Gadgets Archives
When You Weren't Sure Exactly What Time It was Got a cell phone in your pocket or purse? How about a GPS in your car? I'm sure you have a computer, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this right now. Then you know, within a teeny fraction of a second, exactly what time it is. We take such a situation...
Lunchboxes Man has been eating lunch since time immemorial. And you might think that the portable lunchbox like you carried to school in the 50's, 60's, or 70's would have been just as ancient. But you would be wrong. In 1950, Nashville, TN-based Alladin came up with a concept that they...
Tupperware We Boomers are proud of the fact that we came into existence within a few years of the end of WWII. And as the nation put all of the creative efforts that were once channeled into making the world safe for democracy into business ventures, many familiar household names sprung...
Remote Controls for our TV Sets We Boomers are buried in gadgets, as are all other generations running around in the early 21st century. In ten years, I've gone from reluctantly carrying a (heavy brick) cell phone to proudly sporting an Android phone that is more of a computer/multimedia center than anything else. We've seen TV's...
Timex Watches Ah the simple, carefree days we enjoyed as kids, when we used the sun, our mom's yelling out the front door that lunch was ready, or the school bells to tell time. Our lives were unencumbered by small wrist-worn machines that constantly reminded us that we were late, or that...
The Advantages of Low-Tech As I attempt to put this column together, I'm struggling with a number of technological issues. First of all my rather expensive Cox internet connection has been up and down all morning. It wouldn't do any good to call tech support because I'm just not in the mood to try...
The Laredo Cigarette Machine The year was 1970. Cigarette prices had been steadily climbing throughout the 60's. Why, they had just hit an obscene 40 cents a pack! Something had to be done. Thus, the Laredo cigarette rolling machine was released. The plastic device would compress tobacco into a tube of cigarette paper to...
Weather Radar of the 60's As regular visitors to this site already know, I grew up in Miami, Oklahoma, not in the heart of tornado alley, but certainly within spleen distance ;-). I remember being terrified with break-ins on TV shows from the likes of KOAM and KODE with reports of tornadoes in the area,...
The Evolution of the Telephone This last week, your humble webmaster purchased a piece of cutting-edge technology, a rare occasion for the hardware Luddite. I scored a Samsung Epic computer/phone which is approximately three times as smart as I am. In mulling over subjects for today's piece, I couldn't get that amazing gadget out of...
Hot Lather Machines What a happy coincidence. The younger members of the Boomer generation began shaving at roughly the same time that a formerly familiar device began appearing in our bathrooms: the hot lather machine. Shaving is a rite which few of us guys enjoy. I'm sure you ladies enjoy it even less....
The Supersonic Race The Jet Age hit full stride during the 1950's, as piston-powered aircraft gave way to faster jet-driven models. And as we got addicted to pure speed, the next logical step was to go supersonic. And that was the ambitious plans of airlines all over the world. In the US, development...
Mr. Coffee We grew up listening to the early morning gurgling sounds of the percolator. Even though we were probably too young to enjoy its taste, the coffee smell and the calming sound made for great kitchen ambiance. But all of that changed in 1972. That year, Vincent Marotta released his invention...
The Most Stunning TV Ever Made: the Philco Predicta My subjects for columns are frequently decided upon by pure gut feeling. If it feels right, write about it! I'm a subscriber to Charles Phoenix's Slide of the Week, and I recommend you do so too. Last week, I received a slide that featured a TV that I'd known about,...
The Polaroid SX-70 1972 was a banner year for inventiveness, consumer-product-wise. That year, Mr. Coffee was born. The coffeemaker, which forever changed the way the morning brew was prepared, will no doubt rate its own future mention here. The other big release that year was the Polaroid SX-70. Polaroid had long ago made...
Why Does This TV Show Look...Different? When I was a kid, I noticed something about TV very early in the game: my mom's "stories," as she called the soap operas she watched on weekday afternoons, had a different look to them than other shows like Leave It to Beaver or Bonanza. The look is hard to...
Flash Bulbs If you were to time-travel back to the mid 60's, you would find that photography was a pretty technically challenging affair. I mean, nowadays, we shoot auto-focused, auto-exposed, auto-flashed shots with our $100 digital cameras and see the results as soon as we plug the memory chip into our computers....
Vanished Sound Alert: the Ka-Ching of the Cash Register First of all, I'm taking a two-week break. We're off to Sunny St. Pete Beach for a vacation. See you when we get back. The sounds that we grew up with were things we took for granted. I always assumed that I would hear the five-days-weekly noon whistle at the...
Kodachrome "Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away" sang Paul Simon in what is clearly the greatest song ever written that paid homage to slide film. Unfortunately, mama, i.e. Kodak, didn't listen. Earlier in this year of 2009, Kodak announced that Kodachrome was going away. They had actually been making it disappear...
The Ten-Speed Bike, and How It Took Over the World The year was 1973. My middle brother was home on leave from serving in the navy. While on tour in the far east, he stopped in Japan and picked up a Bridgestone ten-speed and had it shipped stateside. He had it with him when he arrived at our Pea Ridge,...
The Three Speed Bike Boomer kids grew up on two wheels. From the time the training wheels came off, we were spotted buzzing around town on our Sting-Rays, or on less expensive banana-seated clones. However, many of us had more technologically sophisticated rides. Perhaps we inherited them from our parents or older siblings, or...
Easing into FM Think back, Boomers. Once upon a time, listening to the radio meant one thing: listening to AM radio. Now perhaps you had a father like mine, who enjoyed tuning in shortwave broadcasts from all over the world. That could mean a possibility that selecting stations on the home radio might...
You may use any images you find on my site on your own personal site. COPY the images to your own server, PLEASE. If you link directly, you will likely get a logo encouraging others to visit I Remember JFK instead of the graphic that you expected. In return, I request that you include a link back to I Remember JFK. Fair enough?
Podcast: Soda Fountains:
We Boomers grew up with a soda fountain within easy walking distance of where we were. Sadly, they disappeared, to be replaced by the self-serve convenience store. However, with the retro movement, soda fountains are making a bit of a comeback. Today's podcast is all about the long-lost, lamented soda...
Recent Posts
Recent Comments