Doorway to the Weird and Wonderful World of the Future' --The Times Review, Fort Erie, 1968.
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"All the phases of our lives are influenced-directly or indirectly-by electronic technology, from the simplest circuit that provides our light and heat, to the most complex computers that answer our current political and economic problems." --the Times Review, Fort Erie, Ontario Canada, December 4, 1968.
"Studies have shown that a child's early environment may determine his ability to learn and thus his whole life pattern." --"Buffalo Man Makes Childs Play of Learning with Electronics" Buffalo Evening News, September 10, 1969 [view article]
Luminary Jane Jacobs has warned of a mass forgetting which is characteristic of great civilizations in decline. It is sobering to think, for example, that practices as straightforward as crop rotation, common under Roman rule, were lost in Europe's dark ages. That mass forgetting resulted in greater hunger, because without replenishing the soil fewer crops could be grown. What's worse, the memory of what has been lost dies out quickly, within a generation or two. Randomly sampling the fare offered up on television, it might seem that culturally we are forgetting much indeed, although today's teens would not know that. And too few remain who can remember the time when unlocked doors were commonplace because we did not fear our neighbors. This quirky page of vintage product brochures (click on the lime-green inset), drawn from our CEO's own family files, harkens back to another time, marred by confusion and war, but also full of innovation, idealism and dreams. No times are entirely good or entirely bad, but it is helpful on occasion to look back and draw on our historical strengths, and not to forget lessons we have already learned.
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1Speeth is not a common name, so would be correct if you guessed at a
family connection. The Director of R&D at PRD was the late father of our CEO. A psychologist
with a particular fascination for early childhood education, he'd studied behavioral psychology with the great
B.F. Skinner and worked as an inventor at famed locations including Cornell and Bell Labs.