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dustygizmos is the start of a modest attempt to catalogue one small corner of the electronics revolution of the last 50 years.

Don’t get me wrong, modern gadgets are great and who amongst us could live without our mobile phones, pocket PCs, MP3 players, GPS route finders, digital cameras and a zillion and one other widgets that apparently make life easier, more pleasant and productive? But there’s something missing, flashy widgets with winking lights are everywhere and in my opinion they are not as much fun as they used to be...

For me the golden age of gadgetry began in the early 1960s and came to an end in the late 80s, or roughly the time between the introduction of the transistor and the point when the word digital crept into the language.

In the early sixties transistors re-wrote the rules. Until that time radios and televisions had been expensive, heavy and unreliable wooden boxes full of fragile temperamental and smelly components that got very hot and like as not gave you a nasty shock if you got too close

Transistors changed everything and during the early 1960s factories in America, Europe and the Far East were falling over themselves to develop exciting ways to utilise the new technology and this continued for the next 30 years.

By the end of the 70s the microchip had started to take over and these fantastically versatile and complex devices could be designed and programmed to do just about anything.

It was the end of an era, though, the point at which electronic gadgets stopped being interesting pieces of technology and engineering and became soulless 'black boxes', for the most part conceived by committees, designed by computers and built by machines.

Gadgets have become disposable commodities with a limited life expectancy and nowadays you simply throw them away or replace them when they go wrong, or something better comes along.

Gadgets from the glory days are different, if they went wrong, which they tended to do with alarming regularity, there’s was a fair chance that someone handy with a screwdriver and soldering iron could fix them. They also were relatively expensive and mostly built to last. A few of them have survived and that’s where dustygizmos, and you come in.

If you have an interesting gadget or gadget-related story (preferably with a photograph or two) or if you know of a website that we can link to then we would really like to hear from you so we can help to preserve the products and memories from this extraordinary period of history.

The site is still under construction so please forgive the gaps and the odd dodgy link. I hope to get everything together soon, so thank you for your patience, and above all, thanks for looking!

Rick Maybury

All information on this web site is provided as is without warranty of any kind. Neither dustygizmos.com nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from your choosing to use any of the information contained herein.