Baby Steps

This is a trip down memory lane. The baby steps I refer to are my learning about our world of media and electronics. Back in the days of my youth I experienced the "birth" of television. The TV sets had small pictures. The pictures were in black and white. The stations didn't broadcast all day. When there were no shows on the air the stations displayed a "test pattern". The test pattern allowed us to adjust our picture. The picture would roll over and over if the horizontal hold was not just right. Or the picture would slide sideways. Then we would adjust the vertical hold. The TV sets had tubes like light bulbs. The tubes were vacuum and sometimes burned out just like light bulbs. We would have to go to the store and buy new tubes. The tubes had lots of pins sticking out of the bottom of them. You had to get the exact same tube or it would not fit.


To get a picture you had to have a big ariel on the roof of your house. Some people used a ariel on the top of the TV which were called "Rabbit Ears". You would turn the ariel until you got the sharpest picture possible.


The first color pictures were made using a screen over the front of the TV. The screen made the picture look like it was colored.


Now today the tubes are long gone. The TV is very big screen and skinny. The picture comes in on a cable. The shows are on 24/7.


I have lived in a historic era, that's for sure.