Major Developments in My Lifetime

First of all, when I was a kid, there were no televisions, no computers, no nuclear bombs and no jet aircraft. All railroad engines were steam locomotives. We didn't get our first TV until I got back from the Air Force in 1958. That TV was in a large console with a small 12-inch black and white screen. We could get 1 station at the time. Prior to getting the TV our entertainment and news was brought to us via a large console AM radio with large tubes in it. We had a 3 party line telephone that when you picked it up, an operator would ask, "Number Please."

One of the first major world events that I became aware of as a kid was World War II. We were fighting the Japanese because they had bombed our base at Pearl Harbor and we were fighting the Germans because they declared war on us at about the same time.

For that war, the US rallied all the citizens to support the war effort. There were no civilian cars manufactured because all the car companies were dedicated to building tanks and airplanes. Many things were rationed including gasoline, sugar, shoes and more. They even made pennies out of zinc instead of copper so they would have more copper for the war effort. Two of my uncles and one aunt moved to California to work in the ship yards.

After that war there was a great economic boom in this country and around the world. It also brought about the expansion of the nuclear industry for both electricity and for bombs.

Unfortunately, after we defeated the Germans and Japanese, Russia start rearing its ugly head and wanted to spread communism around the world. That was the start of the cold war period. Today we face the threat of international terrorism. Back then we faced the threat of total annihilation by nuclear war. We had a lot more to worry about then than we do now.

In 1952, Eisenhower became president and one of his greatest accomplishments was the start of the nation wide Interstate Highway system. Before that there were mostly just one lane highways all over the country.

When I was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi in 1954, Black people had to sit in the back of the bus, they could not get served in most restaurants, there would usually be 3 restrooms in public places (Men, Women and Colored). Both black men and black women had to share the single "colored" facility.

After Kennedy was elected in 1960, he supported the big push for equal civil rights and so did Lyndon Johnson after JFK was assassinated. I was there in person in 1963 to hear Martin Luther King give his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

The 1960's were the wildest of times. Drug use became popular and was widely condoned. Drugs didn't become criminalized like they are today until Nixon came along in the late 60's. He started "the war on drugs"

Nixon's greatest accomplishment was to open diplomatic talks with Red China.

For me the period of my first marriage (1966 - 1976) was a combination of a great family life and great successes on my job.

IBM came out with the first personal computer in 1979. The price of it was about $4000 which translates into about $12,000 in today's money. The computer speed was about 200 kilohertz and the hard drive had a 1-megabyte capacity. Today you can buy a computer with a speed of 3.0 Gigahertz (that's 3,000,000 kilohertz) and an 80 Gigabyte hard drive (that's 80,000,000 megabytes) for less that $500.

When I worked for the Navy Dept in 1979 we had something like the Internet but it was for military use only. Later, in the mid 80's, it was converted to the World Wide Web that is used throughout the world today.

Through out these years there were similar advances in many areas. My dad died in 1940 from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever because they had no cure for it. Five years later, a single shot on penicillin would have cured it. We wiped out polio and other major infectious diseases, we developed open-heart surgery, organ transplants and many other medical procedures. Average life expectancy in the US has risen from about 62 when I was a kid to close to 80 now.

I have lived during exciting times in human progress but I'm sure this progress will continue as fast or even faster in the future.