I was thinking if I were transported back a hundred years would I have any of the media and apps I hold so dear today? At first I thought, no way... A little side trip this week revealed I just might, sort of.
On my way home from Spokane last week I stopped by to spend the evening with my brother Steve and sister in law Joan Mamanakis in Cheney, Washington. After blabbing about everything under the sun for a couple of hours we went out for dinner then stopped by the Cheney Historical Museum.
Joan is the museum’s director and I totally enjoyed a private viewing. I couldn’t help but think how far we’ve come in 100 years. With a little stretch of the imagination I’d have many recognizable early versions of technology that still serves much the same purpose.
It's no iPhone, it's my wallPhone. Crank it up and "Siri", a live operator, greets me personally and connects me to my party. All I have to do is talk to her. Also, I can use her to send and receive messages, check in on local gossip and hear the latest breaking news in my community.
I couldn't live without my keyboard. It’s no PC or Mac and it has no Microsoft Office or Google Docs but I can store everything I type and the keys are still arranged in the same order.
I’d have my piano. They haven’t changed all that much over the years except for the materials. It would be made of high quality aged wood, probably with ornately carved front panels, ivory keys and no plastic parts.
No big screen LCD or Plasma television but I would have the ever popular and portable Stereoscope picture viewer.
No glass top electric stove but if I lived in the big city I might have gas. This old coal and wood stove would have been the center of the house in a big kitchen and used not only for cooking but heating the bath water, warming up your clothes iron and other than a fireplace or a pot belly stove, it would have been the central heating system for your home.
I’d still have about 20 years to wait for this ultra modern convenience. The one pictured came out in 1930. Note that over half the space in this refrigerator is used just to make 2 trays of ice cubes that cooled the rest of the space.
I’d have the latest improved Whirl clothes washer. Add hot water and soap and agitate by rocking the rounded basket back and forth. Then pull up the basket, it swings up right on a hinge, drain the tub, lower the clothes back in and rinse. When you’re done send the clothes through the ringer on the left to squeeze dry and they’re ready for the hanger.
Relax and enjoy the evening by listening to some tunes on your Olympia Music Box. This one was built in the 1890’s and plays 15 ½ inch steel platters.
It’s like a mechanical realization of our CD/DVD technology. They're both based on code stored on platters. The holes stored make hammers strike tuned metal bars. Now it’s ones and zeros tripping light to move electrons through a micro circuited synthesizer to vibrate speakers.
I wonder a 100 years from now will there be a thread to connect? You think?
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