tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11970089.post114925465597718113..comments2023-12-19T12:28:50.637+00:00Comments on Earth and Universe: E.T. Phone Home...1971 style!John of Dublinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02536252400016522481noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11970089.post-1150760952764127532006-06-20T00:49:00.000+01:002006-06-20T00:49:00.000+01:00Thanks Kim. Yes it's fun watching how fast technol...Thanks Kim. Yes it's fun watching how fast technology changes and how kids react to older stuff. I watched a TV episode of Home Improvement where the Dad was showing an old dusty device to his kid.<BR/><BR/>"What's that, Dad?<BR/><BR/>"It's a gramaphone player."<BR/><BR/>"What's a gramaphone player?"<BR/><BR/>"Well it's an older type of record player,"<BR/><BR/>"What's a record player?"<BR/><BR/>"Geez, kids! Well it's an older type of CD player."John of Dublinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02536252400016522481noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11970089.post-1150759203602346982006-06-20T00:20:00.000+01:002006-06-20T00:20:00.000+01:00Hello, John of Dublin,I found you through my frien...Hello, John of Dublin,<BR/><BR/>I found you through my friend, MissMellifluous' blog.<BR/><BR/>I am crazy about all things Irish (my heritage is Irish and Welsh) and hope to visit someday.<BR/><BR/>I got such a kick out of this post; I am 50 and I can remember still having a party line when I was in high school (probably 72 or 73--we moved to the city in '74 and got a private line).<BR/><BR/>My children were amazed and bewildered at the thought of one line ringing to our house and our neighbors' with only the different ring to tell them apart.<BR/><BR/>True funny story; I was given an electric typewriter by my parents for graduation from High School. It had long since been set aside for our seeminly never ending consecutive parade of one computer after another. One day, when I was cleaning the basement, I came across the typewriter and showed my son, then about 7 or 8, how to put in a piece of paper and type. He ran upstairs to go to the bathroom and didn't come back and so I went over and switched it off. When he finally came back and found that I had turned it off, he was shocked and dismayed--"Mom! Why did you turn it off? I didn't save my work yet!" : ) The computer saavy kid couldn't quite reconcile the old technology!<BR/><BR/>Even funnier, I told the story to my mom, who is not a computer user, and she did not understand what was funny about the story. . .a real technology disconnect.Kim from Hiraethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10681030734608681468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11970089.post-1149504552139942162006-06-05T11:49:00.000+01:002006-06-05T11:49:00.000+01:00Funny enough, I do know what a slide rule is, but ...Funny enough, I do know what a slide rule is, but only because my grandfather was a civil engineer. :) Don't worry though, you're WAY younger than he is.-Annhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08359625931588140579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11970089.post-1149444023717324252006-06-04T19:00:00.000+01:002006-06-04T19:00:00.000+01:00Thanks Ann. Another big change I recall in 1970s w...Thanks Ann. <BR/><BR/>Another big change I recall in 1970s was when I started studying for engineering degree in 1973. The Head of Engineering told us to go out and buy Slide Rules for mathematical calculations. He said there was no truth that the newly talked about electronic calculators would eventually replace Slide Rules. By the time we were doing our finals in 1977 - everybody in the exams had scientific calculators and there wasn't a Slide Rule in sight!<BR/><BR/>Slide Rules are so passe now that you probably don't know what I'm even talking about! They were a sliding triple ruler device used for multipications and other calculations and were a tool of every engineer for many centuries before their death to calculators in the 1970s.John of Dublinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02536252400016522481noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11970089.post-1149315743871652822006-06-03T07:22:00.000+01:002006-06-03T07:22:00.000+01:00Great story, well told. Kicking around the house s...Great story, well told. Kicking around the house somewhere, we found an atlas/almanac of Ireland. It has all sorts of fantastic maps and charts showing things like telephone ownership in various decades or the existence of indoor plumbing in various decades. It was pretty amazing to us to see that in the 1970s, well within our lifetimes, indoor plumbing was not a given.-Annhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08359625931588140579noreply@blogger.com