INVENTIONS

[Matt Dillon]

A song ("Percolator Twist") was recorded about the old Percolators.

[Matt Dillon]

This is a very interesting thread, Cathy. Thanks for starting it. The posts about coffee makers got me to thinking about things from the '40's and '50's such as washing machines and automobiles and how they've changed over the decades.

[CATHYnKY]

This is a very interesting thread, Cathy. Thanks for starting it. The posts about coffee makers got me to thinking about things from the '40's and '50's such as washing machines and automobiles and how they've changed over the decades.

Every now and then, I think about how my Mom grew up. She was born in 1925 and was the youngest of 6. My grandparents didn’t have running water til I was in my teens and only because they were forced to move because of the freeway being built. Some of my fondest memories. They put off the expense of indoor plumbing because they fought the freeway taking the house for years. The state found a way to get the house condemned.

[Matt Dillon]

Every now and then, I think about how my Mom grew up. She was born in 1925 and was the youngest of 6. My grandparents didn’t have running water til I was in my teens and only because they were forced to move because of the freeway being built. Some of my fondest memories. They put off the expense of indoor plumbing because they fought the freeway taking the house for years. The state found a way to get the house condemned.

My mother washed a lot of clothes on a wash board and dried them on a clothesline.

[Jaxcat]

Image of an old Percolator.

My 91-YO mother STILL has a percolator and refuses to use anything else. Surprisingly, they do still sell them but it's been a whole-family search for a replacement whenever her percolator gave up the ghost in the past.

Automatic dishwashers have opened up several minutes of my day, every day. Power/battery-powered drills, screwdrivers, etc. - SO much easier to be a DIY-er with all these little handy tools that travel with you. And, instructional videos on literally EVERYTHING on YT. I literally don't have to know anything anymore, just find a video on YT and it will hold my hand through any chore.

[Old School]

The internet and ubiquitous devices that quick allow access to it almost anywhere, to include online shopping and e mails, text messages, etc.

Cassettes, CDs, and digital music. Ways people can listen to recorded music on small, portable devices like Walkmans and iPods instead of only on a big, bulky device that will skip if bumped.

Small, affordable printers, including color. Thirty years ago a dot matrix printer was pretty good and expensive.

Cheap and plentiful computer memory and advanced cable which allows for transmission and storage of all kinds of things to include massive amounts of video (movies on demand, surveillance, etc.) and data (all of the information Amazon has compiled and bought about you, etc.). Like music above, in the 1980s, VCRs were a new and expensive device and even with them you were limited to what was available, which was limited and expensive, and sometimes not easy to find. All the inventions leading to processors that are more and more powerful allowed all of these other advances in computing, digital memory and storage, communication and transmission, etc. to occur.

Aerial drones, which have changed so much about photography and warfare, and will continue to do so.

Nonlethal weaponry from tasers to ultrasound and other directional sonic devices. Decades ago, it was either guns or clubs (eventually also tear gas) for policing, riot and crowd control, etc.

For cars, airbags and antilock brakes. They’ve saved tons of lives, bones, faces, etc.

All kinds of materials and manufacturing inventions have led to solar power equipment capable of far more than anything could do in prior generations.

In medicine, all kinds of medications, and imaging with incredible detail and resolution compared to x rays (MRIs, CTs, etc.). Organ transplants of many types were hypothetical into the 1960s and success rates have increased greatly. AIDS was a death sentence for decades but now has effective treatment, and so do many other illnesses and diseases.

Generic profiling for law enforcement and other purposes. In the 1950s the existence of DNA was a pretty new discovery.

All sorts of technological advances went into the Saturn V and lunar mission equipment. The Saturn V rocket itself is probably one of the most incredible inventions of all time.

Our parents and grandparents couldn’t conceive of today’s versions of devices that have rendered unnecessary or obsolete postal mail; long distance calling paid by the minute; phonographs, cassettes, CDs, videotapes; cameras; and cable TV - much less all in a device roughly the size of a deck of cards. That’s not to say that everything that comes with it is good. But kids now can’t hardly conceive of a world without an iPhone, even though it debuted less than 30 years ago, and with far fewer features, capacity, and abilities.

Our parents and grandparents would’ve been amazed in their younger lives at things that are obsolete now like dial up modems, GeoCities, AmericaOnline, the Atari 2600, Apple II, or Sony Walkman.