Most Influential Electronic Gadgets in History

The 50 Most Influential Electronic Gadgets in History

Consider the items you can't live without:

Your smartphone, which you are always checking.

The camera you bring on every holiday.

The television that acts as a gateway to binge-watching and gaming.

Each owes its influence to a single model that altered the direction of technology for the better.

These are the gadgets recognized in this list of the 50 most influential electrocic gadgets of all time.

Some of these, such as Sony's Walkman, were among the very first of their kind.

Others, such as the iPod, took an existing concept and made it mainstream.

Some were commercially unsuccessful yet impactful nonetheless.

And a few are interesting but unproven new ideas (looking at you Oculus Rift).

Rather of ranking technology such as writing, electricity, and so on, we elected to evaluate gadgets, the instruments through which consumers allow the future to seep into their present.

 

50) Apple iPhone

Apple i Phone

 

When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it was the first firm to put a truly capable computer in the hands of millions of people.

Smartphones had technically existed for years, but none were as easily and tastefully put together as the iPhone.

Apple's smartphone heralded a new era of flat, touchscreen phones with on-screen buttons that appeared when needed, displacing chunkier phones with slide-out keyboards and static keys.

However, it was the iPhone's software and later-introduced mobile app store that truly distinguished it.

The iPhone popularised mobile apps, forever altering how we interact, play games, shop, work, and do numerous daily tasks.

The iPhone is part of a very successful product line.

But, more importantly, it significantly altered our relationship with computing and information, with long-term consequences.

 

49) Sony Trinitron

           Sony Trinitron

 

Television, according to renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow, is "nothing but wires and lights in a box."

Sony's Trinitron, introduced in 1968 when colour TV sales were finally taking off, stands out among notable sets, thanks in part to its revolutionary method of combining what had previously been three distinct electron cannons.

The Trinitron was the first TV receiver to win a prestigious Emmy award, and it went on to sell over 100 million units worldwide over the next quarter century.

 

48) Apple Macintosh

 

Apple Macintosh computer, model M001, c 1984.

 

"Will Big Blue rule the computing industry as a whole?"

What about the entire information age?

"Did George Orwell get it right about 1984?"

That was how Steve Jobs introduced the advertisement proclaiming the advent of the Macintosh.

The Macintosh was Apple's best hope for competing with IBM, thanks to its graphical user interface, simple mouse, and overall inviting appearance.

High prices and the success of Microsoft's Windows software conspired to keep the Mac a constant runner-up.

However, it will always be remembered as the benchmark for how humans interact with computers.

47) Walkman by Sony

 

 

                       Sony Walkman, c 1980.

 

Sony's Walkman music player was the first to combine portability, simplicity, and cost.

While vinyl records remained the most popular music format, the Walkman—originally known as the "Sound-About" in the United States—played much smaller cassettes and fit in a purse or pocket.

It gave birth to the phenomenon of private space in public, which was made possible by the isolating effect of headphones.

It relied on AA batteries, allowing it to go long distances away from power outlets.

Sony eventually sold over 200 million units, paving the way for the CD player and the iPod.

46) IBM Model 5150

  IBM PC Model 5150 with printer, 1981.

 

What would the computer market be like today if the IBM PC didn't exist?

Sure, personal computers existed before the 5150 was launched in 1981.

However, IBM's sales pitch—bringing Big Blue's corporate computer capabilities into the home—aided in making this a hugely successful product.

Big Blue's decision to licence their PC operating system, DOS, to other manufacturers proved even more influential than the 5150 itself.

This resulted in the creation of "IBM Compatibles," the precursor to practically all non-Apple PCs available today.

 

45) Victrola Record Player

   Victrola

 

Despite the fact that the phonograph was invented in 1877, the Victor Talking Machine Company's Victrola was the first to make audio players a commonplace in most people's homes.

The amplifying horn of the instrument was disguised behind a wooden cabinet, giving it the sleek appearance of a fine piece of furniture.

Classical musicians' and opera singers' records were popular purchases for the device.

The Victor Talking Machine Company was eventually purchased by RCA, which went on to become a radio and television behemoth.

