Not many people know this, but there was a time, quite recently, when mobile telephones were not as widespread as they were today. For instance, in the 19th century, mobile telephones were only available to the very rich! This is because the owner of a mobile telephone had to take with them:
A recently invented Alexander Graham Bell telephone
For text messages, a live telegraph and telegraph operator
And a personal trans-Atlantic cable in order to link yourself up to other telegraph users.
It was all most inconvenient, and people who owned a mobile telephone usually put all the telegraph operators and trans-Atlantic cable engineers in a big house in the countryside while they gallivanted about and did their own thing. It was only with the invention of microchip technology in the late 20th century that scientists were able to work out how to shrink the telegraph operators and put them inside the phone itself that the mobile phone, as we know it today, was invented.
So there you go!
Blogging in the Augustan Age
In the Augustan age, as odd as it might seem, the modern internet, as we know of it, did not exist. Rather, blogs were sent to one another in small chunks of html text by a small coterie of in-the-know fops and dandies who were held in suspicion by the greater public. Their favoured method of communication was carrier pigeon.
It was a little slower than dial-up.
Now isn't that interesting?
The era of Nintendo
Before the era of Nintendo, little geeks and nerds the world over had nothing to stimulate them, so they just sat in a corner and cried. Without little electronic buttons to push, their hands would eventually drop off, and they died soon afterwards.
Thankfully, Nintendo ushered in a new era where geek children the world over could happily make a contribution to society by sitting in front of a computer screen and pushing little buttons for hours on end.
And thank heavens for that!
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