Lately I have been pondering how things have changed over the course of my life. By “things” I mean not only tangible physical things, but also processes like traveling and long-distance communication.
Being fascinated by history, I also extended my perspective beyond the span of my own life into the past. This essay is my effort to recount my observations about how things have changed over the course of my life, and how they changed over the span of time long before I was born.
I was born in Saudi Arabia to American parents. It is natural for us, early in life, to assume our experience of life is more or less like everyone else’s experience of life. Over the course of our lives, we learn there are many different cultures, beliefs, opportunities, and circumstances that influence our experience of life. Comparing my life with the lives of the many other people I have encountered throughout my life, I must say I feel extraordinarily fortunate and grateful. I don’t mean to denigrate others by suggesting that my life has been so good. In fact, I have seen people who have far less convenience, wealth, and personal security than I have, but nevertheless seem to have found lots of happiness and contentment.
Traveling
Before I was born, travel was much more arduous than anything I have experienced. Imagine what it was like in 1492 for Columbus and his crew as they crossed the Atlantic in three small sailing ships. What was it like to travel in a covered wagon from Independence, Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean in the 1840s.
Early in my life we did a lot of traveling all over the world. We drove across the United States and various places in Europe, flew in propeller planes all over the globe, and went on many steamship voyages.
Those prop planes were a bit different than present day plane travel. Unlike present-day commercial planes where almost everyone is packed in like sardines in a can, those 1950s planes were very spacious. Where we store our carry-on luggage in the overhead compartments today, there used to be sleeping berths that would pull down. Some of these planes were double-decker with a spiral staircase that led down to the lounge. As a young kid I would sometime be invited up to the pilot’s cabin to sit on his lap so I could “fly the airplane.” Unbeknownst to me, the pilot had the plane on autopilot. Early in 1960, I flew on one of the first Boeing 707s, from Hawaii to Los Angeles.
Steamship travel was also very different, unlike the modern-day gigantic vacation cruise ships with waterslides and 24-hour food service. We traveled on many different passenger liners. In those days they usually had 3 different “classes.” First class had all the best amenities, including formal dining that required at least a sport coat and tie for men and boys, and an evening dress for women and girls. Second class was segregated from first class and a little less fancy, but still kind of regimented. Steerage class was also segregated and provided very few amenities. In some cases, not even a stateroom, a bed, or any food service.
Speaking of travel, I would be remiss not to mention the 24 astronauts who traveled to the moon and back, 12 of whom actually walked on the surface of the moon. From Olduvai Gorge in East Africa to the moon in little more than 200,000 years. And from Cape Canaveral to the moon and back in just over 8 days.
Long Distance Communication
Between 1300 and 1520 the Aztecs used a relay of runners to send messages over long distances.
In the 1790s semaphore was invented. This is a method that signals letters by the signaler holding left-hand and right-hand flags in various positions.
In the early 1860s the Pony Express could transport a message more than 1,800 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California in just 10 days!
On July 13, 1866 the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable was laid, and was in service until 1965.
When I was born in 1950, there were telephones, and apparently there were even area codes less than a year after I was born. But my early life experiences of long-distance calling definitely required contacting the operator. Do you remember driving around trying to find a phonebooth? How about mimeographs or carbon paper, remember those?
These days, almost everyone has a cellphone. In 1984 I got my first cellphone installed in my car. It was just a telephone without any of the functions we have on our cellphones today. Now, cellphones have dozens of functions including a clock, a global positioning device, a game device, a TV, and hundreds other useful functions. They are light, portable, and can easily communicate with someone on the other side of the planet. A pocket-sized computer.
Computers
Perhaps the very first computers were the fingers on our hands, which could be used to calculate the addition and subtraction of small numbers.
There have been many mechanical and electronic computers throughout history, too many for me to recount them all here. So, I’ll just list the ones with which I had some sort of personal experience.
I experimented with an abacus but never used one for anything serious. I had a slide rule, and used it to solve math problems in seventh grade. I had a pocket-sized calculator, that was a necessity when I returned to college to study mechanical engineering.
After graduating from college in 1978, I went to work at Boeing where I had the opportunity to use several different computer systems, including CAD computers (computer aided design systems). Among these were Computervision (CV) systems which we used to design parts for the Boeing 757. This experience with CAD inspired me to see if I could create my own CAD software to run on the newly introduced IBM PC, which I did, modeling the user-interface after the Computervision interface that I knew so well.
In 1983 I got an opportunity to show my software to CV. They were impressed and we subsequently entered into a joint a marketing and development agreement. Over the next couple of decades, my software was purchased and used by companies all around the world, bringing me and others financial success.
As I said in the previous section, contemporary cellphones are also computers… much smaller and more powerful than the first computer I owned… which was roughly the size of a contemporary dishwasher.
Healthcare
In ancient times little was known about the causes of disease. There were shamans who used their incantations to heal illness, with no real effect except by coincidence. Those coincidences helped to reinforce confidence in these early pseudo remedies. Some herbal remedies did actually have a beneficial healing effect. Some of them have been transformed into modern-day medicines. Aspirin, one of the most widely used drugs in the world, was originally derived from salicylic acid found in the bark of willow trees.
There have been many pandemics impacting many thousands of people around the world. Among these are the bubonic plague, also known as the black death. Between 50 and 100 million people died from the bubonic plague in the 14th century. That is at least one out of every ten people worldwide at the time. In the first fifty years of the twentieth century smallpox killed about 400 million people. That is more than the current total population of the U.S.
Modern medicine has done much to improve the lives and longevity of people living in North America and Europe. I have personally been the beneficiary of medical treatment that is not available to the vast majority of people around the planet. I have many times inadvertently cut myself. When that happens, I go to our medicine cabinet and dress the wound with antibiotic ointment and a band-aid. Several years ago, I was hiking in Nepal when we came across a stone building with a sign over the door labeling it as a clinic. Inside this building there was nothing… no doctor, no medicine, absolutely nothing at all except a dusty dirt floor. Just outside the door of this “clinic” was a man who had had a bad laceration on his hand. He frantically asked us if we had any medicine. We pulled our travel medical kit out of one of our packs, put some antibiotic ointment on his laceration, and then applied a large bandage that we had with us. He was very grateful. In retrospect, I too am very grateful… for the opportunity to help this man… and even more so for all the medical services availed to me over my life.
Entertainment
One of the earliest forms of entertainment was story-telling. Sitting around a campfire, listening to the stories told by the elders. Also, singing and dancing… around that campfire, and later sitting in front of the indoor fireplace listening to grandpa and grandma’s stories. After the printing press came along reading books became very popular. Also, going to a hoedown, a fancy ball, a symphony concert, vaudeville, a theatrical play, a movie theater were popular for entertainment. More recently, we have television and, sigh, here they are again… cellphones.
I don’t have much opportunity to do it these days, but I do like sitting around a campfire, or looking up at the night sky when I can get far enough away from city lights to see the stars. I used to have a tipi… actually several over the years. I remember many nights watching the fire dwindle as I slowly fell asleep.
Indeed, things have changed… some for the better… some not so much…
