Obscure Technology

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...

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...