44)
Regency TR-1 Transistor Radio

                                                      Regency TR-1 Transistor Radio

The Regency pocket radio was the first consumer electronic device driven by transistors, ushering in an era of high-tech miniaturization.

The $49.95, 3-by-5-inch, battery-powered portable was a post-WWII innovation developed by Texas Instruments (which had previously made devices for the Navy) and Industrial Development Engineering Associates (which had previously put out television antennas for Sears). It was built on technology developed by Bell Labs.

Many things coalesced to make the TR-1 a holiday must-buy after its November 1954 launch, from the transistors that amplified the radio signal to the use of printed circuit boards that connected the components to the eye-catching design.

And, as innovative as all of this technology was, it barely scrapes the surface of how the Regency altered the world overnight by ushering in true portable communications.

43) Kodak Brownie Camera

No 2 Portrait Brownie cameras in �fashion� colours, 1929-1935.

 

This little, brown leatherette and cardboard camera, marketed at youngsters, carried by troops, and cheap to all, popularized the term "snapshot" due to its ease of use and low cost.

When it was debuted in February 1900, the Brownie was priced at $1 (with film that was similarly affordable) and took cameras off tripods and into ordinary use.

The low-cost shooter was the hook that allowed Kodak to make money through film sales.

And for the rest of the globe, it contributed to the capture of endless moments and the shaping of civilization's connection with images.

 

42) Apple iPod

Apple iPod

 

Sure, there were MP3 players before the iPod, but it was Apple's breakthrough product that encouraged music aficionados to ditch their CD players.

The iPod made piracy more enticing by allowing consumers to carry thousand-song libraries in their pockets, while also providing a lifeline to the floundering music industry with the iTunes Store, which eventually became the world's largest music retailer.

The iPod's significance goes far beyond music.

It was the introduction of an entire generation to Apple's user-friendly products and slick marketing.

These customers would go on to buy MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads in droves, helping Apple become the world's most valuable technological business.

 

41) Wand of Wonder

                                                         Magic wand by Hitachi

  After a 2002 episode of Sex and the City showed the electric neck massager's cultish adoption as a vibrator, Hitachi removed its brand from the device.

But just in name: the Magic Wand, which has been in operation since the late 1960s, is possibly the best-known product created by the $33.5 billion Japanese conglomerate in the United States.

(Hitachi manufactures everything from aircraft engines to defence equipment, but probably nothing is more personally thrilling than this.)

Though sex therapists and admirers have exalted the Wand's charms by comparing it to automobiles (the Cadillac, the Rolls Royce), it is more like to a microphone, with a white plastic shaft—the wand—and a vibrating head—presumably, the magic.

40) Canon Pocketronic Calculator

canon-pocketronic-calculator

 Is it all business? Hardly. If you go back far enough in time, iconic adding machines like this 1970 classic paved the way for the cellphones we have today.

This calculator, which retailed for $345 at the time of its release (a cool $2,165 today), was designed around three circuits that allowed it to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

Thirteen rechargeable battery cells were squeezed inside the case to power the calculations, with the results printed on thermal paper.

Following the Pocketronic's introduction, circuits quickly downsized and prices fell to meet.

Within five years, comparable devices were under $20, and the pricing wars in technology had begun.

 

39) VCR Philips 

N1500 vcr

 

The videocassette recorder, or VCR, got its start in 1972 with Philips' release of the N1500, despite a lengthy and winding journey to mainstream market success.

The N1500 predated the BetaMax versus VHS format fight by recording television onto square cassettes, as opposed to the VCRs that would attain mass market success in the 1980s.

However, with a tuner and a timer, Philips' device was the first to allow television junkies to record and save their favourite shows for later viewing.

That level of convenience, however, did not come cheap.

It was originally sold in the United Kingdom for roughly £440, but today it would cost more than $6,500.

That equates to 185 Google Chromecasts.

38) Atari 2600

Atari computer console and games, c 1977.

 The black-and-faux-wood Atari 2600 game console was the first to capture the imaginations of millions with its blocky 8-bit graphics that looked nothing like the lush, exciting pictures on its game jackets.

