comment: >
  
  You only need to look as far as the U.S A. Senate to answer this.
context: This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.
  Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
  (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)
  Rule-breaking posts may result in bans. >
  
  My great uncle was born in 1896 and passed in 1994 when I was 14. Radio had just been invented, automobiles were a curiosity, it'd be almost a decade before the Wright brothers made their first flight and television was several decades beyond that. By the time he passed he'd been through two world wars, helped wire our town for electricity and phones, seen planes evolve into 747s and horse-less carriages become luxury cars. In his lifetime we went from "man could never fly" to the space race and using Morse code on telegraphs to the nascent days of the internet. Blows my mind whenever I think about him and the fact I grew up around someone from the 19th century. >
  
  The 20th century was astounding when you really think about it. I watch a lot of classic films from the 30s 40s 50s and when you see old people In those films you can't help but think how they were born in the mid 19th century and went from steam boats, locomotives, horse and carriage, telegraph to automobiles, phones, planes, nuclear energy, television. Can you imagine explaining to the average person in 1850 that a rock is capable of wiping out an entire city. >
  
  It took 2100 years for humans to move from bronze to iron tools. It took us just over 50 years from us inventing the airplane to us going to space >
  
  I'm a classics major and I minor in history. The progress we make through time is mind-blowing. And like some other redditor on here said, we don't always move forward. The medieval era was pretty stagnant. >
  
  I too was a classics major. And I’m fascinated by how the changes in technology do not mean that we humans have changed that much. The average person today and the average citizen of Rome have much in common. >
  
  Yeah reading roman and greek comedies showed me how similar their humor is to ours. >
  
  Jack Marston could have played Pac-Man with his great grandchildren at the ripe old age of 85. >
  
  Yeah he's a great example. He grew up with outlaws and ragtime and likely witnessed disco and MTV >
  
  So when did the wild west end? It sounds medieval from TV (as it it was that long ago) >
  
  My home town, Bakersfield, boast to have had the last Wild West shootout. The bad guys and good guys dueled in the streets in 1903. PacMan debuted in 1980. So, someone born in 1900 would be 80yo and play? >
  
  My favorite example is that one of the wright brothers lived to see the first supersonic flight. >
  
  That might be one of the coolest things ever >
  
  My great grandmother was born a year before the Wright Brothers first flew a plane, she died 2 years after 9/11. Pretty wild to think about the things she saw in her lifetime. She nearly died of pneumonia when she was 5 or 6, then nearly died again of Spanish flu, she started a basketball team at the school she taught at, had to learn it from a book because she had only heard about it from newspapers. Her husband fought during the First World War. Her son, the Second World War. Her husband died of old age in the late 70’s and she lived another 25ish years. >
  
  It must have been hard seeing her husband go off to fight in WW1 and then her son fight in WW2. worst part is her grandson could have very well fought in Vietnam. >
  
  Yep. 100 years ago majority of North Americans homes didn’t have electricity. 
  Won’t be too long now that you kids will be posting shower thoughts about being surprised that there’s people alive who were around before the internet. >
  
  My grandmother was born in 1901.  Family had a horse and buggy in those days.  Gram and Grandpa had a car in the early 1930's.  She died in 1984.  Nobody in our family played it, but ...  she could have. >
  
  The oldest person to have lived whose age has been verified was Jeanne Louise Calment (1875 - 1997). Her life intersected with:   
  
  Wild Bill Hickok - gunfighter killed in Deadwood.  
  George Custer - cavalry commander.  
  George Sand - novelist and girlfriend of Frederic Chopin.  
  
  As well as. 
  
  Maisie Williams - Game of Thrones actor. 
  Jake Paul - YouTuber and mixed martial artist. 
  Simone Biles - gymnast. >
  
  Jeanne Calment also met Vincent Van Gogh.  She said the meeting was a disappointment, and described him as ugly and "very disagreeable," adding that he "reeked of alcohol." >
  
  Technology has advanced so fucking far. It's crazy to think where humanity will be in 3023, when you think of where it was in 1923 compared to 2023. I imagine we will keep innovating and make life easier for later generations, or we will somehow manage to wipe ourselves out altogether within the next century. >
  
  I can never believe how close the wild west was. Like kids in the 50s (people alive today) probably spent all day playing Cowboys outside and then spoke to someone who lived that life from that era. I was thinking how cool 3d games must have been when they were first introduced to people who grew up on pac-mn and pong and it got me thinking that if they came out in the 70s and 80s then people from the wild west could have played them. Could you imagine going from horse and cart, reading about Billy the kid in the newspaper to playing pac-man? >
  
