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Bruce Lawson ✅ (quiet time)

When I was a kid, my elderly music teacher told me that, when he was a kid, his music teacher told him that, when he was a kid, his music teacher had actually met Beethoven.

The distant past isn't actually so distant. My house is at least 130 years old. My great-grandmother, who i met many times (she died when I was 11) had seen Queen Victoria.

@brucelawson My mum remembers milk delivered on horse and cart. My granddad grew up when cars were barely around. I myself grew up in a world which barely had networked computers in it, and where we burned coal in a fire to keep warm.

The sheer *difference* in what regular life was, and what was available, and how “normal” worked, is evident in one or two generations these days.

My grandparents don’t understand how impossible *everything* today is without computer networks.

@mattwilcox I can remember coal being delivered to my nan's house by horse and cart.

@brucelawson It’s kinda scary to look back on my own childhood and viscerally notice that *it seems like a different age* - because it was. Before houses had insulation or double glazing as standard, before computers in homes or even business, before the concept of a credit score existed.

It’s kinda brain-breaking to realise that for 99.99% of history your life and your grandparents was essentially the same. And now the fundamentals change in one generation.

@mattwilcox my great grandfather (who died before I was born) helped develop radar in ww2. His wife, my great grandma (the same one) apparently refused to believe the moon landing because "they hadn't got to heaven first".

@mattwilcox but yeah: I grew up (in the 70s) with early-closing shops on Wednesday. Everything shut on Sunday. Houses with phones shared a phone line. 3 TV channels.

@mattwilcox @brucelawson My grandfather had the first electric lights in his town. He had little windmills on the roof and batteries in the basement. One of his sons was killed when installing wire to build the "grid". (Adirondack mountains of New York State, USA)

@mattwilcox @brucelawson My aunty, the eldest of 10 children, my Mum the youngest, told me about going out with a jug for the milkman to fill with a ladle from the churn. It was a child's job to join the queue and pat the horse's nose while they waited. I asked her what it was like for there to be no cars. She said it was normal. I've been asked how I did my homework, if there was no Internet. You would go to the library. The book you needed would be out, so Encyclopaedia Britannica.

@woo I have some of the 1963 Encyclopaedia Britannica set that my nan bought for my mum & siblings for homework.

@brucelawson The ones in the village library were a similar age. The library was demolished, replaced by a shop the size of a static caravan, staffed by volunteers. The old library was at least twice as big.

@brucelawson Oh yeah, I always found it kind of amazing, that my great-grandmother was actually older than independent Poland (she was born in 1911, Poland regained independence in 1918), and she died when I was 26.

@brucelawson We watched a series on the famous African American lawman from the 19th century Baas Reeves. His great, great grandson Willard Reaves (last name spelling was changed) was an all time great player for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I have a football signed by Willard Reaves in my living room. So in a sense we have a real connection to a not so distant past right in front of us every day.

@brucelawson One of my computer science lecturers worked on Lyons Leo, the (UK's ?) first commercial computer. A retiring Chair of the BCS toured the branches give a talk. He remembered calibrating mercury delay lines with a tap, so the instruction and data arrived at the same time. They drifted out of synch over time. It's still a young industry.