2. Use your imagination-what exists today that will be replaced by improvements by the time of your grandchildren?|||I%26#039;ll try to answer.
Gas: although it had its dangers in the early days, it soon caught on to provide light. This would have been less dangerous than candles, and would have helped people like seamstresses to see better after dark. Lighting the streets would have reduced the dangers; earlier, torches were put in sconces outsite the better houses, and linkboys would have lit the way for people as they walked for a few pennies. It would later have been much cleaner and easier to use for cooking rather than the coal fire and grate, which had to be cleaned, heated, cleaned again, etc. Here%26#039;s a good site:
http://www.nationalgasmuseum.org.uk/inde…
http://www.gasmuseum.co.uk/milestones.ht…
Electric lights: imagine not being able to flick a switch and have instant light, not to mention being able to power TVs, hi-fis, washing machines, cookers, computers, electric drills, etc. Before that, if you were very poor, you had to go to bed as it became dark, and get up at dawn to make use of natural light. Rich people had candles; poorer people had to make do with torches and rushlights. Candles were expensive; all sources of light made smoke on the walls and ceilings. Again, light would have helped people who needed to use their eyes for their work, and could work longer hours - though this might not have been a good idea before the days of humanity laws.
Bridges: their origins are lost in the mists of time. With a bridge, you could cross rivers easily instead of finding a place shallow enough to cross. You could defend your citadel from a bridge; you could cross with your horses and carts with no danger of being swept away. Some early bridges had houses and shops built along them, like old London Bridge. (You can still see such a bridge in Florence, Italy – the Ponte Vecchio.) Instead of riding long, dangerous routes around rock faces, you could cross a bridge directly.
Cameras: instead of sitting for your portrait over many days, one click and there you are, preserved for posterity! I don’t think the camera will ever take the place completely of great artists and their depictions of people in period clothes, and scenery, but you could say it was a great development in showing it “how it is”. In the Victorian era, pictures were taken of the dead. If you were poor and your child died, this photograph would probably be the only picture you had of the child. It’s called Memento Mori.
Cars: instead of taking days to travel relatively short distances, now you can hop into a car and be there in minutes/hours. If you had horses, they had to be housed, fed and looked after; on a long journey they needed rest, and you often changed them with fresh horses.
As for future improvements, I’d hope that we find an alternative to expensive and polluting fuels. Cars run by manure, perhaps! I also hope we’d find ways to live without depleting the world of trees, the earth’s lungs. I hope we’d reduce unnecessary packaging, and find ways of disposing of our huge amounts of waste. And, living with a spaghetti junction of wires to power all the household appliances, I really hope there will be a way to run things with a minimum of wires and expensive power. It would be good if we could find a way to harness solar power efficiently.
I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I hope it helps!
|||Thank you!
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