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#1
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
Was America a better place then? I think so.
To be sure, a hundred years ago, any major city stank of ****, human and horse, there was no air conditioning, and people must have had body odor most of the time. Indoor plumbing was not a common practice much before 1900 and not universal until the Roaring Twenties, and having central hot water heating was in fact only nearly universal at roughly the dawn of WWII. The upper classes had them a generation earlier of course, and so we forget that many working class families could remember chamber pots within living memory. The next fifty years, from 1909 to 1959, brought the most foundational changes technologically in every aspect of life, from birth to childhood to working life, retirement, and death, of any similar period in human history. An Egyptian or Chinese for four thousand years, perhaps, could live to sixty (although most did not) and reflect back on his, or her, experience from the age of ten with little change in day to day life. A Briton from earliest to later Victorian life would have seen more change, but the basics were relatively similar. But an American, male or female, working or middle or patrician in class, would find such a massive upheaval that in fact, most people still alive in 1969 who had been born in 1909-ten years onward from even then and after the tumultuus six or seven years that constituted the tumultuous 1960s-were not particularly stunned or shocked by the television images they watched as American Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar lander ladder onto the moon. In fact, it was not considered remarkable that most Americans born in 1909 did watch the lunar landing. That fifty percent of the population would see their sixtieth birthday was a historical milestone few took for anything but routine. Most modern people would consider it more pleasant to live in 1959 than in 1909. But would either be preferable to 2009? It's of course a moot question, since time travel is either absolutely impossible or is sufficiently far in the future that those visiting us today in their own past are universally discreet so as we can not detect them, or even tangentially infer their presence. My own opinion is that intellectually 1909 was far better than today, and that a learned person might well prefer it, but that 1959 overall was probably the zenith of American life and the best time in history simply to have experienced the country, although the foundations were even then being attacked by termites of various species. The concern allegedly of interest here is, or was, the business of sound reproduction. In that, 1959 was truly the golden era. The technology was sufficiently advanced to permit results that today can be improved only asymptotically, yet, cost cutting and cheapening were not the order of the day. Profit margins were good, and talented people still designed and good workers still assembled and tested each item here in the United States. With the exception of some very specific items in Britain and Germany, all the best items were made in the United States. People making them could afford to own a house and feed a family. And a considerable number of audiophiles built a good percentage of their own systems from component parts, giving them knowledge and experience later 'appliance operators' would never attain. |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 12:35*pm, Jon Yaeger wrote:
Gee Bret, I would have thought that your favorite interval would have been from 1933 to 1945 in a particular European country . . . I would've placed Bratzi's favorite era and location as pre-1865 southern US, when a white man knew where a white man stood. Bratzi is one sick puppy. |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 12:46 pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote: On Jan 18, 12:35 pm, Jon Yaeger wrote: Gee Bret, I would have thought that your favorite interval would have been from 1933 to 1945 in a particular European country . . . I would've placed Bratzi's favorite era and location as pre-1865 southern US, when a white man knew where a white man stood. Bratzi is one sick puppy. Aee my more recent post for the answer. A white man is a manufacturing man and for that reason I would, with some reluctance, have worn blue in 1865 and USAAF khaki in 1945. |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 1:23*pm, wrote:
*Was America a better place then? I think so. (snip) And a considerable number of audiophiles built a good percentage of their own systems from component parts, giving them knowledge and experience later 'appliance operators' would never attain. Bret, I am an optimist... IMO, it is better now. We can still collect and build the 1959 audio stuff (and I do!) but at the same time have an affordable LCD home theatre (I don't!), use a cellphone (yes!) and fly to Oz at any time (I have!) One good thing about 1909 and earlier was that the "inquiring scientist/engineer" could know a good percentage of the then current knowledge in a number of technical disciplines. Now he/she can never even cover one discipline but must specialize (as I have!) Of course, if we know the basic physics, maths and chemistry we can at least be told how most stuff works - but we can't make it in the basement like they did! Anyway, most of us live longer now ("three score and ten" is obsolete... I hope, nearly there!) and if we are active and inquiring thoughout our lives it can even be fun. The beer's still good, too! Cheers, Roger |
