I was recently asked by one of my children to discuss technology and other conveniences when I was growing up. What follows is a discussion of modern conveniences in the 1950’s.
Well, to start off, we did have running water and electricity in our home in the 1950’s when I was growing up! So, for us, that was “modern.”
Actually, “modern” is a relative term.
For example, we assume WiFi is part of many homes now in 2022. That modern convenience didn’t exist until the early 2000’s. Cell phones in the U.S. became popular about ten years prior to WiFi. Similarly, multi-television homes, and Internet-ready TV’s, are a recent “norm.”
Retirees and Technology
Even for really old people like my wife and me, the changes are fairly obvious. We’re retired, living in a two-person household. We have fiber, thus high-speed Internet, running into our house. And, WiFi that connects three TV’s, a desktop computer and printer, a laptop computer, two cell phones, and an iPad.
But, there’s no landline telephone. And no cable or satellite, only streaming TV! We’ve made a bold leap into the 2000’s!
TV in the 1950’s and 1960’s
Growing up, we had one, black-and-white television in our home. It gave us access to three channels! You used an antenna to capture the TV signal.
Believe it or not, TV antennas are still available for sale today, including Rabbit Ears.
There was no such thing as cable or 24-hour TV channels. The TV test pattern would come on just before 7:00 AM when the stations started broadcasting for the day. Sign-off was around midnight. CNN was the first 24-hour U.S. news channel in 1980.
Color TV’s didn’t become widespread in the U.S. until the 1970’s due to high costs. Early TV’s tended to be a separate piece of furniture rather than today’s light-weight device sitting on a cabinet or counter top. Flat-panel TV screens weren’t popular until the early 2000’s. Sound bars for the TV were an even later innovation.
Thus, black-and-white TV was one of the modern conveniences in the 1950’s!
Until recently, there were no services such as streaming or on-demand viewing. If you wanted to see a show, you had to be in front of the TV when the show was broadcast!
In fact, some TV shows into the mid-1950’s were broadcast live, meaning not just a live audience. Some soap operas, which were daytime dramas, were live until the early 1970’s.
Telephones
My parents never owned a cell phone. It was always land-line for them, with a rotary-dial device mounted to the wall. If I remember correctly, they didn’t have a second telephone (not a separate line!) in the house until I was in high school.
How did people live before there were cell phones? Well, there were these things called telephone booths! It cost a dime to place a call. You only dialed the area code when placing a long-distance (thus expensive) telephone call.
Cell phones changed the use of a telephone number from a fixed location like a house, to a device that was portable. Moreover, the billing changed to a flat, monthly fee for cellular coverage. Previously, you paid extra for calls made outside your local area code.
Some Common Appliances
We had a washing machine when I was a child. But, mom didn’t get a dryer until after her retirement. So, prior to that we always had a clothes line outside.
At our house in Tampa, Florida there was no laundry room inside. The utility room was enclosed, but it was not inside the house, thus not heated or cooled.
Similarly, mom didn’t have a dishwasher, other than dad, until after they retired. Actually, she used the dishwasher to hold storage containers for leftovers! I’m not sure if she ever used it for washing dishes.
I first lived in an apartment with a dishwasher when I was 25, after getting married and moving to Miami, Florida.
There was a built-in microwave in the apartment mom and dad retired into. And, one TV! Also, a land-line telephone, on the wall in the kitchen. But, no cell phone!
I grew up in Florida. The house I lived in as a child didn’t have central heat and air conditioning. A/C was a later addition to my parent’s house. Likewise, our cars when I was a child didn’t have air conditioning.
Other Modern Conveniences in the 1950’s
Modern conveniences are most certainly generational. That is, what my grandchildren view as “normal” were non-existent or not so widely used when I was growing up.
Take for instance, life prior to the Internet in the mid-1990’s.
When we needed to do research, we went to a building called a public library and used something called an encyclopedia. To find the location of books in the library, you went to a card catalog – a cabinet with small drawers that held printed cards that showed the book titles and shelf locations. Now, research thus personal growth is independent of a library.
My parents never used a credit or debit card. Everything was paid for with cash or check. How did that work? Dad simply carried extra cash when we traveled, but never any traveler’s checks.
In the U.S., debit cards became popular in the 1980’s, but didn’t receive Mastercard or Visa logos until the early 1990’s.
The first self-check out scanning system that I used was at a Kroger in Oxford, Ohio in the mid-1990’s.
Mom and dad never had a car with a navigation system. Or a built-in entertainment package. Car windows operated with a manual crank. Interestingly, seatbelts weren’t required in cars in the U.S. until 1968, the year I graduated from high school.
Until they retired, my parents didn’t live in a house with an enclosed garage. There was an attached, open carport on several of the houses they lived in. Similarly, the first house my wife and I bought, in Miami, had a carport, as did the next house in Winter Haven, Florida. Our first one-car garage was when we moved to Tampa, Florida.
We did have a radio in our home when I was growing up. But, it wasn’t digital. Thus, the playlist was whatever the radio station was broadcasting on that particular day!
Some Takeaways
What’s defined as a modern convenience is most certainly based on the decades when you grew up. Thus, it’s generational. This post focuses on modern conveniences in the 1950’s in the U.S., the decade in which I was a child.
Remember, you don’t miss something you never had, or that didn’t exist when you were younger.
We are indeed impacted by what was around us when we were growing up. However, our personal and professional growth is much more a factor of our willingness to change.
One benefit to digital technologies such as streaming and cellular is a dramatic increase in the information and entertainment choices available to each of us. That said, it didn’t take us very long to flip through those three TV channels in the 1950’s while turning the dial on the TV set – that’s right, no remote!