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CDV-700 Civil Defence Geiger Counter 1960 - 68
They were first produced in the early 1960s, at
the height of the cold war. Hundreds of thousands of them were made for the US
Civil Defense Corps, to be kept in fallout shelters and issued in the aftermath
of a nuclear attack. Several different models were made and the manufacturing
was contracted out to specialist companies, including Electo-Neutronics Inc
(ENI), Universal Atomics, Victoreen, Anton and Lionel, the latter being better
known to many Americans as a maker of toy trains. The CDV-700 was the most sensitive model; it
uses a Geiger Muller tube and can easily detect low levels of background
radiation up to lethal doses. Other models, like the CDV-715 and 717 were only
capable of sensing very high levels and if you ever saw the needle move on one
of those you were probably going to die... No expense was spared in their design and
construction. They were built to last; those that survived mostly still work,
or can be easily bought back to life as the electronic circuitry is very simple
(most had just two or three transistors). They run off standard 'D', type torch
batteries that last for several weeks in continuous use. The Geiger tube is
housed in the detachable probe handle and it has a clever rotating shield that
allows the user to discriminate between Beta (nasty but doesn't travel very
far) and Gamma (really bad and gets through almost anything) radiation. It was
meant to be easy to use and came with an instruction manual that could be
understood by untrained personnel. Calibration was simple, on the side of the
unit is a 'Check Source' label containing a small piece of radioactive material
(Radium D/E or Lead 210) and when the probe is bought close to it, the meter on
the top can be adjusted to give the correct reading. Over the years the
radioactive material has decayed - the half-life of the source is around 22
years -- so they are no longer reliable but there's still enough activity
enough to give a decent reading. What Happened To It? CDV Geiger Counters, Survey Meters and
dosimeters were produced throughout the 1960s and the stocks were scrupulously
maintained - regularly tested and recalibrated -- until the mid 1990s when they
were gradually phased out. Local and Federal government bodies auctioned off
stocks and many of them ended up in private hands, schools and colleges, which
is where I come in. A few years a go I bought up a few CDV-700s, mostly 'as
new' unissued stock, which I have been steadily selling off on my
anythingradioactive web site. Sadly they are coming to an end now but you can
still find them on ebay in the US. The only problem is they are quite heavy and
the shipping costs can be prohibitive, moreover in some states the export is
banned, probably due to the radioactive check source labels. The great thing about CDV 700s is that they are
a practical gadget and (mostly) still work. You would be surprised how much
radioactivity there is out there, everything from the hands and dials on old
watches and clocks with luminous hands (radium paint was used up until the
1950s), glassware and porcelain that uses uranium tints and glazing, old gas
mantles (doped with thorium to increase brightness) and even granite kerbstones
which can contain traces of naturally occurring uranium ore. I doubt that you will see very many of them
here in the UK but if you do, it's not a silly price and it still works grab
yourself a little piece of Cold War history. GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1960 Original Price £ unknown Value Today? £30 - 100, depending on condition Features: Single switch off x100, x10 & x1
range, detachable probe with beta shield, carry strap, water-resistant case,
three range settings, covering 0 - 0.5, 0 - 5 and 0 - 50 mR/h (millirontgens
per hour), check source label, high impedance headphone Power req. 2 or 4 D cells (depending on make) Weight: 1.5kg ex batteries Dimensions: 120 x 210 170 Made in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Oric Atmos Home Computer, 1984
It was a mad time and new computers were coming out of the
woodwork; during peak times there could be two or three new models a week.
