Technology grew by leaps and bounds

Technology grew by leaps and bounds in our years, and it became more and more accessible as the years passed.  Technology in its most sinister form already existed.  In 1945, the United States had built a nuclear bomb and wiped out two cities in Japan.  Early computers were in use, but were the size of trains.  We had come far from the days of our parents, whose sole form of entertainment was the battery operated radio, and the occasional silent movie.  In 1939, television was introduced at the New York World’s Fair, but it would be years before a television appeared in every American household.  In 1945, only 7000 televisions were in American homes, and there were only nine stations broadcasting in the entire United States.  At some point during our early childhoods, most of us saw some form of television come through the doors of our homes.

Battery operated transistor radios were also one of the earliest forms of emerging technology and reduced radios from huge sizes to hand held.  Any kid worth anything had a transistor radio which they could whip out of their pocket and show off to everyone.  Little did we know that we were carrying around the basis of future calculators and computers in our little hands.  Science fiction movies and television were huge probably because of nuclear proliferation and the space race.  We absorbed all we could from reading, movies and television.  Technology ruled, and the more the better.  Wes and I were fond of envisioning how it would be for us in ten years when we were in high school.  If we were not flying with jet packs to school before we graduated, we would surely drive in cars that levitated like the Jetsons or ride on monorails.

Our era was saturated with all things “space.”  With the coming of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, competition ramped up and the race was on.  First the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, and the United States was appalled.  How did those Russians manage to get ahead of us?  But we soon smirked when we sent Alan Shepard into space in 1961, and then John Glenn into an actual orbit in 1962.  Technology steadily increased, with the Russians constantly nipping at our heels until we demolished them in 1968 and 1969, by first sending men to orbit the moon, and then to land on it.  We heard little from our Soviet friends after that.  It is a cornerstone of our childhoods that we all remembered exactly where we were when the United States reached the moon.  John F. Kennedy had thrown down the gauntlet, and NASA had risen to the challenge.

Part of the return cargo from that first trip were moon rocks and they toured the country.  San Antonians got their turn when the Witte Museum featured one of them.  The rock was housed in a glass case on the second floor and the line stretched down the stairs and into the lobby!  We all slowly made our way through the line and then had our few seconds to study the strange and small grey rock, lit fabulously in its case.

Throughout our school years, our Weekly Readers were filled with American prowess in all things space: astronauts, space capsules, Saturn rockets.  Unknown to us, we were also filling a nuclear arsenal which would be capable of wiping out every living thing on the face of the earth.  Russia was doing the same.

The coming of telephone lines was a huge step forward for our parents.  In rural areas especially, families made do with one phone line which served miles and miles of households.  In our childhoods, most households had a telephone line, either private or on a "party" line which was shared with someone else in the neighborhood.  Telephone numbers began with initials for your exchange, such as Taylor or Capital.  More affluent families added a "children's" private line.  This was high class.  Around the mid 60s, the wonder of long distance telephone service became widely available.  Long distance service had been available for a number of years, but it was very cumbersome, involving multiple operators and multiple connections before you actually reached the person you wanted.  The connection was often dismal with both parties having to shriek to be heard.  Many families employed the "person to person" trick to let families know they had safely arrived home after a road trip.  If you phoned person to person and your "person" was not there, there was no charge for the call.  And long distance calls were quite expensive.  We regularly phoned my grandmother's house and asked for ourselves.  It was her signal that we had arrived back in San Antonio safe and sound and she could rest easier.  Direct distance dialing arrived a few years later and made calls a little more reasonable, but still expensive considering the average household income of the time.  We all made do with clunky black rotary dial phones, until the princess line arrived.  They graced many households with their modern and sleek lines.  Princess phones were usually pink.  The black clunkers could be replaced with an avocado green clunker if you were willing to pay a little extra.

Back in the classroom, high tech was a filmstrip machine.   This was a real treat, especially if the teacher let a student turn the crank and advance the film.  Our teachers would set up the  machine, carefully thread the film, dim the lights and turn on the record player which provided narration.   There was a loud beep every time the frame should be advanced, and it was easy to get mixed up.  We often lost our place and cranked one frame behind or forward, which did not amuse our teachers.  Often, the frantic filmstrip operator would be whipping wildly through the frames, totally lost and disoriented, and the teacher would have to turn on the lights, find the correct place and take over the job herself.   If you were good, you could figure out where you were supposed to be and either back the film up or advance it to the right frame quickly enough to avoid that embarrassment.  Sometimes the projector bulbs blew out, providing another few moments of excitement before the teacher would quickly redirect us to something else.

Filmstrips were a great way to enhance our science and social studies lessons, a little audiovisual excitement to supplement the textbooks and worksheets.

