During the past century, while spending some six years as a reporter/photographer (and nine months as a copy boy) at the former San Diego Evening Tribune, I was acquainted with a staff photographer named Chuck Boyd. He has since retired: I’m still waiting to do the same.

Boyd has a blog, and in it he relates that Alvin Toffler in his 1970s book, Future Shock, notes that if you were to take the time that human beings have existed (approximately 50,000 years) and divide this time into 62-year average lifetimes, you would get 800 lifetimes. Of those 800 lifetimes:

*650 of them have been in caves.

*It is only during the past 70 lifetimes that humans have been able to communicate across generations.

*It is only during the past six lifetimes that we’ve had the printed word.

*It is only in the last four that we have been able to measure time with any accuracy.

*Electric motors and gasoline engines have been around only during the most recent two.

*Most of the technology with which we are so familiar has been brought into existence during our lifetimes.

Boyd relates that he had a chance to see this rapid transition first-hand in the late 1960s when the Union-Tribune sent a reporter and a photographer (him) to interview a man whose son, astronaut David Scott, was training to walk on the moon.

When the father was born, the Wright Brothers had not perfected controlled powered flight and -- within one lifetime -- his son was going to be the seventh man (of only 12) to walk on the moon. As commander of Apollo 15, Scott also drove Lunar Rover-1. “Yikes,” notes Boyd. Yikes indeed, we say.

In fact, if people “my age” (slightly less than 6.4 decades) think about their past, there can be some major eye-openers. As a child, the following items, just off the top of my balding head, did not exist: color television, 24-hour TV programming on a gazillion stations, satellites, astronauts, TV dinners, microwave ovens, drive-through restaurants, commercial jetliners, espresso coffee stands on every corner, the Internet, personal computers, and on and on.

In fact, the original computers were monstrosities we’d laugh at now (ha-ha). For example, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), which operated from 1946 to ‘55. Its physical size was massive compared to modern PC standards. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes (some will have to look that up to figure out what they were), 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and approximately 5 million hand-soldered joints.

ENIAC weighed 27 tons (not real good for use as a laptop); was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80; took up 680 square feet and consumed 150 kw of power. Input was possible from an IBM card reader; an IBM card punch was used for output. These cards could be used to produce printed output offline using an IBM accounting machine.

When I worked for the Electronics Division of NCR Corp., which some still remember as The National Cash Register Co., the big deal was the Century 100, which offered a 16k or 32k memory. Wow. Compared to the memories of today’s computers, that’s like putting a Ford Model T next to a 2008 Toyota. No comparison in terms of performance and technology. So we progress, and often aren’t really aware of the significance or historical value of such advancements.

Oh, one item hasn’t changed. I’ll state it in five words: Are you ready for Christmas? Don’t need a computer to answer.

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