Do You Remember Any?
Many of the things we call “modern” have been around for decades, centuries, and in some cases, millennia. This includes technologies that we believe to be revolutionary. Although their predecessors are largely forgotten, they were considered to be revolutionary in their time, too.
10 Music Streaming
We stream music over the Internet today, but our grandparents streamed it over the telephone in 1906. The music they streamed was provided by a piece of extinct music equipment called the telharmonium (aka dymanophone), a massive machine that was 18 meters (60 ft) long, weighed 200 tons, and occupied an entire floor. Interestingly, only two people were required to play it.8 Smartwatches
The world’s first smartwatch was the HP-01. It was made by Hewlett-Packard in 1977, 17 years before the world’s first smartphone. Unlike the smartwatches of today, the HP-01 could not make phone calls, send messages, or connect to the Internet.
Instead, it had a timer, stopwatch, calendar, reminder, alarm clock, calculator, and daily planner. It also lacked a touch screen, and users could only interact with it using its 28 buttons. But the buttons were so small that they could only be clicked with a stylus.
The HP-01 was waterproof and powered by three batteries, six chips, and about 38,000 resistors, which was impressive for a time when computers only had two kilobytes of RAM. Two years after its introduction, the HP-01 went out of production due to poor sales. Its premium price—$650 for its stainless steel version and $750 for its gold-coated version—made it too expensive for many consumers.
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