Canberra, at present celebrating 100 years of national capitalism, is certainly a case in point. And while most of the attention is focused on the big-hatted events of 1913, it is timely to recall that even half a century ago (the era at present being popularised by Mad Men), this was a very different place.

If one transgressed badly enough in 1963, for example, the territory's judges had the power to sentence you to death. Minors, mercifully, were exempt from such draconian measures by special statute.

Although, to our credit, nobody was ever put to death by due process in the ACT, it is alarming to note the ultimate penalty remained on the books until it was abolished by federal legislation in 1973.

Official attitudes to the indigenous population were also problematic. The Menzies government had amended the Commonwealth Electoral Act in 1962 to ensure Aborigines could vote in federal elections. It was not until after the 1967 referendum that the traditional owners were automatically included in the national census.

Indigenous Canberrans, like the rest of the population, did not have the pleasure (or burden, as some still believe) of voting for a territory government until the introduction of self-government in 1989.

Given almost a third of our present residents were alive in 1963, the year the Queen attended Canberra's 50th anniversary celebration, the changes in social attitudes, as well as the obvious development of the territory's infrastructure over the past five decades are worth taking some time to ponder.

The Canberra many thousands of its present residents were born into was a product of its place in both space and time. Today's multicultural and cosmopolitan city of 360,000 was still a gleam in the eye of a generation that had been defined by its experience of war, economic hardship, and as champions of national reconstruction.

It's members had done it tough on more than one occasion, a fact acknowledged by the authors of the 1963 Commonwealth Yearbook, who took pride in claiming the population was ''nearly 70,000 people'' and that ''it had become, in 50 years, the largest of Australia's inland cities''.

While the latter claim was undoubtedly true, the Commonwealth statistician's ''nearly 70,000 people'' statement was a remarkable stretch for an official publication. The results of the 1961 census, also published in the year book, put the ACT population at 58,828 and Canberra's population at 56,449 just two years before.

Rarely has a lily been so adroitly gilded! The reason for this excess of enthusiasm appears to have been active over-compensation for the national capital's failure to launch in the period up until the end of World War II.

''In 1911 the [city site] was a treeless and sparsely settled plain; improvements were few and had no shape on the bearing of the future city,'' the authors observed.

The intervention of two world wars and a global depression meant progress between 1914 and 1945 oscillated between stalled and sedate. The first Parliament House was not opened until 1927. It was the most high-profile product of a ''quickened'' pace of construction from 1926 to 1928 that saw ''nearly 5000 people'' moved to Canberra under the auspices of the Federal Capital Commission.

Then in October 1929 came the Wall Street crash, plunging Australia and the rest of the world into economic depression. ''With the onset of the Depression there was mounting criticism [of spending on Canberra] and, in 1930, the Federal Capital Commission was abolished. Developmental work in the city was brought almost to a standstill; the only major construction during the period being the Federal Highway from Canberra to Goulburn'', the 1963 yearbook reported.

As conditions improved in the years immediately before World War II, the purse strings were untied and approval was granted to build a hospital, the administration building (completed in the 1950s and now known as the John Gorton Building) and the Patents Office.

Canberra was a hive of activity on the infrastructure front in 1963, with many of the iconic structures that define the modern city just completed, under construction (the Russell Offices, the ACT courthouse, Canberra Technical College and others) or on the drawing board. The latter included the Mint and the National Library.

Work was also in full swing to finally create the long-awaited Canberra lake. ''The lake scheme is estimated to cost some £2.5 million spread over five years and it is expected that the major lake construction works will be completed by 1963,'' the statisticians calculated. History records Lake Burley Griffin was finally inaugurated in October 1964.