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Staticmaster Polonium 210 Anti-Static Brush 1978
So far so ordinary, but
there’s a few things about the Staticmaster that makes it rather interesting. Firstly
it’s radioactive, that’s
right, if you look closely, just behind the bristles you can see a small
grating with some brown material deposited on the surface. This is the radioactive
element and it creates a ‘field’ of ionised particles up to an inch or two
ahead of the bristles and this has the effect of neutralising the static charge
that makes dust stick to surfaces. Here’s the second surprise,
the radioactive material used in the brush is none other than Polonium 210, the
same stuff used in the recent horrific poisoning incident that resulted in the
death of the Russian ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Polonium 210 emits alpha
particles. These are very weak and cannot penetrate skin so they are relatively
‘safe’ in the contained environment of the brush head. It is also significant
that Polonium 210 has a half life of 139 days, which basically means that virtually
all of the radioactivity disappears within a couple of years of manufacture, as
the polonium turns into an inert isotope of lead, so these old
brushes are now completely harmless. The alpha particles emitted
by Polonium 210 become dangerous when ingested into the body in liquid form or in very fine particles in quite significant
qualities so before you ask, you would need a great many brushes, some pretty sophisticated equipment and very specialised knowledge to create anything dodgy from them.
What Happened to It? Here’s another surprise,
they’re still being made, and this is the only legal way you can obtain
Polonium 210. The brush shown here was made in 1978 by a US company called
Nuclear Products. Nowadays they are manufactured, along with a wide range of
industrial and consumer anti-static products by Amstat Industries. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1965 Original
Price
£8.00 Value Today? £2 Features:
Radioactive anti-static brush Weight: 100g Dimensions: 125 x 30 x 20 mm Made in: USA Hen’s Teeth (10
rarest): 1 Seiko EF302G Voicememory 1980
Inside the unit, which is
the size and shape of a standard telephone handset, there’s a chunky
loudspeaker and microphone and on a densely packed circuit board there’s at
least half a dozen microchips. To illustrate just how far this technology has progressed I recently picked up a voice recorder built into the top of a pen. It had a single microchip, microscopic speaker/mike and a 1-minute recording time, which probably doesn’t sound a lot after 20 years of development, but it was purchased from my local ‘Pound ‘ shop, which basically means it cost next to nothing to make What Happened To It? Solid state voice memory recorders have been around for at least the last 15 years but these days apart from cheapie widgets and novelties that turn up in gadget shops and gizmo catalogues this type of stand-alone device is virtually redundant. Voice recording hasn’t gone away, though, it’s just moved on to bigger and better things and it is now a secondary feature in a wide range of other devices, everything from mobile phones to personal organisers now have memos recorders. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1980 Original
Price
£60 Value Today? £10 Features:
analogue
clock with alarm, 4/8 second audio memory, 3-stage volume Power req. 23 x AAA Weight: 100g Dimensions: 195 x 60 x 35 (very approx) Made in: Japan Rarity: 7(1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth) Bio Activity Translator, 1979
Don’t laugh, there is
something to it, and if you change a plant’s environment, by varying the amount
of water and light it gets then the impulses it generates will change. Similarly,
if you shake the plant, or cut off a leave you will get another, usually more
strident type of reaction, which some advocates of the ‘technology’ took to
indicate shock or pain. This particular device was
sold in kit form, for around £18.95, which was a fair sum almost 30 years ago,
and it was quite a challenge to build with dozens of components to solder onto
a printed circuit board. Basically it’s a very sensitive amplifier, connected
via various filtering circuits to a voltage-controlled oscillator that makes all
the noises. It has a built-in speaker, or you can connect it up to your hi-fi
system, to really hear your vegetation scream! It’s battery powered and there
are just two connections, one to a spike that goes into the soil, the other is
a conductive pad in a spring clip that attaches to a leaf. Just switch it on and
tease you plant and you’ll be rewarded with a string of notes that were mostly
quite annoying though to be fair on occasions it could be quite tuneful. What happened to it? Bioactivity remains a very
active area of research but its application in home entertainment was always
going to be limited, not least because most plants are not that melodic.
Similar devices have popped up from time to time and perhaps with the current
resurgence of interest in greenery and plant welfare it may be time for a revival.
GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1979 Original
Price
£18.95 (supplied in kit form) Value Today? £50 Features:
voltage
controlled amplifier and envelope modulated pulse generator, coupled to a voltage-controlled
oscillator Power req. 2 x 4.5 volt cycle lamp batteries Weight: 700g Dimensions: 198 x 145 x 86mm (very approx) Made in: Jeremy Lord Synthesisers, London SW16 Rarity: 9 (1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth) Stylophone 1967
It was basically a
monophonic -- you could only play one note at a time -- electronic organ,
played by moving a wired ‘stylus’ across a printed metal keyboard, completing a
simple circuit. The sound was very distinctive, especially with the ‘vibrato’
switched on, and it famously featured on several 70s pop hits, including David
Bowie’s Space Oddity. For most of the time it was on sale it was associated
with Rolf Harris, who helped to launch it on his TV show and made several
records featuring the instrument. Only two models were ever
produced, the ‘Pocket’, shown here (also available in white and brown) and the
larger and more advanced 350S, though there were countless copies and clones made
in the Far East. When it first went on sale it cost an amazing £8 18s 6d (eight
pounds, eighteen shillings and sixpence, or around £8.92) which is more than
£100 at today’s prices. This one is in
fairly average condition, found on ebay a few years ago for £10, but it did
come in its original box. Nowadays a really pristine example could set you back
£100 or more but it is still possible to buy Stylophones for between £55 and
£150; these are the real deal, made in the 70’s either refurbished or ‘New’ old
stock that for some reason was never sold.
