Televisions. Remember when a 20 inch screen was huge? When you had to turn the TV on 5 minutes before your show started so the tubes could warm up? When you had to adjust the color on your new color TV, because otherwise people were bright orange or purple? And it had to be redone about once a week? Remember TV Guide, and the little icons that let you know a program was in color or black & white?

I love to listen to music as I sew. I would say Pandora and Amazon Music changed my life. Before them, I paid for Sirius Satellite.

I am glad I don't have to watch Hopalong Cassidy any more.

What a walk down memory lane. I had completely forgotten all those things. Something else. How about the tubes in the TV that could be removed and taken to something like a Circle K to check to see if they needed replacing. How about the picture tube. If that went out, you just a soon buy a new TV because it was very expensive to replace. So long ago.

And programming used to end at midnight or thereabouts and didn't resume until 6 the next morning, No late night movies or infomercials. And (if you were lucky) only 3 channels.

test patterns broadcast on TV
Cigarette ads on TV

Crank starters on cars.

MP3 players and wireless technology are the things that come to mind for me. The ability to carry thousands of songs with me in one device was phenomenal. I had hundreds of CDs prior to my first iPod in approximately 2006 or 2007. I still had wired headphones then but I could have all my music and more! Now I have wireless headphones which, for me, is amazing. I talk on the phone to family and friends regularly and having my hands free allows me to get more done while I talk.

Since I was born in 1943 everything has gotten better. We had a swamp cooler, icebox until we got an electric one, TV when I was 16, school classroom attendance was 30-40 kids in one room with 1 teacher--no helper! We had a party-line phone. It is better now, except for the '60s, Vietnam and drugs took a lot of my friends.