Invented by Whom, Where, When?

The other day I happened to hear about the invention of the garbage disposal. Also at around the same time I heard about when the first automatic washer came on the market, and the first hermetically sealed refrigerator—these latter two a little before my time.

I was somewhat astonished to realize that I had never thought about when the garbage disposal was invented. It's one of those things that you take for granted.

Of course what you are aware of as an innovation within your own lifetime, and what you take for granted, depends on your age.

Children today—well, probably anyone under about 30—have always known computers, so they don't even think about a time when home computers didn't exist. And cell phones are only a bit more recent so kids take them for granted, too, and have no notion that they didn't always exist.

In my family, some fairly well-off relations got some gadgets at a time when they were not yet really common: the automatic washer, air conditioning, even TV. My own family was the third one on our block to get TV, in December 1950. My grandparents, aunt and uncle, and several of my friends already had it in their homes. Everyone wanted one—of course it was something of a status symbol—even though we had one channel, and there was no 24-hour broadcasting, so when there was no program we actually stared at the "test pattern" on the screen. I suppose it sounds like some third-world country but it really was just a smallish city in Pennsylvania.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Our Complicated Electronic Gadgets

I finally popped for one of those gigantic LCD TVs, or "flat-screens" as evidently they've come to be called. Believe it or not, for quite a while I'd been mainly watching a 20" CRT (picture tube) TV, and in fact that was the biggest TV I'd ever owned.

I completely leapfrogged over the era when people were buying those huge devices called DLP TVs that would totally dominate a room. Sit in the corner and stare at you. Usually, I'm not the first one to go right out and buy some new technology or toy—but I'm not the last, either.

It seems like every new electronic device is so complicated. Luckily, this TV (and probably almost all of them) steps you through the initial setup—at least the channel scan—with prompts. And for audio and picture settings, there are the factory defaults or presets. I have a feeling that 98% of owners use those presets and never change them.

Which gets me to my main point. How many of us really know how to exploit the features and settings and options of our electronic toys—our cell phones, our computers, even our cars? I know for fact that, since computer ownership has become so mainstream, many people have a very shaky knowledge of, say, their operating system (e.g., Windows) and need some sort of computer help at one time or another. So operation has gotten too complex. Consumer Reports magazine recently rated some Ford and Lincoln models as "not recommended," because their command system--MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch, I believe--is too complicated. They said good old-fashioned knobs and switches would be better: easier to use and less distracting for the driver.

Then there's just the matter of hook-up. An awful lot of people need help just with hooking up their TVs, computers, etc. I know because I have helped others hook up their computers, stereos, and so forth, many times. And occasionally I myself have been confused, if only momentarily, by a complicated hookup.

I can manage my computer all right and seldom if ever have had to seek any help. And ditto for my cell phone. With my previous car, I had to spend a lot of time studying the owner's manual, since it was somewhat fancy and had a lot of features I wasn't accustomed to. ("The car will do such-and-such, except when this or that or an alternate Tuesdays.") I bet we often discover some of the features only accidentally (happened to me).


I tend to feel that all this stuff complicates our lives. Yes, it's definitely cool what some of these things can do. Our "toys" are fun, convenient, helpful. But I find myself yearning for the days when my clock radio (probably now over 30 years old) would have been considered complicated. I feel I'm almost capable of becoming a real Luddite (named for a man who was a leader in protests and even sabotage of the new machinery that came in with the Industrial Revolution).

Interestingly, later (since I originally posted this) there came news that Consumer Reports removed its recommendations on one Ford and one Lincoln vehicle because their touch-screen-driven command system (MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch) is unnecessarily complicated and too much of a distraction to the driver. They said good old-fashioned knobs and switches would be better. Kinda makes me think that we've been seeking complexity and sophistication for its own sake and not for practical reasons or for real utility.

Also, from where I stand I think there is an age thing going on. Some of my friends my age continue to be knowledgeable of, and comfortable with, all these technological innovations. But a lot of people my age (and younger) need help with, for example, learning to use their computers. The other day I heard an 84-year-old man say that he didn’t know what karaoke is. As the writer Judith Viorst once said, It's hard to be hip after 40.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

What's Changed in the World. Part 5 - Computing

If computers have brought great changes in our lives, computing itself has changed. Fifty years ago, computers were owned only by the government, the military, universities, and large businesses. Computers were very large and required dedicated rooms that in turn had dedicated air-conditioning, because the heat that the computers generated was bad for the computers themselves and had to be removed. A modern computer—a laptop or desktop computer--that almost everyone in America can have, is many, many times more powerful than one of those old computers that filled a room.

I dealt with computers back before the day when it occurred to someone to hook up a TV screen to the computer. The computer's output (and sometimes input, as well) was to a TeleTypewriter, a big machine that—well, never mind, suffice it to say that this was a device that had been around for the purpose of receiving and printing out telegrams.

