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Information in a box: Then and now

 

For decades, I thought those industrial-strength, metal newspaper boxes had it all. One company, Kaspar, was even manufacturing them by the 1950s.

Now, the information once printed in a daily newspaper - and so much more – can slide neatly into your pocket with a smart phone. Palms. BlackBerrys. iPhones. iPhone knockoffs.

So how has technology changed the box-shaped devices used to hold or convey information?

Here’s one slice of the picture:

 

•  1960s: At his office, my dad takes a stack of punch cards to a special area packed with huge box-shaped computers. He returns the next day to pick up the simple computation.
• 1985: Kaspar sells its one millionth heavy-duty newspaper box - about three years after USA TODAY starts.
• 1986: My dad brings home an Apple Lisa and a dot-matrix printer. I use it to write essays for high school.
• 1988: As a college intern, I use a boxy fax machine to send documents across the country. I call people in California and say, “Please check your fax machine before you go home.”
• 1989: I work as a television news intern. At the office, I spot a Tandy laptop computer. I think it’s the coolest.
• 1996: I backpack through China and lug a laptop with me — an Apple PowerBook 520. I use CompuServe and have an email address with a lot of numbers. I download messages by finding a reliable phone line and having my computer dial a special Hong Kong number.
• 2000: I decide to go for a PDA device and opt for a Palm Pilot, which I remember as this model. I try and zap my address and phone number to a friend who has one. I later drop it and break the glass.
• 2006: As a reporter, I get sent to the Seattle waterfront. Authorities are investigating a threat. I spot someone near the dock and ask: “What happened?” The man looks at his smart phone and says something like: “TV news is reporting that police received a call for help at … ” I pause and quickly clarify: “Did you see anything related to this incident?”
• 2009: My newspaper is about to close in March. I’m out of the office using vacation time. I run errands at stores. As I look for my family in the aisles, I use my BlackBerry Curve to read updates about the end of Seattle’s oldest newspaper. Later, my former colleague, Todd Bishop of TechFlash, writes that it would be interesting to use a newspaper box as a platform for a PC.

 

As I recall all of this, I remind myself that over the Cascade Mountains, hours from Seattle and Redmond, sits the town of Cle Elum.

It wasn’t until 1966 that the area switched to dial service, making it one of the last in the country to have manual telephones.

Operators sat on stools, flipped levers and plugged cords into tiny holes so people could talk to one another. And that wall-sized switchboard was nice, boxy, wooden. It had some heft. 

 

 

Call it what you want. Form. Function. The intersection of design, technology and information.

I often just say quietly to myself: “Good times.”