I remember my dad bringing home some stuff that blew my mind. The first one that springs to mind is this:

I played with it for hours and then dismantled it to see what was going on inside. I didn’t manage to re-mantle it though and I got a bit of a rollocking.

I also remember the first remote control TV we had. The remote was ultrasonic rather than infrared so you could hear the signal that changed channel / adjusted volume! Similar to this:

I remember by dad couldn’t hear it as he was at that age when his higher frequency hearing was diminishing. Not surprising though, I’ve just read that a typical signal frequency was 35kHz.

And finally (for now at least) this:

My “uncle Tommy” bought me and my sister Zeon LCD watches for xmas. I was stunned by it and spent hours just staring at the changing numbers.

Hours and hours… 😀

Me and my dad were terrified of its potential. As far as we were concerned we had invited this into the house.

Oh ,and the gadgets advertised on bubble gum wrappers 🙂

My Dad’s dictaphone. He bought me one for Christmas eventually. Ace 😀

Witchcraft.

We had these calculators

Loved the games on them, game III was my favourite

I used to make my own gadgets 🙂

Harry you youngster.

I won £100 on the premium bonds (this is when £100 was a lot of money), so bought one of these.

First time i saw a digital watch it was one of those ones where the numbers light up red. It was integral to the plot on Columbo (How do you know it was precisely 7:28? sir- because of my new digital watch officer)
The next day at school everyone was talking about it like it was special effects. By xmas everyone had one, by boxing day all the batteries had run out.

this was rather novel when I were a lad:

Remember my father brining a comodore pet home to work on his mental science based stuff….tiny screen…huuuuge box….small green letters and it was like the future maan as long as the future involved big beige boxes!

Also had one of these

Which was amzing as the screen was see through.

Peterfile, that’s brings back some good childhood memories, I had the 200 in 1 kit and I spent weeks configuring various gadgets, I think my favourite was the AM transmitter which freaked out my sister.

My older brother bought one of these

Age 6, I was awestruck. It had an asteroids cartridge (a brilliant version of asteroids, too), and joysticks, and made explosion noises come out the telly.

Several years later I spent all my earthly posessions on a spectrum.

I still work in computers…

Billy blast off
Action man with gripping hands, real hair & eagle eyes
Verti bird
Reynolds 531 tubing

Listen to one song after another after another… genius!

My ol man was the first in our street to have one of these –

(The mower not the pink trousered damsel)

We thought it was brilliant. Next door neighbour bought one a week later!

My dad had a petrol Flymo – jeez – that was hard work.

Many of the items above.

Plus.

TCR – Totally Crap Racing. If one car was a bit quicker you just held down the lane change button and you couldn’t be beaten. Mate of mine had one. His older brother HAD to have the fast car and bored us to death with this tactic. Arsehole.

I used to help out on a farm, the farmer had one of these and even at the age of 12 it terrified me:

*Fails to see ‘techno gadget’ in the above photograph*

TCR – Totally Crap Racing. If one car was a bit quicker you just held down the lane change button and you couldn’t be beaten. Mate of mine had one. His older brother HAD to have the fast car and bored us to death with this tactic. Arsehole.

Well yes it was useless. But when I first saw it I was amazed. All I remember of actually using it was having to go around the track with a 2p coin all the time to make sure the contacts were really clean.

And we got busted that Christmas – our mum found us in her bedroom with it all out after we had found it in their wardrobe.

Sorry mum – I never did get to say sorry to you for that one x

*Fails to see ‘techno gadget’ in the above photograph*

You never know, globati might be 120 years old?

And we got busted that Christmas – our mum found us in her bedroom with it all out after we had found it in their wardrobe.

I wish I’d read the rest of johndoh’s post and not just that bit.

Not really a gadget but spent hours playing with one of these. Had it set up in the Garden with a really long approach, truth is it was crap but we seemed to live in simpler times then. Wanders off looking for specs with rose tinted lenses

(i never had davros though)

cool as … 😀

end of 8)

Listen to one song after another after another… genius!

Except when the stack all fell down on the first play 😀

this

and one I can’t find an image of. memory is hazy now, there was a steering wheel and a little 3d landscape in front of it with various roads, the landscape went round and you had to move the steering wheel which moved a car towards and away from you via magnets. This allowed you to ‘navigate’ the roads and junctions.

I think part of the magic was, they weren’t mine. Goes on them were fleeting and I couldn’t take them apart/get bored of them so they always seemed a bit mysterious and special.

Loved these too

Is that like an updated version of the View Master awesome 3D viewing toy?

The old Acorn computers. Used to love it when my dad brought it home from work (School teacher) playing lemmings on it was ace.

Our first Pentium powered pc, windows 95 and flight SIM 95 was ace fun.

Raleigh Streetwolf, never got one but Wow. had that TCR on previous page

Is that like an updated version of the View Master awesome 3D viewing toy?

No! Proper 3D gaming