If my dad were alive today, he’d be 100 years old. His birthday was Dec. 15. (If you asked Dad how old he was, he’d always say, “I’m 10 days older than Jesus!”)
Toward the end of his life, Dad had some pretty serious memory issues, but he’d have occasional periods of relative clarity, and when that happened, he was capable of thinking some serious thoughts.
On one such occasion, he was in a particularly pensive mood. He said, “Just think about how the world has changed in just the time I’ve been alive! An amazing amount of history has happened: a couple of world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf wars, thousands of incredible inventions. Just in my lifetime!”
That idea has stuck with me for a long time, and I have often thought the same thing about my own lifetime, a relatively short time relative to the history of the world. I was born in 1939, near the end of the Great Depression, just before the outbreak of World War II. It was a time of poverty for my family and the others in our neighborhood — no electricity, no running water, no central heating or air conditioning, no telephones or TV, no microwaves for cooking or powering cell phones.
If you’re about my age or a little older, you have been a witness to some remarkable decades of change in terms of human interaction, medical discoveries and technology.
The ’40s were dominated by World War II, and as so often happens during war, technological advances grew by leaps and bounds. The first-ever use of a nuclear bomb forced an end to the war. Major advancements were made in jet engines, radar, unmanned rockets, transistors and Colossus, the world’s first totally electronic and digital computer. Kidney dialysis, Velcro, aqualungs, holograms and the use of atomic energy were all developed in the ’40s.
The ’50s gave us the hydrogen bomb, which cast the shadow of nuclear Armageddon over the world. But research in other fields, often spurred by military concerns, brought some advances that directly affected lives everywhere. In medicine and electronics, innovations that came to fruition in the ’50s offered mankind tremendous benefits.
I remember listening to the news in October 1957 and hearing that the Russians had launched Sputnik, an 84-pound satellite that orbited the earth every 92 minutes. And then a month later, they orbited another satellite carrying a dog. That set off a massive drive in the U.S. to win back the lead in technology, and the space race was on. NASA was created in 1958.
Polio vaccines essentially wiped out the disease by the middle of the ’60s. Tranquilizers and birth control pills, open-heart surgery to implant artificial valves and pacemakers, and vaccines for whooping cough and diphtheria all were part of the ’50s.
By the end of the ’50s, nearly 90 percent of American homes had TVs. 3-D movies were introduced, too. And don’t forget rock ‘n’ roll!
Some historians think the ’60s may have been the biggest decade in history for producing significant changes. By the end of the ’60s the U.S. had reestablished its dominance in the space race and put men on the moon.
The ’60s brought about Halogen lamps, audio cassettes, video disks, permanent press fabrics, soft contact lenses, CDs, Kevlar, electronic fuel injection systems, hand-held calculators, ATMs, artificial hearts, bar-code scanners, the computer mouse, “arpanet” (the first Internet) and felt tip pens—just to name a few.
The ’70s began the age of the practical computer, made possible by the invention of the floppy disk and the microprocessor. VCRs and video games, disposable lighters, liposuction, laser printers, ink-jet printers, MRIs, cell phones, roller blades and the Jarvik-7 artificial heart were all a part of the ’70s. And who could forget polar fleece, the fabric made from milk cartons, 1979?
The ’80s saw the development of many popular consumer products still around today, such as cell phones and home computers. The hepatitis B vaccine, human growth hormone, Prozac, Doppler radar, Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, digital cell phones and synthetic skin were invented in this decade.
The ’90s saw the phenomenal growth of the Internet and the invention of genetic engineering, as well as cloning and stem cell research, digital answering machines, Pentium processors, DVDs, Tekno Bubbles and Viagra!
Since 2000, we’ve seen the development of hybrid and all-electric cars, iPods and iPads and personal GPS systems for our cars and golf courses. Social networking sites mushroomed.
To catalog all of the amazing changes in the world in just my lifetime would take way more space than I’ve already used, but you get the idea, right? So Dad was right: This might have been the biggest 100 years in the history of the world.
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