1960s: Children's television shows like Chuckles the Chipmunk are produced locally in most major cities. Broadcast live and staged in front of a live audience, they typically feature a male host who shows cartoons, reads the comics from the local newspaper, and does short comedy sketches.

Today: With the exception of a few locally produced Public Television programs, nearly all children's programming is produced in New York or California and broadcast over the major networks or cable channels.

1960s: Business offices use the latest communications technology. Arnold Burns's New York office has a "special speaker-phone" with a separate speaker attached so others in the room can hear a phone caller. Gardner needs three sentences to explain this technology in his stage directions.

Today: Businesses still are the first market for new communication technologies, such as computer servers and routers, video conferencing, and satellite networking...