Do you remember reactions to new inventions?

Maryn said:

I live in Kodak territory, and their failure to anticipate the huge popularity of digital photography and the decline of film cost something like 38,000 jobs, about a third in my city. Man, why didn't they ask me? Eliminating developing is huge compared to looking at your pictures on the TV screen.

Maryn, who discovered a bunch of undeveloped film recently and isn't sure it's worth the bother and expense

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Never mind Kodak, I drive by the abandoned Polaroid headquarters once in a while and just keep shaking my head. I loved my Polaroid cameras. I remember how cool it was to take a picture and have it ready to look at in under a minute. No computer or printer needed.

We were the proud owners of an early home video game system. I don't remember the brand, but it came with a shooting game, a pong game and maybe one other game? Then we got an Intellivison, and I played with that until we wore out the controllers. It was so cool, and when I describe it my kids laugh at me. Of course, when we visit Funspot, http://www.funspotnh.com/ I get high scores on BurgerTime and Asteroids.

I should note that my dad worked with the guy who invented the first video game. Pong. For those of you too young to remember it, it was basically a sort of tennis/hockey kind of thing, the ball bounced back and forth and each player had a control for a paddle. The object was to knock the ball past the other player's paddle. I also remember visiting my dad's work (he works for a major defense contractor) and seeing the computers. They took up the whole room, they had giant open reel tapes, and you could play chess with them. My dad actually let us play Lander on one.

Wonder if I'm as old as Maryn?

I'll have to join Maryn, dolores haze and Eric on the porch rocking chairs.

Pantyhose: Wow. The school uniform was skirts and nylons for girls and those nylons were a real expense until I switched from playing French Horn to flute. (The bell of the horn case snagged my nylons every time I carried it.) And you didn't need garters to keep them up!

Music synthesizer: My school saw one of the very first breadboarded synthesizers presented at Place Ville Marie in Montreal. I thought it was fascinating.

Saturn rockets/space program: That looked initially like we'd be living in Buck Rogers' world pretty quick and I couldn't wait to grow up and go visit the planets and asteroids. I'd still like to, but it ain't looking good.

My first job was running a telex machine - a kind of updated teletype. Occasionally I'd be asked to contact someone in Germany or Japan with a question. It was pretty thrilling to type an inquiry and suddenly have an answer typing out on the screen from halfway around the world. I also used an old Series 1 IBM computer and had to call the techs at the head office at least once a week to compress the files so we had enough storage.

Beta VCRs: Imagine! You could watch a movie without having to go out to a theatre! What a fabulous idea.

Mobile/cell phones: Our local phone company used the advertising blurb "Never be out of touch again." My first reaction was, "What an appalling idea." I haven't changed my mind on that. Don't own a cell, don't want one.

Bottled water? Nope. Silly idea. Never touch the stuff unless it's been boiled and flavoured with tea then served hot.

the bunny hugger said:

I will admit to trying to play the 'other side' of a music CD.

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The first CD I listened to in its entirety was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Full Moon Rising.

At the beginning of Track six Petty says "Hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette, or records, will have to stand up, or sit down, and turn over the record. Or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side two. Thank you. Here's side two."

There's roosters in the background . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSHeKfZG7c

-cb

I remember Polaroid photos being kinda neat with the slow from blank to picture, but I also remember that after a few or ten years the pictures disappeared.

I remember getting the internet in 1993 on the Freeweb service. I didn't ever find anything useful and so remained pretty much hapless on the internet until computer classes in grade 7 in 1997.

I remember the first CD we got: Rankin Family back in 1993. Still a very good album if anyone ever wants to dig into some Canadiana. Don't remember my reaction at first but I remember being told to not touch the surface of you would scratch it.

The first video game console I was exposed to was the NES in 1990. Memory is vague on reactions but I remember the blowing on the cartridges and the games you'd try to play when the game was half-blown.

First exposure to the computer was in 1989. Saw my dad have fun playing a primitive flight simulator. Never saw that computer again as I think my dad had to return it to the office or something.

mp3 Players and Mini-Discs- I thought they were neat but too small. And they kept getting smaller.

Cell phones - I'm still fearful of them and do not know how to use them. Mind you, I'm pretty helpless on a normal phone so. . .

Digital turntables - the original ones were awful for DJs and there was a great push-back against them in the period 2002-2006. But they eventually got it right and it became easy to use. The turntablists soon became Live-tinkerers. Digital turntables are now club standards and still don't do that great job on scratching.

I recall reading EE times circa 1997-1999 about many things. There were several articles on the emerging MP3 audio file format and its growing popularity - it had 90 percent of the sound quality of CD, but used only 10 percent the storage of uncompressed audio, so song files could be downloaded from the Internet over dialup modems (then up to a blazing 56k bits per second) in a reasonable time. The record labels knew about it and were concerned about the ease of copyright infringement.

