Most people were happy to have a 'party line' for the new telephone they had in their home. You shared your phone line with other people and several families took turns using the same phone line. If you wanted to communicate with someone, you usually went to visit them in person or wrote a letter by hand.
I remember when...
We had a typewriter. It did not even plug into an electric outlet. You pressed the keys really hard and you reached up with your right hand and pressed a handled to return the carriage to type the next line. If you wanted something centered, you counted the characters in what you were typing and went to the center of your carriage and backspaced half the characters you needed to type. There was one font and that was it. There was a ribbon in your typewriter that had to be flipped over so you could type on the other side, then flipped back so you might get a little more use out of it. To change it was a messy proposition.
I remember when...
To make multiple copies of something you typed on a stencil. It had a piece of carbon paper on the back with a piece of white paper on the top. You typed very carefully because there was no eraser so a mistake stayed on your work. Then you put that paper on a mimeograph machine and filled it with this alcohol based liquid and turned that handle for each copy you wanted to make.
I remember when...
We got our own phone line. There was only one phone our home. It had a special nook built into the wall in the hallway in the center of our home. There was a shelf under the nook for the telephone directory. That phone had a cord that would reach from the middle of the house to anywhere else in the house. It was a very long cord. It was a big deal when gettting your phone to state the length of cord you wanted for your phone. We all shared that one phone in our home. That phone was not the big, black, heavy, rotary-dail phone we were used to with the party line. It could not come in colors but you still had to 'dial' the number you wanted to call. Our phone numbers were all four digits long.
I remember when...
We got electric typewriters in our school for typing class. You didn't have to press as hard on the keys but you still had to return that carriage yourself and count out characters for the spacing you wanted on your paper.
I remember when...
That mimeograph machine went electric and it turned itself to make all the copies you needed.
I remember when...
The princess phones came out. How trim and pretty they were. You could even have more than one phone in your home. They were even beginning to make them so you could press a button instead of turning a dial to enter a number. Princess phones came in many colors so they could match the room in which they were placed. They didn't have to have miles of phone cords. But, you had to pay for each phone you used in your home and the telephone company had some magical way of knowing if you were using more phones in your home than you were paying them for on your phone bill. There were more people with more phones so our phone numbers went to seven digits. The three digit prefex now told what part of town you lived in.
I remember when...
We still used typewriters but the carriage automatically returned when it got to the end of the line of type. You could change the print head so that you could have a variety of fonts to from which to choose. It could even do some of the centering automatically. The touch of the keys was light and very easy to use. They even started to come with correcting ribbons in them so you could go back and type the character over the first place you typed it and it was press white correcting ink in that spot.
I remember when...
They came out with copiers that used rolls of paper which you tore off for each page as it printed.
I remember when...
Cordless phones came into use. You could walk anywhere, even outside to sit on the porch, while you talked to someone. These could even be hung on the wall instead of sitting on a table.
I remember when...
I used my first Xerox computer. Claude had used a computer at work. The processor took an entire room. To do his back-up he would have to stay after hours for hours to make a back-up of the work done that day. My Xerox computer could do word processing and a spreadsheet and had as much memory as Claude's compute that took up a room. I spent my lunch hour every day teaching myself how to use it. You could make a document and send it to the printer. You had to use a lot of "F" (function) keys to do things.
I remember when...
Copiers started using real paper. They needed to be big machines then and they only made black and white copies, no color yet.
I remember when...
I started to work and the phones in the office were connect. I could answer a phone and then put that person on hold and then contact the person in the office they needed to talk to, tell them who was calling, and connect them to the caller I placed on hold. I also remember that some of my friends parents got them their own telephone for their bedroom.
I remember when...
Everyone in the office now had a computer at their desk. These computers were all connected so we could create a document and the 'cc' it to others in our office. We didn't connect to the outside world yet. There was no eMail but we could do that 'cc' thing with others in our office.
I remember when...
We could now send multiple copies from our computer to our printer making the copy machine only needed for larger copy jobs. We could also now change the cartridges in our copier and make color copies. Literally, the first one of these I could pick one color (we had red, blue and green). I would print a document with the black ink first, then run that same document through to add what I wanted to show in red, then run it through again for each of the blue or green items I wanted on it. Very slow but such a step up from just black and white.
I remember when...