Inevitably most of them disappeared without trace, usually after a year or so,
deservedly so in many cases. Far too many of those early machines were launched
in haste; they were often buggy, poorly made, lacked software support or were
just another dull me-too product. A few – very few – deserved better and in my
opinion one of the models that should have gone on to bigger and better things
was the Oric Atmos. It looked like a professional product, made in a factory
and not someone’s garden shed; it had a proper keyboard, proper connection to
the outside world, a whopping 64k of RAM (there was also a 16k model but it was
next to useless), decent sound that included several built-in effects, and the
price was quite reasonable. What Happened to it? No prizes for guessing, there were a fair few games for the Atmos
but nothing on the scale of the ones being written for the likes of Spectrum,
Atari and Commodore machines. Back then games were all that mattered, and
although some for the Atmos were very good, in general they weren’t the slick
and hugely popular headline grabbers that made the other machines so
successful. One of the reasons I liked the Atmos so much was the keyboard and
the fact that it could be so easily coupled up to a printer and disc drive.
There was even a couple of half-decent word processors. Sadly this was not
enough to sustain the machine and the makers, Oric International, went into
receivership in 1985. My Atmos was an early review sample; for a few months it had a
fair bit of use but something newer and shinier must have come alone, it was put
back into its box and has remained in my loft ever since. My guess is it still
works but for some reason the power supply has disappeared, along with a small
collection of program cassettes. This neatly illustrates one of the majpor pitfalls
of collecting old PCs; they really need to work and you must have a supply of
software to make it worthwhile. Nevertheless, it’s an undeveloped market,
especially for more obscure models like this, which can often be found very
cheaply, but more than anything else, they are a little bit of history and
played a very important part in the development of the personal computer; who
knows, one day they could become quite valuable… GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1984 Original Price
£170 Value Today?
£25 Features:
6502A processor, 48k RAM, 16k ROM, 200 x 240 pixel display (text 28
line/40 characters), 8 foreground &
8 background colours, QWERTY keyboard, TV/UHF display output, cassette
interface, printer, Expansion & RGB ports, sound: 15Hz - 62 KHz (7 Octaves)
3 channels + 4 sound effects (explode, ping, shoot, zap) Power req. 7 volt DC (supplied mains adaptor) Weight: 0.8kg Dimensions: 280 x 180 x 55 mm Made in: UK Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Yamaha PortaSound PC-100,
1981,
It was all thanks to the
Yamaha PortaSound PC-100, which I was reviewing for a short-lived technology
magazine that I used to edit, called Next… Those three tunes and a dozen or so
others were provided with the keyboard, which used the innovative Playcard
system. The tunes were coded into a magnetic strip that ran along the bottom
edge of the card, which also had the notation and words, for those that could
actually read music. The card was ‘swiped’ in a slot along the top panel, which
programmed the keyboard to play the tune, but here’s the clever bit. An LED lit
up next to each note as it was played and if you selected the ‘Free Tempo’ mode
all you had to do to learn a tune was to hit each key as it lit up, and this
also controlled the speed or tempo. Nowadays this system is old hat but back
then it was nothing short of revolutionary. It really worked too, and as you
got more proficient you could go solo and switch off the lights. Needless to say it
doesn’t actually teach you to play a keyboard instrument, just to memorise
tunes parrot fashion, though I have to say that after digging it out of the
loft and trying it again, and after a gap of more than 20 years, not only did
the PC100 and most of the Playcards still work, my Saturday Night Fever still
wasn’t half bad… What Happened To It? Yamaha had high hopes for
the Playcard System and I seem to remember there was even talk of it becoming a
standard format for keyboard instruments. Clearly that never happened and apart
form anything else, magnetic stripes can and do wear out. A couple of my cards
are too dog-eared to play now and solid state storage devices do a much better
job but many of the features in this keyboard have gone on to bigger and better
things. The fact that it still works says a lot about the build quality of
these devices, it also helps that it came with a sturdy rigid carry case. By today’s standards it
is very basic and the range of instruments (which all sound a bit samey) and
effects are quite limited but back then home keyboards were still a novelty,
and quite expensive. As a result I don’t think many of them were sold, and I
suspect they had fairly short lives so this sort of thing is probably quite
rare but not especially valuable. It’s unlikely to become a serious collectable
but they’re fun to have around so if you see one going cheap, and it’s a
runner, grab it, you never know… GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1981 Original Price
£350 Value Today?
