Two men walk into a diner….. No, this is not the start of a bad joke. The Carpenter men traded stories this morning about how technology, or lack of, marked their very different careers. What emerged from the conversation was the “early adopter” mentality of both — Herb as a self-taught programmer and Mike as a self-taught numbers/systems runner — the efforts of both advancing the company in different ways. And the journey of breakfast with Herb and Mike continues...
Mike: What technology was available to you when you joined the police department?
Herb: Technology was virtually non-existent. I worked the 4-12 shift directing traffic in the Diamond (the intersection of Margaret, Clinton and Bridge Streets in downtown Plattsburgh) until traffic slowed down. After dark I walked a beat, checking to be sure doors were locked and everything was okay. The only tools I had that might be considered technology were a whistle and a flashlight. If there was a problem, I had to run to one of the five call boxes that were positioned around the commercial area to call for backup. It took a few more years before we got primitive two-way radios called walkie talkies. When new police cars came with built-in radios, we thought we had entered a new age. Today police have state-of-the-art computer systems in the stations, laptops in their cars, cell phones, body cams, and more.
Mike: I don’t remember much from those days, but I do remember the incredibly bad definition on the big tube rounded televisions we had at home, and the fact that we had a station wagon with a rear seat that faced backwards.
Herb: When you went to work as a dispatcher in Connecticut what was your technology like?
Mike: In the 1980s I worked for TRANSTAR, a huge trucking company that had more than 1500 trucks on the road across the country. There were eight of us in dispatch. Everything we did was done using pen and sheets of color-coded paper. That was before the days of cell phones, so drivers had to find a pay phone to call in to get their next job. Today an operation of that size can be handled by one or two people sitting in front of a computer and communicating through a head set.
Herb: By the early 1990s, you were back home, working for F.W. Myer, a Customs Brokerage firm in Rouses Point. What was the tech set up there?
Mike: That was the era of the fax machine. They were considered an advance in technology, but they were slow – it could take a minute or more to create a single page – and they printed on rolls of paper. Anyone who ever used one, will remember the curled copies that never stayed flat on your desk. It was common for each of us to receive up to 100 faxes a day for a customer. We never seemed to catch up. Today, fax machines are obsolete, virtually every business’s operation is paperless, and truckers have laptops in the cab of their rigs and high-tech cell phones.
Herb: When I retired from the police department in 1981, I took over Northeast, the small printing company I had started a few years ago. It was a time of great change in the industry. Computers were taking over. I bought one of the early Tandy models sold by Radio Shack and set out to teach myself how to use it.
Mike: You also bought a computer and set it up in our basement. I remember it had a green screen. I would wait until you went to work and then I’d go down stairs and play a game called Hammurabi’s Code.
Herb: Once we understood the advantages computers could offer, how we handled work changed. A job would move from the computer to a light table, to the darkroom. Plates were made – paper plates for short run print jobs; metal plates for long runs. The press operator would mount the plates on the cylinder and we were printing.
Mike: I had worked for you part time before I moved to Connecticut. At that time Imperial Wallcoverings was your biggest client and my job was to cut what you produced for them.
We printed millions of labels and instructional inserts for Imperial in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mike: I hated the work. The cutter did the job, but it was old. I had to load the hopper, operate a heavy circular clamp, unload the finished product, and box it up. A cutter today is guided by a computer. No more back breaking work.
Today we think about the technology that has come and gone, and sometimes we pine for the “good old days” But the truth is, we are fortunate for the innovations that make our lives easier and us more efficient. It’s interesting to watch what is happening now — smaller computers, healthcare improvements, driverless cars, and more. We are witnessing the next era of technology.
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