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Published on 12/29/1997 All articles from this issue

Pages of the Past

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25 years ago in the Town Crier

The Jan. 10, 1973, issue of the Town Crier reported that early 1973 saw the retirement of Foothill College's second president, Hubert H. Semans, who had devoted 41 years to education in California, including his five years at Foothill. He had been the second administrator to be hired by the local district trustees, following Calvin C. Flint.

Foothill's third president was James S. Fitzgerald who came from Southern California's Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

The new year, 1973, also saw the public opening on Feb. 2, 1973, of America's first electronics and communication museum, located at Foothill. The only electronics archive on the West Coast, the museum had exclusive properties that traced the electronics industry from the turn of the century.

The college also planned new, permanent headquarters for a campus-based child care center, unique in California. It offered infant care, pre-school care, extended day care and evening care. The director said the center would have an hourly capacity of 100 children aged 6 months to 14 years.

50 years ago in the Los Altos News

As reported in the January 8, 1948, issue of the Los Altos News, January bills to telephone subscribers carried an announcement of a change in the central office names for local numbers. When it became effective with the issuance of the summer 1948 directories, Los Altos numbers carried the prefix, Whitecliff 8.

The change affected approximately 45,000 phone numbers in Los Altos, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Woodside, San Mateo, Burlingame and Hillsborough. It prepared the way for direct customer dialing of calls to selected nearby points.

Palo Alto numbers received central office names of Davenport 2 and Davenport 3.

California Governor Earl Warren planned to attend on Jan. 24, 1948, the first of California's three-year programs of centennial celebrations recalling the discovery of gold at Coloma in El Dorado County 100 years earlier. Warren said, "There is much to inspire us in the celebration of these events for they bring to mind vividly the progress which we have made during the last 100 years."

Though the big, official discovery of gold at Coloma was celebrated in the El Dorado County hamlet itself, there were other companion celebrations, including a big civic luncheon in San Francisco with a pageant depicting the "Century of Gold."

- Ellen Shaw of the Los Altos History House Association