£25 Features:
10 rhythms, 10 instruments, auto bass chord, arpeggio, Playcard system, variable
tempo, trasnposer, sustain Power req.
9 – 12 volt DC, (6 x C cells or supplied mains adaptor) Weight: 2kg Dimensions:
600 x 180 x 35 mm Made in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Psion Organiser II XP, 1986
By current standards it’s laughably crude, the Pison II was based on an 8-bit Hitachi processor running at just 0.9MHz. It came with 32kB of ROM and a choice of 8, 16, 32 or 64k RAM and featured a simple 2-line LCD display, yet this small box of tricks with its calculator type keyboard was nothing short of revolutionary. Today’s programmers would be amazed at how many functions were squeezed into such a modest device.
It came with a built-in alarm clock, calendar, calculator and
databank, but the killer feature was OPL or the Organiser Programming Language,
which meant anyone with a modicum of programming skills, could develop
applications for it; there was even a simple word processor. Two slots on the
back were for expansion ROM/PROM cartridges or Datapaks and there’s a RS232
port on the top, which could be used to connect the Psion II to a host of
external devices, from printers and telephone diallers to barcode scanners. The
latter made it particularly popular with business users, for stock control and
so on and Marks and Spencer were early and enthusiastic users. What Happened to it? Quite simply it evolved, the Psion II was
always a bit specialist and it’s appeal was a bit limited for the average Joe,
if only because it was so groundbreaking, but the big breakthrough came in 1989
with the launch of the MC400, followed by the Series 3 and 5 models, which look
like proper pocket computers, complete with larger screens and QWERTY type
keyboards. This one costs me just £12 and I found it
gathering dust in the corner of Brighton Junk shop, complete with a full set of
manuals. It's in great condition and it works too, and the LCD screen would put some of today’s notebooks
to shame for legibility, especially in bright sunlight. There’s still a few
enthusiasts out there using them, and plenty of links on the web for
downloading software, applications and even a few games, so unlike many early
computers this one can still be used, and it’s a guaranteed scene-stealer in
the office or down the pub, the next time some smart Alec hikes out their
latest shiny smartphone. GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1986 Original Price
£139 Value Today?
£10-20 Features:
2-line 6cm LCD screen, 16k RAM, 2 memory cartridge slots, slide cover,
diary, alarm clock, data bank, calculator, RS232 port, Power req.
9V PP£ battery Weight: 300g Dimensions:
78 x 145 x 30mm (whd) Made in: UK Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5 Amstrad CPC 464 Colour, 1984
Alan Sugar’s particular talent was to cut
through the crap and deliver affordable, well thought out products that mostly
worked fairly well. The CPC 464 was a prime example, whilst other PC manufacturers
had you messing around with optional cassette decks, TV modulators and lots of
tangly cables Amstrad’s offering came with the tape deck built in, and its own
dedicated colour (or mono green screen) monitor, so you didn’t have to tie up
the family TV. That was a really big deal because back then most households
only had one telly. You could even buy an adaptor that turned the Amstrad
monitor into a TV, now that was something! The CPC 464 was nothing special in computing terms, it was based
on the ubiquitous Zilog Z80 processor that most other PCs at the time were
using, it ran at 40MHz, there was a useful 42kb of user RAM a\available and it
had decent graphics and audio facilities, plus a good assortment of ports for
peripherals. It’s main selling point, though was that it attracted a lot of
interest from the games companies so there was a really good selection of
software available, which helped it to sell over 2 million units in the 6 years
it was in production. I have to admit that back then I wasn’t a fan, I was into the more
versatile Commodore and Atari products, but I can see the appeal of the 464 and
looking back at it now it’s easy to see why it was so successful. I picked this one up at a flea market in Brighton and it cost me
£10, for another tenner I could have ad the monitor as well, though the chap
selling it was fairly certain it wasn’t working, and I had my hands full. It’s
in pretty good shape and it still boots up, though I haven’t got around to
getting hold of any programs so a full test run will have to wait. What Happened to it? The CPC 464 went the way of all non-PC home computers, by the late
1980s the IBM PC and Microsoft’s DOS operating system had begin their takeover
of the computer market. Amstrad went on to build PCs as well but nor before
they’d had a successful run with their classic PCW word processor. Sinclair,
Commodore, Atari, Tandy and many others limped on to the mid 80s but the open
licensing of the IBM design, which allowed just about anyone to set up business
as a computer manufacturer, and the standardisation of Microsoft’s operating
system wiped out most of the competition (Apple being the only notable
exception), Although a lot of CPC 464s were made my guess is that most of them
ended up in skips, but they’re by no means rare and they turn up regularly on
ebay and in car boot sales for a few pounds. They could become collectable one
day but I suggest that you go for a pristine working example, with a monitor
and plenty of software. GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1984 Original Price
£400 Value Today?
