This is all good stuff - but our memories serve us so badly - we forget about things from yesteryear that were truly terrible. A couple of things important to me:
Thank goodness we finally came up with an alternative to the automobile choke and carburetor - notoriously unreliable and extremely sensitive to the cold, when was the last time you had difficulty starting a car and it was because of a fuel problem? Come to think of it 40 years ago we would have been thrilled with 100 000 miles out of a car - now they regularly do 200 000 and more. Digital tuning of radio and TV receivers (not to be confused with digital radio) - how I hated trying to turn the knob to get the station tuned correctly - they always seemed to drift. Car batteries that always needed topping up with water. Give me my electronic programmable thermostat for my home heating any day - the mercury filled electro-mechanical one I replace was a piece of work that bounced the temperature around all over the show. Answering machines with tapes in them - actually anything with tape in it - my car stereo ate tapes up for breakfast regularly. Leaded paint, fuel. My grandparents had a coal fired kitchen oven and range - took one person about an hour each day just to keep the thing running (clean out stoking etc). The steam iron - the guy (gal?) who invented that deserves a medal. Automatic washing machines, bagless vacuum cleaners and DISHWASHERS Woo Hoo! Diapers!!!! In short you couldn't pay me enough to live in my parents or grandparents generation - it sucked big time.
