This made me think what my Grandparents saw in their lifetimes. The youngest of them was born in 1892, and they all were "of age" by 1910. They had parts in the change and growth of civilization, started out in the day of horse drawn transport and walking to get where one needed to go, to taking part in, and seeing mankind break free of the Earth and set foot on the Moon. They were business people, nurses, technicians, even did some farming, and logging. Two of them were instrumental in the development of the telephone system and it's spread across the country and the world, and had a small part in the completion of the first trans-continental long distance telephone call; my Grandfather was a switchroom wireman, on duty that day, and the switchboard operator who plugged the call through the switchboard in the Oklahoma City central office, was to later become his wife, my Grandmother. The same man built and flew a mono-plane before anyone else thought it could be done, but he crashed it, and having used up his funding, left the pursuit to others, and took up building power systems and electrifying the southwest. When I was a kid, he was working at Caltech, and had a hand in development of many of the systems that led to the development of space technology, and was on conversational terms with many of the esteemed scientific minds who roamed the Arroyo Seco facility in Pasadena, California.

The changes that occurred in my parent's lifetimes were no less dramatic in many ways.

Many of us on this board have seen vast, dramatic changes in our civilization. We were born and grew up in the era of steam locomotives and saw the change to diesel-electric, the time of piston engined aircraft and the move into jet powered and rocket flight, and the beginnings of the true exploration of outer space. To list the engineering, social, and cultural changes many of us have seen in our lifetime would require a book or two.

In our childrens lives, they have seen the wild growth of electronic and computer technology and space technology, and many of them are now taking part in the next phase of the forward movement of our civilization.

What will our grandchildren see in their time?