Those worksheets and tests were prepared on an inked mimeograph machine.  Teachers typed their “masters”, clipped them onto the mimeograph cyclinder in the front office and turned it on.  It would then crank out as many purple inked copies as needed.  Our teachers often had to run their mimeographs at the last minute and would come rushing in the classroom door with the still damp papers.  We would stick the sheets in our faces and inhale deeply, enjoying the fresh ink before it properly dried.  The sheets were often still cool to the touch with dampness.

The school owned a contraption for 35 mm. films, but it didn’t come out very often.  It was the size of a refrigerator,  green and rolled around on four wheels (with effort).  The screen was huge, comparable to big screen TVs  of today.  It was usually rolled into the cafeteria for the only 35 mm film in the school: the FILM which all of the sixth grade girls got to watch with their parents’ permission.  

The award for best use of technology in teaching has to go to Mrs. Janice Anderlitch, a third grade teacher at Wilshire.  Third graders must learn their multiplication facts, and Mrs. Anderlitch made it a breeze with the use of a record player.  She had a set of recorded sing-song chants with all of the multiplication facts in order from the ones to the nines.  One set had us chanting the facts with the answers.  She played this every day for weeks.  We sang along every afternoon, little realizing that mathematical knowledge was being planted in our little brains through the music.  After about a month of this, Mrs. Anderlitch switched to a second set of records, but now there was a pause instead of the answer!  It was up to us now to sing in the answer.  But after weeks of listening to the first set of records, it was quite easy.  There were a few hitches in the sevens and nines that we had to get by, but it was no big problem.  To this day, when I am wondering what six times seven equals, those little songs return to my head.  We learned it, and learned it well with no kill and drill and little practice other than daily singing.  Mrs. Anderlitch realized early that music and rhyme are powerful boosts to learning.  She was ahead of her time.

Around the mid 60s, color television made its huge debut.  Most America households at that time enjoyed television, but it was the black and white variety.  When color TVs became available to the public, they were rare at first.  Our classmate Penny belonged to one of the first families I knew who owned a color TV set.  Penny loved to fill us in on the family's latest acquisitions:

“They’re delivering our new color TV today!”

Within the week she had described to all of us in detail the different colors that Tinkerbell would splash onto the screen with her magic wand when the Wonderful World of Disney broadcasted on Sunday evening.  A huge treat it was to be invited to her home on Sunday night to watch Bonanza in full living color.

 When her father bought one of the new 1965 Ford mustangs, she kept us off balance for days:

“They’re delivering our new horsey today!!!”

But after a couple of years, most families could afford the new technology.  Our color TV came from Sears, and my mother set it up on monthly installments.  It cost around $600 which was expensive for the time.  We were thrilled when the delivery truck arrived and installed the set in the corner of our living room.  They gave us a quick lesson on how to adjust the color, and the contrast and the hue.  At the touch of a button, you could turn people fire engine red, and then back to green.

Wes wanted to immediately put the huge box that the TV came in on the front lawn for the trash.  That way everyone in the neighborhood would know that the Burlesons too had a color TV.  We settled down to be mesmerized by the set.  It was a true example of Marshall McCluhan’s philosophy:  “the medium IS the message.”  We were looking at the color and the TV and not the content.  We didn’t really care what was on, only that it was in color.  The weekly TV guide from the newspapers put a tiny star by any program that was broadcast in color and I made my viewing selections based on that.

For several years, about half the programs were still broadcast in black and white before color completely took over the airways and we could then take it for granted.

In 1967, we bought a new Buick which had a power antenna, which we considered extremely uptown.  We would drive down the street and make it go up and down, trying to impress our fellow motorists.  Soon, power windows would make their debut as well.  That was still beyond our fathoming.

In the classrooms, there were no centers with tape players, Ipads or mini-computers.  If you finished your work early, you read or you could take out the manila paper and draw.  My group of friends drew horses, and we drew plenty of them, colored with our map pencils.  We would then collect them in small boxes to keep in our desks.  When we had some free time, we would pass the boxes around and admire each other’s latest creation.

In the later high school years, we didn’t even have calculators.  The TI programmables didn’t come out until the early 70s.  We used the sharp pencil method for everything, including quadratic equations and finding square roots while in high school.  Slide rules were available but not widely used except by the nerds.  

One huge high school treat was a commercial (but old) movie brought in and showed by the Student Council as a fund raiser.  You had to buy a ticket, but if you bought admission, you got out of class for most of the afternoon.  Ticket sales were phenomenal.  The district owned a 35 mm projector, the same quality used in a movie theater so it really was like going to the movies.  The film shown was “Wait until dark” with Audrey Hepburn.  In the closing scenes when the killer leaps across the screen after Audrey, many of us leaped out of our seats.

Was our so-called technology primitive by today’s standards?  Of course it was, but we were easy to please and thrill.  With movies and television to inspire us, we had a pretty good idea of what was to come.