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Regency TR-1 (1954)
The Regency took radio out of the parlor and put it in your pocket. Jointly produced by Texas Instruments and TV accessory manufacturer IDEA, the TR-1 was the first consumer device to employ transistors. The $50 item didn't sell well--Sony did much better with a similar product a couple of years later--but it inspired a host of imitators, which in turn helped popularize a then-obscure genre of music known as rock and roll. If not for transistor radio, nobody would have been dancin' in the street -
1955--TV REMOTE CONTROL
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/2078467.html
its important for the lazy people who didnt want to get up to change the channel on tv! -
1964--MUSIC SYNTHESIZER
Robert Moog develops the first electronic synthesizer to make the leap from machine to musical instrument. Moog's device not only generates better sounds than other synthesizers, it can be controlled by a keyboard rather than by punch cards. The subsequent acceptance of electronic music is a crucial step in developing audio technology for computers, cellphones and stereos -
1969--SMOKE DETECTOR
Randolph Smith and Kenneth House patent a battery-powered smoke detector for home use. Later models rely on perhaps the cheapest nuclear technology you can own: a chunk of americium-241. The element's radioactive particles generate a small electric current. If smoke enters the chamber it disrupts the current, triggering an alarm -
Motorola Handie Talkie HT-220 Slimline
The first portable two-way radios introduced during World War II weighed up to 35 pounds apiece, but the HT-220 weighed just 22 ounces--in part because it was the first portable radio to use integrated circuits instead of discrete transistors. Back then it was a favorite of the Secret Service; today it enjoys a small but fiercely dedicated following of radio geeks. Photo courtesy of Motorola. -
1970--DIGITAL MUSIC
James Russell, a scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, invents the first digital-to-optical recording and playback system, in which sounds are represented by a string of 0s and 1s and a laser reads the binary patterns etched on a photosensitive platter. Russell isn't able to convince the music industry to adopt his invention, but 20 years later, Time Warner and other CD manufacturers pay a $30 million patent infringement settlement to Russell's former employer, the Optical Re -
Atari Video Computer System (1977)
Later known as the Atari 2600, the VCS brought video games out of the arcade and into America's living rooms. It was a snap to set up: Just plug the clunky-looking box into your TV set and grab the joystick. The Atari 2600 was the first successful console to use game cartridges, which allowed consumers to play multiple games on the same system and created a huge market for crude-looking but addictive titles such as Space Invaders and Pac Man. The Atari's games may not have looked much like Grand -
Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979
Portable music players are so cheap and ubiquitous today that it's hard to remember when they were luxury items, widely coveted and often stolen. But when the blue and silver Walkman debuted in 1979, no one had ever seen anything quite like it. The $200 player virtually invented the concept of "personal electronics -
Motorola Minitor I Pager Motorola Minitor I Pager "Brick"
This is the very first of any Motorola Minitor Pagers. It is not computer programmable, it has tone reeds and frequency crystals. Becasue of it size and colors it was most often reffered to as the brick. -
Commodore 64 (1982)
The best selling computer of all time still appears to be the Commodore 64: Estimates of this PC's sales range from 15 million to 22 million units. The first C64 cost $595 and came with 64KB of RAM, a 6510 processor, 20KB of ROM with Microsoft BASIC, 16-color graphics, and a 40-column screen. (How times have changed!) It also was the first PC with an integrated sound synthesizer chip, according to Ian Matthews of Commodore.ca. Photo courtesy of the Compute -
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983)
This early "portable" phone measured more than a foot long, weighed close to 2 pounds, and cost a whopping $3995. But with Motorola's DynaTAC 8000X--aka The Brick--you could for the first time walk and talk without that dratted cord. Generally considered the first mobile phone, the DynaTAC 8000X had enough juice for an hour of talk time and enough memory to hold 30 numbers. And the device's Formica-style enclosure was the envy of anything that Ma Bell had to offer. Photo courtesy of Motorola -
Motorola Minitor II Pager
VideoThis is a pager that recieves its alerts through a RF Crystal and had tone reeds to alert when the correct tones go through it. It is probable the least sophisticated pager made by motorola. -
Iomega Zip Drive
This little blue external storage drive, roughly the size of a paperback book, was an instant sensation, giving average computer users their first taste of easy backup and relatively rugged 100MB storage media. The only storage technology ever mentioned by name on HBO's Sex and the City, the Zip Drive was available for both Macs and PCs; the Mac version connected to the SCSI port and the PC version hooked up via the parallel port. You could see the disk through a clear window built into the top -
BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld (1998)
Canadian firm Research in Motion didn't invent e-mail, wireless data networks, the handheld, or the QWERTY keyboard. But with the little BlackBerry, along with server software that made e-mail appear on it without any effort from the recipient, RIM put it all together in a way that even nontechie executives could appreciate--and thereby opened the eyes of corporate America to the potential of wireless communications. So addictive that some call them CrackBerries, RIM's ubiquitous e-mail communic -
Poqet PC Model PQ-0164
Years before the Pocket PC, there was the Poqet PC. About the size of a videotape, the Poqet was pricey ($2000), but it ran off-the-shelf applications and could go for weeks on two AA batteries. Highly praised during its brief life, the Poqet vanished from the market after its manufacturer was acquired by Fujitsu. As with seemingly every interesting computer of yore, it still has its devotees, including Bryan Mason, proprietor of the informative Poqet PC Web Site. Photo courtesy of the Obsolete -
(Tie) ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (1999)
The appearance of the first ReplayTV and TiVo models--the pioneering Gemini of digital video recording--in the number three spot on our list may be a measure of how much we all hate TV commercials. The concept is simple: Digitize the TV signal and stream it to an internal hard drive, so the user can pause, rewind, fast-forward, or record programs at will. For the first time, users flummoxed by their VCRs (#29) could record an entire season of shows with a few clicks of the remote. And yes, it ma -
Motorola Minitor III Pager
The minitor III is the first computer programmable pager by moto it has very few issues. -
2. Apple iPod (2001)
If the Walkman is the aging king of portable media players, Apple's iPod is prince regent. It rules the realm of digital music like no other device: According to the NPD Group, more than eight out of ten portable players sold at retail by mid-2005 were iPods. Yet when the $399 iPod first appeared in October 2001, it was nothing special. It featured a 5GB hard drive and a mechanical scroll wheel, but worked only with Macs. A second model released the following July offered a 20GB hard drive, a pr -
iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac (2002)
A robot that does housework? Sign me up! With more than 2 million users, the Roomba is considered by many to be the first commercially successful domestic robot. The 14-inch-wide vacuum cleaner may look like an oversize hockey puck, but its brilliant design lets it avoid obstacles while sucking up every speck of dirt--including those dust bunnies cowering under the couch. Photo courtesy of iRobot. -
motorola Minitor IV pager
Probably the worst version of the motorola minitor has several problems but it has some new features that the iii didnt such as stored voice capabilities. -
Motorola Minitor V Pager
The newest version of the minitor pager by motorola, has the 4 function, up to 2 channels, and stored voice, it is more sophisticated than its predecessors, computer programmable.