  Just thinking that it was less than 60 years between the Wright Brothers and the first American space flight absolutely blows my mind. >
  
  Why specify American spaceflight? >
  
  Because that's the one I looked up. I'm pretty sure the Soviets.beat us to it but I don't know when exactly. >
  
  Gagarin went to space in 1961. >
  
  My Great Grandma was born in 1896. She arrived at Ellis Island in 1902. Moved west with her family in 1904. 
  Technically the Wild West was from 1840 to 1912. So she was in it, if barely. 
  She died in 1996. 
  From a covered wagon to her 1992 Buick LeSabre. She went from no electricity, giving birth to my grandpa in a barn at the farm to modern hospitals, TV, video games. 
  The technology jump from 1900 to 2000 is insane. The world when she arrived in NY to the day she passed, was a different world entirely. >
  
  
  The technology jump from 1900 to 2000 is insane.
  
  Even 70 years ago. 1950s culture and lifestyle is vastly different from today, yet it wasn't that long ago when you really think about it. >
  
  John Tyler who died 1862 was the 10th pesident of the USA had 2 living grandchildren alive until a year or two ago >
  
  Had he died 20 years earlier, he would (along with everyone else who didn’t last to 1842) have lived his whole life completely unaware of the existence of dinosaurs >
  
  Wow, that's a wild thought! It's amazing to think how far technology has come in such a short time. We can only imagine what the future holds for us! >
  
  Pac-Man 2 >
  
  Drop the mic and walk this way my friend >>>>>>>>>
  😂😂 >
  
  Pac Woman is probably when the last cowboy died. >
  
  He yee'd his last haw while someone was yelling at miss pacman to move her ass >
  
  Now imagine what our grandkids are going to show us (speaking for GenZ and millennials) >
  
  My great grandmother could have chronologically- She was born  in the late 1890s (but in Sicily) and died in 2001. She theoretically could have played Majoras Mask. >
  
  Also, wild west movies have been around almost twice as long as the wild west itself was. The wild west lasted for around 40 years or so, generally speaking. >
  
  My great grandmother was born in 1894 and lived to be 103. I don’t know that she ever played Pac-Man. I did ask her when Halley’s Comet was visible about the previous time and found out she didn’t care about that. But to think she went from a house without electrical or running water to living in a house with a PC that might have had AOL in her lifetime >
  
  Wait were the westerns of the 1950s just old person nostalgia? >
  
  Literally, yes. The golden age of the wild west was from 1860s-1890s, but the culture and lifestyle has been considered to extend up until WW1. 1950-1860 is 90 years. So someone born at the very start of the golden age could have seen their earliest years dramatized in cinema. Even forty year olds could have gone to see a western and thought 'hey there's my parents' lifestyle!' >
  
  Yarp my grandpappy. Died in 1981 . He never owned or drove a motor vehicle >
  
  My my great grandma war born in 1900 (not quite the Wild West anymore but close). 
  I was born in 2000. 
  She was still alive at that point. And kept being alive for another 4 years. 
  So to answer your question, yes it would totally could be possible that that happened >
  
  I’d love to hear stories from someone what travelled the Oregon or California trails in the 1800’s. >
  
  Depends on what you mean by the wild west.  My grandma was born in 1905, yet travelled across the US in a covered wagon to homestead in the Midwest.  Encountered Indians and the whole thing.  She was definitely still alive when PacMan was invented.  But I don't think she ever played. >
  
  My grandmother was born in 1895 and died in 1994.  She wasn't into pacman tho, cable tv blew her mind. >
  
  There was a whole thing about this, I remember the news having a thing when I was a kid about a man who was born in i think 1889 playing a nintendo for the first time. >
  
  Super cool to think about what kids right now will be doing when they’re old >
  
  Similar thing, my oldest grandfather was born around the turn of the century, went through two world wars and died in 1999 but took a keen interest in what was happening around him and I remember there being a CGI Coca Cola advertisement on TV with a polar bear and him being blown away by the technology that made that CGI and how real it looked. >
  
  That's really cool. Do you remember what advertisement it was? >
  
  I can see why it blew his mind >
  
  r/BarbaraWalters4Scale >
  
  As I was scrolling I read," It's possible that someone alive during The Wild West was alive to play 2-PAC."