It brought the arcade experience home for $199 (about $800 adjusted for inflation), with a pair of famous digital joysticks and games with computer-controlled opponents–a first for a home system.

It sold badly in the months following its release in September 1977, but when titles like Space Invaders and Pac-Man appeared a few years later, sales skyrocketed, putting Atari at the forefront of the nascent video gaming industry.

37) US Robotics Sportster 56K Modem

56k modem

 

Beep, boop, bop, beep.

Eeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

That was the sound of the Internet in the days before broadband.

Dial-up modems, such as the US Robotics Sportster, were many families' first connection to the Internet.

Their popularity peaked about 2001, when quicker options that delivered data over cable lines became available.

However, millions of families still have a dial-up connection.

Why?

They're less expensive and more accessible to the millions of Americans who still don't have access to broadband.

 

36) The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

 

NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)

 Nintendo's first front-loading, rain-gray system arrived just in time to save the games industry from itself, arriving a few years after a crash that capsized many of the industry's top players.

The NES was to video gaming what The Beatles were to rock and roll, reviving the business on its own after its release in 1983.

The NES inaugurated Japan's dominance of the industry, introducing lasting interface and game design principles that have become so classic that their DNA may be found in every home system since.

35) Game Boy (Nintendo)

1989, Nintendo Game Boy.

 

Given how many Nintendo sold, it's a marvel we didn't burn out our eyes playing on the Game Boy's tiny 2.6-inch olive green screen (over 200 million when you include the souped-up subsequent Game Boy Advance.)

Nintendo's 1989 handheld introduced the contemporary mobile game, a big, somewhat desolate off-white device with gaudy cerise-colored buttons.

Because of its limited processing power and small screen, developers were obliged to compress the core of genres passed over from consoles.

As a result, there has been a paradigm change in mobile gaming design, influencing everything from competing specialised handhelds to Apple's iPhone.

 

34) Selectric Typewriter by IBM

Typewriter IBM Selectric II

 

 

This Mad Men-era equipment worked at the "speed of thought," transforming the plodding, jam-prone mechanical typewriter into a rapid-fire bolt of workplace innovation, and heralded the beginning of the computer age.

The 1961 Selectric model pioneered the use of interchangeable typefaces using the typewriter's characteristic, golf-ball-shaped print head.

Then, in 1964, a magnetic tape model added the ability to save data to the typewriter, potentially making it the world's first word processor.

When the IBM System/360 mainframe debuted in 1965, it was only natural for the Selectric's keyboard to serve as the computer's primary input device.

 

33) Pager Motorola Bravo

 

Pager Motorola Bravo

 

 Long before cellphones were ubiquitous, beepers were the only method to remain in touch while on the go.

Early pagers allowed users to send codes to one another, such as 411 for "what's up" or 911 for an emergency (for obvious reasons).

Message recipients would respond by dialling the sender's phone number.

According to Motorola, the Bravo Flex, which was debuted in 1986, became the best-selling pager in the world, offering many people their first taste of mobile communication.

It could hold up to five messages of 24 characters each.

Having a pager became a status symbol by the early 1990s, paving the way for more modern communication devices such as the two-way pager, cellphone, and, eventually, smartphone.

 

32) JVC VideoMovie Camcorder

JVC camcorder gr-c1

 

From Rodney King and citizen journalism to America's Funniest Home Videos and unscripted television, the camcorder changed the world as much as it recorded it between 1983 and 2006.

Even though the 1984 JVC VideoMovie wasn't the first model on the market, Marty McFly carried it around in 1985's Back to the Future.

The tapedeck was originally included inside the camera in the ruby red model.

(Previously, home videographers were required to wear a purse-like accessory that housed the cassette.)

Camcorders were eventually supplanted by flash memory-equipped Flip Video cameras and, later, smartphones.

But, like the films they captured, their impact will live on in perpetuity.

 

31) Motorola Droid

 

Other Android-powered smartphones existed before to the Droid's release in 2009, but this was the first to get enough attention to propel Android into the spotlight.

