A Half Century – Looking Back

Like most Americans who were around and cognizant of the world around them, I remember exactly where I was 50 years ago today, when the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy hit the airwaves. I was taking a spelling test in Mrs. Beck’s second-grade class when Dr. Glickman, the principal of P.S. 133 in Bellerose, N.Y., made the somber announcement on the public address system that he had been shot.

I arrived home that afternoon and found my mother tearfully glued to a transistor radio as updates unfolded. 

Now, re-read the above paragraphs, fast forward a half-century and think about how different and expeditious the communication of that terrible event would have been today. A public address system? Students would either have received a viral text of the tragic news on their smartphones or witnessed it on one of the hundreds of 24-7 cable channels on large flat screen TVs that are now omnipresent  in most elementary and middle schools.

A transistor radio? – well in the interest of time and an almost certain lack of people who actually remember them, we won’t even address that long-forgotten but one time media staple of any household.

To give you an idea of the massive scope of a half-century of progress, let’s revisit some of the events, both cultural and scientific that took place in 1963. For you Baby Boomers, some might spark a familiar “wow, I actually remember that,” while the Millennials will understandably be scratching their heads wondering how we ever survived day to day in what must seem to them like frontier times.

• The first ATM machine is introduced in San Francisco.
•  “Touch tone” phones debut
• The nation’s first Lear jet takes off
• The nation is introduced to lava lamps.
• Zip codes are first implemented
• State Mutual Life Insurance launches the “smiley face” icon (no it wasn’t Forrest Gump)
• Top movies were: Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Birds.
• The Dow Jones Average closes the year at 762.
• The rate of inflation is 1.24 percent.
• The average annual income is $5,807.
• The average price of a new home is $12,650
• A loaf of bread costs 22 cents and a gallon of gas costs 29 cents.

CPA firms could purchase a Remington electric adding machine for $77.44 and a manual Underwood typewriter for $119.00.

And while we’re on the subject, can you name the country’s largest accounting firms of 1963? Hint: there were eight - Arthur Andersen; Coopers & Lybrand; Arthur Young; Ernst & Whinney;  Deloitte Haskins & Sells; Peat Marwick Mitchell; Price Waterhouse; and Touche Ross.

Dress codes have relaxed for sure since 1963, salaries have certainly risen, but CPAs as a whole still remain overly cautious and continue to procrastinate terribly when it comes to planning for the future of their firms.

Some progress just takes longer than 50 years.