Tech(/nerd) History Time line (some fun stories)

[Mot]

Writing this because:

- People on YouTube seem to be missing some history
- I'd like my kids to maybe read it (someday)

- Some of these things I can't find on the internet

Please add your own stuff and corrections.
What would you highlight (add asterisks to) as being significant?

 

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Early 70's I remember being in Disneyland with family waiting for "American the Beautiful"
Circle-Vision 360 and they had a play tic-tac-toe agents a computer or
electronic something. I just remember it winning every time.

 

Watching rockets blast off going to the moon.

Mid-70's
Balsa wood airplanes w/rubber ban windup propeller.
Tandy Leather co (get tools and kits to make designs in leather mostly for wallets. My dad had a lot of tools)(Tandy co owned Radio
Shack)
Burning wood kits (no lawsuits back then)
No 8-track tapes but still had cassette adaptor for the car 8 track player.
ONLY 3 TV channels! (Maybe a UHF fuzzy channel)(something called VHF and UHF
(one dial U-2-3-4..12-13 and the other channels 15-20-25-...–80 that didn't
click)
Saturday morning cartoons (Hanna-Barbera: Speed Buggy, Scooby-Doo)
CB radios (new language "breaker one-nine"), 8 mm home movies (no sound), board games (master mind, monopoly,
battle ship), bikes (kid would do wheelies, and jumps ala Evel Knievel)
First calculators (I remember a magnifier on each digit)
Library no computer! card catalogs, microfilm, microfiche

1972 Magnavox Odyssey home ~pong system with gun
(Magnavox latter sued Atari and others for Pong)
1975 Oct Saturday Night Live
1975 Monty Python and the Holy Grail
1975 Atari/Sears pong

1976 Bicentennial (USA 200 years old, Red, White, and Blue everywhere, posters
with 1776-1976 on them, special quarters)

1977 May Star Wars IV (was such a hit that having a Star Wars T-shirt made other
boys envious)(Kenner Star Wars Early Bird Kit)
1977 Space Wars arcade (my big brother and I played this in Disneyland after
riding Space Mountain in the Starcade (currently they have Fixit Felix with
Wreck-It Ralph they look like Donkey Kong machines))
1977 June ****Apple ][ **** $1,300 (Atari employee #40: )
1977 June TRS-80 computer $600 (Radio Shack)
1977 handheld electronic mastermind
1977 Sep **Atari 2600** heavy 6er $200 with Combat, fun but you need another
person.
4k rom addressing
9 games (all early games are 2k, it is more expensive to make 4k)
3 different controllers: joystick, paddles, driving (Indy 500 only(game was to
bring home a fun arcade game that had big steering wheels for multiple players)

1978 Merlin game, Handheld LED Football, Simon
1978 ****2600 Space Invaders ****(Atari 2600 killer app) (pretty much first game
you can play by-u-self for hours. (Well maybe Surround or Code Breaker)
Otherwise you had to get a friend over or convince a sibling or parent to play
with you)

1978 Dr. Demento (radio show of funny songs, this show will start "Weird Al"
Yankovic, Space invaders by Uncle Vic, ((Locked In The Closet With You by
SuLu)))

1978 Adventureland text RPG on the TRS-80

1978 Basic Computer Games book (a book with basic programs to type into your computer to play games) (We also would have magazines with type in games and latter some would be rows of data statements : "100 DATA 4E 00 48 63" and the basic program would write the data to a cassette tape and then you could load the games and play

Late 70's - Early 1980's Shacky's Pizza all you can eat with the whole family
with video games silent moves would play on a big screen and a player piano
would play music.

1979 Galaxian arcade game (Shacky's had one we would flick pennies up the return
slot to add a credit until the owner bent the metal on the return slot)

1979 Steve Jobs goes to PARC and see a GUI!
1979 Nov 2600 Asteroids (first bank switching game:8k)
1979 Nov Atari 8-bit computer
With Star Raiders killer app

Arcade: Pac-man, Missile Command (first trackball), Battle Zone
1980 Commodore VIC 20
1980 Intellivision $300
1980 ***Adventure*** (OMG saw this at a friend’s house and got this game within a
couple days)
1980 first Activision games
1980 July Airplane! Movie

(A friend was playing Adventure at my house. He saw the maze blinking with only
one object. He said there must be something in here. I'm all naw. We said
there is a little square right here and he got the ladder and got in there and
hit something in the corner. It was a dot but it was late and he left to go
home. I was so excited. While carrying the dot I went to the main hall way and
the line on the left disappeared! But it didn't let me through ahhhh! Well
eventually I got through the other line but didn't know what it said.)
1981 we started seeing arcades in strip malls with tokens! (I use to go after
school and play Gorf and centipede and they expanded the arcade and Robotron:
2084 and Donkey Kong came.)
And Golf and things had a ton of arcade games.

1981 Arcade: Gorf, Donkey Kong

1981 Dec Pac-Man Fever song
1981 Aug IBM PC (thus starts the monopoly switch from IBM to Microsoft (also
hardware to software).

1982 July Tron movie
1982 Aug Commodore 64
1982 Aug ColecoVision with
****killer app: Donkey Kong******
1982 Sep Star Raiders 2600 with touch pad
1982 Tron arcade game

1983 Kid controller
1983 Dragon's Lair (first laserdisc video game)

1983 Oct Coleco Adam home computer attachment to ColecoVision video game (a
quick story: Adam was sold in JC Penny's (Tucson El Con downstairs) in Video
games in the toy department and they had a computer department. Someone walks
up to the guy behind the counter at the computer department and asks “where is the Adam
computer?” Reply: that would be in the toy department. The person leaves and we
both crack up laughing.)

1983 video game crash(or home video game console crash)
I remember outside the KayBee toy store ("where you guna find a KayBee toy
store?" (Tucson mall bottom floor) loads of 2600 games in a bin, one box I
remember had a big tank on it with the title: "Tanks but no Tanks" and no one
wanting to buy them because they mostly sucked and we wanted computer games.
(watch David Crane video on Pitfall (54 min in): no quality control/lockout chip and 3rd
party crap games)

A stupid home computer commercial with a kid going off to collage on a train and
coming back because of "lack of computer skills".

Part of the Video Game crash for me was that parents said if we are going to
spend money about $200 on a video game thing why not buy a computer that plays
video games and my kid will learn some programming and not just waist time.

1984 Firefox video game with laserdisc background (based on Warner Bros (parent
company to Atari) Firefox movie. (First 7800's had a laserdisc port)

Arcade: Paperboy, Marble Madness

1984 March IBM PC Jr (home/cheep computer w/ inferred keyboard)

1985 Oct *****NES *****(rebirth of console gaming)

 

... Bulletin board systems distributing pirated software

Edited April 6, 2014 by Mot