cowan%snark@uunet.uu.net (02/17/91)
In <16813@accuvax.nwu.edu> Our Esteemed Moderator writes: > I had fun too! Do I wish it was 1960 again, or what? :) PAT] What, 1960? No cellular phones? No cordless phones? No VCRs? No PCs? No ATMs? Arrgh. :-) [Moderator's Note: Not only no PC's, but relatively few computers. No handheld calculators. No international direct dialed calls. We were just starting to have direct dialed domestic long distance calls. Lots and lots of communities in the USA still had manual telephone systems. (The last COs in Chicago to go dial were cut in 1951.) No modems, no color television. Very few answering machines. No digital clocks, but lots of Western Union clocks in every office, school and other public building. I graduated from high school in 1960. My final year in high school and for awhile afterward I worked for the University of Chicago ion the old phone room, operating the telex machine and the switchboard, which was a 19-position ringdown style cord board. All that summer I worked the overnight shift by myself. Typewriters were mechanical and operated by the force of your fingers on the keys. Chicago was a very lovely city, as was New York when I flew there for shows and shopping a couple times each year. Yes, I'd go back to 1960 anytime, provided I could take my 1990's knowledge with me! :) PAT]
john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (02/17/91)
On Feb 16 at 23:49, TELECOM Moderator writes: > (The last COs in Chicago to go dial were cut in 1951.) No modems, no > color television. No color television? Speak for yourself, Pat. I was a high school sophomore and augmented my income by baby sitting for neighbors. I distinctly remember watching (of all things) the Perry Como show on NBC on Saturday nights because it was very much in color on the neighbor's RCA color TV. (The first color TV I ever saw was in 1956.) John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: Maybe there was color television by then; I forget. I am sure it was not all that common in households until the early sixties sometime. Obviously there was no cable television, and FM radio was in its infancy, virtually dwarfed by AM stations, which were still doing the 'radio version' of the old shows (comedy, variety, etc) which had begun migrating to television several years before. PAT]
KLUB@maristb.bitnet (Richard Budd) (02/19/91)
> The Moderator writes in TELECOM DIGEST V11 #123 >> (The last COs in Chicago to go dial were cut in 1951.) No modems, no >> color television. And john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes in TELECOM DIGEST V11 #128 writes: > No color television? Speak for yourself, Pat. I was a high school > sophomore and augmented my income by baby sitting for neighbors. I > distinctly remember watching (of all things) the Perry Como show on > NBC on Saturday nights because it was very much in color on the > neighbor's RCA color TV. (The first color TV I ever saw was in 1956.) Actually, color television has been around longer than either Pat or John (if I deduce correctly from their high school graduation dates that they were born in the early 1940's). It's been available since the early 1930's, though before World War II it was strictly experimental. I'm not sure of the exact date, this information comes from a book published in 1943 on the development of radio and television by General Electric, RCA, and CBS, that I don't have in front of me right now. The Moderator then Noted: > [Moderator's Note: Maybe there was color television by then; I forget. > I am sure it was not all that common in households until the early > sixties sometime. Obviously there was no cable television, and FM > radio was in its infancy, virtually dwarfed by AM stations, which were > still doing the 'radio version' of the old shows (comedy, variety, > etc) which had begun migrating to television several years before. PAT] Color television wasn't rare, but color television programming certainly was before 1965. I remember back in grade school days when the NBC Peacock indicated that the upcoming program was in full living color. It was more a case of economics, the cost of producing a television program in color compared to black-and-white. The scarcity of color television sets before the mid-1960's made it more cost effective for the networks to broadcast in black-and-white. The same situation existed with FM programming. FM has also been around since the 1930's, but World War II and subsequent FCC regulations made it uneconomical for radio stations to broadcast in FM until the mid-1960's when the increased number of AM/FM radios and changes in the FCC by-laws made FM broadcasting practical; just in time to become the medium for the underground psychedelic music coming out of the West Coast and Texas. It wasn't the lack of technology, but rather unavailable "software" outlets and economics that made FM and color television rare commodities in 1960; the same reason VHS video-casettes became the main storage medium for VCRs instead of Betamax, even though the latter technology is more advantageous to the user. Richard Budd | E-Mail: IBMers - rcbudd@rhqvm19.ibm VM Systems Programmer | All Others- klub@maristb.bitnet IBM - Sterling Forest, NY | Phone: (914) 578-3746 [Moderator's Note: Thanks for a good history lesson. The first FM radio station in the USA was here in Chicago. Started in 1941 by the Zenith Radio Corporation to encourage the sale of FM radios by giving the new owner at least one station to listen to, WEFM broadcast classical music from 6 AM until midnight daily until 1978. The call letters stood for <E>dward <F> <M>cCormick, the president of Zenith in the 1930 - 1940 era. The only advertising message was the simple statement "A service of Zenith Radio Corporation". The station was sold to Metromedia in 1978 and changed to top forty rock. PAT]
PZ2@psuvm.psu.edu (David L. Phillips) (02/20/91)
In article <telecom11.134.6@eecs.nwu.edu>, KLUB@maristb.bitnet (Richard Budd) says: >> The Moderator writes in TELECOM DIGEST V11 #123 >> [Moderator's Note: Maybe there was color television by then; I forget. >> I am sure it was not all that common in households until the early >> sixties sometime. Obviously there was no cable television... [whole bunch deleted] One more piece of history: although it was not as ubiquitous as it is today, cable television (or community antenna television, as it was known then - CATV) was important to TV viewers in mountainous areas like Pennsylvania and Oregon in the early 1950's. It was the only way those folks hidden behind the hills could watch over-the-air TV. You might guess that the first system was started so a music store retailer in Lansford, PA, could sell TV sets.