What Happened to it? It was basically a toy and this is a remarkably fickle market; musical tastes also change very quickly and the Stylophone ‘sound’ became passé. The development of much more sophisticated electronic instruments also played a part in its eventual demise; first generation synthesisers were just starting to appear at this time and the Stylophone’s limited repertoire sealed its doom. Every so often it is rediscovered and several contemporary bands have dabbled with it. Stylophones will always be a popular collectable, however, and if you want to find out more, maybe buy one or just relive that rich distinctive sound then pop along to the Stylophone collector’s web site GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1967 Original
Price
£8 18s 6d Value Today? £50 Features:
Single
octave keyboard, 4-transistor oscillator/amplifier, internal speaker, amplifier
output, volume control (later models) Power req. single 9v PP3 Weight: 300g Dimensions: 158 x 40 x 100 (very approx) Made in: UK ) Rarity: 7 (1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth) AlphaTantel Prestel Terminal 1979
Prestel or ViewData as it was generically known was developed by the British Post Office in the 1970s. It was an interactive video text system, loosely based on Teletext technology, sharing the same 40 x 24 text character display format. Prestel users had to pay a subscription to access information and a number of journalists (and I was one of them) were recruited by ‘IPs' or Information Providers to generate the content for the system. This ranged from the latest news and stock information to simple games, technology articles (my department) and buyer’s guides. Prestel could also be used to send messages to other subscribers -- early email -- there were forums and what we would now call chat lines and users could even upload their own personal pages (forerunners of YouTube, MySpace) The AlphaTantel unit here was used to input and upload material to IP via the main server computer in London; this was then edited and ‘mirrored’ on a number of regional servers on a network that is uncannily similar to the Internet (albeit on a much smaller scale). As you can see it has a crude calculator style keyboard and entering more than a few lines of text was a long and tedious business. On the plus side it was quite easy to use and all it needed was a mains connection and a telephone socket (old style multi-way jack); the TV connected to a aerial socket on the back or if you were really flash you could use a monitor as it has an RGB output socket. It had a built-in modem, which dialled up the server and established the connection at a blistering 1200 baud. There was also a printer port and a DIN socket for connecting the unit to an audio cassette recorder, for recording data. What Happened to it? Quite simply the Post office and the various IPs were greedy and priced it out of business. Substantial hardware costs and subscription charges were on top of normal call rates when you were online, so you had to be fairly well off, especially if the call involved a long distance connection. On top of that most IPs charged by the page, up to 99 pence in some cases (and that was when a quid was worth something…). Prestel hung around for around 10 years and the Post Office finally closed it down in 1991, not that anyone noticed. Nevertheless, this now forgotten technology laid the foundations of the Internet and the next time you hear about some whizzy new web feature there is a fair chance that Prestel was doing it twenty years ago. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1979 Original
Price
£200 Value Today? £100 Features:
QWERTY
keyboard, built-in 1200/75 baud modem, 15-pin D-Sub printer port, RGB video
out, RF video out, tape/data adaptor port Power req. 220-230 volt AC mains Weight: 2.4kg Dimensions: 270 x 55 x 170 (very approx) Made in: UK Tantel Products, Ely) Rarity: 9 (1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth)
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Here’s a truly weird, wonderful and rather appropriate gadget from the late 1970s with some bizarre contemporary connections.
It’s an anti-static brush, used to de-dustify things like vinyl records and
photographic film.
This rather uninspiring object is what I believe to be one
of the very first examples of a solid stage digital audio recorder, in other
words a very distant relative of today’s microchip based MP3 players. Not that
you could use this particular device to record many tunes, in fact the maximum
storage capacity was a paltry 8 seconds, at the lowest quality, and 4 seconds
at the higher setting, and both are pretty dire. Nevertheless, it was quite
something back then and it’s the technology we are concerned with. Don’t forget
this was at a time when the only way for the average Joe to record their voice
was to use a tape recorder. The analogue clock is a nice touch, sadly it’s not
coupled to the voice memo but it does have an alarm that bleeps at the
appointed hour
I’m guessing that few
dustygizmos visitors will have seen one of these before since so few of them
were ever built. It’s a Jeremy Lord Bio Activity Translator, a device that converts
the tiny electrical impulses generated by all living organisms, into sounds. It
was part of a brief fad for hooking plants and small creatures up to electronic
devices in an effort to communicate with them or try and understand what they
were saying...
No collection of 60s and
70s technology would be complete without a Stylophone. It was invented in 1967
by British pianist Brian Jarvis who along with brothers Bert and Ted Coleman
formed a company called Dubreq to manufacture them. By the time the craze
fizzled out in the late 70s some 3-million had been sold.
It is said that there’s nothing new under the Sun and this
little box dating from very early 1980s proves it, as far as data
communications are concerned. A good ten years before the Internet went public
it was possible to download information, software and play games through a
phone line and display it on a TV or monitor screen.