I can look back over more than 50 years of my life. As a child, growing up in the fifties, it was a very different world. A few key memories from my first 20 years:
- My father was one of the first to have a car in our street, about 1955.
- As a child, holidays were caravan holidays in South Wales.
- We had our first TV for the launch of ITV in the Midlands in 1956. So I was 7 years old at the time. I remember it well. Those of you my age, living in England, may well recall Andy Pandy, Rag Tag and Bob Tail and more!
- The first satellite, Sputnik was launched in October 1957 when I was almost 9 years old and stimulated a life long interest in science and technology.
- I had one of the early consumer reel to reel tape recorders (Phillips Stella) in about 1962. And back then there were no electronic calculators: slide rules and log tables were the norm - a mechanical calculator if you were lucky.
- The first computer, I ever saw was at Rutherford Labs circa 1965. It was valve driven and water cooled!
- As a teenager: no phone, no internet. I walked half a mile in all weathers to the nearest red public phone box to phone my girlfriend.
- Books: you borrowed them from the library. You did not buy them and of course no Amazon.
- First manned Moon landing in 1969!
