Older Dopers: Compare and Contrast 1950s Tech Advance to the Internet Era

In My Humble Opinion
1

From 1950 to 1966 the US experienced the greatest era of technological advance the world had ever seen. True, a few third world countries have grown faster because they have been able to apply technology developed elsewhere. But the to my knowledge US growth during that era was the fastest ever experienced by a nation at the cutting edge of technological change.

In terms of measures of economic output, real potential GDP growth fluctuated between 3 and 4.8 percent during that period. After 1966 it generally fluctuated around a declining path, except during the 1992-2000 burst of prosperity. But even that was peanuts compared to the 1950s. Here’s a graph: http://wm40.inbox.com/thumbs/6c_130b52_988a4ec1_oP.png.thumb

Most of you probably haven’t seen a chart like that before, because this series controls somewhat for the business cycle. The data comes from FRED, at the St. Louis Federal Reserve: they obtain it from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Anyhoo, during the 1990s quite a few businessfolk and others found the introduction of the internet rather disorienting. So much so that the stock market prices of internet companies were bid to fantastic heights, partly due to fears that the whole structure of the economy would be upended by this fantastic new technology. Those fears were overblown. They were understood to be overblown at the time - but even saavy people attached a certain probability that many stodgy companies might enter a death spiral.

It’s my understanding that 1950-1966 had a different feel to it. New chemicals, rural electrification, the interstate highway system, antibiotics and other advances represented progress. It was the Soviet Union that was scary. Of course unions and high taxes ensured that the benefits of economic growth would be distributed pretty broadly, at least among whites.

What are the impressions of dopers with first hand knowledge of both eras? Please state your country: the US had not been clobbered by WWII so its experience was pretty different from the rest of the Western world, never mind other places. I should note that some wonder whether GDP adequately reflects the value of such innovations as google, facebook, Groupon and wikipedia. So individual perceptions of technological change may or may not line up well with the data. I recall that the blogosphere marveled about the miracle of indoor plumbing earlier this year, but the introduction of that amenity predates the periods under discussion.

2

Born 1937. I did not feel that the years 1950-66 during which I started HS, went to college, grad school and got my first two serious jobs. In retrospect, I can see that the transistor, integrated circuits, lasers were immense technological advances that led more or less directly to PCs, the Internet, the Web, cell phones and all the rest. But I was not cognizant of any of this. Oh sure, I knew about transistors, although not ICs. My first transistor radio cost $25 in 1960 (probably over $200 today) and was a piece of shit. I heard of lasers but had no idea where they were heading. To me a computer was a million dollar machine, not something that meant anything to me. When I heard about computer kit for $300 in 1974, I was incredulous. Yes, now I know you could get a PDP-8 for a mere $100K, but I had never heard of that then. The first hand-held calculator (HP-25, I think) cost $399 and it looked like a nice toy, but I would never own one. So no, this did not impinge on the average Joe, not even, say, a Scientific American subscriber, which I was and remain.

3

Ok, but you also had the polio vaccine, new detergents, the introduction of antibiotics after WWII, plastics, the TV, remote control for the TV, super glue, built-in flash units on cameras, etc. I was thinking about comparing IT of the 1990s with everything else from an earlier era. If you want to fold in other types of tech change from the 1990s-2000s that’s ok too.

4

One of the main differences I see was that the technology of the 1950’s seems to have been much more “practical.” By that, I mean no one had to guess at the potential uses for automatic dishwashers, power steering, polio vaccine, direct-dial long distance or television – to name a few innovations.

By contrast, consider the Internet. We’re still trying to figure it out.

5

I am not quite that old, but I was around for the end of the party line phones as a kid, and then affordable private phone lines - but then again, when my dad in Illinois called his sister in California, it was something insane like $5 per minute, a hefty charge today, but a fortune back then! Even local calls were charged by the minute. Oh, and you usually had to “rent” your actual phone from the (monopoly) phone company back then…and when the first push button phones came out, that was way cool, high tech!

We got a color TV before most of my friends - and when you look up the prices for them back then, you could get a 70" flat screen today and still have enough money to pay for cable for a year.

Silly things like a pocket calculator cost a fortune and were often a “major gift” to high school graduates going on to college.

