One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ... part 126 .... the Italian bit ......going digital …… and travelling from the age of the wireless

 The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

The telly, 1950s

I often wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of the digital age.

 After all they were both born in the closing decades of the 19^th century and reached maturity as cinema was still in its infancy, and telephones, the wireless and cameras were yet to become household objects.

 That said by the time they had reached middle age they had a telephone, dispensed with the traditional cooking range and had joined the growing band of people watching television in their own home.

 Added to which by the 1920s, Joe was building houses with electricity which he proudly advertised across Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

 So, I think they may well have welcomed computers, smart phones, and microwaves into their home as necessary items.

Topical Italian TV, 2021

Likewise I think they would not have batted an eyelid at the arrival of Italian television in to what was their front room.

 It will have been over seventeen years ago that we went digital with a satellite dish, and now we have upgraded so that we can watch Italian TV stations which is not an affectation, but a practical necessity given that half the family is Italian.

 

If it's Sunday its Italian dancing, 2016

Of course, there is a down side, which is the nonstop cascade of entertainment shows from one provider on a Sunday, which roll on from midday into the night, and despite having different names and offering slightly different content are basically just seamless happy TV.

 All a little different from the two televisions channels of the 1950s, when programmes finished before midnight, were in black and white and on a Sunday were interrupted by a close down in the late afternoon for a few hours.

 

The choice of TV, 1964

That time is as remote and incomprehensible to any one born after 1980 as would the cinema be to someone from the Middle Ages.

 But I am confident that Joe and Mary Ann would happily sit watching past episode of their favourite soap on their mobile phone, while debating which take away to order up and finishing having booked online their coach holiday to Skegness.

 So that I think allows me to be confident that our new Italian TV shows fit well with the history of the house.

 Well …. perhaps.

 Location; Beech Road

 Picture; pictures from Italian TV and television choices in 1964 and our first television, circa mid 1950s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 *The Story of a House, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house