When news in slow, there tends to be more ads in the newspaper. Although there are still stories to report, many from the spring of 1956 are about committees making executive decisions.
This front page from the end of March '56 had headlines like:
"Post Office to Scrap Scratchy Pens" and is about the nation switching from ink well pens to ball point pens in the post offices.
"W&L Student is Year's First Highway Death" and reports that 1956 had no deaths on Rt 60 until Rabun Lee Brantley Jr. died in an accident there.
"Not Guilty Plea for Minnie Chittum" which is about a woman who is accused of murder but entering a 'self-defense' plea.
The papers for all of April 1956 are full of large product ads for new appliances with break-through technology. Although these products are 'low-tech' by today's standards, and the ads are doubly so, it demonstrates that we are the same as we always have been: finding new ways to improve our lives through improving technology. We look back at these ads from 70 years ago and we can see how far we have come, and look forward to even more technological advances to help our lives become more comfortable.
Which of these products would you have bought back in the day?
