The Video Toaster

The gadget that revolutionized TV in the 1990s.

The Vacuum Tube

The Vacuum Tube (or Valve) was the grandfather of the Silicon Chip

Kodachrome Color Slide Film

This color film defined the look of a generation and was used in many of the most iconic photos ever taken

Tamagotchi

These electronic pets were the bane of schoolteachers in the 1990s.

The Compact Cassette Tape

A generation used compact cassettes to create mix tapes, creating one of the first battles over music piracy.

The Gadget We Miss: the Commodore PET

This primitive computer was many people’s first experience of home computing

The Gadget We Miss: The Apple Newton

Apple’s pioneering PDA was ahead of its time

The Gadget We Miss: The Sony MiniDisc

Sony’s pioneering music format failed to catch on, but found a few unexpected niches

The Gadget We Miss: The Clapper

Clap On! Clap Off! At least, that was the theory of this gadget.

The Gadget We Miss: The US Robotics Courier Modem

The king of dial-up was a modem that could handle anything you threw at it

The Gadget We Miss: The Casio QV-10 Digital Camera

One of the first consumer digital cameras defined the category

The Gadget We Miss: The Calculator Watch

Sting isn’t usually thought of as a geek hero. But, if you look carefully at the cover of the Police single “Wrapped Around Your Finger”, you’ll see that he is proudly wearing a symbol of geekdom from the late 1970s and 1980s. Similarly, geek icon Marty McFly is

The Gadget We Miss: The Polaroid SX-70 Land Instant Camera

Photography used to be a passive experience: you would take the photo, send the film off to develop and then get the prints back weeks later, long after you had forgotten taking them. Digital photography changed all that, but the digital camera was not the world’s first experience of

The Gadget We Miss: The Nokia 9000 Communicator

Nokia’s first Smartphone was a ground-breaking gadget for the traveller

The Gadget We Miss: The BBC Micro

The pioneering home computer was created for the BBC, but was the gateway to a computing career for generation.

The Gadget We Miss: The Texas Instruments Speak & Spell

For many people, their first glimpse of the power of technology wasn't a laptop or a cell phone. It was a bright orange device that spoke in an odd, rattling voice: The Texas Instruments Speak & Spell. First announced at the CES show in 1978, the Speak &

The Gadget We Miss: The Palm V

The philosopher Plato believed that all things have a perfect form, an abstract ideal that represents the essence of the thing in its purest form. Although the perfect form is unattainable in the physical world, the Palm V probably represents the closest that we have come to the perfect form

The Gadget We Miss: The Motorola StarTAC

Motorola’s first clamshell phone was the must-have gadget of the late 1990s

Gadgets We Miss: The Psion Series 5

The PDA that made PDAs cool