#6
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 10:09 pm, Engineer wrote:
On Jan 18, 1:23 pm, wrote: Was America a better place then? I think so. (snip) And a considerable number of audiophiles built a good percentage of their own systems from component parts, giving them knowledge and experience later 'appliance operators' would never attain. Bret, I am an optimist... IMO, it is better now. We can still collect and build the 1959 audio stuff (and I do!) but at the same time have an affordable LCD home theatre (I don't!), use a cellphone (yes!) and fly to Oz at any time (I have!) One good thing about 1909 and earlier was that the "inquiring scientist/engineer" could know a good percentage of the then current knowledge in a number of technical disciplines. Now he/she can never even cover one discipline but must specialize (as I have!) Of course, if we know the basic physics, maths and chemistry we can at least be told how most stuff works - but we can't make it in the basement like they did! Anyway, most of us live longer now ("three score and ten" is obsolete... I hope, nearly there!) and if we are active and inquiring thoughout our lives it can even be fun. The beer's still good, too! In America the beer is way better IF you shun the major brews, which only bikers and Mexicans drink anymore. Where American beer sucked fifty years ago, we now have a selection of brews as good as any although I like German, Canadian and British beers occasionally too as well as the Czech beers. Nothing Asian because most use rice and it gives me the ****s. |
#7
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 11:22*pm, wrote:
Nothing Asian because most use rice and it gives me the ****s. And that is different from your natural state how? Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
#8
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On 18 Ian, 23:22, wrote:
*In America the beer is way better IF you shun the major brews, which only bikers and Mexicans drink anymore. Where American beer sucked fifty years ago, we now have a selection of brews as good as any although I like German, Canadian and British beers occasionally too as well as the Czech beers. Nothing Asian because most use rice and it gives me the ****s.- c'mon guys, each of you put up a couple of bucks and I'll send him a couple of cases of Kirin, |
#9
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 19, 9:20*am, Clyde Slick wrote:
c'mon guys, each of you put up a couple of bucks and I'll send him a couple of cases of Kirin, Yeah - and when he passed, he could be buried in a shoe-box given all that would be left. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
#10
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 11:23*am, wrote:
*Was America a better place then? I think so. *To be sure, a hundred years ago, any major city stank of ****, human and horse, there was no air conditioning, and people must have had body odor most of the time. Indoor plumbing was not a common practice much before 1900 and not universal until the Roaring Twenties, and having central hot water heating was in fact only nearly universal at roughly the dawn of WWII. The upper classes had them a generation earlier of course, and so we forget that many working class families could remember *chamber pots within living memory. *The next fifty years, from 1909 to 1959, brought the most foundational changes technologically in every aspect of life, from birth to childhood to working life, retirement, and death, of any similar period in human history. An Egyptian or Chinese for four thousand years, perhaps, could live to sixty (although most did not) and reflect back on his, or her, experience from the age of ten with little change in day to day life. A Briton from earliest to later Victorian *life would have seen more change, but the basics were relatively similar. But an American, male or female, working or middle or patrician in class, would find such a massive upheaval that in fact, most people still alive in 1969 who had been born in 1909-ten years onward from even then and after the tumultuus six or seven years that constituted the tumultuous 1960s-were not particularly stunned or shocked by the television images they watched as American Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar lander ladder onto the moon. In fact, it was not considered remarkable that most Americans born in 1909 did watch the lunar landing. That fifty percent of the population would see their sixtieth birthday was a historical milestone few took for anything but routine. *Most modern people would consider it more pleasant to live in 1959 than in 1909. But would either be preferable to 2009? It's of course a moot question, since time travel is either absolutely impossible or is sufficiently far in the future that those visiting us today in their own past are universally discreet so as we can not detect them, or even tangentially infer their presence. *My own opinion is that intellectually 1909 was far better than today, and that a learned person might well prefer it, but that 1959 overall was probably the zenith of American life and the best time in history simply to have experienced the country, although the foundations were even then being attacked by termites of various species. *The concern allegedly of interest here is, or was, the business of sound reproduction. In that, 1959 was truly the golden era. The technology was sufficiently advanced to permit results that today can be improved only asymptotically, yet, cost cutting and cheapening were not the order of the day. Profit margins were good, and