Category Archives: Tech History

‘The Current War’ Helps CTA Celebrate 20th Anniversary of Hall of Fame

Posted on 26 November 2019 by Stewart Wolpin

Perhaps the most consequential period in technology history, the first format war that determined how the world would be powered, is lovingly portrayed in the new film, The Current War. The film depicts the business, technological and personality battles that … Continue reading →

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dCS Launches HiRes Audio Campaign With 1st Legends Award

Posted on 17 October 2019 by Stewart Wolpin

Surrounded by his recording engineer peers, master mastering engineer and 11-time Grammy winner Bob Ludwig was presented the first dCS Legends award at an event Tuesday night during this week’s annual Audio Engineering Society confab in New York. Read the rest of … Continue reading →

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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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