Atari 2600, the only video game console that has wood grain printed on it. The Atari 2600 or Atari VCS (Video Computer System) was Atari’s golden child. With the 2600 Atari felt that they were unstoppable in the new video game market they have established. Although rightfully so, every console Atari made after the 2600 could not compete with the numbers that the VCS brought. Now how did the 2600 come to be? Although not the first video game console, it was the first to popularize the new industry. Atari started off with it’s Pong arcade machine which debuted on November 29 1972. It faced great success and started a trend of home Pong consoles. This was during a time in which semiconductors, chips and rom (Read-Only Memory) were on the rise which meant that a console or computer can be built with less cost and much smaller. With all of this Atari released the 2600 in 1977 with a price tag of $199. What made the 2600 different from the pong consoles was that the console could pla...
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EV1, the Prius of the late 1990s. I decided to celebrate Earth day with something that is the embodiment of going green… the electric car. I could have gone with Tesla or the previously mentioned Prius, but of course, those are cars as not obscure as the EV1 since they're either crashed or not legally allowed on the road anymore. The EV1, for those who did not see the video in Economics last year, stands for the creative name Electric Vehicle 1 and one of the first mass produce modern electric car. The car soon had a created major up roar by buyers because of GM repossession them and crushing them. The creation of the EV1 started when California CARB or California Air Resource Board in the 1990s started to impose stricter emission due to combat the horrible air pollution at the time. The air quality was so bad in California that it was worse than the other 49 states combined. Thus strongly encouraged major car companies like GM, Honda, Toyota, etc to create emission free veh...
Reel-to-reel, the final boss of the audio world. Reel-to-reel are one of the most expensive audio formats you are able to collect for. Top of the line machines can go up towards thousands of dollars and the tapes can go for hundreds of dollars too, depending on artist and band of course. It is the go to format for many audiophiles and for good reason. So what justifies the price? Well before we go to that, lets talk about history. The reel-to-reel started it’s life in Germany in that late 1920s and did not have a name for it has it was since all magnetic tape recorders used it. Early tapes were made from papers and later plastic. Later on in the 1950s tapes where one-channel mono audio and used vacuum tubes. A company formed called Ampex Corporation which contributed a lot to reel-to-reel. Later on in mid-1950s two-channel stereo came into existent. The reel-to-reel would start to lose its popularity in the 1980s due to the cheaper compact cassettes. So what makes theses ...
Typewriter, the official device of that satisfying click sound from the movies. Typewriters were once a popular form of typing up essays and document in a clear and formal way in which regular handwritten documents could not replicate. Now they are relics of the past due to the rise of personal computers, allowing so much for functionality with less hoops to jump through. The first commercially produced typewriters appeared on scene in 1874, but became widespread in offices until the mid 1880s. Throughout this time there has been many manufactures and companies who added improvements over time. Historians believes that the typewriter was invented 52 time in some form by other inventors and thinkers. This helped to create competition and develope many types of typewriters. The common mechanical typewriters works like this, the keyboard is in the same order as the keys on a computer or on a digital one on a cellphone. When a is press, for example the F key, a lever swings...
Automatic or passive seat belts, the great compromise between automakers and the United States government. Passive seat belts were one of those “safety” products that cause more harm than good for the end user. It was much hated by consumers and led to them only having a short life from 1990 to 1995. Now why were these seat belts a thing in the first place? Well the passive seat belts were invented by Volkswagen in 1972 and was first used in the Volkswagen Golf in 1975. This lead the Brock Adam, the United States Secretary of Transportation, to mandated that every car in to have either automatic seat belts or airbags by 1983. Now this angered many lobbyist who thought this was a way too soon of a deadline. In 1981 the mandate was dropped then transferred to the Supreme Court which lead to the mandate to stay, but now with an extended deadline of 1990. Now airbags were still a relatively new system which meant it was pretty expensive. Thus many car companies decided to go with pas...
Rotary engines, the official motor when burning oil is actually a good thing. The rotary engine or Wankel engine is much like chocolate ice cream in the car world, you hate it or you don’t. It is actually interesting concept because unlike other engine configurations, there is no cylinders. Instead they have a rotor which some claim to look like a Dorito spinning. The inventor of this odd engine was a Felix Wankel. Wankel was born in August 1902 in Lahr, Germany. He came up with the idea at the age of 17. It was only after 2 World Wars when he began working with NSU Mototenwerke in the research department without ever getting a degree or a driver license. He complete his design in 1954 and in 1957 and 1958 the prototypes were tested. In 1961 Mazda had contracted with NSU to produce the engine and install them in their cars. The engine was proven to be quite powerful in the 1960s and soon the engine was used by other car companies. The engine would began to lose its popularity in ...
Plasma televisions, the official device of screen burns-in. Plasma televisions were once a luxury item in which anyone envy those who had one. Now they are much forgotten and can be bought relatively cheap on the second hand market for not much money. The plasma televisions, before it got its colors, was co-invented by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson at the University of Illinois in 1964. They created a monochrome neon orange display for the PLATO Computer System. At this time television was not very common in households and the major benefit of these plasma televisions was that it did not need memory nor circuitry to refresh images. It was until the late 1970s that semiconductors started to become cheaper and CRT’s took over the household. Plasma televisions thin thickness and big screens made its way in places such as Wall Street and lobbies.It wasn’t until 1992 when the first full color plasma televisions was created, and soon manufacturers ...
Apple Newton, Apple’s struggles summed up in one device. The Newton was a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) that was released in the early 1990s. During this time, Steve Jobs quit and left his own company because of internal conflicts, and left the CEO at the time John Sculley in charge. The Jobsless Apple was starting to struggle and was “experimenting” with many ideas including digital cameras and video games, but nothing seem to stick. And one of these experiments was the Apple Newton. Now Apple’s PDA did not go mainstream and was swept under the rug for a reason. Before that, It is time to talk about the development of the Newton. It was released in 1993 and was the first to have handwriting recognition. The Newton developed cycle was a smooth throughout, except towards the middle, for the company and their first time creating such a device. Apple was able to get a custom AISC chip with 163 mhz that was quite powerful for a portable device at the time and energy efficient. It ra...
Sundial, the only device not to work in the dark after solar panels. Sundials are quite the important leap for man because it was the first time in human history that we are able to tell and manage time. There simple yet effective design (only if there was sunlight of course) provided a way for early humans to keep up a schedule for the work throughout the day. Without this invention, life as we know it could be completely out of sync. The history of sundial and time it self start with, like everything, in Egypt. Their sundial was a stick or pillar that they would stick in the ground and told time of the length of the shadow. The Egyptians also created another form of the sundial which was a t-shape. This sundial had 5 hours were written on the stick and would be set up two way, one in the morning with the stick facing east, then west when afternoon came along. The Greeks created a sundial which was called “pelekinon”. This sundial was different because it is closer to the sundi...
Telegraph, the first device to allow people to finally “text “ one-another even an ocean away. I would be writing about more specifically about the electric telegraph.Basically a telegraph is a machine that is able to send information through Morse’s code. The telegraph was the first to send information to one place to another no matter the distance and in a matter of minutes! This means that important information like treaties, war status, etc could be sent without waiting weeks for a letter. The invention of the electric telegraph is mostly thank by two set of researchers: Sir William and Sir Charles Wheatstone also Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. Morse and Vail helped to develop what now we know as Morse’s code which is made up of dots and dashes for each letter of the alphabet. While William and Charles are credited with building the machine itself in 1830s after the discovery of the first battery by Alessandro Volta and Hans Christian Oersted discovery of the connection betwe...