You'd write your program out, with a pen or pencil, on "IBM coding sheets." Then you'd have to sit down at a machine called a keypunch. You'd type in your program at this machine's keyboard. Every line of your program would result in the production of a punched card (called Hollerith cards or IBM cards).

A program of any complexity could be hundreds of punched cards. People writing and running programs would carry their stack of cards in a shoebox. (Don't even imagine what would happen if you dropped the box or spilled the cards!)

Then the stack of cards was fed into a "card reader." That finally got the program into the computer, and then the computer needed to be commanded to run it. For students such as I was, you had to wait your turn for your program to be run, and you'd get the printout of the program's output in a day or two!

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

What's Changed in the World. Part 3 - Science

In some fields of science, progress may have been frustratingly slow—both to the general pubic and to the professionals in those fields. For example, it is still not possible to predict volcanic eruptions or tornadoes--and warnings of imminent tornado strikes are all too short. Basically, warnings are issued only once a tornado has actually formed and been spotted.

However, it is in the biomedical fields that we have seen astonishing progress. With many miraculous new drugs and new surgical procedures, such as transplants, many illnesses and medical conditions are no longer death sentences. Patients with certain types of cancer now have much longer life expectancies. Patients with HIV/AIDS can now often live long with the virus. Generally, people are living long lives, now, with many illnesses and conditions that would have shortened their lives a few decades ago.

There are entirely new kinds of medical imaging (CT scans and MRI); and, the sequencing of the human genome has almost unlimited possibilities for associating diseases with specific genes and maybe also permitting new treatments.

I can't comment too much on the physical sciences except maybe astronomy, which has intersected my life at several junctures. Astronomy has made a lot of progress with incredible new tools such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The field of computers, both computer hardware and software, has probably done more to transform our lives than any other technical field; but I've covered a lot of this in the posting on changes to communication.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

What's Changed in the World. Part 2 - Communication

I think that it's in communications that the greatest changes have occurred in the past few decades.

Of course the computer has been a transforming invention. Once upon a time, computers were very large and only businesses, government, and scientific research establishments were able to have them.

Then, in the early 1980s we began to see small home computers. Then Apple, with its computers that had a graphical user interface, and then later MicroSoft's Windows, began to make computers sufficiently user-friendly that everyone could learn to use one. Now many universities require incoming students to have a computer, and even high school students consider having a computer to be necessary for doing their homework. As of 2010, it is estimated that there is nearly one computer for every resident of the United States and Canada.*

Computers and the Internet have changed so much of our lives: how we date, how we shop, and much more. Interpersonal relations have been transformed by computers, in particular by the Internet and "social networking" web sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Cell phones, which rely on what is essentially computer technology, have also transformed our lives. I just read that many young people have never used a phone with a cord ("except at my grandparents'"). And who writes letters nowadays? Anything written and mailed is scorned as "snail mail" and ridiculously slow and old-fashioned—all this to the detriment of the post office, which has seen mail volume drop because of the use of email, not to mention the FAX machine--which now has been around for more than 30 years and thus is not thought of as an innovation anymore.

We have new ways of spending our time: using social networking sites, sending and reading email, texting, and so forth. And, as I wrote in an earlier post, so many of us now seem very committed to doing one or more of these activities at the same time as something else: for example, talking on the cell phone while driving, shopping, etc.

The cell phone looks like one of those cases where fact has caught up with science fiction. Anyone old enough to remember the comic strip Dick Tracy might remember that Dick had a "two-way wrist radio" (and then, later, a "two-way wrist TV"). Then the "Star Trek" characters on TV had their "communicators." These fictional wireless communication devices now look like nothing but anticipations of the cell phone.

In an emergency, you no longer have to (as in a scene from an old movie) knock on the door of some strangers when you are stuck on a stormy night. You no longer have to look for a phone booth. You no longer have to ask anyone to use the phone in their home or place of business. Pay phones are disappearing, being removed from public places. They are going the way of the buggy whip.

Think of how the cell phone has transformed our lives. No one is ever out of touch anymore—with their bosses, their families, their friends. (I personally think that being unreachable has its good points; and I guess that someone who wanted to be out of touch could be: we can always shut those cell phones off. But I doubt that very many people do.)

And, I could go on about the "smart phone," and all the marvelous things that has made possible. But I don't own one so maybe I'm not aware of the most important and transformative things that they have made possible.

With the spread of wireless phones, many individuals and families no longer have a phone with a cord. And, does anybody remember telegrams? They were used to sending messages of congratulations when I was a kid, but earlier they were a primary method of communication. They were probably particularly useful for overseas communications because international phone calls were very, very expensive. Telegrams were not fast, by today's standards, but they were faster than what we now call "snail mail" letters. Now gone and mostly forgotten. Western Union, the telegraph and telegram company, survived into more recent times by "wiring" money.

* http://www.technewsreview.com.au/article.php?article=9967

Note added 8/30: With so many amazing apps for the smart phone appearing daily, I think this is going to be a truly transformative technology.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein