On Technology - Part 1

When I find myself admiring some newfangled (does anyone even use that word anymore?) technology, two things can happen.

I sometimes feel like a kid in a candy store... maybe a kid on Christmas morning would be a better analogy.  When I find some new gadget, software or other form of tech to be truly impressive, I get all little-girl giggly.  Because I'm a geek.

The other thing that is just as likely to occur is that I'll suddenly start thinking about how far we've come (technologically) in such a short time.

To frame this last thought, within my lifetime perspective, is what this post is really about.  Consider...

My earliest encounter / memory of "cool new tech" harkens back to a few major (and painfully slow to develop) technology changes during my formative years (remember... I'm old!).

I clearly recall the changes from Black and White to color in both film and television.  Not so much film, as color was already the convention for most new films, but I spent many hours watching old (and even slightly older) B&W films on TV.  From Citizen Kane to Casablanca to Psycho, B&W was still a normal part of film.  Color was cool and somewhat new, but film just came in two 'flavors,' no big deal.

TV, as a young child, was always B&W.  (To put the timing in perspective, there were only three (maybe four) channels to choose from and they all went off the air somewhere between 11:30pm and 1:00am.

I remember getting up very early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons.  If you got up early enough (before 5:30am), nothing was on TV (yet).  I think it was either channel 2 (CBS) or 4 (NBC) that was the first station to "come alive" and the first show was... Modern Farmer.  (Modern Farmer was a non-fiction, farm based show about... duh).  Of course it made perfect sense to be showing this to 3 and 4 year olds in Brooklyn, NY (somehow I never did get a hankerin' to be a farmer) but did we care?  Hell no! It was "TV" (the great, new American babysitter!).

We "suffered" through Modern Farmer to get to 'the good stuff.'  Crusader Rabbit, Winkie Dink among others.

As I aged, watching movies on "The Early Show" after school, became part of my world.

When a movie was shown on TV, if it was a color film, it was rendered in B&W.  Again, the "norm."

Then one day... after many years, came color television.  Color TV wasn't cheap enough, nor was there enough content being broadcast in color in it's early years for color televisions to start selling widely until the mid 60's. This means I was in my mid teens when color television became a "reality."  That is for some, not for my family (color TV was still outside our financial reach until the later 60's).

I remember going to a church member's apartment to watch The Wizard of Oz in color (yeah, you could only watch shows and movies when they were actually aired back then and the airing of TWOO was only once a year!). That's when I first found out what the hell "a horse of a different color" was all about!

So during my first 15 years or so of existence I was witness to the following technological advances as it pertains to television.  Let's compare!

Roughly 5 or so TV stations became 7 (not counting UHF, look it up) in NYC.  Color replaced B&W. 
Today, there are hundreds of stations, almost all in High Definition.

Screens (aka picture tubes) lost their rounded corners and became larger (upwards of about 25").  Remotes came into existence and went from terrible (almost mechanical) to bearable.  Screens were 4x3 aspect ratio for many years to come.
Now, every screen sold today is "flat" and is (roughly) 16x9 widescreen ratio.

TV's also went from gigantic pieces of furniture to smaller, almost (but not really) "portable" forms.
While my last 27", picture tube model TV weighed around 100 pounds, even 65" - 70" TVs probably weigh less today.

Finally, how we watch TV seems to be the largest change,  As mentioned, you had to wait and be in front of the TV when something aired to see it.  The invention of the Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) with VHS format winning out over the superior Betamax (again, look it up) changed peoples lives.  You could finally record something to watch later.

The VCR was a true technological, watershed moment.  One of the biggest.  Not only could you record "live" TV for later viewing but you could buy movies on tape and watch them whenever you wanted to.  The future had arrived.

A bit more on these changes in part 2.