I very clearly remember my first exposure to CDs. I was 9 or 10, and my parents were taking me to an “oldies” movie theater to see The King And I. I was generally a VERY impatient kid who didn’t like sitting through old non-Star-Wars-y movies, so I was dreading the experience, but I was given a 100% solid guarantee that before the movie, there would be a cartoon of some sort (presumably an old Looney Tune). However, instead, we were treated to a demonstration of this new technology. So instead of my cartoon, I got to sit still for 3 or 4 minutes and listen to classical music. What a rip!
I was in college when The Web came into existence, and was a computer science major, so I used it very early in its life cycle, with good old NCSA Mosaic, although I don’t have any particularly seminal memory. I do remember using the original match.com, in which you filled out a text survey via email and emailed it back to them, before they even had a web site.
I also remember using Netscape instead of Mosaic for the first time. Netscape had this amazing feature where when you were downloading images, it would first download a low res image, and then the resolution would increase and increase and increase until the final image was there, as opposed to Mosaic, where you just waited and waited and then bam, the whole image was there. Somehow, this technology has gotten lost.
Oh, and since this has devolved into a general nostalgia fest, my parents got an IBM PC for Hannukah, 1981. I still have a copy of PC Magazine, volume 1, issue 6 (I think), which is the PC Product guide. That is, it lists EVERY product available for the PC. Every one.
I remember the first time I saw a personal computer. It was the late spring of 1981, I was 17 and in Grade-13 calculus class, and the teacher announced that there was something special for us. He and one of the students left the room, and returned with a Commodore PET.
The student was carrying the PET awkwardly, and he placed it on the teacher’s desk with some relief. I distinctly remember thinking, “Wow! A computer so small that one person can carry it!” They proceded to set up looping programs to demonstrate finer and finer slices of the area under a curve. (Our calculus books used a calculator symbol to mark problems that lent themselves to this kind of iteration.)
Five or six years ago, I found an 8-track recorder… in an antique shop on Spadina Avenue in Toronto.
My first personal computer, the Timex Sinclair, was a source of endless fascination for me in the early '80s. I was already well into my thirties, but I felt like a kid again. Then I got a Commodore Vic-20, and taught myself BASIC. One thing led to another: I learned to write 6510 machine code on the Commodore 64. I often stayed up all night writing programs for my C-64. When I slept, I dreamed new subroutines. Those were exciting times. The hardware was stone-age junk when compared to today’s marvels, but it was good enough to enchant me.
My dad had this nifty little Casio keyboard, maybe 15 inches long. It came with a little scanner pen you plugged into the keyboard; it read barcode in a book that came with, then replayed the song along with accompaniment. Man that thing was cool.
Later my mom bought him one of the first cheaply available MIDI instruments (ca. 1988 I think). I still have it; it comes with 465 different sounds (you can mix any two together, really cool little toy). The MIDI aspect of it however has never been used.
Then the first CD player we had (ca. 1986 I think?). I remember it was hooked to the stereo, underneath the kitchen/livingroom pass-thru. On top of the bar was the fishtank. I remember being a little girl (at the time quite inspired by the movie Amadeus) and grabbing the fish tank sponge on a stick thingie and pretending to be conductor while my mom played Mozart CDs. The first CD I had was a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story CD. I was of course never allowed to handle it myself.
My first computer with Inet access was a MacIntosh Power PC. My mom still has it. I had 28.8 kbaud, and I liked it! I had AOL 3.0 and thought it was the greatest thing since beer.
In the late 80’s my dad decided to buy us a PC. I of course wanted an apple, we had used them at school, and i liked **Oregon Trail ** and Lemonade Stand. He went with the Tandy, similar to what he used at work. After a years worth of book reports, the hard drive was full, so I found some files with strange names and deleted them. Ooops.
Our first VCR, which was used to backup files (somehow???) at my dad’s office also came with a remote control, with a cord.
To entertain myself at a temp job this summer I would imagine how many 3.5 diskettes (which they used everyday) would equal my ipod.
I am not a complete whipersnapper though. Just think how many young’uns see a manilla folder and think “hey look, its a ‘folder.’ kinda like on the computer.”
I wondered if anyone would remember Lisa. I had a Commodore at the time, and was positive those silly little pictures (“What’s an icon?”) would never catch on. Yeah, right.
My first brush with “modern technology” was when I was about 5. My aunt and uncle got one of the first cars available with seat belts. We went for a drive with me belted proudly in the front seat. When we got back to the house, everyone got out and went into the house - except me. I couldn’t get out of the seat belt. It took about 20 minutes for someone to come and rescue me.
Anyone else remember IBM Selectrics? With changeable font!! (You changed out a little ball with the characters on it.) And backspace erase!! (It had correction tape - does that even exist anymore? - like another ribbon.) When was the last time you saw a typewriter eraser?
ATMs. You can get a machine to give you money? Lead me to it!!
747s. Yeah, I knew about airplanes, but that thing was huge, how could it possibly even fly? They were very new when I took my first plane ride - what a way to start flying! The funny thing is that the second leg of that trip was on a military transport DC-3 - from the sublime to the ridiculous.