£10 Features:
Zilog Z80 8-bit CPU, 64kb RAM, 16kb video RAM, 640 x 200 (2 colour), 320
x 200 (4 colour) 160 x 200 (16 colour),
3-channel sound, Ports: printer, bus, joystick, floppy, monitor, headphone,
power, built-in cassette deck Power req.
5 volts DC (external mains adaptor) Weight: 2.5kg Dimensions:
570 x 65 x 165mm (whd) Made in: Korea Hen's Teeth (10 rarest):
2
Giant Light Bulbs 1960/70?
The bulbs in question are not your common or garden variety,
they’re huge, between 5 and 10 times the size of your typical 60 watter and as
you can see from the photograph, these two examples are a good deal bigger than
the current crop of energy saving jobbies. Unfortunately I have little inkling what they’re for. They’re
industrial quality and I suspect meant for street lighting, floodlights or some
such. I would like to think the one on the right is from a lighthouse, but I
honestly have no idea. They tend not to have much in the way of markings on them,
maybe just a model number, though the one on the right does have the maker’s
name – GEC England, the light output – 5000 watts, and what I presume is the
voltage – 110-120. I’m fascinated by their construction, real ship in a bottle stuff,
with their ornate webs of filaments, and huge insulators and connectors and
judging from the materials and design, I am guessing – and it really is only a
guess – these were made some time from the 1960s onwards. I’ve been tempted
once or twice to hook them up to a power supply and see what happens but
without more data I haven’t the nerve, or the inclination to blow fuses. The
two shown here turned up in a box of glass chemical apparatus bought at a large
antiques fair in Surrey, I think I paid around £10 for the lot. Others have
come in boxes of valves and other old electronic wizwangs that I come across
from time to time. What happened to them? For all that I know bulbs like these are still being manufactured.
I’m not aware of any major advances in lighting technology at this end of the
scale and I can’t see a bunch of LEDs or compact fluorescents being suitable
for the kind of applications I imagine these were designed for. I really don’t
know and one day I must look into the whole subject. There seems to be a small
but thriving community of serious collectors on the web (http://electriclights.tripod.com/bulbs.htm),
though most of them appear to be interested in collecting consumer light bulbs.
But it really doesn’t matter. They’re totally useless and I have no idea what,
if anything, they’re worth but they are great things to have, provided it’s not
your job to keep them dusted and polished… GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1960s onwards Original Price unknown but probably very expensive Value Today? £5 - £50, who knows? Features: They glow and probably get very hot… Power req.
