George Westinghouse

I'm in the midst of a documentary about George Westinghouse.  Westinghouse was a contemporary of Edison, though very unlike him I'm learning.  These days he's probably best known for the appliances bearing his name. 

The era in which he lived is truly one that fascinates me.  I'd love to have experienced life as he and those around him did.  He fought in the Civil War in his late teens.  He went on to become a fabulous inventor and human being.  Above is a photo of the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago.  Westinghouse beat out Edison and his GE to provide the lighting for the Fair.  That's about where I am in the documentary.

My point is not a history lesson on George Westinghouse.  My point is this.  Growing up in the late 1900's has been great.  We have all these fabulous gadgets here in the 2000's that allow us to do most anything we can imagine.  We can communicate instantly over any amount of space, not only with sound, but extraordinary amounts of information.  We'd all but stopped going to the moon by the time I was born.  We'd been there, done that.  I could hop a plane and be hanging out with my brother in Alaska in time for dinner.  We can carry our entire music collection of hundreds or thousands of albums in our pocket.  We're making things bigger and faster at an alarming rate.  It's cliche, but one can hardly get a computer out of the box before it's obsolete. 

I contrast that with the world Westinghouse lived in.  When he was a boy, things were pretty much as they had been for a hundred years.  Sure, they had these new-fangled "steam locomotive horse-less travelling machines" but people still did everything more or less by hand.  They still read by candle light.  Then slowly things begin to change.  Edison invented his music machine.  Electricity was harnessed.  The picture above looks like a fuzzy but kinda cool night shot to us now.  To people at the turn of the century, however, it must have looked like something close to the second coming.  I can't even think of how to describe what it must have been like for someone who had lived 30 years in the dark to first see a grand display of the beaming electric light. 

I don't imagine it took long for people's imaginations to run wild with the possibilities.  Soon the car would come, then the plane.  Telephones. Refrigerators. Washing machines.  Radio.  What awe and wonder must the people have felt at each of these seemingly mundane inventions.  I really feel that this must have been an amazing time to be alive, to see the sky as the limit.  The only truly revolutionary thing that I have seen is the internet.  Gadgets like cell phones and mp3 players may count also.  But things are being made new and improved so quickly it's lost all magic.  We're already on the 3rd generation of iPhones. 

I don't think we really appreciate all the luxuries we have.  I heard a girl of about 13 complain recently.  Her dad had gotten her the "wrong" iPod.  Good grief.  I can't imagine what it must be like to be of that generation.  They don't even see the internet as all that exciting.  Kids in elementary school have cell phones.  They probably have never owned an album on cassette.  I'm afraid to think how it will be for our kids one day.

I just wish I could see life as people did at the turn of the century with their Worlds Fairs full of the possibility of anything and everything, full of optimism and hope that things were only going to get better.  What a happy way to live.  I don't know who said it, but there's a famous quote that goes something like this: "You can live as though everything is a miracle or nothing is."  I know which I prefer.