talented people still designed and good workers still assembled and tested each item here in the United States. With the exception of some very specific items in Britain and Germany, all the best items were made in the United States. People making them could afford to own a house and feed a family. And a considerable number of audiophiles built a good percentage of their own systems from component parts, giving them knowledge and experience later 'appliance operators' would never attain. I have both an unusual type of autism,and mitochondrial disease.Neither of which could have been diagnosed fifty years ago.As an autistic,I can't be anything but blunt.The internet,and the advances in medicine,genetics,etc. are the only things that make life in the early 21st century at all wortwhile.Other than that,the whole of western civilization has gone dramatically downhill in the last thirty years.As a leftist,and a socialist,I say the downfall began with the election of Ronald Reagan,and the ensuing rise of the religious right in America. The twentieth century was marked by musical innovation and revoulutions,from "Le Sacre du Printemps" to The Sex Pistols.Punk,now over thirty years in the past was the last of this.The lack of any classical composers to emerge in the past sixty years,as well known as Bartok,or a Shostakovich speaks for itself.Both high culture,and pop culture has gone dramatically downhill since the early 1980s.Teenage kids still love Buddy Holly,Miles Davis,The Doors,and The Velvet Underground,generations after they are gone,in part because they have no equal today.In part because technology and corporations have each done their part to ruin music,beginning with the rise of the CD in the early 80s.Today's classical artists sound boring,and pedestrian,when compared to a Furtwangler,a Menhuin,or a Stokowski. A Kenneth Wilkinson,or a team like a C.Robert,and Wilma Cozart-Fine has no place in the classical recording biz anymore,even if their equals ARE out there. Most of the major components in my system,like my Marantz 8,and my Thorens,are all around fifty years old.The only exciting development since the CD,has been the triode revolution,and what are we talking about here,but modifications in seventy five/eighty year old technology.Can you say Loftin-White? Fifty or a hundred years ago,Coca-Cola had real sugar,and tasted like Coca-Cola.Same with all soda.Fifty years ago,most packaged supermarket food was better quality than it was now.You did not have to worry about dying from substandard ingredients imported from China,to cut corners on cost and quality.There was still a vibrant manufacturing base,in this country.Unions were alive and well. I wish I could move to a prosperous,well run country like Venezuela. Hugo Chavez is the greatest president ever, Roger |
#11
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
wrote in message ... On Jan 18, 11:23 am, wrote: Was America a better place then? I think so. The twentieth century was marked by musical innovation and revoulutions,from "Le Sacre du Printemps" to The Sex Pistols.Punk,now over thirty years in the past was the last of this.The lack of any classical composers to emerge in the past sixty years,as well known as Bartok,or a Shostakovich speaks for itself.Both high culture,and pop culture has gone dramatically downhill since the early 1980s.Teenage kids still love Buddy Holly,Miles Davis,The Doors,and The Velvet Underground,generations after they are gone,in part because they have no equal today.In part because technology and corporations have each done their part to ruin music,beginning with the rise of the CD in the early 80s.Today's classical artists sound boring,and pedestrian,when compared to a Furtwangler,a Menhuin,or a Stokowski. A Kenneth Wilkinson,or a team like a C.Robert,and Wilma Cozart-Fine has no place in the classical recording biz anymore,even if their equals ARE out there. Hi Roger. Excellent post. Most of which I agree with Iain |
#12
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On 19 Ian, 12:25, "Iain Churches" wrote:
wrote in message ... On Jan 18, 11:23 am, wrote: Was America a better place then? I think so. The twentieth century was marked by musical innovation and revoulutions,from "Le Sacre du Printemps" to The Sex Pistols.Punk,now over thirty years in the past was the last of this.The lack of any classical composers to emerge in the past sixty years,as well known as Bartok,or a Shostakovich speaks for itself.Both high culture,and pop culture has gone dramatically downhill since the early 1980s.Teenage kids still love Buddy Holly,Miles Davis,The Doors,and The Velvet Underground,generations after they are gone,in part because they have no equal today.In part because technology and corporations have each done their part to ruin music,beginning with the rise of the CD in the early 80s.Today's classical artists sound boring,and pedestrian,when compared to a Furtwangler,a Menhuin,or a Stokowski. A Kenneth Wilkinson,or a team like a C.Robert,and Wilma Cozart-Fine has no place in the classical recording biz anymore,even if their equals ARE out there. Hi Roger. Excellent post. Most of which I agree with Iain- Ascunde citatul - - Afișare text în citat - we are waiting for the two of you to marry and run off to live happilyever after in Venezuela, unless that's the part of the you don't agree with. |
#13
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 19, 2:08*pm, Clyde Slick wrote:
On 19 Ian, 12:25, "Iain Churches" wrote: wrote in message .... On Jan 18, 11:23 am, wrote: Was America a better place then? I think so. The twentieth century was marked by musical innovation and revoulutions,from "Le Sacre du Printemps" to The Sex Pistols.Punk,now over thirty years in the past was the last of this.The lack of any classical composers to emerge in the past sixty years,as well known as Bartok,or a Shostakovich speaks for itself.Both high culture,and pop culture has gone dramatically downhill since the early 1980s.Teenage kids still love Buddy Holly,Miles Davis,The Doors,and The Velvet Underground,generations after they are gone,in part because they have no equal today.In part because technology and corporations have each done their part to ruin music,beginning with the rise of the CD in the early 80s.Today's classical artists sound boring,and pedestrian,when compared to a Furtwangler,a Menhuin,or a Stokowski. A Kenneth Wilkinson,or a team like a C.Robert,and Wilma Cozart-Fine has no place in the classical recording biz anymore,even if their equals ARE out there. Hi Roger. Excellent post. Most of which I agree with Iain- Ascunde citatul - - Afișare text în citat - we are waiting for the two of you to marry and run off to live happilyever after in Venezuela, unless that's the part of the you don't agree with.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Clyde: You need to understand that there is little or no connection between Politics as-practiced and Reality as-observed. Whatever feather of whichever wing you inhabit. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
#14
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On 19 Ian, 14:15, Peter Wieck wrote:
On Jan 19, 2:08*pm, Clyde Slick wrote: On 19 Ian, 12:25, "Iain Churches" wrote: wrote in message .... On Jan 18, 11:23 am, wrote: Was America a better place then? I think so. The twentieth century was marked by musical innovation and revoulutions,from "Le Sacre du Printemps" to The Sex Pistols.Punk,now over thirty years in the past was the last of this.The lack of any classical composers to emerge in the past sixty years,as well known as Bartok,or a Shostakovich speaks for itself.Both high culture,and pop culture has gone dramatically downhill since the early 1980s.Teenage kids still love Buddy Holly,Miles Davis,The Doors,and The Velvet Underground,generations after they are gone,in part because they have no equal today.In part because technology and corporations have each done their part to ruin music,beginning with the rise of the CD in the early 80s.Today's classical artists sound boring,and pedestrian,when compared to a Furtwangler,a Menhuin,or a Stokowski. A Kenneth Wilkinson,or a team like a C.Robert,and Wilma Cozart-Fine has no place in the classical recording biz anymore,even if their equals ARE out there. Hi Roger. Excellent post. Most of which I agree with Iain- Ascunde citatul - - Afișare text în citat - we are waiting for the two of you to marry and run off to live happilyever after in Venezuela, unless that's the part of the you don't agree with.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Clyde: You need to understand that there is little or no connection between Politics as-practiced and Reality as-observed. Whatever feather of whichever wing you inhabit. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA- Ascunde citatul - - non sequitor |
#15
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 18, 11:22*pm, wrote:
On Jan 18, 10:09 pm, Engineer wrote: On Jan 18, 1:23 pm, wrote: *Was America a better place then? I think so. (snip) And a considerable number of audiophiles built a good percentage of their own systems from component parts, giving them knowledge and experience later 'appliance operators' would never attain. Bret, I am an optimist... IMO, it is better now. *We can still collect and build the 1959 audio stuff (and I do!) but at the same time have an affordable LCD home theatre (I don't!), use a cellphone (yes!) and fly to Oz at any time (I have!) *One good thing about 1909 and earlier was that the "inquiring scientist/engineer" could know a good percentage of the then current knowledge in a number of technical disciplines. *Now he/she can never even cover one discipline but must specialize (as I have!) *Of course, if we know the basic physics, maths and chemistry we can at least be told how most stuff works - but we can't make it in the basement like they did! Anyway, most of us live longer now ("three score and ten" is obsolete... I hope, nearly there!) and if we are active and inquiring thoughout our lives it can even be fun. The beer's still good, too! *In America the beer is way better IF you shun the major brews, which only bikers and Mexicans drink anymore. Where American beer sucked fifty years ago, we now have a selection of brews as good as any although I like German, Canadian and British beers occasionally too as well as the Czech beers. Nothing Asian because most use rice and it gives me the ****s.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Bret, I, too, shun the major brews. I mostly drink dark beer from the smaller breweries here in Canada. Sleeman's Dark is pretty good, as is Alexander Keith's Amber Ale and Wellington County Dark Ale. But sometimes I drink Keith's IPA. I have never like American pale beers. In Britain HSB is very good indeed, I have sunk many a pint over the years, but I have never seen it over here. Oh, yes, London Pride (a classic British bitter) in cans is also very good and it is shipped to Canada, perhaps to the US, too. Then there's Smethwick's... but this is getting a a bit OT! Cheers, Roger |
#16
Posted to rec.audio.opinion,rec.audio.tubes
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America: Better 50, even 100 years ago?
