Just recently we found ourselves watching an episode of Dan Cruickshank’s excellent TV series on the history of housing focussing on post-War living, quickly followed by one in the ‘Hidden Killers’ series again dealing with the post-War home. Both were fascinating, both filled with highly-desirable mid-Century items (not all of them potentially lethal!), but both brought home to us just how much our 1960s childhood was defined by the everyday technology that pervaded the home in a way no previous generation of children had experienced.

Rather than write an essay about it that would be a poor shadow of so many books and articles on the topic, I thought I’d turn this blog over to the photo albums, on the basis that the access to affordable photography was itself hallmarked the halcyon years of the 60s family. It didn’t take long; we were both lucky enough to have fathers keen on documenting our childhoods, and parents who, if they didn’t pounce on every technological fad, certainly had the means and inclination to embrace the modern. So, here’s a selection of images that typify the place of technology in the 60s home.

Let’s start in the living room…

And still in the lounge (as the 60s house had it)…

Whilst through in the kitchen…

Transport was a big influence…

But random bits of technology offered just as much fun…

And days out were full of reflections of scientific progress…

But occasionally reminders of a simpler age…

And finally, the house in which my memories were made, which Mum and Dad watched being built: