Remote Control Who’s responsible for America becoming a nation of couch potatoes? What helped us along was Zenith’s Space Command, a wired TV remote control with 4 buttons (channel up/down, and volume louder/softer). This 1956 feature allowed us to change the TV channel for the first time without leaving our… Read More »Great Gadgets Part 4

Pocket Calculator Desktop electronic calculators starting appearing during the 1960’s, but if you wanted to perform complex mathematical equations when you were away from an electrical outlet, a slide rule was your only alternative (I don’t even know what a slide rule is). Texas Instruments began selling the SR-10 in… Read More »Great Gadgets Part 3

Answering Machine You can tell that a TV Show or movie you’re watching is over 30 years old when a character has to remain beside his/her telephone in order to get an important call. The first automatic answering machine was a 3 foot tall contraption invented in 1935. In 1971,… Read More »Great Gadgets Part 2

Transistor Radios In 1954, Regency introduced the TR-1, the first so-called “pocket” radio. Prior to that time, radios required tubes, and even the most compact model was the size of a picnic basket. Bell Laboratories had developed the transistor several years earlier, but prior to 1954, its only commercial use… Read More »Great Gadgets Part 1