The Most Popular, Most Quickly Adopted Gadget In History

[Gravdigr]

from Y!Tech

[wolf]

I think it's an economic issue rather than goodness of technology. CD players stayed in the $300 and up range for years after their introduction. I think I finally got one, a Sony CD Walkman, in the 1990s. Didn't own one before that ... still had a cassette player in the car and a cassette Walkman. Actually, I still have a cassette player in the car. And I still use it. I ended up with a bunch of cassette tapes from the clean out of crazynurse's house. They belonged to her husband, so they are over 20 years old. And they play just fine ... tape of The Wall Live in Berlin I and another friend taped off the radio.

I had my first cassette/radio boombox in the mid 80s. It cost me $44 at Silo. So, yes, it cost more than an ounce of weed.

My first VCR (VHS) was around $350 and it had a wired remote. Really fancy!

[Clodfobble]

I don't think it's fair to separate color TV adoption from black-and-white TV adoption. It's an upgrade of an existing technology, not a new gadget.

[ZenGum]

CD players do so poorly because there's the technology investment trap.

If you already have lots of records and a good ... what were they ... phonograph ... to play it, you'd be reluctant to change over, if it meant having to buy all your albums again on CD.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

CD players do so poorly because there's the technology investment trap.

If you already have lots of records and a good ... what were they ... phonograph ... to play it, you'd be reluctant to change over, if it meant having to buy all your albums again on CD.

Yeah. People gave me CDs as birthday gifts before I had a player. When I had about 5, I invested, and ran turntable, cassette deck, and CD payer in parallel.

[Blueflare]

Some time in the 80s my parents bought a beast of a machine that plays records, CDs and tapes. So they could play all three formats. It's still going, too.
We also still have a black and white TV, which worked fine right up until they turned off the old analogue TV signal.
I was surprised that it was the boombox. Personally, I don't think I have ever seen a boombox in real life. Before my time, or just a mostly American thing? Or both?
Hope I made y'all feel really old now.

[SteveDallas]

I was going to go with the stick.. acquisition cost very low, easy to replace, versatile, etc.

[ZenGum]

If we include non electronic things ... I guess the stick took several thousands of years to catch on and be widely used.

I suggest that the gadget which made the fastest inroads into consumer households was the Rubik's cube. From no-one to damn near everyone in less than a year.

[pastortoy]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

I suggest that the gadget which made the fastest inroads into consumer households was the Rubik's cube. From no-one to damn near everyone in less than a year.

One of the greatest toys ever.

[ZenGum]

I saw a kid walking down a supermarket aisle playing with one last week.

[richlevy]

Man, I loved the designs of boom boxes. All the new tablets, phones, etc, try to have that low key, curvy, sci-fi look. Boom boxes were always designed to look like the control panel of a space shuttle. And the cheaper they were, the more buttons, slides, and dials they had, usually set in a faceplate that looked like a circuit board designed by a graduate from a clown college. They were pure techno bling, an electronic peacock display that had no bearing on the quality of the electronics.

No wonder they were so popular. Just like some cars look fast just standing still, some boom boxes just looked loud.

I think someone should make a business out of taking old boom boxes and inserting smartphone docks into them so that we can have our MP3's and our retro style. Maybe a conversion kit that replaces a cassette door with a smartphone cradle.

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Maybe a conversion kit that replaces a cassette door with a smartphone cradle.

That's not far off in spirit from the iPad-enabled Hungry Hungry Hippos that Thinkgeek did for their April Fool's special.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

If we include non electronic things ... I guess the stick
took several thousands of years to catch on and be widely used.

I suggest that the gadget which made the fastest inroads into consumer households
was the Rubik's cube. From no-one to damn near everyone in less than a year.

The NY Times has an interesting article about the resurgence of the cube...

NY Times
DOUGLAS QUENQUA
8/7/12

Rubik’s Cube Twists Back Into Limelight

He took 1 minute 46 seconds to study a jumbled cube,
then pulled a blindfold over his eyes and started to twist.
Forty-eight seconds later, Riley lifted his blindfold and smiled.
<snip>

And in a sign of how affectionately the cube is viewed in techie culture,
Google in 2010 donated its computing resources to determine “God’s number,”
the minimum number of moves required to solve the cube from any position,
if one uses the most efficient method.
In 1980, it was thought to be 52; Google’s computers place it at 20.
<snip>