Beam Me Up Scotty

As I reminisce I think of all the technological advances I've been privileged to witness in my lifetime. From an age when we can remember certain homes that still had outdoor bathrooms, nobody had air-conditioning and we never locked the backdoor. There was no reason, nobody had anything good to steal anyway.

So let's look at just one area of the broad scope of things, television. What this visual tube in the wooden cabinet that was the cornerstone of our living rooms then has become now. What it spawned as offspring to the ones who spent way too much time in front of it.

From the late 1960s on things really seemed to take off. We who grew up the black and white TV era can remember the late night test pattern that signaled us we were up way too late. Then we saw TV change to color. By then we had added the UHF channels and could pick up nearly 8 channels on good nights with the new rotary antennas. In the late 70s video recorders became popular but were very expensive, few had one. Around 1980 or so, cable TV was beginning to catch on, a chance to have up to 28 channels with perfectly clear picture. TV would never be the same again. From cable to satellite, options increased and multiple channels were created to increase the amount of income it took just to watch what was once considered free with a simple set of rabbit ears!

As video recorders became common place in every home, the large early top loading decks which took up the entire cabinet space of a floor model television set started to fade away, new slimline VHS models began to emerge. Still they cost around $400 by the mid 80s, now you can pick up a decent stereo model for around $40 at the local Wal-mart. By that point I think Sony had figured out how bad an idea it was to sink so much money into Beta [me too for that matter]. Sort of like the lazar disc, another brilliant idea. The first video club I joined at a local rental house cost me $89 per year. Within two years it was down to $9 per lifetime membership and then became free as competition increased. But all of this is fading fast into the past too as DVDs have now become the standard.

And the sound, who would have dreamed stereo TV was even needed. Today's surround sound systems can emulate the sound of a theater in your living room. We have so many choices of what to watch, when to watch, how to watch, it all just seems a bit much. What will the next twenty years or so introduce to us? I can only just imagine when virtual reality becomes of age.

I never mentioned video games either, now where is my Atari 2600?