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A the title says but here are the details....

You must be 55 or older to answer these questions.

For the year of 1969 I present these questions...

Can you tell me if you ever saw a computer - let's say at the hospital or the department store? If you did see it - what did you see it do? What kind of computing? Or maybe you saw one in the office - what did it do? What was it used for?

Can you tell me if there was cable TV available? If not - was it just TV antennas used for reception? Can you elaborate a little - did storms interfere? Also - did you have a color TV? Maybe your friends or neighbors had one? IF you did have cable TV available did it just serve your town or was it countrywide?

Did you ever see a Camcorder? How big was it? How heavy was it?

Have you ever seen a News reporter in the street covering a story? If yes - how big was the camera and could the camera man strap it or put it on his shoulder?

Were there any cell phones or satellite phones? Or maybe super long distance walkie talkies?

I am extremely curious about this period and I am tired of reading internet and second hand experiences and textbook answers.

I really want to hear from the persons that lived through it. I believe your testimony is the best resource for the answers to my questions. I mean - you lived through it!

I lived through the 60's and early 70's. They were great times, but I don't remember much. LOL! Only kidding. 1969 was the year that I graduated high school and entered my freshman year of college. The only computers I ever saw were at college. They were huge machines. Data was entered by a punch card. There were very few personal computers as we know of today. Only extremely nerdy people had them, and they were huge. We did have color TV. I believe it was either a Sony trinitron or an RCA. Reception was by antennae. Interference was caused by airplanes, large motor vehicles, storms, etc. . There were no camcorders at that time. There were cameras that used video cassettes (similar to 8 track tapes). These cameras were bulky. I saw new reporters. Cameras were mounted in trucks and occasionally on large tripods. There were no cell phones or satellite phones. There were not that many satellites in space at that time. Coin operated telephones were everywhere. All kids had walkie talkies, but the best ones had a range of only a few miles. Ham radios were still being used. A few years later CBs were all the rage. Everyone had one in their car.

Those were the days. Probably the best times of my life. Life was different and just beginning to change. Great post. Brings back lots of good memories.

You are making me feel old!!!

I never saw a computer in person until I went to college in 1971. At that time it occupied the entire first floor of the science building. You submitted your work on a stack of keypunched cards, something like 80 characters per line max. Your job came back the next day. You needed white coats to enter the climate controlled room for the beast.

Cable TV? We never had it in Fairfield, NJ. I remember our family getting our first color TV. Yes, we used antenna's. My father mounted ours inside the attic so it wouldn't show up outside. Yes, storms interfered, just like it does on radio reception. I cut in a signal splitter to the antenna wire to enable me to get better FM radio reception. When I went to college, I brought along a FM antenna for my radio-mounted it outside the window in the dorm. My uncle showed me how to make an FM antenna specific for a particular frequency. The length is based on the frequency of the station. I don't remember if I still have the formula or not. He designed antenna's for the military.

Camcorder? Don't remember when I saw my first. I do remember my brother in law buying a very early HP calculator. Paid $400.00 and a cheap $10.00 one does more today. TV cameras were mounted on dolly's in the studio. The cameraman sat on the dolly while shooting.

No cell phones. Didn't see my first till around 1984 or so. I still don't own one, and I love the freedom.

Wow! Thanks guys - sorry if I made you feel old - you're not old - you've just been here longer than me.

What an insight to yesteryear.

Of course - we all know it was the year men landed on the Moon.

Unfortunately - I am still one of those persons that believe's they just didn't have the technology to do it. Most people refute by saying the military is well advanced of the general public and that's why they had technology few knew about. Well - I'm just not that naive. See - whenever someone creates something that can generate millions of dollars it immediately goes to market. The military would not be able to hold onto small handheld portable video cameras, computers that could fit into a tiny space capsule, radio/communication technology that can feed live audio, oh and live video without line of sight technology that can feed live video - they would not be able to hold on to all of that without hitting the mass market before 1970. No rich guy in his right mind would allow it. No company would allow it. They would all jump on it immediately to make a fortune. Our history has dictated this. Just look at all the inventions we take for granted and see how quickly to came to the masses. Flight, TV, electricity, vehicles, trains etc etc These things only took but a few years to be offered to the masses.

So I thank you guys for the Life Experience - you were there - you saw what I could not - I was born in 1967!

But I think working for NYNEX/Bell Atlantic/Verizon/T-Mobile/Verizon Wireless/Comcast has actually convinced me all the more why I believe what I believe. They gave me too much information!

But how could you let a guy like Kennedy down? You can't man - you just can't.

