Things That Once Amazed Us but We Now Take for Granted

[GB]

Everything listed so far has been great.

I will add remote controls. I remember sitting in my grandparents TV room when they had their remote control. It was attached to the TV with a thick wire. We thought it was the most amazing thing ever. It was the size of a box of tissues.

Computers would top my list. My father has been in the computer business for my entire life. When I was in nursery school in the early 70's I remember my entire class taking a field trip to my house to see our computer. It was this huge thing with a screen that could hold about 3 words of text at a time. You took your phone receiver and plugged it into the suction cups on top to get it to work. We used to play a game on it called Animal. It was a 20 questions type game where the computer would guess what kind of animal you were. Everyone was amazed at this machine and what it could do.

[Andy M.]

GB That had to be the coolest. Having your class come to your house for a field trip!

[GB]

We lived just a 5 minute walk from the school so everyone just walked down to my house. It really was cool. I was proud as a peacock.

[Jeekinz]

Originally Posted by GB

I will add remote controls. I remember sitting in my grandparents TV room when they had their remote control. It was attached to the TV with a thick wire. We thought it was the most amazing thing ever. It was the size of a box of tissues.

My first thoughts. LOL

We had that cable TV remote with the 15 foot wire. It had 12 or so buttons and the side control to select higher channels. No matter what, someone would walk by and catch the cable on their foot ripping it clean from your grasp. LOL ROTF

[suziquzie]

My brother and I got in a little trouble once,
we were caught using the remote to play jump-rope.....

[GB]

Here are a few more...

Garage door openers
keyless entry for cars
Cable TV

[Wart]

Originally Posted by AllenOK

Can you imagine what is going to happen in the next 50 years?

I hope to live to see it (I'm 49).

Take for granted ... thats a rough one.


Electronic Fuel Injection. When the truck or car is very VERY cold and I turn the key and it starts without having to play gas pedal games ... That still brings a smile. And no carb ice.

2 gig SD card. Wife got into eBay. I took pictures with the SLR I got in '80 or the one she got in '77, had the pictures developed, scanned and used them in the auctions at a cost of about 25 cents per graphic. This started getting expensive and time consuming so in '99 we got a Sony Mavica that wrote to floppy. I was thrilled. I could take a mess of pictures and have auctions posted in the time it took to get the pictures back from the developer (if we waited for them). But as time went on listening to the Ca Chunk Ca Chunk of the floppy drive got taxing. Plus the writing to and retrieval of data from the floppies more than once started getting iffy. Plus Disks are getting hard to find.

Last November we got a Nikon DSLR. Last week I got a 2 gig memory chip for it (had been using a 512 meg chip). Last weekend I was at Relay for Life and filled the chips. Twice. I put a stop watch on the transfer from the chip to computer, transferring 2 gigs of 600+ Raw format and high res JPG graphics (RAW + B) took 5 minutes 30 seconds. Slow card. ;) If I used this card once cost per picture would have been just over 6 cents a picture. But it can be used many times ... this all Makes me smile.

[Andy M.]

Originally Posted by Wart

...2 gig SD card. Wife got into eBay...

I have to say that digital photography is one advancement that continues to amaze me. My first camera was an Eastman Kodak Brownie.

Now I can take pictures, load them onto my computer, mail them around the world and print them in the time it used to take to laod a new roll of film into the Brownie.

[Barbara L]

All the responses are great--keep 'em coming!

One of our dearest friends lived to be either 104 or 105 (her daughter-in-law didn't bother to let us know she had died, so I'm not sure which) and died around 1987. I loved to listen to her tell about her early days. It always amazed me because she was alive during the inventions of so many amazing things.

Did you know that the head of the U.S. Patent Office wanted to close it down in 1899 because, "Everything that can be invented has been invented?" Pretty amazing considering most of the things that have been invented have been invented since he said that.

Barbara

[Wart]

If someone has a history do they really ever take things for granted?

Can you imagine a 16th century cook ever taking a gas range for granted? Ok, so that's a bit far fetched.

I take the telephone for granted. But then it was there when I was born.

And last night I'm fast forwarding through Paula Abdul and commercials with the DVR and the thought crosses my mind: Wow, you know what this would do to a video tape?

Last weekend I'm taking loads of pictures and marveling at the lack of cost and instant feedback on the LCD.

I putter in woodwork. And I've been to Williamsburg numerous times. Quite often when I'm running the 50's jointer or the 60's and 80's table saws I think of what was needed to make a board in the 17th and 18th centuries. One person gets in a pit, another straddles the log, push and pull the saw between them. Ouch.


Something I have noticed in my short history of coming up on 50 years is advances in technology allow more people to do more things but they just don't seem able to do these things as well.

No simple explanation for this. Mayhaps because things are becoming easier people don't pay as much attention to what their doing. Other times I think it has something to do with safety nets.

I think it also has something to do with what was written well over 100 years ago, their taking the talent and skill out of the craftsman and putting it in the machine (paraphrase). Machines really don't have soul and I think soul is missing from much of todays work.

When doing my woodwork I oftenly stop and wonder, would I be able to do these things if I had to start by straddling a log and pulling and pushing a saw. Maybe, but would I want to? No.