Oh What I Have Seen

   When you can't think of anything new, I guess it's alright to think of something old. Today I thought I would reach back in my mind and pull out some old memories, dust them off, and see if anybody else would like to take a shuffle down memory lane. 

I remember giving my father-in-law a bad time because he was born before television. In his lifetime he saw cars go from an oddity to a necessity. He saw phones go from the wall to the pocket, and he saw this nation go through three major wars. He's gone now, but thinking of what he saw makes me think of the changes I have seen in my lifetime.

            I was born in 1957; there were only 48 States in the Union and the Korean War was a very real memory to my father and others of his generation. Ike was in the White House and we had a small number of advisors in a small country in Southeast Asia called Vietnam. We had troops in Little Rock, enforcing Civil Rights, and the Russians had Sputnik up in space. In 1957 cars had big tail-fins, white-wall tires, A.M. radios, and compared to today, small price tags. The Giants moved to San Francisco and the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.
            When I was one-year old, the integrated circuit was invented and a computer language called FORTRAN was developed. The Hula Hoop and laser also came along, followed by the microchip and Barbie. The United States put its first satellite into orbit.
            By the time I was sitting in Mrs. Baker's first-grade class, Valium, and non-dairy creamer were part of our lives. The fiber-tipped pen was here, as was the audio-cassette, although it would be a few more years before they would become main-stream. Dow Corporation invented silicone breast implants and Hollywood stood in line, so the actresses could look more like Barbie. Space Wars became the first computer game, although there were no home computers. 1963 saw the invention of the video-disk, but again there were no home players. The next year was a good year for housewives because permanent press material was invented. The computer world saw the BASIC language invented and acrylic paint was invented, making clean up a lot easier for home handymen.
            The remainder of the sixties gave us AstroTurf, soft contact lenses, and NutraSweet. Kevlar was created for the military, but soon became a necessity for policemen as well. Our fingers and toes got a break in 1967 when the first hand-held calculator was invented. The ATM was invented in 1969 followed immediately by the first upset bank customer. The sixties also gave us the artificial heart before they faded away and the seventies came on strong.
            The computer world took a giant leap forward during the first half of the seventies with the invention of the daisy-wheel printer, dot matrix printer, and laser printer. The LCD and microprocessor, along with the first word processor moved computers closer to our living rooms, while the Vietnam War was moving out of our living rooms. Our time in Vietnam drew to a close. BIC gave us disposable lighters and Uncle Sam gave us disposable troops. We still have too many MIA/POWs unaccounted for.
            The Artificial Heart and Magnetic Resonance Imaging were breakthroughs in the medical world at the end of the seventies. The Walkman, Cell-phone, and Cray super-computer came into use in 1979, and along with the roller-blades invented that year, helped transition into the eighties.
            In the early eighties, MS-DOS, the IBM PC, Apple Macintosh, and the CD-ROM were all invented. Virtual Reality and the Cabbage Patch Kids were part of our lives as was a former actor who became President of the United States.
            In the last half of the eighties, Microsoft gave us Windows, Fuji gave us the disposable camera, and Eli Lilly gave us Prozac. Digital Cell phones and HDTC were invented before we moved into the nineties.
            The nineties gave us the digital answering machine, DVDs, Pentium processor, and Viagra. And that was the end of my century. The next century is shaping up to be even better in terms of inventions and accomplishments. What a ride it has been so far.