(July 24, 2009) - This week celebrated several anniversaries including the Apollo missions to the Moon 1969, the release of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and for Wired Online and Gizmodo Blog - an homage to technology from the late 1970's.

In Gizmodo'79, the site revisits everything that is from 1979 (30 years old). I found it amazing how many things I had forgotten about. Like Merlin, Speak and Spell and other classic technological gear.

The site even tackles other non-technical aspect of life back then - like how hard it was to find Porn (compared to today). Gizmodo identifies that as a kid from the 70's "You had to be part 007, and part Pee Wee Herrman. In short, there was no internet." Check out all their postings here.

In the article by Nathan Barry appearing in Wired Online, Nathan identifies the top 100 things that Kids won't remember today. While he brought the UK perspective to the article, it represents a good cross section of obsolete, antiquity and otherwise out-of-date gadgets and technology.

I particularly like the reference to Manual Door Locks. I remember the routine when getting into a car - Dad would open his door - then reach over to open Mom's (passenger side) - she would open her door and open the lock behind her (when we had a 4 door) - or pull the seat forward to allow us kids in the back. Meantime Dad would do the same on his side. Oh, and even though there were seat belts in the back seat - I don't remember wearing any until the 1980s.

And Yet, simple things kept us amused too...

Of course I do recall non-technologies that we used to amuse ourselves as kids. Like changing a Bic Pen into an orange peal launcher. This kept us quite amused at lunchtime in grade 7. How did it work?

Simply remove the pen cartridge and plug and drive one end into an orange peal. The flip it over and drive the other end into the orange peal as well.

Now you have both ends of the pen tube stuffed with orange peal. Then you take the cartridge and push it down the tube from the top. In doing so, you push the top Orange peal down the inside of the tube towards the blocked end - and the air in the tube compresses.

At a certain point the air pushes out against the bottom end ... shooting the other orange peal piece out ... across the room. Very sticky and a lot of fun.


Image Credits:
1. Astronaut on the Moon - NASA
2. Sinclair Computer - smin via flickr