I sold Christmas cards (remember those ads in the back of comic books?) and did fairly well, thanks to my godfather who owned a car dealership and would buy a whole bunch of them at one fell swoop - and one of my prizes was a small, reel-to-reel tape recorder! I was the envy of all my friends! I also got a small B&W TV for my bedroom - also a first among my friends, from those annual card sales.

Our neighbor had a bit a money and loved gadgets - one day he came back with a watch he had seen in the newest James Bond film - it was a DIGITAL watch, with the time showing in those godawful red lights…and the watch had cost him $3,000! It was super cool at the time and he was quite proud of it.

I also remember when getting A/C in a car was a huge luxury that most opted not to do, as the additional price was rather high to have installed.

My parents won a large short wave radio - and I would fiddle with the dials for hours, listening in to radio stations around the globe and mystified at the languages, but loved thinking I was actually listening to people talk around the world!

And then there was that Commodore64 - one of the first “affordable” home computers you hooked up to a TV for a monitor - yep, I bought one…they weren’t all that cheap, but wow, image 64 bits of info on one computer! I was sure it couldn’t get better than that!

6

I don’t remember much before the late 60’s, though I was around then. The technological details of that era or of today don’t impact one’s awareness that much. Yes, lasers existed in the 60’s and I certainly knew about them and some of the principles involved. Same with IC’s and TV’s etc. Same with Wi-Fi and broadband today. But technology didn’t define people back then or now.
What was different then compared to now was the view of the future. In the 50’s and 60’s people’s view of the future was one of very high highs or very low lows. Either families would be hopping in to their personal spaceship and rocketing off to Mars, or nuclear war would mean the few survivors were hunkered down in caves or underground shelters. In the 70’s and 80’s those views started to calm down. Reagan wanted to start bombing in 15 minutes, but everyone knew he was joking. Not so when people listened to Kennedy. NASA got to the moon, and the reality of future travel started to kick in. Commercial SST travel was dropped. No one expected another interstate highway system revolution. Travel became relatively cheap and uncomfortable. People in the 80’s and 90’s viewed that as the future. The US view of the rest of the world calmed down as well. First Japan was going to buy up the west in the 80s, now China is. But neither are going to destroy the west. Contrast that with the view of the China and the USSR in the 50’s or 60’s. Our parents saw a tremendous increase in economic well-being. Their kids (us) saw that as normal. It isn’t and today some but not all adults I know view the next 20 years as worse than today. Based on the FRED chart, they might be right. The contrast between the 50’s and the 00’s is more in the perception of the future than knowledge of technology.

7

I wouls assume the Industrial Revolution was the greatest era of technological advance the world has ever seen.
It might be very boring now but the difference between say 1790, still representing the same old world since creation, and 1830, with machines and power, is in retrospect amazing.
And we are still in the 1830s pattern now: things improve continuously, but the structure was laid out then.

8

I remember the advent of the pocket calculator, but that was in the early 70s, not the 50s-60s. HP came out with theirs, then TI came out with one. I couldn’t afford the hefty $400 for an HP and ended up buying a four function calculator from Sears for $110 (!). Calculators were banned from the classroom at the college I was attending at the time. When HP came out with the version that could do trig functions, math professors went nuts about keeping them out of the hands of students and staying with slide rules.

The only computer access in 1970-1973 at the university was via a computer programming course for Buff 40 Fortran. It was tedious and time consuming to write even the simplest of programs, and only professors or their assistants ever had access to the actual mainframe.

In the 50s and 60s, transistor radio prices nose-dived, and we had our first one sitting in the kitchen, while the console radio/phono sat brooding in the living room. I was probably 12 years old at the time and totally unaware of any other IT type things. You could build a crystal set or a ham radio, and do other elementary circuitry with kits, of course.

Outside the IT realm, I remember the rapid advancement of rocketry and of jet aircraft. Missile delivery systems proliferated, with several Nike sites around Anchorage. The DEW Line was built (which my father worked on as an equipment operator) along the Arctic coast, which provided overlapping radar coverage for any incoming aircraft or missiles. It tied in with a similar system along the northern coastal areas of Canada. Many years later (2006), I was the facilities manager for the much tamer automated system that took its place.