I’m a real techno-bozo. I have yet to use a DVD, iPOD, convection oven, GPS, and probably a whole lot of things I don’t even really know exist.
The cellphone I ever saw (belonged to a friend’s family) came packed in its own little suitcase. It looked very similar to a regular telephone, only it was portable. My friend and I actually laugh about it now, when we remember it.
Her family was poor, but her mother was a paranoid safety freak, so they got the cell phone. She used to make us carry it every time we went somewhere. I’m sure people thought it was really weird that a bunch of 16 year olds were toting around this black briefcase. Today, we would probably be picked up by mall security as potential terrorists. (Yes, my poor friend even had to carry it to the mall.)
A related story that has very little to do with the OP: before the cell phone, my friend’s mom had her car outfitted with a CB radio. That was the first time I’d ever seen one. It was there in case we got stranded in a snowdrift or broke down on the interstate. But we used it to talk dirty to truckers. My handle was Tasty Muffin.
Telephone answering machine - I didn’t come across one until the early 80s.
(I know someone who claims her family had one in the 60s, though.)
A friend’s friend got himself an answerphone only to have it filled with silly messages from giggling teenagers phoning it because it was such a novelty. :rolleyes:
No, there wasn’t much to do of an evening in my home town in the early 80s…
I first encountered the internet in 1998 in the library.
The most amusing part came a few days later when I told a friend about my husband’s new email. She thought his account was at hot M-A-L-E, not mail and asked me if the address had anything to do with porn.
Portable radios, with batteries, and then, in about 1958, transistors! Little teensy radios, and (if I remember right) you could tune both AM and FM. (Might have been the first time I listened to FM.)
I couldn’t afford a transistor, but my best friend had one. She and I cut corn out of beans for a local farmer that summer (40 cents an hour), and she brought her radio along. It sure made the time pass faster.
I guess this means I also remember when most farmers took care of weeds manually, rather than using herbicides.
I first saw a music video at a Beatlefest in around 1979. They had one room designated the “promo” room, where they showed films of the band dancing around, singing, riding in cars, etc., while their music played. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. By the time I graduated from High School in 1983, one of my friends had cable tv and I was occasionally invited over to watch MTV. MTV played music videos back then.
I remember when I was around ten and Disneyland was switching over from selling books of tickets for its rides to selling a “passport” that allowed you on all rides. I was so thrilled to have a passport and not have to hassle with the A, B, C, D and E tickets. You always had so many A and B tickets, and no one ever wanted to ride those rides.
I remember when answering machines were getting popular and for years there were lots of people who insisted that they would never leave a message on one of those awful machines. hehe
Just remembered another one this morning – portable hair dryers and electric curling irons.
In the 50’s, if your girlfriend said “I can’t go out tonight, I just washed my hair”, she wasn’t lying.
When you washed your hair, you were stuck at home until it dried, naturally. The first home hair dryer was a heater with a hose that connected to a bonnet. You put the bonnet on, turned on the heater, and warm air blew into the bonnet.
Curling irons – if you wanted curl or body, you twirled your hair into little circles and fastened them with rags or bobby pins, or you slept on hair rollers. You could get little foam pads to put under brush rollers.
Oh! Permanent press – everybody had an iron and an ironing board. Permanent press cost more at first. I thought $6 was pretty extravagant for a blouse, just to avoid ironing.
I remember when the 53 Chevy’s came out looking so different from the 52’s.
My Dad had the biggest outboard engine on the lake, an Evinrude 22 HP with opposed cylinders and you had to wrap a rope on the top to start it. No shift, if it started, you were moving, not even a neutral.
The first Cessna -172
Listening to the Lone Ranger on the big Zenith radio before we got the brand new Philco TV.
I remember the first hand held calculator I ever saw. My father bought it to do his taxes. It reminds me of the ones you can buy for about three dollars now. If I remember correctly, it cost about two hundred fifty dollars in 1973. We had one of those early TV remote controls that made a clicking sound that would make it change channels. I remember that you could make it change channels by clapping your hands, and passing cars would sometimes change the channel. It was ruined when we went on a month long vacation once and a passing car turned it on while we were gone. I remember the first cell phone my father had. It was one of those “bag phones” that were the size of a six pack. In cars, I remember the first car I ever saw with ABS. Whenever you put the brakes on hard, the pump whined loudly, and the pedal pulsed really hard. I remember the first computerized diagnostic machines that ford put out. It was the size of a refrigerator and had about a jillion cables and hoses you had to hook up to the car. The one I use now is a small pocket PC and one small cable that hooks up to the car.
I remember when my dad first got a laptop computer issued by his work. It was a Tandy something or other: one flat unit with a screen about the same proportions as a business envelope but somewhat smaller. Text only. I don’t even remember if it had a floppy drive or how they got anything on or off it.
When my dad got a cellphone, it was a huge thing the size of a litre of milk, with a big bendy antenna the size of a fountain pen.