I can still remember when Uncle Arthur pulled up to the curb at my family home once each summer. He was always driving a brand new car.
Arthur had a thing about cars. They were, of course, new and shiny but what mattered most to me wasn't the look of the car but what new gadgets it had: electric windows, automatic transmission, electric seats.
To this day, one new whizbang that showed up one year has always stuck in my mind. Air conditioning.
Holy moly. Cold air at the touch of a button?
We lived in Southern California at the time and summers there were always hot. In my parent's car, the answer to the heat was always to roll down the windows (a blessing from the winter months when we kids had to breathe in the smoke from my folk's cigarettes). But, air conditioning?
The idea of refrigerated air at the touch of a button was, to me, extraordinary. I coerced Arthur into driving me around the block with the car's air conditioner blowing in my face.
Today, of course, I doubt you could buy a car with roll up windows and no climate control.
Add ons and extras always start out that way—wonders that tickle the fancy and boggle the mind before becoming de rigueur: remote controls, direct coupled, OTL.
What we take for granted today in our HiFi systems would have seemed like something out of the planet Vulcan or Romulus just a few decades ago. The entire library of musical recordings at the touch of a finger?
Add ons and extras are the spice that get us excited until they become the recipes we come to expect.
What's next?