Left: 110 – 120 Weight: Left: 0.8kg Dimensions:
140mm dia bulb x 270mm Made in: England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7
Philips Electronic Engineer Kit EE8, 1963
Sadly the reality was a little different. I had by then become
reasonably accomplished at building simple electronics circuits from plans in
magazines and the kit’s offerings were rather tame, to say the least. There
were 22 ‘projects’ in all, which included one and two transistor radios that never worked, a Morse
key trainer, gramophone amplifier, flashing light, automatic night light and a rain
and moisture sensor. Nevertheless, it was good fun and the main feature was that
you could build an electronic circuit then tear it down and build something
else. Unlike other electronic educational toys of the day you actually
got to play with real components, I seem to remember most of the other kits had
the parts safely sealed inside little transparent plastic boxes. The downside
was that the more delicate components were easily damaged and resistors and capacitors
soon lost their connecting wires through repeated bending. The kit’s design was really clever; a thin card overlay, showing
the position of the components and their interconnections is placed over a
perforated peg-board. You popped spring connectors through the holes and
inserted the components. Sometimes the projects actually worked, though
problems with broken wires and intermittent contacts meant that the failure
rate was high. Nevertheless, this encouraged you track down the fault, which
was probably more educational than building the thing in the first place. What Happened to It? I am not sure when Philips finally pulled the plug on the EE
series of kits but several Dutch
websites mentions kits being made as recently as 2002. Their heyday, though, was
undoubtedly in the 60s and early 70s, when an interest in electronics wasn’t
considered nerdy and this was just before computers and video games came along,
killing interactive, educational and hands-on practical products like this one stone
dead. It’s a great pity because several generations have now grown up without
the faintest idea about what goes on inside all of the electronic gadgets and
widgets they’re buying, or the simple pleasure of building something that
(might) actually work and do something. Needless to say I bought this kit from ebay and it was identical
to the one I owned back them. The box and polystyrene container are very well
used but it is around 90 percent complete, which is amazing considering that it
appears to have been very well played with. I was thrilled to find it still had
the original transistors and light dependant resistor (LDR) which in my opinion
was the most exciting thing in the box. This was the core component in a
light-operated switch, a genuinely amazing feat of technology back then. I paid
a little over £30 for it but if you want one in pristine condition you can expect
to pay nearer £100, but for me condition isn’t important, it looks as feels
just like the one I used to own. It’s pure nostalgia, and if I can get hold of
a couple of those flat 4.5 volt ‘lantern’ batteries, I’ll see if I can get
that 2 transistor radio to finally work…
GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1963 Original Price
£20 Value Today?
£20 - £50 Features:
22 projects, key components: 2 x germanium transistors, 1 x germanium
diode, tuning capacitor, loudspeaker, crystal earphone, ferrite rod aerial,
light dependant resistor, choke, resistors, capacitors, potentiometer,
miniature light bulb, heat sink, building board Power req.
2 x 4.5 volt lantern batteries Weight: 1.0kg Dimensions:
(box) 360 x 260 x 60mm Made in: Holland Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7 Cambridge Z88 Notebook Computer 1987
What goes around comes around and over twenty years ago Sir Clive
Sinclair launched a compact notebook PC, called the Cambridge Z88. It had an A4
footprint, weighed less than 1kg, came with a suite of office applications,
used solid state memory instead of a hard drive, data and software are stored
on plug-in memory expansion modules, it comes on more or less instantly and
runs for a whopping 20 hours on a set of standard 4AA batteries Okay, so some things have improved and the Z88 screen is a touch
narrow. In fact it can only display 8-lines of text, though you would be
surprised how easy it is to use for routine tasks like word processing, though
it could be difficult to read in some lighting conditions. Otherwise it really
is quite civilised; the rubber keyboard is actually very good and there’s a
proper serial port so it can communicate with other PCs, printers and modems. The Z88 had a chequered history. The original idea, back in the
early 1980s was to develop a portable version of the hugely popular Spectrum,
but by the mid 80s this had evolved into a portable computer called Pandora,
which then, after a number of revisions became the Z88. But by that time
Sinclair Research was in dire financial straits, thanks largely to the
ill-fated C5 electric vehicle and the computer division was sold to Amstrad. In
1986 Clive Sinclair formed Cambridge Computers and the Z88 was finally unveiled
to the press in February 1987. It was an instant hit and I bought this very one soon after the
launch for the not inconsiderable sum of £300 (I also bought several EPROM
memory modules and an UV ‘eraser’ device, so they could be re-used). This
machine proved ideal for press trips and I must have wrote hundreds of
articles on it during long flights and sleepless nights in distant hotel rooms.
