I'm going to ignore all the medical advances in my lifetime - there are far too many and I am incredibly grateful for all of them.
So this is a very personal list of those made in my life time which have enhanced my comfort and efficiency. And yes, time management.
First of all:
Automatic washing machines, dishwashers, dryers. Unheard of when I was a child. I do remember my mother's old hoover, a huge purchase when I was about seven or eight. Two small tubs, one a spin-dryer, in the same machine. Eased her workload considerably.
Calculators, mainframe computers, floppy disks, all the way to personal computers. And printers. And laser printers. Bye bye typewriters! At home! Home offices! The foundation of my own business! True independence!
Reel to reel tapes, recording music off the radio when I was a teenager. On to cassette tapes, not forgetting 8-tracks, on to CDs, on to Ipods and Spotify and 5,000 pieces of music on a tiny hand held device. To be played at whim. Anytime and anywhere. Mirabile dictu! And the miraculous VCR all the way to streaming today.
And last, but not least (believe me, I can think of many more) cell phones, the internet, then the internet and world wide web on our actual mobile phones!
I've seen many, many changes in my lifetime. Not least of which was the enormous radio with a huge battery my dad would listen to at a local farmer's when we children spent our summers on an electricity free island. It's aerial was strung up outside the kitchen window to the second floor as heaven forbid they might miss a hurling match from Croke Park in Dublin. Pre transistor. I was about 13 when I saw my first transistor - my cousin was gifted it. I was sick with envy.
What changes have you seen in your lifetime?
No invention beats indoors running water and WC!
ReplyDeleteNext on my list: Fridge! no more going to town each day, even sometimes twice.
Next: Central heating! no more lugging coal or petrol from cellars on ice-cold mornings.
Yes all in my lifetime.
Charlotte I would hate having to start a fire with the turf and newspaper and holding a newspaper page over the fire to create a "draft" to get the dampness out. And the smoke. I remember having running water when I was a toddler but for the life of me can't remember where the WC was.
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Blogger has taken to hiding images from me. How I wish that blogger boffins HADN'T been invented.
ReplyDeleteI am very grateful for sanitary items. Those dealing with menstruation and including toilet paper.
I am very, very grateful for water on tap. And electricity.
I am not grateful for things which cannot be repaired (unless you have skills way over the level in this house) which are designed to be thrown away as soon as they stop working...
I was lucky in that living in a city I had access to sanitary towels but the RCs forbade tampons on the basis it rendered us "Impure".
DeleteRepairs are not my forte either but I will be forever grateful to my retired tech guy who replaced the innards of my favourite big screen desktop at a laughably low price recently.
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And in regards to contraception. They won't make my list. The medical ones are not good for your health. Medical industry ions trying to talk this under the floor, but the ovulation method (not the same as the calendar method) is actually as efficient as the Pill in avoiding pregnancy, and just as efficient when used for getting pregnant if that's what you want. I once wrote a piece called the cow and the wife pertaining to this. Maybe I should translate and publish it ;)
ReplyDeleteIn my time "ovulation" was unmentionable. But I know your recommended method works. The risk (to me and my friends) was always the carelessness of inebriation.
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Once if you were told you had cancer, it was generally assumed you would soon die. How different it mostly is now. Modern medicine is amazing.
ReplyDeleteAlso amazing is the very powerful computer we carry around in our pockets and hand bags, yet we think little of it and expect it to always function perfectly, and they mostly do.
I suppose the advances in technology is behind almost everything. Where to next?
The easing of women's labour and control over her own body is my top one Andrew and technology has contributed to this and research, etc.
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The computer and cell phone have definitely been game changers! I would add the cars we drive today. My Subaru has an adaptive cruise control that will maintain a distance from the car in front and in traffic without turning the cruise on and off. It also has collision warnings and safety measures. All much better than the lap belts and lack of air bags of my youth.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's car has all the bells and whistles even verbal reminders to get her to maintenance. Almost like a human. Automotive technology has been amazing.
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You have listed the majority. I put the star on birth control; it changed our lives, especially after husbands did not have to agree, or even know. The generation that went to work in the sixties truly were freed.
ReplyDeleteI so agree with you Joanne, not forgetting vasectomies for men.
DeleteThe progression in the sixties (freed from childbirth) was astonishing.
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Great post! I'd add equal rights, seat belts and airbags, the jet plane, space exploration, less smoking, less crime (despite the recent uptick) and longer lives (despite the recent backsliding due to drugs and Covid).
ReplyDeleteI believe your equal rights bill (US) has still to be ratified, Tom? Maybe I am mistaken. I know women's rights are constantly on the table with the Repugs. Vis-a-vis Texas as the latest.
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The biggest changes for me were television which did not arrive in Australia until the 50s, then colour television sometime in the 70s. Fridges weren't new, but we didn't have one until I was about six, maybe five. Then an indoor, flushing, toilet, no more running down to the back corner of the yard to the "dunny" with a wooden seat and a can under it to be collected by the "nightman" once a week.
