Thursday, December 17, 2015

How time and technology have changed

Do you remember slide projectors? Do you remember taking endless pictures on vacations and then having them transformed into slides which you shared with anyone who would sit still and watch. Friends and relatives would watch each others' slide shows because that's what you did.  If you were considerate you kept your shows to an hour and of course you served snacks and, if you wanted people to really appreciate the experience, drinks.
One of the things I had to deal with as I was working through the downsizing process this summer was our slide collection - seven projector trays containing about 700 slides, none of them more recent than the 1970's. I sorted and sorted and sorted with the help of a little hand held viewer that my son unearthed in the basement. Heaven knows how it survived. After careful consideration, and the realization that I didn't have any idea where many of the scenic views had been taken, I narrowed it down to 32 slides of family and friends, which a friend of mine gave to his daughter who scanned and copied them on to a memory stick. This is so cool. I can watch them any time I want on my computer or, if I want to see them on the big screen, I can watch them on TV through my DVD player.
I plan to show the pictures to my children, probably over Christmas vacation, and then, who knows, probably just tuck them away. But believe me this little three inch gizmo takes a lot less space than seven slide trays, a projector and a screen. Let's hear it for technological evolution.

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