Connecting with the Past

I can’t help but be in awe at how far technology has gone, especially for us members of the so-called Baby Boomer generation (those born after the Second World War in the years 1946 – 1964 when economic prosperity rose and birth rates increased).   It was a very different world that we grew up in – much simpler and very much slower – but everything worked nonetheless, and we got things going, so nobody really complained.

Let’s travel back in time to about half a century ago.  It would really be fun connecting with the past.  You’ll be amused at what you’ll learn.  I’ve been there, or more accurately, that’s where I came from, and I still have many of the things from that era. It would really be a pleasure sharing these with you.

  Most everyone loves listening to music, so let’s start with this one.

We listened to music mostly on the radio.  It was then the primary source of entertainment in the home.  Radio programming was generally geared towards music broadcasting all day, stations starting their broadcasts at 5:00 a.m., the genre of songs to fit the time of day, until they signed off at 11:00 p.m.  24/7 broadcasting was unheard of then.  People had to sleep, so there was always a quiet period each night till sign on again the next day.  Cool.  I miss those days.

The early broadcasts were on AM – on the same 550 -1600 medium-wave (MW) band spectrum that’s in use today, except that the frequencies were referred to then as kilocycles per second (kc) instead of kilohertz (khz).  You will see this on the dial markings of radios of that era.  FM came later in the 1960s.   One thing I must say, though – AM stations in those days sounded so much better than they do now.  I believe it was standard practice at that time that all broadcast material should be of the highest quality.  And that extended even to the person behind the microphone.  I could have been a radio announcer myself but was told that my type of voice was considered not fit for broadcast.  Not cool! LOL!

Because electronics experimentation was my hobby, I constructed many receivers throughout the years on which I listened to both AM and shortwave broadcasts.  Shortwave is a spectrum above the MW band that extends from 3 to 30 Mhz on which you can receive broadcasts (news and music) from all over the world direct from the countries from where they originated from.  Radio listening here (called DX for distance) is limitless adventure and lots of fun, often tuning late into the night and sometimes until the wee hours of the morning when band propagation is most active.  I will discuss at length on this in future posts.

Aside from radio, there were the phonograph records – these are the flat discs now referred to as vinyl or LPs on which the actual sounds are recorded in spiral grooves and which play from the outer rim towards the spindle at the center.  (Today’s CDs, on the other hand, play from the inside towards the outer rim.)  We had 78s, 45s, and 33 1/3s – the numbers referring to the rotational speed measured in revolutions per second (rpm) of the platter on which the records were played.  There’s also so much to tell about phonograph records that I’ll reserve that for future postings when I dedicate our discussions to specific subjects.

And of course the tape recorders on which we did our copying of selected songs either from records, from the radio, or even live performances.  The quality of the recordings was proportionately dependent on how expensive your equipment was, though.  The original open-reel tapes in time evolved to other smaller formats until its performance was rivaled by the compact audio cassette, which I believe most of you are familiar with, since the ‘cassette’ as it was popularly known, was only fairly recently taken over by the CD.

Fast forward to today - you’ll find me using a Nokia C1-01 cellphone and earbuds for my music during my early morning walks.  In addition, I also take both still photos and video using its built-in camera, and its voice recorder for memos.  The songs are organized in different playlists so that I don’t have to listen to the same batch each time.

 

While we keep abreast with modern technology, it will become even more interesting when we start exploring and building old-time projects and find that most of these have actually led to the development of the high-tech gizmos that we enjoy today.  It will prove to be a very fascinating and rewarding experience to be connecting with the past.