ReplyDeleteThere is one thing, not new, that I will always be thankful got invented. The HOT shower. Although we didn't have one until the bathroom was built and then it had a chip heater, which we had to fill with woodchips and light them to heat the water as it ran through the pipe.
I'm with you on the shower, River, when I emigrated to Canada, I was thrilled to pieces at the idea of the shower. I hate baths.
DeleteFirst time I heard of a chip heater.
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Many of the same, although I didn't know a time without birth control (thank goodness). I had a typewriter in college and computer labs were just starting to appear. I didn't think they'd amount to much in my own life so I refused to learn how to use one. What foresight, huh?
ReplyDeleteOh that's funny SAW. I remember all my male co-workers sighing and cursing over the new fangled gadgets with little screens as I snorted privately.
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All the things that you have listed and since for most of my pre retirement period was spent in Socialist India, another list that will take me an hour to compile. Just to get from eras of shortages to abundance shortly explains it.
ReplyDeleteWhile many of us have experienced shortages of funds in our families--we did, for sure, when I was young--we haven't experienced that kind of shortage. Thanks for the different perspective. In this time of adjustment for all of us, it's good to be reminded to be grateful.
DeleteI think you should do your own blogpost on this Ramana and like Linda I am grateful for your reminder - though I did experience shortage (rationing) in WW2 Ireland.
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TV. Not necessarily a good thing, but definitely a game changer! Today we are almost all addicted to our various sources of home video entertainment, whether conventional TV or streaming services or YouTube or video games. It has changed home life enormously, and the struggle to limit children’s “screen time” looms large in many parents’ lives.
ReplyDeleteStreaming is certainly one of my favourite inventions as I haven't had TV since the eighties. I couldn't bear the commercials or on the public ones, the begging for money. Always high pitched and hurting my ears.
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I was born in 1961. We used a wringer washer outside by the clothesline until 1968. Mom did clothes by hand until I was 6 months old.
ReplyDeleteI've seen all the changes since. As a RN in the Operating Room since 1981, I couldn't begin to list the changes I've seen. I'll give 1. A knee replacement was a HUGE procedure. Patients admitted the night before. They stayed in the hospital 14 days. They had therapy for months! I had my 1st knee replacement June 2018. I arrived at the hospital at 0530 and was home at 2015. I had my 2nd knee replacement this July. I arrived at 0530 and was home at 1500. I needed no narcotic with either one. I started PT day 6 and got "fired" after 5 visits because I had full knee motion at 15 days. AND, the procedure used to take 3 hours while mine was computer-assist and took 55 minutes. I am loving my "perfect twins" :-)
Wow! Good to hear!
DeleteI was born in 1961. I washed babys' things by hand until baby nr. 2!
DeleteYes, the hips and knees were a wonderful anti-crippling invention Elle, I know so many who have had them.
DeleteI remember when laundry services were really, really cheap when my first baby was born. So I only handwashed the delicates or woolen sweaters.
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Ok but I like the old school stuff and still use it. Our area is a cell phone dead spot so landlines are still in. I don't do streaming. I will always watch my dvds. If it's not in my hand and not in my control then no can do! With movies being pulled due to political correctness or old TV programs being edited so they can insert more commercials, I will never part with home or external media.
ReplyDeleteI had to give my massive collection away when I moved to a small apartment Mark. DVDS and VCRS, thousands upon thousands. Streaming my favourites is an unexpected pleasure now and with the large screen and no commercials a jou.
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This is a very nice post, makes me remember and be grateful.thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you Unknown!
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indoor sanitation for all in my lifetime in rural and urban Ireland. On our main road people still drew the day's water from the pump, called in Dublin for some reason, the fountain.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness Anne. Reminds me of my well at my last house. The taste was exquisite. But hauling from a pump would have no appeal :(
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A friend of mine got pregnant while using an IUD. So I am not sure the IUD is all that effective. It might be better to pull out. What the heck? LOL. As for me, the microwave and dishwasher made my life much easier.
ReplyDeleteI got pregnant after my husband got a vasectomy. It can happen. I lost the baby though and we were very upset. Another of my friends had twins post vasectomy. Nothing is dead safe though young friends tell me the injection is fantastic.
DeleteI sure miss my dishwasher.
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We once lived in a house with an open sewer ditch behind it. Modern sanitation and effective enforcement of city codes has to number among the best of inventions. I thought the food disposal a wonderful invention, but now we compost and don't use it. Birth control, of course, although it turned out I didn't need that so much as I did help getting pregnant, so Clomid has to rank as high as birth control. Computers and smart phones, of course. I've worked since the early days of portable computers on a computer, first on an Osborne suitcase computer with its 5-INCH screen. The computer allowed me to write my first books from home and then to write for a website when I needed a steadier income while my girls were attending college. In the last few days, one teen granddaughter Facetimed me to show me that she'd gotten her braces off and another to show me her homecoming dress. I ordered cookie delivery gift certificates to be delivered by email to my two college-age grandchildren and texted one, who is a junior, to wish her good luck on her upcoming interviews for an internship next summer. She's far too busy for a phone call with Grammie right now. I help them with homework, and last summer, helped the youngest edit her first novel. Due to disability and Covid, maintaining that kind of relationship with them would be difficult without modern technology. Robovacs and mops help us maintain a clean house, enabling us to stay here. Through DNA studies, we discovered a previously unknown son of my late brother.