Tito

I went to college in Melbourne, FL just 30 miles south of Cape Kennedy. My college was founded to educate the space scientists at Cape Kennedy. I saw rockets going off many, many times. I saw laser beams in the sky late at night right around the tracking station that nobody said anything about. Not even a mention in the paper, even though the paper listed the liftoff times for the rockets. I actually felt the ground vibrate as a Saturn 5 took off with an Apollo crew. It was a night launch and it lit up the area like noon and we were around 3 miles away (I think-memory does fail me. We were at a public site as close to the space center as legal, my friends and about 10,000 others) across the Banana River. I took 35 mm color slides of the launch and shot an entire roll of 24 slides in the time it took for the first stage to fall away and the second to light up. I still have them, but need to get them on digital. Don't have the projector any more.

The space program was not a hoax. Back then, reporters respected privacy and the need for military secrets. Things were different. I also remember seeing Sputnik out our house-the beginning of the space race.

Tito, your thinking is flawed. There are many inventions that are not marketed to the public. As an example: Years ago someone invented an automobile tire that can get over 200,000 miles of life. The tire manufacturers bought the patent. Much of the technology related to government, particularly the military, is not available for sale to the public at any price. You can't just go out and buy a stealth bomber. LOL!

Did man land on the moon in 1969? I believe they did. Too many people were involved for the truth not to come out. If it were staged, it was one of the best film productions of all time. LOL!

I want to thank you two guys for sharing your memories with me.

I definitely was not trying to bait you into something. I'm not a "conspiracy theorist" - that's just what I believe. I know that you guys will differ with me cause my dad and mom do as well. So i wont make the thread a conspiracy thread - that horse is so dead why beat it again! LOL

You know what they say, it's an old cliche, "Seeing is believing". I think that's why everyone in my dad's generation believes.

My challenge to that generation is - did you see what you thought you saw. I have no doubt that rockets were launched.

This conspiracy theory about the moon landing is for Tito: http://www.jayweidner.com/ShiningSecrets.html

It is amazing how different people can interpret things.

Myth Busters did a great show on busting the moon landing myths.

In 1969 I was a senior in High School. I took a college course for extra credit on computing. We used an IBM 360/40 which took up an entire floor of the computer science building at OSU. I also worked on a DEC PDP-11 that year that only took up a corner of the room, floor to ceiling. The memory was a bunch of iron donuts with wires going though them. It looks like and was the size of a screen door. You used punch cards to program them. One card per line of code.

These have far less power than the PC I'm now using to type this. Personal computers did not come into being until 1975. I built my first PC from a kit in 1976 called a Cosmac Elf. It did almost nothing. Real computers for home use really didn't become available until 1977 with the TRS-80 (Tandy-Radio Shack) Apple, and the Commodore PET. Loads of others quickly followed. They didn't have floppy disks or hard drive. Data was saved to a cassette recorder.

Rich people had car phones that were huge and were plugged into their cars. The 1st true cell phone didn't show up until 1973. Those were called "bricks" due to their size and weight. There is a credit report dot com commercial that features one.

Cable TV has been with us since 1948, but in 1969 few people cared about it. It was sort of like XM radio is now. Why pay for TV when it is free and there were only 3 networks anyway. They all broadcast for free. You had to live in a big city to have access to it, and I didn't. I used my TV with Rabbit ear antennas and sometimes a coat hanger. My folks had a color TV, but I didn't get one until around 1980.

Camcorders for home use didn't show up until 1983.

Tito-
The world was different back then. What we have today in computers and electronics came from the space program. It just took time. The world didn't move as fast back then. Miniaturization was needed for space flight and NASA could pay for it. The computers used in the moon missions were more like calculators, nothing like we have today, yet they cost millions each. People also had not wrapped their brains around the new technology. In 1969 LED's and liquid chrystal displays were unknown. CRT's and MNixie tubes were used. At OSU I used a Wang Calculator that had them. You used the one at the library as no one could afford them. My first calculator only did 4 functions and I paid $100 for it in 1975 dollars, something like $1000 is todays money. In 1969 most TV's still used vacuum tubes. They were way cheaper than solid state. If you wanted a transistor TV you needed to buy a Heath Kit and build it yourself. It took 10 years for camcorder technology to become a consumer item. It only took about 5 for computers to do it.

Nearly two decades earlier we built the ballistic missle program based around atomic submarines. Think about what that took. Going to the moon was easy in comparison. Those guys were scary smart and worked really hard. Anyone putting out state secrets, like the NY Times does today, would be arrested and executed for treason, or just dissapeared. Believe it.