TECHNOLOGIES OF THE PAST

• Most of the technologies that we have used in the past have been eclipsed by the
remarkable technology that we use today.
• Advances in their design have occurred in tandem with the advances in technology in
this digital era, with many large products being redesigned and miniaturized into
amazingly small sizes.
• While we may laugh at the fact that anyone ever found this technology to be cutting-
edge, we can’t discount its place in history as a forerunner for all of the technology that
wouldn’t exist today without its dinosaur ancestry.
 SUPER 8/8MM” HANDHELD VIDEO
CAMERAS

• Kodak invented the Super 8/8mm film format in 1965. Soon after,
handheld film cameras flooded the market and the living rooms of
people everywhere were filled with families watching the hi-jinks at
Freddie’s sixth birthday party.
 LASER DISC PLAYERS

• Initially marketed as “Discovision”, laser discs were the format choice of

tech enthusiasts who had the money to put together a collection until
the DVD format came out.
 PHONOGRAPH

• The phonograph, or gramophone, was invented by Thomas Edison in

1877 and was on the mass market by the turn of the century. The
gramophone was replaced by the considerably less bulky record player
in the latter half of the twentieth century.
 CASSETTE TAPE RECORDERS

• These devices were considerably less bulky then their reel to reel
ancestors, and were used mostly for transcription.
 TRANSISTOR RADIOS

• Transistor radios typically only picked up on the AM band and were a

ubiquitous sight in schools and businesses in the seventies.
 CASSETTE TAPES

• The compact cassette was originally developed for transcription

purposes, and its users quickly realized that they could use it to record
music and make “mixed tapes”.
 BOOM BOXES

• Associated with hip hop, break-dancing, and other aspects of eighties

culture, the boom box was introduced in the late 1970’s as portable, all-
in-one music devices. Earlier models took huge quantities of batteries
and were very heavy.
 ANALOG TELEPHONES

• While exactly who invented the phone is a topic of debate, the first
patent was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. They have
evolved from rotary dial models to smart phones that we can use today
to surf the internet.