Fifty years ago on the morning of July 16th, Apollo 11 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida beginning its 8-day mission to the moon and back, fulfilling the goal President Kennedy proposed in 1961. While I do not remember this particular mission, I do have very clear recollections of subsequent ones, particularly Apollo 15 in 1971, which was the first of the so-called “J Missions” which remained on the moon for three days and featured the “Moon Buggy”, or Lunar Roving Vehicle.
Shh!! I'm recording!
How many of you out there remember holding a microphone up to the speaker and recording the radio onto a cassette tape? I do.
In 1983, cassettes tapes accounted for 47.8% of music sales; vinyl 44.6%. The jump in casette sales was a result of the debut of the Sony Walkman in the early '80s. Although CDs overtook cassettes in 1991, their sales peaked barely a decade later in 2003. Downloads overtook CDs in 2012.
In 2013, CDs accounted for 30.4% of all music sales. Downloads, meanwhile, accounted for 40% (singles, 22.4%; albums, 17.6%) Sales of ringtones peaked at 11% in 2008.
iTunes was released in January 2001; the iTunes Store in April 2003. The first iPhone was released in 2007.
When it comes to tech, I feel I was born at just the right time.
When I was young, we were riding rockets to the moon, exploring space. When I was in high school, the first personal computers were just starting to debut. In my first year of high school, I was typing reports on a clunky manual typewriter. Later, I was using an electric one that had all kinds of new-fangled gadgets like a correction tape. By my first year in college, the Mac was released, changing everything.
I experienced a range of cellphones and digital devices, such as “pocket bells”, simple digital cameras and electronic dictionaries, electronic notebooks, etc. Then Steve Jobs did a presentation of the first iPhone and a tech revolution followed that even the eggheads at Apple couldn’t have predicted.
Armstrong and Aldrin got from earth to the moon with only 4K of computing power. I now carry 64GB in my back pocket. Kids today probably can't imagine what it was like before computers and smartphones.