Bernard J. Lechner
 

Recently passed, one of the pioneers of LCD flat panels and major contributor to the development of digital TV standards, Bernard (Bernie) J. Lechner:

http://vimeo.com/94460999

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_J._Lechner

I had one granny who was born in 1889, passed in 1992 the other one was born in 1898, & died in 2002. I was a FOOL to not ever record their recollections of "Years gone by".. What those 2 women saw in their lifetimes was unbelievable.. My mother's mom, the 1889 one, said the first time she saw an airplane, she figured from then on that ANYTHING was possible.

Sandy, can you imagine? Born when the Horse & Buggy were the normal form of transportation and by the time you died there were Computers, TV, Cars, Coast to Coast Highways, Space Exploration, Jet's etc...

We complain that things are changing too fast nowadays but at least when I was born we had all of these things already, just not as advanced as today.

A guy I knew told me once that his Granny crossed the Mississippi twice-Once in a covered wagon/flatboat, the 2nd time in a 727.

I remember my grandmas house in Joliet IL. She had a 5 acre home, picket fence, gravel road, big corn field on the other side, planked wood porch like in the old west towns, no indoor plumbing, an outhouse, in the kitchen we had to use a hand pump to get water, the stove had firewood under the burners, the refrigerator was an icebox. A guy would come three times a week to deliver a large block of ice. Coal was delivered for heat. They set up schutes from the road at a downward angle and gravity would covey the coal through a window in the basement. The workers faces and arms were covered in coal dust. She had electric lights, but that was a "new upgrade" because she had oil lamps throughout the house. No phone or TV. No A/C.

We had fun, I would be there in summer for two weeks, several years in a row in the mid 50's. I was 8 years old then. My grandma had plenty of fruit trees and a vine yard. We used to make the wine, pick the grapes, crush them in huge vats with our bare feet, let it ferment. At night we set huge Bon fires, sang songs and my parents got drunk. :-) Only problem was a language barrier, she spoke German. Great memories!

...

Seeing my grand parents and my parents with so little in the way of modern conveniences and yet they were happy and enjoyed each other's company and with friends. They did not need cell phones, modern conveniences, etc. that we take for granted to be happy. I guess it is all relative generational wise.

I was one of those who read the old magazines, hang on the wall TV, 3D TV, Dick Tracy TV watch, etc. and I dreamed of such things. Now it is all a realty.

The computer and the internet makes everything super easy and fast. Instant gratification. The picture phone shown at the 1960 world fair is a reality through the internet. Back in the day information was in books and magazines. If you wanted to review and see the best color televisions, you had to get in a car and travel all over town to the dealers to see the sets.

As I get older, now 68, family members and friends are dying off. When I attend their funerals, the young kids don't know how to interact. They get bored and bury their heads in their cell phones. Some of them can't even construct a sentence or spell from all the texting. Pretty sad.

I grew up in the sixties and remember for quite awhile we only had one bathroom, only one hang on the wall Western Electric hard wired rotary phone, no color tv until I was almost 10. But in spite of that I had a bunch of neighborhood kids to do things with. We rode our bikes, played street football or pig/horse with a basketball. No cell phones, VCR's, or video games existed yet. I feel I had a much better upbringing than my own kids did mainly because of the limited technology we had then. I'm always amazed when we got out for dinner now how a family is isolated from itself because there all surfing the net or on social media with there phones. I do miss a simpler time in which I grew up in.

I'll be 60 in June and still have yet to buy a plat panel television. But I am looking now at them. I was struck by something the other day and it really made me think. We now live in a post picture tube (my preferred nomenclature) type television. That means as these years pass flyback transformers and picture tube technology someday will all be but forgotten to some future generation. I feel strongly about letting the current generations know about how things in the past were done. So many inventions by many individuals were done for tv to become a reality. I'm still amazed that we pull an invisible signal out of thin air and reassemble it by a device that gives us a sound, a picture, and to boot color. That has always amazed me. It's old hat now, but it really is miraculous if you think about it. Sorry for my rant, but new technology marches on at a pace we can't keep up with. When I worked at the tv shop in the '70's. We could still get a fair amount of parts to fix something that was twenty years old. That doesn't exist today. Today's technology might get forgotten due that we are wholly a throw away society. I hope future generations reverse that. When I finally buy my plat panel tv. I will know that it will have a limited life and then its over. That for me is sad. Thank you fellow tv nuts that keep this forum going with your interest in old technology. I am forever grateful. I'll see some of you at ETF for the first time this year.

Very sad....... Whenever someone passes its sad :(