I stumbled upon a BBC recording from 1970, where two women in their 90's were interviewed about their teenage years. These women had been born in 1880's so they were in their teens in 1890's-1900's.
One woman recalled how her brother had seen this weird machine on a shop window, and women working with these machines. It was a typewriter and the place was hiring women to learn how to type with it. She also was bicycling a lot in her teens, and told a story how she once accidentally drove into a policeman. She and her friends were summoned to a court and fined 5 shillings each for this preposterous activity. The magistrate has been most horrified and disgusted that these young women hadn't been horse riding but bicycling when this collision happened!
It was amazing to hear. These women has gone such a huge jump in development of society and technologies from 1880 to 1970! I can't remember where I heard it but when we look back at time, humanity globally has advanced between 1900-2000 as much as in the previous 5000 years.
These ladies had seen the dawn of electricity; the very first electric cars and horse-pulled handsome cabs turning into busses, taxes and cars; Titanic; two world wars; suffragette movement fighting for women's rights and women getting these rights; the Wright brother's first plane and it leading to commercial flights and eventually to the moon landing; rise and falls of nations in Europe and changes on European map; the changes in workplaces and work place regulations; the development of radio; the whole history of TV; the fast changing clothing styles by each decade; the invention of plastic. They were born just 4 years after a telephone was patented in 1876.
I'm a pre-internet era child. Pre-mobile phone era child. I can recall when news told how this thing called internet is now open and how we predict it to become important. I can tell how huge difference mobile phones, emails, internet, video services, art programs etc. have done to the world. I'm every day grateful for the internet and technology because it was brought me to all I dreamed of and wanted as a child. Endless amounts of movies, comic, pictures, information, connections to everywhere in the world, exploration. Niche books and stuff I could never even see in my whole life without internet! In a need of a certain character reference? Just google it! Want to see that particular scene from a movie or a game? Go to internet, it's there!
And yet, I can never experience the same gigantic jumps as these 1890's teenagers did.
