Eleven score and 15 years ago, our forbearers lived by candle light, communicated via pen and parchment, traveled by horse, and paid for goods and services with coins. We might have been free politically, but here are 10 technologies and gadgets that made our lives more independent.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but words were all we had to record and remember the times of our lives until George Eastman created consumer photography with the Kodak Brownie in February 1900. Now anyone could capture the memory of a moment or a loved one forever on celluloid and, now, in bits and bytes.