If we're still on the topic of honoring past and often forgotten technologies, today's upload date offers us the opportunity to put an invention that popped onto the scene in a flash, but went out almost as quickly (oh my god, did I really write that?) in the limelight: the flashbulb. Once again we turn to This Day in History and learn that in 1930:

Flashbulbs were patented on this day by Johannes Ostermeier of Athegnenber, Germany. Now that's an invention that used to be very popular in the little box cameras. You popped the bulb into the socket in front of a silver reflector dish. The bulb would get all crinkly looking and milky white in color after it was used -- and you could only use it once. Then the bulbs were replaced by flash cubes and now, the automatic flash is built into the camera. So easy to use ... but not half as much fun.

Flashbulb memory is the term used to describe our memory of the situation in which we first learned of a surprising and emotionally arousing event. We all recall very vividly, for example, precisely where we were and what we were doing when we learned that Rabin had been shot - that's a flashbulb memory.

But wait a minute. Certainly people had memories of this sort before 1930. What were they called before the flashbulb was invented? Or perhaps it's a case of the technology offering us a metaphor for something which we weren't able to clearly define before the technology was available.

And if flashbulbs haven't been manufactured for at least twenty years and are only available in specialty shops and Mom and Pop stores where there are still some in stock (or even from me), how do we explain the following link?