Throwback Thursday: Your Earliest Tech Memory #TBT

[#1]

It's Thursday!

I was 8 years old when I got my first watch (Christmas of '78). Actually, I got two of them :) One was a regular watch and the other was a digital watch. I don't remember all the details of it but it had red digits, which were pretty bright! It was similar to the one in this picture:

I really liked this watch. It was just SO cool. Felt very techie despite it being a simple watch.

Soooo, what is your earliest memory involving technology (a device, a game, a computer, remote controlled toy or even a pager)? What do you remember most about it?

Let’s make it a great Thursday!

KGM

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

First Playstation...... (PSX) Legendary Games....

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

My aunt was an accountant and one weekend she had to work from home. So she brought a calculator that could print, but I wasn't interested in that. 

It was an old school calculator (you had to plug in into a socket) with those glowing, neon-like, red digits that had an illusion of 3D. Of course, I wouldn't describe it like that back then, I was 4-5 and it was early 19... a long time ago :D 

But a proper tech moment - the one when you KNOW you're experiencing future was in 2002.

I was a journalist in an IT/Science section of a Slovak daily. Orange Slovakia was running a pilot 3G network in Bratislava and lended us a 3G phone.

So I borrowed a USB bluetooth adapter - which were a novelty back then, modified linux drivers so it worked on an early version of Mac OS X... a common practice back then.

We hooked up the phone to the BT dongle and... conducted what was probably one of the first 100% wireless updates of a Mac.

There's a phone on the table next to the iBook... which was downloading data from the internet without wires. Future has arrived.

[Stephen_Lugton]

I remember my dad taking me to watch The Empire Strikes back, and when I got home there was a Laser Rifle waiting for me that made 'Pew, Pew' sounds:

(Unfortunately not the original, that stopped working and vanished years ago 😭, but many happy hours were spent running around with friends pretending to be rebel heroes!)

[Martin Runge]

Hi, I have memories of sitting in front of the C64, loading games and programs from audio cassettes. Those were such nostalgic and exciting times!

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

@Martin Runge 

Probaly i have still a C64 in Basement :)

I think time to take Dust off it. :)

[Amanda Barber]

My earliest memory of technology is probably our Nintendo! I remember we also had an Atari at one point, so that was probably first? Another favorite techy device I remember loving was this Dear Diary thing. We could send messages to each other across the room - it felt pretty magical at the time!

[Josué Garcia]

I vividly remember playing Ms. Pacman on the ATARI

[Carsten Severin _KUMAVISION AG_]

Does anyone recognize this picture, or at least the name Atari? I do 😂

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I don't know if an EZ Bake Oven, Close and Play record player, or a View-Master from the early 1970s count as technology. If not, I'd have to say a Texas Instruments TI-33 calculator that I got for chemistry class when I started the 10th grade (1979). 

[John Funk]

Earliest was probably just a simple digital calculator for normal functions when I was a youngster. Then it would have been the TI advanced calculator for Advanced Math class in High School. Also was my the same year I was introduced to programming with the TRS-80 and then the Fortran interface we used. 

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Something I remember is my dad having a Nokia 3310, where I would play that snake game 🐍 It was quite intriguing at that time 😅

Apart from that, I remember my best friend having a PS1 console and me being quite envious that I couldn't get one for myself 😆

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Takk, everyone, for sharing your fun memories. I had totally forgotten about Pong, @Carsten Severin _KUMAVISION AG_  An acquaintance of mine had Atari. We didn't go there very often but seeing your comment made me remember one time we went over there and played Pong.

I spent a lot of time watching my friends play Pac-Man on arcade boxes, @Josué Garcia I played it some as well.

[Anwesha Pan]

I had this kind of handheld console, where I used to play the snake game, car racing and the brick game. 🥰 But I also remember having the video game of duck hunt and mario played on TV.

[Bobby Taylor]

This is such a great topic @Kristján Geir Mathiesen ! Like others, I remember the glowing red digits on digital devices. My own first interaction with tech was the TI Little Professor "game" that I got for my birthday in the late 1970's. I remember spending hours playing on that burning through those rectangular 9V batteries.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Takk for sharing that memory, @Bobby Taylor  That picture brings back sweet memories, even though I never had this TI Little Professor

[Sonny Llarena]

Wow!

[Rishabh Jhawar]

We had a computer like this when I was 1-2 years old. My mom tells me I used to crawl under the table and switch it off while someone was working on it—and then it would take ages to start again. I don’t remember doing that, but I do have a faint memory of machines similar to the one in the image below.

Another piece of technology I remember is this kind of video game.