Client: Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Television

RECURRING IMAGE OF HIGHWAY WHITE LINE MOVING BENEATH CAR AT NIGHT

GIRL, EARLY TEENS: Grandpa?

GRANDPA: Hmmm?

GIRL: Tell us what it was like back at the end of the 20th century.

GRANDPA (laughing): Way back then? You mean with the dinosaurs and everything?

GIRL: No, seriously, Grandpa. Tell us what it was like.

BOY, EARLY TEENS: Yeah, like when you had to know a bunch of numbers to call someone on a telephone...

GIRL: And like, when you had all those telephone wires everywhere, and you needed a computer to get into the Net....and, I mean, back then you couldn't just talk to your computer, right? And...

GRANDPA: All right, all right...I guess I am that old, aren't I. Well, let me think. What was it like.

SLOW FADE TO FOOTAGE OF PEOPLE AT TELEPHONE BOOTHS, ON THE TELEPHONE

GRANDPA: You see, right at the end there, right during the last few years of the 20th century, that's when everything started to change.

HISTORICAL FOOTAGE OF BELL, MORSE

You got to remember, a lot of people then thought telecommunications was all about telephones. I mean, that's how most people then grew up, with telephones, and telephone wires. In fact, did you know that the telephone was invented right here in Massachusetts?

BOY/GIRL: It was?

GRANDPA: Mmm-hmm. Alexander Graham Bell, in his lab in Cambridge. Before that there was the telegraph...which come to think of it was invented here, too.

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