Category Archives: Tech History

Flashback 1979: Sony’s Iconic Walkman Is Born

Posted on 1 July 2019 by Stewart Wolpin

Forty years ago today Sony introduced a portable cassette player that would forever change the way the world experienced music on-the-go. That player, of course, is the iconic Walkman. Read the rest of this history story here at Sound & … Continue reading →

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25 Years Ago Today: DirecTV Is Born

Posted on 17 June 2019 by Stewart Wolpin

On a sweltering Friday morning, June 17, 1994, Lemoyne Martin strode past a queue of around 150 other potential buyers and a phalanx of media at Cowboy Maloney’s 1-55 North store. He handed over nearly $1,000 to tuxedo-clad salesman, Ty … Continue reading →

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How the Consumer Technology Industry Was Almost Never Born

Posted on 3 April 2019 by Stewart Wolpin

What we now call the consumer technology industry was born November 30, 1920, when the first consumer electronics product, the two-piece RA-DA, the first commercially produced radio designed for the mass market, rolled off the Westinghouse assembly line in East … Continue reading →

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A/V In ’18: 5 Foundational Changes & 11 Newsmakers

Posted on 14 December 2018 by Stewart Wolpin

Traditionally, A/V product categories don’t tend to be very newsworthy outside of the latest updated versions of existing products and technologies. But 2018 unusually saw five major foundational changes in audio and video. See the rest of this 2019 recap … Continue reading →

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50 Years Ago, Doug Engelbart’s Mother of All Demos Changed Personal Computing Tech Forever

Posted on 9 December 2018 by Stewart Wolpin

² Imagine someone demonstrating a jet plane 15 years before Kitty Hawk. Imagine someone demonstrating a smartphone 15 years before the first cellular networks were even launched. Imagine someone demonstrating a controlled nuclear chain reaction 15 years before Einstein formulated … Continue reading →

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Flashback 1998: A Compressed History of the Digital Music Player

Posted on 26 October 2018 by Stewart Wolpin

A momentous occasion in the evolution of recorded music occurred 20 years ago when a California district court ruled to allow the sale of a curious new portable music player in the face of opposition from the Recording Industry Association … Continue reading →

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The Precarious Cyber Security Regulatory Balancing Act

Posted on 20 August 2018 by Stewart Wolpin

What to do about hacking and the misuse of major social media platforms by foreign actors in U.S. elections? Much of the sturm und drang over potential cyber security solutions boils down to one compound question: should the government step … Continue reading →

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Flashback 1948: Ampex Unveils First Magnetic Tape Recorder

Posted on 5 April 2018 by Stewart Wolpin

Our modern AV world arguably all stems from a single product: the Ampex 200A, the first successful commercial magnetic audiotape recorder, which debuted 70 years ago this month. Read the rest of this post on Sound & Vision here.

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Hedy Lamarr Finally Gets Her Spread Spectrum Due in ‘Bombshell’

Posted on 6 January 2018 by Stewart Wolpin

A review of a new documentary on Hedy Lamarr, movie star and inventor of frequency hopping, aka spread spectrum, the technology that makes all wireless communication possible.

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Happy 161st Birthday, Nikola Tesla

Posted on 6 July 2017 by Stewart Wolpin

My greetings to Nikola Tesla, with some additional museum and movie news, on Huffington Post.

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