Tag Archives | Nostalgia

Help a Technologizer Reader Digitize a 1938 Family Recording

I realize that I’m fairly well-informed about technology. But to borrow a line from a favorite former boss of mine, what I don’t know could fill a warehouse. Fortunately, the combined wisdom of the mighty Technologizer community can answer virtually any tech question. Including this one, I hope.

Technologizer reader Chuck Mayper has a phonograph (78rpm, I assume–or is it a 45?) from June 1938. It’s a recording of a family event. He’d like to digitize it, of course–a job than can normally be done with something like an Ion USB turntable. But both sides of this record have “Start Here” notations which seem to tell the listener to place the needle on the inside edge, not the outside one.

Continue Reading →

8 comments

iPhones and iPads Get a DOS Emulator [Update: Gone]

(Update: Word got around, I guess. iDOS is now gone from the App Store. Original post continues below.)

Either I’m dreaming, someone in Cupertino messed up, or Apple has seriously relaxed the rules of what flies in the iOS App Store. For $1, you can now download iDOS, a DOS emulator for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Touch Arcade broke the news earlier today, and I initially figured it was a fluke, like the accidental approval of a Nintendo emulator last year. But for now, the app is still available, and I just downloaded it directly on my iPhone and from within iTunes. iDos includes two games, Ms. Pac-Man and Dig Dug, plus its own virtual keyboard and keypad instead of the stock iOS inputs. I tried Dig Dug on an iPhone 3GS, and it’s a little slow, but I’m hoping for better results when I try it on the iPad later today.

Continue Reading →

4 comments

Happy Birthday, NES

On October 18th, 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System made its US debut. By any measure, it was a gigantic success–so much so that it brought the entire video game business out of the doldrums it had been mired in since Atari and other early titans had crashed and burned.

As is our wont, we’re celebrating this anniversary with a guided tour of the console’s history by our favorite technology archaeologist, Benj Edwards.  He spotlights some of the surprising stuff that the NES has inspired–from oddball controllers to some mighty peculiar (but entertaining) do-it-yoursef projects.

View Nintendo Entertainment System Oddities slideshow.

No comments

Nintendo Entertainment System Oddities

25 years ago today, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the US. The iconic console broke sales records, revived the video game industry from the brink of death, and influenced a generation of US kids. It also gave us classic franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Metroid.

You may have read plaudits and platitudes from other publications on this notable anniversary, but we here at Technologizer have decided to forgo dry historical analysis in favor of a look at all things odd in the world of NES. So without further ado, let’s pull back the curtain on our gallery of NES oddities.

10 comments

Look Ma, No Hands! A Brief History of Self-Driving Cars

Less than two weeks ago, I attended a talk by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Schmidt spoke about a profoundly computer-augmented future, and said that there was no reason why super-safe self-driving cars couldn’t be built–in fact, he said he couldn’t understand why humans were allowed to drive automobiles at all. (As is fairly common with Schmidt comments, it wasn’t entirely clear where that comment sat on the continuum from utter frivolity to deadly seriousness.)

At the time, I wondered whether Google wanted to control the computers that controlled the world’s cars. Now we know the answer: It does, or at least it wants to play an active role in inventing the technology.

As the New York Times’ John Markoff reports and a Google blog post discloses, Google has been working on developing cars that can drive themselves. One such vehicle, a modified Prius, motored its way down the coast from San Francisco to Santa Monica. (Its route apparently came within a couple of miles of my house–maybe I shared the road with it.) The idea may stretch the definition of Google’s mission–“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”–but the noble goals include saving lives, reducing pollution, and generally making travel more efficient.

The Google blog post says that its autopilot vehicles have logged more than 140,000 miles to date, which presumably means the project has been going on for quite a while. It sounds cool, but I’m unclear why it’s apparently been secret until now, or why Schmidt spoke so cryptically and so recently of laws restricting the roads to self-driving cars without mentioning that Google was building them.

Google isn’t the only outfit working on this idea–a few months ago, I went for a very brief ride in a self-driving, self-parking Volkswagen developed at Stanford University. And the basic idea has been fodder for magazines such as Popular Mechanics and Popular Science for decades. Herewith, a few examples from the past seventy-seven years ago–none of which seem to have gotten as far as Google’s experiments.

Continue Reading →

22 comments

Super-Strange Mario Bros.

In the beginning, there was Mario.  Just Mario–the humble handyman who chased after Donkey Kong. But on September 13th, 1985, he appeared in a blockbuster game whose title gave him an honorific he’s proudly kept ever since: Super Mario.

Technologizer’s resident game historian, Benj Edwards, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Nintendo megafranchise Super Mario Bros. with a look at some of the weirdest Super Mario variations, spinoffs, and tributes. May the little guy continue to inspire us all for at least another quarter century.

View Super Mario Oddities slideshow

4 comments

Super Mario Oddities

Super Mario Bros.–that classic of classics–turns 25 years old today. On September 13th, 1985, Nintendo released the seminal video game for the Famicom (the Japanese equivalent to the NES), and it made its way over to the States early the next year. With the possible exception of Pac-Man, no video game franchise symbolizes the art form more completely.

Since Super Mario Bros. has touched the lives of so many people (it was the top-selling video game of all time until Wii Sports eclipsed it recently), many works of art, culture, and merchandise have been inspired by it. In the spirit of this anniversary, let’s take a look at some of the oddest ones.

4 comments

Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Beyond

They’re some of the most-used software in history. Some of them were written by legendary techies, such as Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. They’re a tradition that’s lasted for decades and shows no sign of ending. And yet they get no respect–in part because very few people stop to give them much thought at all.

I speak of the little games that come with operating systems–Windows Solitaire being the most obvious example–and it’s time they got their day in the sun. Benj Edwards has rounded up twenty of them, including ones you’ve played (I still miss Windows Reversi) and ones I suspect you’ve never heard about (Gorillas?).

View The Great Operating System Games slideshow.

No comments