How many things did we do/use growing up that are totally outdated and/or non-existent nowadays. The most obvious to me is phonograph records. When I was really young, my sisters had (and may still have) a number of 78 rpm records. I remember playing them on our record player at home. The record player had 4 speeds. 16, 33-1/3, 45 and 78 rpm (for those of you neophytes that would be revolutions per minute).  These 78s were about 12 inches in diameter, about an 1/8 of an inch thick and extremely breakable. You dropped them, they shattered. Because the rpms of the turntable were so fast, you could only get one song on a side of each 78 record before it ran out. By the time I was old enough to purchase my own records, 45s and 33-/13 long playing records were the style. 45s were for the single songs and 33-1/3s were for albums.  These were also volatile. They wouldn’t break as easy but were susceptible to warping and scratches.

Remember those? If you don’t it is because you are too young. In only 40 years, phonograph recordings became a historical artifact, giving way to cassette recordings (my first tape recorder was actually a mini reel to reel tape recorder; we won’t bring up 8-tracks), then to CDs, to our present .mp3 and i-Pod players and digital recordings. I now own a small digital recorder that I use to tape performances and concerts. I then upload the recordings to my computer where I store them on i-Tunes, cut them to a CD, or upload them to my website.
Continue reading Outdated…