Cell phones first started to come out. It was like walking around with a brick in your hand with an antennae on it. People would get them installed in their cars and they would take up the entire center console between the driver and the passenger. Big phones they were. Not something you could carry in your pocket.
I remember when...
That computer and that copier were connected together. All the people working in my department shared a copier. Each department had their own copier. The executive office had the biggest and best color copier with a smaller copier. We could tell our computer where we wanted our document to print and how many copies and send that print job to one of the copiers. This greatly enabled my need to multi-task.
I remember when...
Cell phones became smaller and personal so people began to carry them on their person. They were for phone calls not games, calendars and huge address books. However, a lot of people were carrying pagers and would get a beep and then find a phone and make a phone call. Many of us carried Franklin Planners which were notebooks filled with paper for calendars and addresses. A big date for Claude and me each year was to go to the office supply store and each pick out the new calendar pages we would need for the next year and check out any new pages they may have come up with for our planners. They did eventually come out with the Palm Pilot on which you kept your address book and calendar for work, church and home.
I remember when...
The stand alone PC (personal computer) gave way to the lap top which you could take it with you. They even made some little portable printers you could carry so you could print if you needed from the lap top.
I remember when...
Claude got his first Blackberry cell phone. He could put all his address book in it and his calendar with work, church and home things on it. He was able to give up that pager and Palm Pilot the Peace Corp expected him to carry all the time. He loved it.
Now...
The my cell phone has my calendar, address list, scriptures, games, apps to make things convenient. I can find places with a GPS (global positioning system). I can carry lots of pictures of my family. I use it set an alarm when I need to wake up or do something at a specific time. I can text a message to someone, check Facebook and send messages there, find things on the Internet when I have a question, check the weather and the list goes on. All with a cell phone in the palm of my hand that can also fit in my pocket.
Now...
I have a lap top and it is wireless and can connect to any Wi-Fi available. I carry it with me when I work at the Family History Center so I can put my personal family history work right there as I do it. I carry it upstairs to work up there when Claude and I want to be together in the evening and then back downstairs when I want to work on my lessons and Blog. I've learned to love having a lap top.
Now...
I have a Kindle Fire which is a tablet. It is filled with books I intend to read, games to play, pictures of my family and our travels, my scriptures, and many other documents.
Is there evolution? I would say there has been a lot of evolution in my 62 years on earth. Sometimes, when I pause and think about all the changes that have happened in my short 62 years, I am blown away by the contrast. So much is so very helpful but it really also just fills up my day with things that I didn't feel I needed to take the time with years ago. I'm grateful for it, but it must be controlled or it will control me.
The thing I have also noticed is the way we communicate has changed and often not for the better.
- In my early years there were long phone conversations or face-to-face conversations.
- Then the letter writing went the way of the eMail. However, you could send a nice long eMail just like you might write a nice long letter to your family. I still try to send many hand-written thank you notes but often we send an eMail thank you and I do love my eCard notes.
- Blogging was a big thing. It was finally my answer to keeping some type of journal. I always wanted to keep a journal but never was good at it. With the Blog I could make an entry as the mood struck or an event happened. I could follow my families Blogs and it was like getting letters from each other. Now Blogging seems to be going the way of the do-do bird.
- Then Facebook came along and suddenly eMail's were not used as much and the communications sent became even shorter. You can send a private message to someone on Facebook but it is still usually short and to the point. No one wants to spend hours (figuratively speaking) reading some lengthy thing. Some people post things on Facebook that really should have been sent in a private message.
- Texting made things even shorter and came up with its own language which seems to me to be dumbing down spelling and writing in general.
- And there is 'tweeting' which is really short burst of thought you feel the world needs to know. I've never gotten into tweeting and Claude and I only text a little bit.
Last night Claude and I were talking and he stated that Facebook is losing out in this communication race. They are not as popular as they once were. He said there was something else growing in popularity that was taking Facebook's place. I asked him what it was. He said, "I can't remember but I wrote it down." I just laughed. My are the two of us getting old. We try to keep up to some degree but, really, s l o w d o w n people.
I'm grateful for the good that comes of this new technology. I refuse to use the bad that comes with this new technology. Now...I'm off to stop this Blogging about it and finish my Institute lesson for tonight using that technology. Geez!!!
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