Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh, July 1969

Image: © Stefan Czapski Taken: 23 Jul 1969

This was a week of memorable developments. A couple of days earlier we'd sat up all night watching the moon-landing - on black-and-white TV. Then a few days later I had my first experience of a video game - at Edinburgh University Computer Science department in Buccleuch Place. There was a CRT screen - perhaps six inches across - and we each had a little control box with a few buttons on it. It was (would you believe it?) a shoot 'em up game, with two little tanks on the screen. You could drive forward or back, rotate, and (of course) fire. I can't help wondering which of those two developments has had greater consequences for human life in the last half-century. The photo was taken with a Kodak Instamatic, looking roughly ENE, with Arthur's Seat looming above the rooftops. I salvaged the image from an 80mm square print. Update, 15.2.2019: Just a few days after I drew his attention to this shot, MJRichardson has sought out the spot where I stood 50 years ago and posted a tremendous follow-up image Image - many thanks, Mike! One thing comes as a bit of a shock: the height of the trees in the middle distance. There's no trace of them in my photo, yet they're now as tall as the 4-storey tenements. But what else should I have expected, after half a century?

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