What's the first "Newest Technology" you remember?

[CB3]

1956 Plymouth with PowerFlite auto trans push button selectors mounted on the dash.

 

[Gamecock]

Block mode terminal. Changed my life in late '70s.

Fill in the blanks and hit submit.

Computer terminals had been laborious to use. Single line display and response. Invention of block mode terminals enabled myriad computer projects. Changed my career. Changed the world.

As I fill in THIS form and hit Post Quick Reply.

 

[rwsmith]

I helped my Dad.....

Residential central air conditioning. Been in Florida all my life, that’s an important advancement!
Buddy down the street got it. All the cool kid starting hanging out there.
Obviously ac has been around, but getting it to an affordable cost and size was the key.

I helped my Dad install ours. Cutting for the vents with a million case-hard nails in the flooring was a real trick. Lost a few blades.

 

[rwsmith]

Are you sure about the timing......

My parants first color tv was somewhere in the late 50's, I dont remember when I got my first but it was Motorola with the works in a draw, back then tv's were a piece of furniture.

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Most shows weren't broadcast in color until the 60's if I remember right. And yeah, they were monsters.

Another big piece of furniture was the 'console stereo'. 6' long piece of furniture. It was a really nice cabinet, but I got a better component stereo in 1/4 of the space.

Oh, and watching the dot from the electron gun fading out when turning off a B&W TV! Real space age stuff.

 

[rwsmith]

1961

My dad was pretty tight but he did spend money on some of the new gizmos that came out. I remember the Polaroid SX 70 folding camera that spit out a photo and it developed in seconds before your eyes. It was over a hundred bucks and each photo cost about a dollar which was a bunch of money back then in 1972. Also we got a microwave oven when they first came out, it was small and avocado green with a dial that was its only control. Man, we got our money out of that thing 100 times over, I think we had it 30 years or so and finally gave it away and it never had a problem and still looked like new.

My Dad got the Polaroid Land 650 (I think it was). It had the bellows focus and when you pulled the picture out of the side, the whole roll came out like toilet paper. Then you had to open it and peel off the picture and rub that smelly pink stuff on them. I had that camera and used it until they quit making film. The a group got together and started making film for it again. In spite of it's flaws, it took great pictures.

 

[soFlaNative]

Oh, and watching the dot from the electron gun fading out when turning off a B&W TV! Real space age stuff.

Thanks for that, now I recall placing my spread hand on the screen before turning off the TV.
Watching the glowing imprint blew my simple little mind.

 

[Gamecock]

Yes, color TV as furniture.

Dad spent big money ($900 in 1961 money, as I recall) on a big RCA entertainment center. Back when color TV tubes were almost round.

I don't think I ever saw him as angry as when he went to plug it in and the power cord on it was a stubby two feet long. Wouldn't reach the outlet! Had to scrounge an extension cord.

Wait . . . the time I scratched the top of it he was as angry.

When TV remote control came out, I thought, "Why bother; you have to get up to adjust the antenna, anyway."

 

[DWalt]

When TV remote control came out, I thought, "Why bother; you have to get up to adjust the antenna, anyway."

I well remember that back in the 1950s my parents had some friends who lived "way out in the country". They needed an antenna rotator. Could get three channels on their B&W TV, but when the channel was changed, the antenna had to be rotated to get good (or what passed for good) reception from each channel. The control was a small box which sat on top of the TV. The device that turned the antenna was called a Tenna-Rotor or something like that. I had forgotten all about that.

 

[loknload]

Newest tech to me was a TI pocket calculator which of course I purchased one, the same with the TI digital watch,I had one of those as well.
I think the next thing would have to be the microwave oven!
And then along came the computer!

 

[DWalt]

After that, the next thing that impressed me was a red LED watch that you had to push the button to see the time.

My father had one like that, a Gruen. I still have it in a dresser drawer. I don't remember when he got it, but I believe it was sometime in the early-mid 1970s, and it may have been a retirement gift, as that was about when he retired. I think it was a fairly expensive watch. The battery is long dead and I have never attempted to replace it. It always seemed to be inconvenient to have to press a button just to see the time. As I remember, the display was red and the numerals were fairly small.

 

[rubiranch]

Fire. That was huge!!!!!!!

 

[Gamecock]

Just put new batteries (LR54 - from amazon) in my TI-1750-II.

Circa 1980. Still works! After 40 years.

 

[Salty RI]

I worked for Ti the last one I had, I think it was a Ti 73 graphing, my GD needed one for college and I gave it to her, I still have a few around somewhere.

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[GF]

I remember the first time I saw an Etch-A-Sketch (that red picture frame with two white knobs in the bottom corners you turned to draw a picture) and I thought it must be alien technology.

We lived out in the country, you know.

 

[target tech]

This is for all the gen X ers out there.... The Sony Walkman... If you were 10 or 12 years old in 1980 this is what you begged your parents for at Christmas or your birthday.

 

[Fishslayer]

Used to look forward to going to the next door babysitter because they had.... A TV!

 

[29aholic]

I remember the laser disc players. My boss had one with a bunch of discs. He watched War of the Worlds on it over and over.

I remember when if you had a PC with 586mb you had something. The first jump drive I had was 586. Then my company bought us each a 1gb one at a wopping $100.00. Now you can get them for about a $1.00 a gb.

 

[mmb617]

When I was a kid our next door neighbors got a color TV. They had visitors all day coming over to see that wonder of technology.

It still only got two channels though, and one of them was snowy.

 

[mariopepper]

Probably some kind of virtual reality. That was confusing info for me

 

[REM 3200]

The dawn of the atomic age.

For me, it would be the two bombs we dropped on Japan in 1945 to end WW2.
They probably saved my Dad's life, as he was in the Philippines, staged for the invasion of Japan.