I was a 'baby boomer' of the immediate post-war generation. We grew up to believe in a 'white heat of technological change' that would transform the world.
As a pupil in the early 60's I met simple digital devices with transistors as a novelty. The 'tranny' transistor radio was small enough to fit in a pocket & we listened to pirate Radio Caroline!
In 1965 I was taught in A Level Physics at School about thermionic vacuum 'valves', and the limited number of black & white televisions used these. But I gave a lecture to our Scientific Society on these new devices called transistors just becoming available. Cost of one was about £10 in 1997 prices. Modern computers contain millions of transistors!
The Space Race to the Moon in the 60's was done without any real electronic power in the rockets & capsules. TV relayed by satellites was just becoming possible via Telstar.
Taunton was a thriving town based mainly on agriculture, and a well-known bottleneck on the A38 holiday routre to the West Country. And Dr Beeching was about to remove the rail link to Minehead.
The School had a manual plug switchboard for telephones. Calculations were pre-done, or radioed to Earth & back! In Taunton School we were teaching logs in maths lessons for calculating, and any science Sixth Former had his ( all boys, remember..) slide rule. Maths lessons emphasised practice of rules of arithmetic and manipulation of numbers.
