At dinner tonight, we had a little family sing-a-long. Jeff had his Droid phone flipped open, and we were singing along with Moose and Zee from Nick Jr. courtesy of YouTube. I remarked to Jeff that 100 years ago, we would have all been sitting around the piano, or maybe if we were a wealthy family, the Victrola (that's record player for you new-fangled types.) 1910, when 3 of my 4 grandparents were born, was still a few years before Marconi perfected radio (although ship-to-shore communication would be just 3 or 4 years away...one of the first messages ever received was from a ship traveling near the Titanic as she went down.) Philo T. Farnsworth (now THAT'S a name) and the rest of his cronies were still a few decades from mastering the picture tube that we know as television. Cell phones were about 65-70 years away from being invented, and, ahem, Al Gore hadn't quite put the finishing touches on the Internet just yet.
And to think...we were watching a song from TV that someone downloaded onto the Internet by searching with a hand-held computer that we also use to make phone calls.
Now, what would Grandpa think of THAT?
1 comment:
Wow! What a history lesson! I don't know whether I should feel stupid (from my lack of knowledge) or grateful in becoming all the wiser in reading your post! Ha!
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