Posted on 05/03/2016 3:27:49 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The Tech that forever changed the way we live, work, and play.
Think of the gear you can’t live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The camera that goes with you on every vacation. The TV that serves as a portal to binge-watching and -gaming. Each owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good.
It’s those devices we’re recognizing in this list of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time.
Think of the gear you can’t live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The camera that goes with you on every vacation. The TV that serves as a portal to binge-watching and -gaming. Each owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good.
It’s those devices we’re recognizing in this list of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time.
Some of these, like Sony’s Walkman, were the first of their kind. Others, such as the iPod, propelled an existing idea into the mainstream. Some were unsuccessful commercially, but influential nonetheless. And a few represent exciting but unproven new concepts (looking at you Oculus Rift).
Rather than rank technologies—writing, electricity, and so on—we chose to rank gadgets, the devices by with consumers let the future creep into their present. The list—which is ordered by influence—was assembled and deliberated on at (extreme) length by TIME’s technology and business editors, writers and reporters. What did we miss?
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Not the iphone. Just a pocket cell phone. You no longer had to look for a phone booth.
Yea, it got smart later with the iphone. But just having a phone with you at all times changed everything.
Yeah, I wonder why. Oh, yeah. . .
Allegedly it is/was a 'neck' massager.
I once worked at a mall store called Brookstone.
We sold all sorts of trendy and crummy gadgets, and also several different sizes and types of “personal hand held massagers”, coughcoughmasturbationdevicescoughcough.
I went in to that job naïve and wide eyed, and came out a lot more knowledgeable about women and their groin areas.
Some of that knowledge has come in handy!
The book Longitude chronicles the extreme utility of the chronometer, without which (until very recently) it was impossible to ascertain the longitude of a ship at sea with useful accuracy. Basically the problem was thought of, until someone did it, about the way you and I tend to think of fusion power today.At the equator, the earth’s rotational velocity is about 1000 mph. Thus, an error of even one minute (over the duration of a voyage of perhaps a month or more) maps to an error of the sixtieth part of 1000 miles, or about 17 miles.
that is exactly why i listed it.
calculating longitude is more of a discovery and not a gadget.... but a modern watch that kept proper time no matter where it was, that is a ‘gadget’ that influenced the world
btw, if you can find it, check out the A&E TV movie ‘longitude’ from 2000
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/
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