9

A terrific look at the first half of that period is Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. It ends literally days before the release of the Macintosh but you can see how these guys (and an occasional woman like Roberta Williams from Sierra Online) invented our present reality.

10

Born in 1943, ao I’ve seen the changes listed above. But there was a huge difference in the impact of the transistor and of modern computer based web “effects”

I could take my transistor radio to the beach, but it really just expanded my ability to have music just a bit. But today I can buy and sell using the internet, communicate with whoever I choose, research information, have access to all sorts of entertainment through my computer/TV/iphone/etc. Not to mention all of the social networking on Facebook and such.

This leads to a much faster life and change of technology. It also has lead to a change in social norms. Our face to face has changed…just watch younger folks in places like malls to see the changes in interaction between them and the people they are in frequent contact while physically in the mall. Want to read a particular book or “newspaper”? It is available. And then there is dating and so forth.

So if we think of technical advances in terms of the effects on human society, today’s society enormously changed by technology compared t o the 'fifties.

11

Nobody has yet mentioned the two most important inventions of all:
the flush toilet and the refrigerator.
You didn’t have to read a 500 page manual just to figure out how to use 'em. :slight_smile:

I was born in the mid 1950’s, so don’t have direct memories for the OP.
But the contrast between the 1940’s and 1950’s can be expressed in two concepts: shit , and hunger.

In the 1940’s, there was a lot of shit in your life. Even in big cities, there were still horse-drawn carts used for deliveries and such. And so there was horse shit on the streets. Most people had toilets in their house; but they would not have felt disgusted if, while visiting friends out in the countryside, they had to use a stinky outhouse. By the 1950’s , modern sanitation was everywhere, and you never saw horsehit or smelled human shit.

In the 1940’s most Americans went to bed at night a little bit hungry.
Not because they were poor and starving, but because they didn’t have a refrigerator. There was an icebox, but it wasnt reliable…You had to fill it with a block of ice every day or two (which was delivered to your house by the “iceman”, often on a horse-drawn cart.), and the ice, of course , melted. So it was common to find that the milk was sour, the bread you bought yesterday was stale, etc. You didn’t complain–you just accepted it and lived with it as a fact of life. Just like, today, we we live with the weather-it’s a fact of life that you have no control over.
And so you went to bed a little hungry, without making that late-night snack.

By the 1950’s, everybody* had a modern kitchen.

So, by the 1950’s life in America was good. And it was because of very real and very practical improvements in living. Today each new electronic device is advertised as a “gadget”. But the new things in the 1950’s were not gadgets…they were much more basic, and more life-changing.

Life was good, and getting better all the time. Supermarkets had unlimited supplies of food, and with home refrigeration and freezers, you could feel sure that you would not be hungry.
With polio vaccine and antibiotics, you could be sure that your children would not die over summer vacation.
These are deep, fundamental, changes to the quality of life–deeper than the changes we see today from the internet and smartphones.

*(well, not everybody–there were [del]ni[/del] “colored people” who lived on the other side of town.But nobody cared about them)

12

Tests on humans and animals back in the 50s and 60s were sometimes horrendous. Computers have since minimized the need for actual testing. There was this air force guy who was wearing a leaky pressurized suit, who climbed to 110,000 on a balloon. He then stepped out and parachuted to earth. The altitude record still stands. Then another guy was immersed in a completely dark tank of lukewarm water with a scuba. In seconds all his senses had been deadened.

Another test on air force men entailed sitting in a room that was basically a big oven. A clothed man can survive (for a short while) temperatures high enough to cook a steak.

13

I was a teenager during most of that period (born 1945). I wasn’t paying attention to the economy or the stock market. I don’t think an average working person did. My parents didn’t have investments, not even a pension plan. A savings account in the bank was enough. Only rich people had stocks and bonds. Most people didn’t use credit, except to buy a house or a car. There was a feeling of economic security, even if you weren’t rich, because you didn’t have a lot of debt.

I do remember being aware of the Communist threat but I wasn’t scared --the US was still #1 in science and technology and there was a feeling that our military could handle anything.

