.      Cell phones were only fantasy items like Star Trek's communicators or Dick Tracys wristwatch!     

    Speaking of which, some people don't wear watches anymore because their phones have a clock on them too!     

     We now have a generation of kids that don't know the sounds of coins clinking into a pay phone or using a rotary dial phone either!   

Boy, I remember the very first time I heard about a cell phone... actually it was a car phone. I couldn't figure out how it would work. I remember picturing a huge reel of telephone cord on the trunk of the car. Then I remember realizing a reel of cord on the back of a car wouldn't work. The cord would get all tangled up as the car drove down the street and turned corners. I think the first time I ever heard about a car phone was probably in the early 1980's. Of course back then, only the very rich could afford one and I never actually saw someone using a cell phone until the early 1990's. My friend Claude owned one, and he carried the phone around in a case (about the size of a brief case) which contained the phone, the telephone's computer and a large battery.

[David In Indy]

How about computers? I have read a few posts mentioning the Internet and email, but it wasn't all that long ago when none of us owned a computer at all!

When I was a kid (1960's) they kept telling us that someday people would have computers in their homes. Of course back then, computers took up an entire room or even an entire floor of a building.  Nobody ever imagined that one day those huge computers would actually fit on a desk, or even fit in a pocket or purse. Of course the next question always was "Why would somebody even want to own a computer? What would they do with one? Which room in the house would they put it?". The Internet, email, chat rooms and online banking never crossed anyone's mind. Computers only tracked missles or processed a company's general ledger.

I remember my mother waking me up early one Sunday morning and telling me to come downstairs. Radio Shack ran an ad in the Sunday paper and in it was their very first personal computer. Once I saw that ad, I knew the day was coming when people would actually own a personal computer. That was probably in 1976 (give or take a year).

Now, many people have two or three pc's in their homes and computers can be found in nearly everything these days; our coffee makers, watches, thermostats, our cars... just about everything. It's easy to forget that ony 30 years ago all of this was but a dream, and most people even scoffed at the idea.

I agree with Sue. I wonder what we will be using in another 10 or 20 years.   

[David In Indy]

Cable Television?

When I was a kid, Indianapolis only had 4 television stations: ABC (Channel 6), CBS (Channel 8 ), NBC (Channel 13) and Channel 4, which was a local channel. Many people couldn't pick up Channel 4 very well. The reception was very bad in parts of the city, and if you wanted to watch Channel 4 you had to point the tv antenna in the correct spot or wrap some foil around it (or stick a coat hanger in it). Later, Channel 20 (PBS) came to the city, and we had 5 channels.

Now, with cable, I have well over 100 channels and I always amaze myself when I can't seem to find anything interesting to watch on tv. I wonder how we ever survived when we had only 4 or 5 channels to watch? We didn't have DVD players or VCR's either. If we missed a show, we were SOL until the next time it came on tv.

God. I feel like my parents right now. I remember them saying "When we were your age we didn't even have tv. We had to listen to the radio!". 

Sheesh.

The funny thing is, we never felt deprived of anything. Indianapolis only had 4 tv channels, and nobody ever thought anything about it. The possibility of hundreds of tv channels would have seemed ludicrous to us back then. But now I wonder how we ever survived without them.