Back to the 1960's? Was life better then? Have we really progressed?

Cliff Richard and the Shadows round 1962

usually hogging the top of the charts 

1962 seemed to be for most in the UK, a year that finally seemed to affirm that the country was moving into the modern age. The whole country seemed to suddenly move from monochrome to technicolour.

The daring styling of the Ford Consul Capri 109E -

a departure from the tired old car designs -

adopting modern American styling and the '4 headlight' look

Britain seemed to be largely shaking off the memory of the grim days of WW2 and post war rationing. Computers had thanks to the efforts at Bletchley Park, evolved from the embryonic work of Tommy Flowers in his Dollis Hill development inner sanctum to become the stuff of legend, the Bletchley legend that would remain hidden in secrecy for many years after the end of WW2.

Lyons made more than Ice Cream -

It became one of the big post war computer makers

until American giant IBM got a foothold in the market

Bletchley made great strides in technology for the early electronic computer industry. With the advances in post war electronics, computers started to develop at a rapid pace. As an emerging technology, the sky seemed to be the limit. This era was later referred to as the 'white heat  of technology.' Britain led the way for a while, with Lyons foods developing their own business computer and companies like Ferranti, building on the post WW2 development of the previous decade to produce modern computers.

  

Tinplate robots mostly made in Japan captured the post WW2

forward thrust towards space, technology and the future

Since the dawn of time, man as a species long wanted to create an automaton in the image of himself. With the advances in electronics, this no longer seemed to be a pipe dream, but a future obtainable concept. We are only now coming to the time when the seamless 'singularity' between a human and computer may arrive. The so-called 'Turing test' that determines that state of not being able to know the difference is not far off.

Space was indeed our final frontier and the race was on to build craft that could go into space and explore it for the rewards that might be there, such as us establishing colonies off this planet and lead us to becoming a type 1 civilisation. The 60's became the decade of the space race.

1962 was a boom time. Almost anything you bought in the shops over here was British made, anything else was clearly marked 'Foreign.' There was still a puffed out chestedness that as we had with America won WW2 and settled the Nazi's hash that we could justifiably feel proud of ourselves.

Anything you bought was more likely to be British made. This boom in production led to many being employed in factories across the nation. Our industrialisation was a success story that would only be marred by the stupidity of the unions that would lead to many of the industries either ceasing or being hobbled by ridiculous rhetoric and operating practices.

Certainly life was a lot simpler then in the world of the emerging new technologies. Life was better, not much more than a generation back it had endured the 1930's depression, WW2 and post war rationing. Now it was free and going places.

There was almost more work than people to fill the jobs, money was about and disposable income too meant that no more were you just able to hope, you could now have. Hire purchase gave many the have now pay later consumer lust and for a small down payment the have it now generation were able to live beyond their means.  A different story now where automation is silently taking jobs and High Street shops are closing at the rate of 15 a day.

With the days of plenty in the 1960's, the days of austerity and saving up were largely over.

Modernity in the home meant that many women who now chose to work could enjoy labour saving devices that were unobtainable a few years earlier. It all seemed rather civilised back then.

In some ways life was very much less complicated in those early 1960 's years. In fact to look back it almost seemed utopian. But not every family was this model of modernity, many still lived in appalling squalor and poverty, clearly the consumer age had not reached to them yet.

The post war boom from 1956 really showed that anything was obtainable. For someone in their 20's, this was the time, the best time to be alive.

We may have progressed in technological terms but we seem to have lost so much more as a consequence.

Set me back to 1962.