Maybe you weren't around the last time John H. Glenn went into space. Maybe you're a Gen-Xer, an MTV kid, a disco baby. If so, you can be forgiven for not understanding the country's latest nostalgia jag. But let's all pause for a moment and consider those pre-Beatles days when manned space flight was a new and out-of-this-world phenomenon, filling the future with promise.
Glenns four-hour ride was sci-fi made real. Even life with the Jetsons seemed a possibility. All we needed was a little more time with those gargantuan Burroughs 6800 computers and Tomorrowland would be ours.
Now -- with the millennium racing up on us, and Y2K looming, and the scramble on to find the Zeitgeist that will define the fin de siecle feeling we're having -- now, Glenn is taking another ride.
His last one wasn't so long ago, 36 years actually, the blink of an eye when you consider the grand sweep of epochs and ages gone by. But in reality, February 1962 was an antediluvian era, a time before the flood of technology and civil rights. We still had one foot in a world of vacuum tubes, IBM punch cards and segregation. With the other, we were stepping into JFK's New rTC Frontier. And who in 1962 could say what lay ahead?
So, here, a snapshot of then, measured against now
U.S. population:
1962 -- 180 million
1998 -- 250 million
Minimum wage:
1962 -- $1.15 an hour
1998 -- $5.15 an hour
1962 -- political prisoner
1998 -- president of South Africa
Communication satellites:
1962 -- One (Telstar)
1998 -- Too many to count (Iridium system, one of many, has about 60)
TV in Baltimore:
1962 -- 3 channels
1998 -- 61 channels
Grammy Best Song Award:
1962 -- "I left my Heart in San Francisco" by Tonny Bennett
1998 -- "Sunny Came Home" by Shawn Colvin
A new car:
1962 -- Chrysler Newport, $2,964
1998 -- Chrysler Concorde, $19,595
Daily newspapers:
1962 -- 1,760
1998 -- 1,509
Electronics:
1962 -- console stereo with 4-speed changer, $199
1998 -- 3-disc CD shelf model, $199
Chicken:
1962 -- 29 cents a pound
1998 -- $1.40 a pound
World Series champs:
1962 -- New York Yankees
1998 -- New York Yankees
Pub Date: 10/29/98