Rod Speed wrote:
John Williamson wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Tony Bryer wrote
Harry wrote

They were the playthings of the relatively wealthy in the 1950s. It
was not until the 1960s that all theses appliances became commonplace.

I think this is one of the extraordinary changes in recent times -
first mass production cars start of 20C; in my 1960s junior school
class only a handful of children came from car-owning families.

Fark, cant remember any of mine from the 50s that didn't.

In the UK, very few families owned cars even into the late 60s.

I find that rather hard to believe given the sales of the minor and mini
etc.

Shrug If you will insist on believing the marketing talk...

Colour TV, video, mobile phones, broadband have gone from being
technically exotic to mainstream within a decade or so.

Lot longer than that with the first few.

Colour TV was first broadcast here in 1967, and by the end of the 70s,
among people that I knew, about 90% had a colour set.

And that's about 35 years.

? First broadcast to 90% ownership was a *lot* less than 35 years.

then another 15 until the format wars between Betamax and VHS. Home
videos didn't really take off here until the killer application of
being able to watch a movie at home became possible with the advent of
3 hour tapes and video rental shops, then, within five years, almost
everybody had a video recorder or player.

And that was well before a decade ago too.

The first cellphones were introduced here in 1985, and by 1988, I was
the first coach driver in London to have one, and that situatrion
lasted a year or so, then in the early 90s, I was driving groups round
with a dozen or so phones in a group of 40 people.

And that's 20 years ago.

Your point being what, exactly? The point you were answering was that
these tchnologies all became common within a few years of being
introduced to the mass market.

Nowadays, within 20 years, it's common for passengers on the coach to
text each other rather than talk, and there are more mobile phones in
use than there are people in the UK. I've even had texts from someone
at the back of the coach asking me to turn the heating up.

How do they know your number ?

Because, as part of the customer service procedure on tours, I told 'em.
Except that it's not *my* number, it's a company number.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.