by James Smart

Much is written these days about how difficult it is for older people to adapt to the new technologies. Some senior citizens get overwhelmed by the onslaught of e-mail, the Web, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, Skype, Xbox and on and on with the other blessings technology has showered on us.

But there’s another side of this dilemma. Young people get bewildered and bemused when they encounter former technologies that the old folks took for granted. The oddity of this psychological phenomenon came home to me in an unexpected way when a workman, maybe about 40 in age, came into our house for a small repair job. He followed me down the stairs to the cellar, and I pulled the string hanging down that lit the light bulb above.

He had a mystified expression on his face. He finished his work and then preceded me toward the steps, saying “I’ll go first and let you do whatever you do with the light.” His perplexity reminded me of how my granddaughter, when she was a little girl, saw a rotary phone in our house and asked, “How does that work?” The young folks can snicker at us codgers when we have a hard time dealing with computers and iPhones and GPS tracking devices, but they don’t have to learn to use the old stuff.

If they were forced to use a coal furnace or an automobile without an electric starter or a telephone with human operators to get a phone number for them, they’d have a thing or two to learn. In doing historical research, I have come across many examples of people being puzzled by new technology.

I once came upon a letter to the editor in an 1825 newspaper that said, “I have read that a railroad is being built here. What is a railroad?” There is a story about the beginnings of the telegraph in the 1850s when a woman came into a railroad station and told the telegrapher there that her husband was working at the next station down the line. Would he be able to send her husband’s lunch to him by telegraph?

I remember my grandmother, seeing a television turned on for the first time, asking of the face on the screen, “Now, can he see us?” My grandmother is a good example of someone who had to learn about many new technologies. She was born before the Wright brothers flew and before Marconi made his first radio signals, and she lived to watch on television as men landed on the moon.

Think of the new technology that bombarded her life. Automobiles. Electric lights. Telephones. Furnaces operated by thermostats. Radio. Television. She was always a little suspicious of the telephone, which was invented when she was one year old. She would answer and take messages, but I doubt that she made many calls in her life.

Yet she welcomed some new technologies. When the family bought a house with gas lights in 1921, she had electric lights installed. The wires were run through the old gas pipes. She had an indoor bathroom put in, with bathtub and toilet. No sink; there was already a sink in the kitchen.

Just after World War II ended, aluminum storm windows and screens became popular. She bought them. Insulation was recommended. She had the stuff blown in under the roof. But an electric doorbell, to replace the knob, cord and pulleys that rang the cowbell dangling in the hall? She just didn’t like the idea. Grandmom died the year before e-mail was invented. I would love hearing her opinion of that.

James Smart, 86, a Mt. Airy resident for the last 30 years, started working at The Philadelphia Bulletin as a copy boy in 1948, and after assorted newsroom jobs, reporting, etc., was assigned to write the In Our Town column, which he did for 14 years. He has been writing for other publications ever since. You can read other Smart ideas at jamessmartsphiladelphia.com