Recently I purchased a new TV.  That in and of itself is not much of a major life event.  But it reminded me of a lunch I went to 52 years ago in London.  The guest speaker was the president of Ferranti, Ltd., a British electronics firm, and I was covering it as the correspondent for Electronic News.  Why would my new TV remind me of a lunch that long ago?  The speaker, whose name I can’t remember, talked about the great strides electronics would make in the coming years.  I don’t recall much of the many non-existent things he predicted except for two.  He said one day we would have telephones that would work without wires.  He was referring not to cell phones but phones you could walk around within your home.  Even those were unheard of in those days.  Then he announced, (and I shall paraphrase from memory) “Someday we will have televisions that you can hang on your wall.”  The British well-mannered audience noticeably muffled a guffaw.  Now remember, in the 1960s televisions were big bulky things many of which were built into massive pieces of furniture.  The TV I just discarded is 12 years old, weighs about 85 pounds, is 19  inches deep and has a cathode ray picture tube.  (See photo.)  My new TV is an inch and a half thick and weighs about six pounds.  But back to my luncheon.  As a young enthusiastic reporter I thought I had a “big story.”  I could see the headline “British Electronics Executive Predicts the Future.”  I raced back to the office and whipped my story off by trans-Atlantic cable (there were no satellites nor Internet in those days).  When the next issue came out my story was not on the front page, in fact, it was not in the paper at all.  Highly chagrined, I called the editor to ask why a sensational story like mine didn’t make the paper.  His reply was essentially, “Are you kidding!  We are a respected, serious electronics newspaper.  If we put out a story about TVs hanging on the wall we’d be the laughing stock of the industry.” Can you imagine someone predicting that you could watch TV on a mini-screen mounted on your eyeglass frame?  Are you kidding?