Buzz Out Loud Lounge: What is the first gadget you ever bought?
What is the first gadget you ever bought?
by robstak - 4/28/09 10:37 AMstolen from gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/5229649/what-was-the-first-gadget-you-ever-bought)
So BOL, what was it?
For me, the first thing i can remember was one of those SUPER yellow waterproof sony TAPE walkmen! hahaha. loved it!
-dr. karl
Sony Walkman CD player w/Mega-Bass Boost! ;)
by shmody - 4/28/09 11:21 AM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakIt had some extra-long buffer and a heat-resistant cover too. I think I still have it...
--S
oh, wait...do Lego's, model rockets, or R/C cars count?...
by shmody - 4/28/09 12:25 PM In reply to: Sony Walkman CD player w/Mega-Bass Boost! ;) by shmodywell, parents bought them...and the Super NES was a gift. But those were the first gadgets that I remember really, really enjoying 
--S
Easy
by Renegade Knight - 4/28/09 11:29 AM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakI made my own crystal diode radio. Ok I bought the pieces...and made the gadget.
First one I remember buying was a Panasonic Ghetto Blaster AFTER I bought a truck.
Same
by Nicholas Buenk - 4/28/09 7:20 PM In reply to: Easy by Renegade KnightGot it as a kit and assembled it.
dating myself . . .
by beelissa - 4/28/09 3:45 PM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakI had a Texas Instruments calculator -- it was huge, cost $50 and had a wall wart plug. It didn't even have all that many functions. That was in the late 70s.
My brother had Pong, and Atari and a Commodore 64.
I wasn't so much into gadgets till they started being so cool looking, small and portable. I've had more VCRs and DVD players than I can remember, and that goes for computers too. I'm only on my 2nd cell phone, though my husband's had a whole bunch of them.
I got my first PC in 1990, though before that I had a hand-me-down from my brother.
I had one of those...
by ktreb - 4/28/09 6:45 PM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakI think I bought it in 1990 and paid over $200 for it!
How do you define "gadget"?
by mattlp - 4/29/09 3:12 AM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakFor us oldies, there are a lot things that weren't really gadgets, but evolved into gadgets.
Both my future wife and I bought cassette recorders in the first half of the 1970's. They were a lot larger than walkmans. I like to think they evolved in Walkmans and later mp3 players. I even had an ARM issue (analog rights management). My brother and I went to a couple of Star Trek conventions, where someone was selling audio cassettes of all the Star Trek episodes. It was at a dealer's table but I doubt it was approved my Paramount.
For my 18th birthday I received a manual, portable typewriter for college, the closest I could come to a laptop in the 1970s. Just after, I went to college and had to get a TI programmable calculator. My future wife had a 110 camera, precursor to a point and shoot.
There were other things that I suspect most folks now take for granted. In the early or mid 1980s we purchased our first microwave from HP. It was enormous -- took up a lot of real estate in our apartment kitchen. I think this was before we got an Atari game console, which would definitely count as a gadget.
It's fun to think what categories CNET would have covered in the 1970s or 80s. Of course, they would have had to been a print magazine.
gadgets
by rmamom - 4/29/09 6:51 AM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakI have two that stand out...
- Atari 2600 which I bought after illegally playing (too young) in a bingo game run by the sisterhood and winning the jackpot. We got games for that for years and years for every holiday and birthday.
- A programmable Sharp calculator which was programmable in BASIC and had a qwerty keyboard. I was in Calculus (HS) at the time and the teacher used to go around hitting the reset button on the back of calculators because you could make a program that was just REM commands with all the notes you needed. LOL The Physics teacher didn't know well enough to do that...
a battery powered radio transmitter
by StephenKenny - 5/1/09 5:18 PM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakwas the first gadget I bought. Range of about 200 yards, or 1 school wall.
That was about 1971. It was when I found out what feedback was.
(NT) haha awesome
by robstak - 5/3/09 7:10 AM In reply to: a battery powered radio transmitter by StephenKennyMine was a Sony Walkman 1 (WM-1) in 1981
by minimalist - 5/1/09 6:58 PM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakhttp://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-1
It was a gigantic brick I wore on my hip when I did yardwork for all the neighbors. But I was so proud of it at the time. Until two years later I replaced it with the coolest Walkman that I ever owned (the WM-F10). It was the same size as a cassette case and actually collpased to fit in a cassette organizer.
http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-f10
RCA Portable Tape Player
by joedelco - 5/5/09 7:10 PM In reply to: What is the first gadget you ever bought? by robstakI bought an RCA portable tape player (walkman style) with my own money back in the late 80's. The reason I chose it over other walkmans was because it had:
1. A 3-band equalizer
2. Digital radio tuner
3. Auto reverse
Digital radio?
by Nicholas Buenk - 5/5/09 7:54 PM In reply to: RCA Portable Tape Player by joedelcoFunny how that means something entirely different today.
Digital Radio
by joedelco - 5/5/09 9:39 PM In reply to: Digital radio? by Nicholas BuenkWow, you are right. I didn't even think about that when I wrote it. Sad to say, it was the plain old AM/FM, but I could digitally tune in the stations instead of using an analog knob. I guess it was a good thing it wasn't a digital tuner though, cause I would have had nothing to listen to.
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