ReplyDeleteModern technology for connection with the young uns is brilliant Linda and I absolutely embraced it in its infancy and could imagine some of the potential but it continually surprises me. My Zoom siblings meeting every Sunday afternoon being one.
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Been a while since I've written. After 21 months including Covid's arrival here, I finally had my lumpectomy last Tuesday as a one-day event and then discharged. What a difference between now and 20 yrs. ago when I had my first lumpectomy (different breast). I am delighted w/ the treatment now compared to earlier and want to share it. Firstly, my oncologist sent a sample to be tested for genetic possibilities and BINGO.....no wonder I'm having another one now! I suspected it had always been genetic because on both sides of my family, lots of breast cancers. Kinda obvious! No one thought of that 20 yrs. ago. There is a drug that I've been taking daily to shrink the mass. ANOTHER WONDERFUL HELP. Shrinks the darn thing prior to surgery. AND YET ANOTHER: radiology presently inserts "seeds" in a few spots whilst consistently checking the same day mammogram. The seeds help the surgeon become more precise in cutting the tumor so there isn't a 2nd visit (which happened ago) to capture spots missed the first time. Anyway, I'm very happy to share so there may be someone who follows your blog will find this helpful. Other than that, I'd surely say computers, printers, cell phones, recycling stations...and many more. Any typos, excuse please...I'm just a tad still recovering fr the anesthesia & a bit "loopy." Hugs from the base of the mini-mountain in Maine.
ReplyDeleteOh Regina, thanks for this post, it will be very helpful for those undergoing similar procedures. You've had a long go of it, indeed, but I am so happy for modern science and technology being such a huge help for you especially in highlighting your genetic disposition. Interestingly, there's no breast cancer anywhere in my family but there is malignant melanoma and most of my siblings and I have had little procedures to dig out the rough spots some a little more serious than others. Vigilence and scanning is the rule of the day.
DeleteDelighted your are writing again. And thank you for being a good blog friend.
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Well I do love my internet connection, whichever device it comes through; I like the security a mobile phone offers and GPS navigation, first through a device in the car and now through my phone.
ReplyDeleteI wear carbon fibre leg braces which are an improvement on the old style caliper my grandmother had......
There is really so much, I couldn't possibly choose a favourite
Birth control, definitely. My mother wad a wringer washer when we came to Canada in 1957. Our first VCR was a must have and cost $1000 back then!! Ditto first computer, a Commodore 64, my first video games!! I absolutely could not live without technology. I have to do a post like this!
ReplyDeleteThe book Hostage is by Clare Mackintosh.
I've read Clare before and enjoyed her. And our first microwave in the late eighties was $800 and yes the VCR was a fortune too, though I can't remember the price of that. I remember saving for a $600 Cuisinart, I thought it was a genius invention. 80s too.
DeleteThanks Jackie.
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I remember reading this and thought sure I left a comment but maybe my response never made it past my head. I particularly recall when the major TV networks all went to color as did our TV station where I was working then -- so much excitement when I went in the control room and saw those color TV screens. My husband had connections and we got a deal on a big RCA color console that had inconspicuous damage but not to the screen or mechanics. The set always worked perfectly. We bought some sort of repair contract that paid for itself when many years later after we moved the set several times including across the country, we finally needed a new picture tube. We've seldom bought such contracts but this one paid off.
ReplyDeleteThere have been so many new inventions I hardly know where to begin. Truly the internet has been a big game changer in my life. I'm really intrigued with new inventions that are coming for all of us. Will we regular folk truly have driverless cars eventually? Will we use robots in our homes for some of the drudgery tasks?
Joared that robot vacuum cleaner is a start. And I wouldn't be surprised if we could put our food in the fridge some day and have it transferred to the oven remotely from our phones!! Along with setting the heat or AC on. etc.
DeletePersonal senior helper robots would be wonderful and we wouldn't have to feed them, just plug them in.
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I really liked this blog post. It got me to thinking about what inventions are my favorites. So I think I will post that on my blog. Hope you can check it out and tell me what you think.
ReplyDeleteI like reading your blog.
Thank you!
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The biggest change in my lifetime has to be the internet. All the things we can now do so much more easily at the click of a mouse. Also word processing, which revolutionised writing letters and other documents. No more daily struggles with typewriters and carbon paper and tippex.
ReplyDeleteThat's a bit down my list after the first few. But I do remember the IBM Selectric with its built in correction tape. I thought it was way far out in modern technology.
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