We've come a long way baby!

diamonback68

diamonback68

US Veteran
Joined
Jun 24, 2003
Messages
6,921
Reaction score
3,437
Location
Due south of Orlando
I was driving down the road the other day talking on my cell phone at about 60 MPH and being old enough, I recall my grandmother who still had the old wall mounted, wooden, crank up telephone connected to a party line in her house and I marveled at what a long way we've came and how we take for granted the advancements in technology. WOW!:)
 
Register to hide this ad
I still have a rotary dial phone hooked up in the basement of my 102 year old house. It was there when we bought it 14 years ago and it still works fine. I took my 17 year old son down and asked him to make a call. He had no idea how to do so.
Wonder what his kids will think is "old technology"?
 
I've still got one of those ol wooden crankers hanging on the wall. Had a barb wire net work between ranches when I was a kid.. We were 2 shorts.

We got "real" phone service in 1962. We had to build our own lines to ATT specs. Each ranch in the area provided the labor. I was it for the 4 families on our place. I dug holes, climbed poles, strung wire, the works.

We sold ATT 60 miles of line for $1.00 to get on their system.
Every call we made beyond our neighbor hood was long distance until 1999.

We got internet service in 2000. It would take all night to down load a letter back then on our network.

Yup, We've come a long way.
 
Last edited:
diamonback68 said:
I was driving down the road the other day talking on my cell phone at about 60 MPH and being old enough, I recall my grandmother who still had the old wall mounted, wooden, crank up telephone connected to a party line in her house and I marveled at what a long way we've came and how we take for granted the advancements in technology. WOW!:)
Click to expand...

My hunting club in the Catskills still has a party line Dick. Gives a distinctive ring, so we know it's for us.
 
micowaves, cordless phones Ipods, cable TV, Home computers, GPS, the list goes on and on. Getting hard to keep up.
 
When I was in College, those Calculator things just came out. I bought a Texas Instruments (first kind available ) that was the size of a very large paperback book. It added, subtracted and multiplied. Cost over $100! Had it a few weeks before it fell of a desk and disintegrated.

Didn't help in my computer class as it was Fortran and we used punch cards.:D
 
>Didn't help in my computer class as it was Fortran and we used punch cards.

I remember those punch cards. Carried my drum control card for the card punch machine in front of my physics book. Carried my Versa-Log on the hip.

Bekeart
 
rocketdog said:
Talking on a telephone when you should be driving is not progress. ;) jmho
Click to expand...

Trust me, it is progress, I was on a long lonely stretch of Rte 721 in the middle of the Seminole Indian Reservation with not a car, cat or intersection within miles in either direction.:rolleyes: If you'd ever been there you would know why you need a cell phone.:eek:
 
I remember the party line from my youth. I bet most people alive today don't even know what that means. I don't think it even had the rotary dial. You picked it up and talked to the operator. Man.... That was a ways back... Mid '50s, I guess.

Last fall I started to use Skype. My boys have been using it for years, but I just started. Many laptops now have a camera in them, or you can buy a camera to connect to your computer for maybe $20 or less. You download Skype for free, and you can videoconference for free with anyone who has a computer, camera, and Skype. It's really simple. Or, you can charge a small deposit to your charge card, and call anyone anywhere's regular or cell phone.

Kinda like Dick Tracy's wristwatch...
 
I remember the old crank phones also. Our phone number was 46R3. When it rang three times we answered. Ah the good ol' days.
 
Maddog 521 said:
I remember the old crank phones also. Our phone number was 46R3. When it rang three times we answered. Ah the good ol' days.
Click to expand...

My grandmothers was three rings too. You knew the number of rings of others on your party line (neighbors). If you wanted the operator for a connection to a person outside your party line, it was one loooooong ring. Operator would then plug you into that party line you wanted to reach and she knew how many rings to reach that person. Ah, the good old days, life was so much simpler then. :D
 
We didn't have the crank phone, but I remember Dad cutting cedar poles and digging the post holes by hand and setting the posts to get the phone line run to the house on.

We were still using a mule to farm then, also. We got a tractor later.

And I'm not that old! The world has just changed awefully fast!
 
Last week the History Channel had a special on "The High Tech of the 90's". The things they were talking about are commonplace now.
 
On the other hand, with all this technology it means there's that much more to go wrong. And it makes you too dependent on others, too dependent on people too far away, who often aren't all that competent.
I recall a wall mounted hand cranked telephone on the wall of the house we moved into in Vermont in 1956, though it soon disappeared.
In 1941 my mother told me she and my grandmother moved into a house just outisde Ossining, New York. Country then, but only 40 miles from NYC. It had a nice electric stove, my grandmother insisted on replacing it with a gas one. The War came, my mother said there were numerous power outages, the electric company was hard pressed due to shortages of man power, materials, etc. But the gas stove always worked.
 
We had a "party line" when I was a kid. I marvel at the fact that people can't seem to live without cell phones. What is so pressing 80% of the women I see on the street, in a store, or in a car they need to be yakking on it. "Poor folks" are given cell phones with free minutes, mainly because their offspring have torn up any remaining pay phones.
 
rocketdog said:
Talking on a telephone when you should be driving is not progress. ;) jmho
Click to expand...

Rocketdog: +10
Studies have shown that a person using a cell phone while driving has worse motor skills than a drunk who is .16 (which is twice the legal limit). This impairment continues after the call is terminated. Texting is even worse and yet millions do it everyday. IMHO: Nothing you have to say is worth someone's life.
 
My old grandpa used to say "Trouble with the world is too many people ridin' on rubber and fartin' through silk" There is a lot of truth to that...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kiwi cop
Well it is finally over (almost)
Replies
7
Views
781
DirtyShirt
D
LVSteve
Reflections on my recent UK trip (Long)
Replies
5
Views
668
326MOD10
3
RM Vivas
NYPD - M&P #S812894 - How I Research The NYPD Guns
2
Replies
22
Views
2K
dobegrant
dobegrant
Faulkner
Tales from the Faulkner Files: Trail of the brush hog +Final Chapter
2
Replies
39
Views
3K
Krogen
Krogen
LVSteve
Rental car review: 2021 Nissan Sentra SV
Replies
7
Views
552
LVSteve
LVSteve

Latest posts

Back
Top