It has probably been around the world several times and it never failed me once.
Much to my astonishment after lying dormant in my loft for at least 10 years,
it powered up first time! What Happened To It? Production finally came to an end in 1989 but in that relatively
short time thousands were sold and believe it or not, there is a hardy band of
enthusiasts still using them. Over the years there’s been a steady stream of
software and hardware upgrades but by the late 80s Cambridge Computers was in
trouble again, the company was sold and Sir Clive turned his attention to electrically
powered bikes. Without further development it was doomed and in any case the Z88
was being overtaken by portable and laptop PCs that by then were becoming
smaller, and cheaper, and more capable. Nevertheless it would take until the
late 90s before really small computers, like the Toshiba Libretto, came
anywhere near matching the Z88 for size, weight and portability. GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1987 Original Price £230 Value Today?
£50 Features:
Zilog Z80 processor, 128kb ROM, 32kb static RAM, (expandable to 3.5Mb),
‘OZ’ operating system, Pipedream word processor/spreadsheet, database, diary,
calendar, calculator, alarm, file manager, data terminal, print manager, BASIC,
640 x 64 pixel LCD display, built in speaker Power req.
4 x AA cell (mains adaptor supplied) Weight: 0.8kg Dimensions:
293 x 207 x 24 mm Made in:
England Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6
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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This is the classic Geiger Counter that has
featured in countless movies and TV programs over the years. Although the
design is more than 50 years old it is still seen from time to time in current
productions, including recent episodes of NCIS. I always have a little chuckle
when I see one on the screen as it is usually accompanied by a 'ticking' sound
as our hero or heroine locates a radioactive source. In fact they have no built
in speaker, just a really weird and long obsolete headphone socket but the
point is, it looks the part.
Back in the early 1980s I worked on one of the UK’s first computer
magazines (Computing Today). I clearly recall the late night and overnight
sessions in the office when exciting new models came in for review. I don’t
think anyone went home for two days when the Commodore PET appeared.
I’m not especially
musical and can just about manage a few fumbling chords on a guitar, but for a brief period
back in the early 1980s I was quite the keyboard virtuoso. My repertoire wasn’t
very extensive, but plonk me in front of a piano and I could rattle out a fair
rendition of Saturday Night Fever, Greensleeves and Aloha Oe…
It hardly seems possible that the Psion
Organiser is now almost a quarter of a century old, and it is difficult to
overstate just how important a milestone it was in the development of personal
computers. This is literally where it all began, for generations of pocket
computers, PDAs, organisers and smartphones. 
Credit for kick-starting the personal computer revolution in the
UK during the late 1970s and early 80s usually goes to Clive Sinclair with his
range of ZX machines. I’m not about to dispute that, but Sinclair’s undoubted
popularity tends to overshadow the huge contributions made by other manufacturers,
including of course Amstrad.
No, I don’t collect light bulbs, that would just be weird, though
I do seem to have accumulated a few but in my defence they are wonderful
looking objects and I didn’t seek them out, they found me…
I vividly recall the initial excitement at receiving a Philips Electronics
Engineer kit for a birthday present, probably in 1964. It was one of those
must-have toys for boys, though calling it a toy is a little unfair.
It was aimed at the early teenage market and was on a par with chemistry sets,
which back then were actually quite dangerous and contained all sorts of dodgy
chemicals. Not that the Philips EE kits were in any way dangerous but the illustration
on the box was in no doubt that mastery of the kit was a big step towards
becoming knob-twiddling boffin, fighter pilot or radio astronomer.
In the world of computing the current flavour of the month is
small notebooks, or ‘netbook’ PCs, weighing less than 1kg. They save space and
weight by using solid-state memory and plug-in memory modules instead of a hard
drive. They mostly run specialised operating systems (proprietary versions of
Linux) that load quickly and they come bundled with office software suites and
usually manage to run for several hours, between charges.
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.