1948-2008 - Sixty Years of Technology

I made my first telephone call when I was 3 years old. We had a huge black handset with no dials or buttons. I picked up the heavy receiver and waited until a live operator asked me for the number. "Mattituck 9-8026 please." Next thing I knew I was connected to my grandmother. My mother smiled and was very proud.

My parents documented all of our birthday parties, Christmases and family gatherings with a 35 mm movie camera. I recently had these films transferred onto DVD. If I had to evacuate my home for any reason,that DVD is the first thing I would grab.

At age 6 , I watched my very first television show. It was called " Kukla, Fran and Ollie". Our console television set was a Dumont and when it sprang to life only after 4 p.m. All the kids from our neighborhood stopped playing outside and came in to watch also.Ollie the dragon puppet gave me nightmares.

We had a rather large table top radio as well, but I don't remember listening to it much except when my dad listened to the Yankees games.I mostly listened to records on a small child-sized Victrola .I loved my 33 1/2 RPM records especially "Tina the Ballerina ", to which I danced and danced.

When I was about 11 or 12 my dad brought home this huge reel-to-reel " Voice of Music "tape recorder. My best friend Janet and I spent hours playing with that thing. We'd make up "shows" , tape them, and play them for the amusement of others. Janet grew up to be the associate producer of a TV game show called "Sale of the Century". We were all very proud.

Not too much came my way as far as technology goes until transistor radios came out when I was a teenager. Those little babies were a hit at beach parties! My family also had a console HiFi. Mom managed to collect a whole set of "Famous Classical Composers" records from the local A&P. We couldn't wait to pop a new record on the turntable each week after putting the groceries away. I danced around the living room to that also.

Other than that ,it wasn't until I was an adult that I was exposed to things like portable TVs, CB radios ( wow! wireless!) ,VCRs, stereos , Atari games and our very own personal computer. We bought a used Apple II plus when my son was 12 and my daughter was 2 . I remember playing "DOS Mixed-up Mother Goose" with my daughter on that PC . It was all very exciting.

Here I am today. I have a cell phone,a lap top, a digital camera,video camera and multiple televisions and DVD players. I admit it's taken me a little longer to learn how to use all this great new technology, but the effort is sure worthwhile.