Circa 1998 I finally got mp3 plaiying software (Winamp) and heard my first MP3, "Cows With Guns" by Dana Lyons. It sounded as perfect as a CD to me. Later I got my own encoding software, heard what different bit rates sounded like, especially lower rates with their wishy-washy underwater sound, and after hearing all that I could detect the same artifacts in "regular" 128k mp3's. But it seems most people still think they sound exactly like CD's.

EE Times also covered the Diamond Rio and the RIAA suit. I thought about getting the Rio thing, as it could be a collector's item. Few know what it is nowadays, but I recall hearing about four or five years ago that Apple had sold 100 million iPods.

Speaking of turntables, Technics has in recent months announced it's stopping manufacture of the SL-1200 turntable (thing that plays LP records), which became the "standard" disco DJ turntable back in the late 1970's, mostly because it came up to speed from a full stop faster than just about any other turntable. It has continued to be popular among "turntablists" to this day.

Stlight said:

I remember Polaroid photos being kinda neat with the slow from blank to picture, but I also remember that after a few or ten years the pictures disappeared.

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I have albums and albums of Polaroids, they haven't disappeared. The oldest are from the late 70s, maybe the earlier technology was different?

jeseymour said:

Never mind Kodak, I drive by the abandoned Polaroid headquarters once in a while and just keep shaking my head. I loved my Polaroid cameras. I remember how cool it was to take a picture and have it ready to look at in under a minute. No computer or printer needed.

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You can still buy film for polaroid cameras from "the Impossible project" online.

There's still people who believe microwaves cause cancer. And people who believe cell phones do it too

jeseymour said:

I have albums and albums of Polaroids, they haven't disappeared. The oldest are from the late 70s, maybe the earlier technology was different?

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Like all photographs, negatives, and slides, exposure to light and chemicals will bleach them.

The first high tech toy I remember being especially impressed with was the digital calculator. My parents bought one in the mid 70s, I guess. If I recall, they paid like $75 for the thing. I was amazed. Then we figured out you could put 7734 on it an look at it upside down.

The microwave was huge when it came out. Mom warned me not to stand too close.

Bought my first CD player at cost ($360) in 1986. Went to Jack's Records and tapes and he had like 4 CDs. I bought Band On The Run. Good stuff.

My father in law had a Commodore 64 computer. He had to write all his own programs.

EG

I remember telling my sister-in-law that the molecules in the baked potato she was eating were still vibrating from the microwave oven. That's why it was still hot.
She dropped her fork and asked, "Are we eating microwaves?"

I also remember the Texas Instruments desk electronic calculator my brother bought in 1975, from Radio Shack. It cost $79.95 and could add, subtract, multiply and divide instantly. It was amazing.

In the late-eighties, my wife was touring Mexico and traded her $2 credit card sized, solar-powered calculator for about $20 worth of clothes.

Does anybody remember the books of websites? It was around the time we got our first PC, so it would have been 1994-1995ish. My dad came home from the local bookstore with a thick paperback book filled with URLs, all neatly divided into categories. There was a "how to use the internet" chapter at the beginning. I think there were a few different books published during that era.

When I first heard about microwave ovens my reaction was "when can I get one?". When we finally did, the first thing my husband did (I wasn't hone at the time) was try to cook a whole egg in a Pyrex dish. The oven survived. The egg and dish - not so much. And I do use it for actual cooking, not just reheating.

jeseymour said:

I should note that my dad worked with the guy who invented the first video game. Pong. For those of you too young to remember it, it was basically a sort of tennis/hockey kind of thing, the ball bounced back and forth and each player had a control for a paddle. The object was to knock the ball past the other player's paddle. I also remember visiting my dad's work (he works for a major defense contractor) and seeing the computers. They took up the whole room, they had giant open reel tapes, and you could play chess with them. My dad actually let us play Lander on one.

Wonder if I'm as old as Maryn?

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Actually, I thought it was more of a ping pong thing . It started showing up in pizza parlors and places like that to long lines of gamers wearing flaired jeans or Farrah dos. There was a game called, Odyssey that people could by for their TVs at home--I'm not sure which one came first. I still remember the music: "let's you and me play ODYSSEY..."

blackrose602 said:

Does anybody remember the books of websites? It was around the time we got our first PC, so it would have been 1994-1995ish. My dad came home from the local bookstore with a thick paperback book filled with URLs, all neatly divided into categories. There was a "how to use the internet" chapter at the beginning. I think there were a few different books published during that era.

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Yes, I remember one called the "Internet Yellow Pages." Those things came and went as fast as the Elcassette, which I thought was really neat and I was looking forward to it.

And there was "AOL for Dummies." Is there a "Facebook for Dummies?"