© Mark Ollig
Upon waking up most mornings, my instincts led me to reach for my Android phone.
I look for new messages, scan Facebook, glance at the news sites, and check the weather for the day.
After brewing my first-morning coffee, I sit with my laptop, open Microsoft Word, and begin typing my next Pulitzer prize-winning column.
Sandwiched in between, I am typing emails and text messages.
I am typing more now than in Mr. Harold Knoll’s 1975 high school typing class.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” How many thousands of times was this sentence punched on those QWERTY keys?
Ah, yes, the good old days.
Many remember a time before boarding the high-tech boat transporting us through continuous waves of today’s fast-paced technology, whose quickening pace sped up during the 1960s with its many advancements.
The IBM 7094 is regarded as one of the 1960s most powerful and advanced mainframe computers.
NASA used it during the Gemini and Apollo space programs, as did the US military and many corporations.
In 1960, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, better known as the laser, was first successfully demonstrated at the Hughes Research Laboratory in California.
In 1962, NASA launched Telstar, the first active communication satellite to orbit the Earth.
In 1963, compact cassette tapes were introduced, followed by eight-track tapes in 1965.
In 1967, Whirlpool introduced the first residential countertop microwave ovens.
On Feb. 16, 1968, the first “911” call was made in Haleyville, AL. Windom, MN, and St. James, MN, were the first cities in Minnesota to install citywide 911 systems in the same year.
The first US bank ATM (automated teller machine) opened at Chemical Bank in New York in 1969.
From the 1960s to the 1970s, we used cassette and eight-track tape players, transistor radios, and watched home movies on a Bell & Howell 8 mm film projector.
The walnut and cherry wood cabinet Hi-Fi radio/record turntable and console television in our living rooms were considered furniture.
We had fun using walkie-talkies and looking at photographs projected on a screen from a Kodak Carousel slide projector.
Amateur radio enthusiasts spoke and exchanged Morse code across the country and around the globe.
Today, some converse with astronauts onboard the International Space Station through a program called Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS).
In the late 1970s, Mr. Roger Syvertsen, an amateur radio operator, was one of my high school teachers.
He taught electricity and electronics classes, and is credited with developing the first high school computer training curriculum.
Mr. Syvertsen’s amateur (ham) radio was set up on a table in the corner of the classroom. His FCC-registered radio call sign is K0VOO.
One day, our class helped him install a new high-gain Yagi radio antenna on the school’s roof.
Occasionally, Mr. Syvertsen would sit down at the radio and speak into the microphone, “CQ, CQ, CQ” (originally a Morse code abbreviation for “calling anyone”).
He often would hear an acknowledgment from another amateur radio operator from within this country or someone from another country.
We would gather around the radio to listen, and Mr. Syvertsen would usually mention the radio was set up in a classroom.
I was saddened to learn of Mr. Syvertsen’s passing on April 21 recently.
During the mid-to-late 1970s, you would have seen me driving around town in my metallic green Plymouth Duster with a dangling CB (citizens band) whip antenna extending from the hood of the trunk.
CB radios were all the rage back then; I was hooked, as were many folks.
CBs were bought and installed as home base stations and in cars and trucks.
I used a 23-channel CB radio made by Channel Master in my Plymouth Duster.
Attention-grabbing usernames or CB handles were common; mine was “The Green Hornet.”
“Breaker breaker one nine [channel 19], this here is ‘The Green Hornet.’ I’m reading you five by five, as in wall-to-wall and treetop tall. I’ll be ten-ten on the side.”
When the FCC allocated 40 channels for CB radio in 1977, I changed out my car’s 23-channel unit with a Midland Cobra 40-channel CB radio.
Does anyone recall those cars with “dummy” CB antennas on their trunks or roofs, solely to achieve that cool “CB look” while cruising through the streets?
CB’ing was as popular then as using smartphones is today – and yes, I can see the younger millennials and Gen Z folks rolling their eyes.
I’ll end this nostalgic trip down memory lane with an old CB radio sign-off: “10-7 to you; we be gone, bye-bye.”