I remember new products being introduced but not at the pace we see today. Consumerism was just getting a hold on society, and except for cars, we didn’t see new models of every damn thing every year. Also, appliances and big ticket items were built to last. It was worth repairing stuff that broke and there were people who knew how to do this. Men got their good leather shoes re-soled. Clothing was made with wool and linen and every little town had at least one dry cleaner.

People didn’t shop for entertainment. Houses built before the 50’s didn’t have huge closets and lots of storage space because people didn’t have so much crap. One garage was enough.

I think of people during that time being more sensible, sturdy, self-sufficient, and less easily distracted, but also less involved in the world outside the US.

14

Bill Bryson is a humor writer, and describes his 1950’s childhood in a wonderful book called “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”. In the first chapter, he talks about the wonders of the new technology that was changing America:

So, as others have already posted: the 50’s had a very different feel, because the pace of technology was much slower, but still very important to each family.
Getting a toaster was news worth telling to your friends.
Getting a refrigerator was big news, worth telling to your friends and extened family.
Getting a television was huge news, to be broadcast to friends, family, everybody at work, and the entire neighborhood.

15

“From 1950 to 1966 the US experienced the greatest era of technological advance the world had ever seen.”

I think this is a bit of an stretch. Compare this to 1880 to 1910. About the same time. Cars, telephone, electric light, the beginnings of effective medicine, public health measures like clean water and sewers, the start of modern physics, chemistry and engineering.

There are people today who barely notice the internet. No one could miss the technological changes around the end of the 19th century. I think a good case can be made that those changes exceed the changes of any other period in history in terms of impact on modern man.

16

There’s been a little reassessment of the Industrial Revolution. Economic historians emphasize its longer antecedents and the slow process of adoption and technological diffusion.

Angus Maddison devoted his life to compiling and constructing demographic and economic growth estimates across long spans of time. In The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective he divides the post 1500 period into 5 eras: 1500-1700, 1700-1820, 1820-1913, 1913-50, 1950-1998. The point being that he didn’t see fit to sort his bins into something like 1700-1790 and 1790-1850.

Anyway, let me present some of the estimates for per person economic growth:


 
	             1700-1820	1820-1913	1950-1998
Britain	                0.34	   0.96	         2.10
United States	        0.73	   1.56	         2.21
			
Cutting it a little differently:			
	              1820-1870	   1870-1913	1950-1973
Western Europe	        0.95	    1.32	  4.08
Western Offshoots	1.42	    1.81	  2.44

You can see that the 1950-1998 and 1950-1973 periods dominate earlier eras. I suspect some of Western Europe’s strong performance in 1950-1973 had a lot to do with technological adoption in the Southern regions and bouncing back after war in the northern ones. But the Western Offshoots (eg US, Canada, Australia) also had stronger growth than in earlier eras.

See above. Still, I think I should have said, “Economic growth”. Advances in technology are tied to their introduction more than their broader dissemination, which is what economic growth picks up.

chappachula: Based on the chart in the OP, I perceive that the 1950s were a time of rapid technological adoption relative to today. But kunilou’s point is a good one. It’s fairly clear what toasters, TVs and refrigerator’s do. But for most of us our mastery of the PC, tablet or smartphone is more tenuous so maybe tech change seems quicker now.

Or…

Or maybe I’m comparing high percentages off a lower technological base vs. lower percentages off a higher tech base. The absolute amount of change in the 2nd case might be greater. eg:


Tech Level   % Growth   Change
50	        4%        2.0
200	        2%        4.0

I’m not sure which column, percent growth or absolute change, would better reflect perceptions of tech change.
ETA: Thanks for the contributions, everyone: keep it coming!

17

My Dad in the 50’s always bought the best he could afford.

21 inch B/W RCA TV, because RCA was the best. Frigidaire for refrigerator because it was the best, Electrolux for vacuum cleaner, Cadillac for car when he could finally afford one, Kitchenaide for dishwasher, Toastmaster for a toaster, Sunbeam percolator coffee maker, Easy washer/dryer combo (that was a piece of crap …couldn’t wash or dry clothes right.)

Funny how many of these elite brands either no longer exist, or exist in name only and made in China, …and none if them are close to being considered the best today.

Just throwing this in because the thread brought back some old memories.