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The 50 greatest gadgets of the past 50 years
(PC World)
Updated: 2005-12-27 11:29 14. BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld (1998)
BlackBerry 850
Wireless Handheld |
Canadian firm Research
in Motion didn't invent e-mail, wireless data networks, the handheld, or the
QWERTY keyboard. But with the little BlackBerry, along with server software that
made e-mail appear on it without any effort from the recipient, RIM put it all
together in a way that even nontechie executives could appreciate--and thereby
opened the eyes of corporate America to the potential of wireless
communications. So addictive that some call them CrackBerries, RIM's ubiquitous
e-mail communicators--especially their high-res displays and small yet
serviceable thumb keyboards--have forever changed the design aesthetic for
personal digital assistants, while their approach to e-mail has become the
standard by which all connected handhelds are measured. To learn more about
BlackBerry on the Web, visit the International BlackBerry User Group. Photo
courtesy of Research In Motion.
15. Phonemate Model 400 (1971)
In 1971, PhoneMate introduced one of the first commercially viable
answering machines, the Model 400. The $300 unit had a wooden case, weighed more
than 8 pounds, and was larger than a major-city phone book, according to Steve
Knuth, a retired company executive. You could record about 20 short messages on
an internal reel-to-reel tape. Users also could listen to messages in private,
via an earphone akin to those supplied with transistor radios. Since people
hated to talk into machines in the 1970s, Phonemate used to joke that only those
who stood to make money from the phone call would buy the Model 400, mostly
businesses. For more information, see the history of answering machines. (The
Phonemate 400 is shown in the photo; the gadget that allowed remote message
access came later.) Photo by Brad Bargman.
16. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (1978)
Texas Instruments Speak & Spell
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A whole generation of kids learned to spell on
this cheery orange device with alphabet keys and a hardy handle. Speak &
Spell contained a single-chip speech synthesizer--novel for the time--and a
robotic voice that encouraged children to spell more than 200 common words. The
$50 Speak & Spell effectively cut the cord on that era's pull-string and
tape-recorder speaking toys. The game of Hangman was a boon for kids during long
car trips--and the bane of at least some parents forced to listen to it. It's
more lovingly described on this dedicated page. Photo courtesy of Texas
Instruments.
17. Texas Instruments SR-10 (1973)
Texas Instruments
SR-10 (1973) |
Math classes were
never the same after the introduction of TI's handheld calculators in the early
1970s. The $150 SR-10 debuted in 1973 and was the first affordable handheld to
calculate reciprocals, square roots, and other slide-rule functions. The $170
SR-50 followed in 1974, adding trigonometric functions and a very cool
14-character LED display. The devices became so ubiquitous that math whizzes at
the time were identified by the simple sobriquet "TIs." This TI site can tell
you more about Texas Instruments calculators. Photo courtesy of the Vintage
Calculators Web Museum.
18. Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 (1998)
Diamond Multimedia
Rio PMP300 |
The Nano it ain't,
but Diamond's Multimedia Rio PMP 300 started the revolution that produced
portable music players such as Apple's iPod (#2). This first portable MP3 player
ran on a single AA battery and packed a whopping 32MB of storage--enough for
about a half hour of music encoded in the MP3 compression format. Read PC
World's original review. Photo courtesy of The Adrenaline Vault.
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