On Jan 19, 10:29*am, "
wrote: On Jan 18, 11:23*am, wrote: *Was America a better place then? I think so. *To be sure, a hundred years ago, any major city stank of ****, human and horse, there was no air conditioning, and people must have had body odor most of the time. Indoor plumbing was not a common practice much before 1900 and not universal until the Roaring Twenties, and having central hot water heating was in fact only nearly universal at roughly the dawn of WWII. The upper classes had them a generation earlier of course, and so we forget that many working class families could remember *chamber pots within living memory. *The next fifty years, from 1909 to 1959, brought the most foundational changes technologically in every aspect of life, from birth to childhood to working life, retirement, and death, of any similar period in human history. An Egyptian or Chinese for four thousand years, perhaps, could live to sixty (although most did not) and reflect back on his, or her, experience from the age of ten with little change in day to day life. A Briton from earliest to later Victorian *life would have seen more change, but the basics were relatively similar. But an American, male or female, working or middle or patrician in class, would find such a massive upheaval that in fact, most people still alive in 1969 who had been born in 1909-ten years onward from even then and after the tumultuus six or seven years that constituted the tumultuous 1960s-were not particularly stunned or shocked by the television images they watched as American Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar lander ladder onto the moon. In fact, it was not considered remarkable that most Americans born in 1909 did watch the lunar landing. That fifty percent of the population would see their sixtieth birthday was a historical milestone few took for anything but routine. *Most modern people would consider it more pleasant to live in 1959 than in 1909. But would either be preferable to 2009? It's of course a moot question, since time travel is either absolutely impossible or is sufficiently far in the future that those visiting us today in their own past are universally discreet so as we can not detect them, or even tangentially infer their presence. *My own opinion is that intellectually 1909 was far better than today, and that a learned person might well prefer it, but that 1959 overall was probably the zenith of American life and the best time in history simply to have experienced the country, although the foundations were even then being attacked by termites of various species. *The concern allegedly of interest here is, or was, the business of sound reproduction. In that, 1959 was truly the golden era. The technology was sufficiently advanced to permit results that today can be improved only asymptotically, yet, cost cutting and cheapening were not the order of the day. Profit margins were good, and talented people still designed and good workers still assembled and tested each item here in the United States. With the exception of some very specific items in Britain and Germany, all the best items were made in the United States. People making them could afford to own a house and feed a family. And a considerable number of audiophiles built a good percentage of their own systems from component parts, giving them knowledge and experience later 'appliance operators' would never attain. I have both an unusual type of autism,and mitochondrial disease.Neither of which could have been diagnosed fifty years ago.As an autistic,I can't be anything but blunt.The internet,and the advances in medicine,genetics,etc. are the only things that make life in the early 21st century at all wortwhile.Other than that,the whole of western civilization has gone dramatically downhill in the last thirty years.As a leftist,and a socialist,I say the downfall began with the election of Ronald Reagan,and the ensuing rise of the religious right in America. The twentieth century was marked by musical innovation and revoulutions,from "Le Sacre du Printemps" to The Sex Pistols.Punk,now over thirty years in the past was the last of this.The lack of any classical composers to emerge in the past sixty years,as well known as Bartok,or a Shostakovich speaks for itself.Both high culture,and pop culture has gone dramatically downhill since the early 1980s.Teenage kids still love Buddy Holly,Miles Davis,The Doors,and The Velvet Underground,generations after they are gone,in part because they have no equal today.In part because technology and corporations have each done their part to ruin music,beginning with the rise of the CD in the early 80s.Today's classical artists sound boring,and pedestrian,when compared to a Furtwangler,a Menhuin,or a Stokowski. A Kenneth Wilkinson,or a team like a C.Robert,and Wilma Cozart-Fine has no place in the classical recording biz anymore,even if their equals ARE out there. Most of the major components in my system,like my Marantz 8,and my Thorens,are all around fifty years old.The only exciting development since the CD,has been the triode revolution,and what are we talking about here,but modifications in seventy five/eighty year old technology.Can you say Loftin-White? Yes, it was a terrible design because the operating points went all over the place as it all ran off a huge multitapped resistor. Later variants floated the front end supply sort of like a Circlotron, but the die was cast. Terrible design in terms of efficiency too. Actually, the Circlotron wasn't bad. There was also a Finnish design based around a special autoformer that did some thing similar that worked well too. But the RC coupled graded power supply system won because it was better. |
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