Authors Electric

Can you imagine a world without phones? They've been around for a while, but not as long as you might think. 1960s: Two tin cans and a piece of string.  As kids, we built our own in-house telephone system using a piece of string and two tin cans. This worked on the same principle as Alexander Graham Bell's 1877 box phone, which transmitted a voice along a wire. If DIY is not your forte, you can buy a kit from amazon: tin-can phone Alexander Graham Bell's box phone. If you want someone to call you, it's "Give me a bell". 1970s: The age of the landline . Most households had a phone by then, usually situated in the hall, where they were jealously guarded by teenagers chatting to their friends. Landline phone with rotary dial, very satisfying to use with either finger or pencil.  Now something of a collector's item (try ebay). My family, wary of the extra bill, did not get a landline installed until I headed off to university. So if I wanted to call my best fr...

 So here I was, at long last in Tucson, suddenly finding myself back in school. I was in a different sort of school, but faced with the same pressures and as lost as any freshman. How do they get to Building FX103...then to XY2B2 in time for the next class? Where's the book store, the student union, the financial aid office? How would I ever learn to pass Medieval Lit, Calculus, Latin, Philosophy, Public Speaking?  I'd suffered all of such questions before. And now they came in different forms yet made of the same stuff: How do I get around by bus when I can't even draw a bead on the city's layout? How do I find work when I'm brand new here and unemployed...How do I furnish my new apartment when I'm starting with limited funds and without a stick of furniture...? After six days in the city I'd spent hundreds of dollars being chauffeured around town by Lyft: to and from assorted stores, back and forth from the UPS Store where a friend had mailed a dozen boxes...