It solidified Google's Android platform as the iPhone's main rival.

(It also created a schism between Apple and Google, which were previously close partners.)

Verizon is rumoured to have spent $100 million on marketing the smartphone.

Although neither company provided sales data, analysts believed that between 700,000 and 800,000 Droids were sold in the month following their launch.

 

  30)

IBM Thinkpad 700C 

 

Few products are so famous that their design has remained substantially intact after more than 20 years.

Such was the case with the ThinkPad series of laptops, which threatened Apple and Compaq's supremacy in the personal computing business in the early 1990s by providing features that were considered novel at the time.

(It's also in the permanent collection of New York City's MoMA.)

The ThinkPad 700C, one of the first in the line, featured a 10.4-inch colour touch screen, which was larger than screens offered by competitor devices.

Its TrackPoint navigation technology and powerful microprocessors were also deemed innovative in the early 1990s.

29) TomTom GPS

 

 

GPS, like the early Internet, began as a government-funded innovation.

It wasn't until President Bill Clinton decided to completely open the network in 2000 that it became a tremendous commercial success.

(He was fulfilling a promise made by Ronald Reagan.)

Shortly after, firms ranging from TomTom to Garmin produced personal GPS systems for car navigation (such as the Start 45) and other applications.

Later, combining GPS technology with smartphones' mobile broadband connections gave rise to multibillion-dollar location-based services like Uber.

28) Phonemate 400 Answering Machine

 

     Phonemate 400 Answering Machine

 

By today's standards, the concept of an answering machine weighing more than a few ounces may seem absurd.

PhoneMate's 10-pound Model 400, on the other hand, was hailed as a glimpse of the future in 1971.

The Model 400 was regarded the first answering machine meant for the house at a period when the technology was only generally seen in workplaces.

It contained about 20 messages and allowed users to listen to voicemails secretly with an earphone.

 

27) BlackBerry 6210

 

             BlackBerry 6210

 

Before the 6210, BlackBerry produced pocket-sized gadgets for accessing email on the move, but this was the first to combine Web-browsing and email functions with phone functionality.

The 6210 let users to check email, make phone calls, send text messages, manage their calendar, and more all from a single device.

(Its predecessor, the 5810, needed users to attach a headset in order to make calls.)

Overall, the 6210 was a significant stride forward for mobile devices.

 

26) Apple iPad 2

 

                  Apple iPad 2

 

Following the launch of the iPad in 2010, a wave of stories questioned whether the tablet will replace the laptop as the most essential personal computer.

Apple's iPad was not the first tablet, but it was significantly different from what had come before.

Earlier devices, such as the GriDPad and Palm Pilot, had smaller touchscreens that required the use of a pen to use.

In 2002, Microsoft unveiled a tablet that ran Windows XP.

The difficulty was that these gadgets didn't have touch-friendly interfaces, and they were frequently clunkier and bigger than the iPad.

Apple sold 300,000 iPads on its first day in stores, roughly matching the iPhone's first-day sales, and has since gone on to dominate the market.

 

25) Commodore 64

Commodore 64

 Commodore's 8-bit brown and taupe lo-fi 1982 masterpiece sits alongside Guinness as the best-selling single computer in history.

No wonder, given that the hefty, relatively inexpensive keyboard-housed system—users connected the entire thing into a TV with an RF box—did more to promote the concept of the personal home computer than any item since.

And it also claimed to make you more popular:

"My pals are knocking' on my door, to get into my Commodore 64," a Ronnie James Dio clone sang in a power-metal commercial.

 

24) Polaroid Camera

Polaroid camera

 

Millennials are often chastised for their desire for fast fulfillment.

But that is a yearning that spans generations.

Do you require evidence?

When the first affordable, simple-to-use instant camera, the Polaroid One-step Land camera, hit the market in 1977, it immediately became the country's best-selling camera, 40 years before "Millennials" were a thing.

Because Polaroid images dominated 80s-era family albums and pop culture, the square-framed, frequently off-color shots have a nostalgic aesthetic that is treasured by aficionados and imitated by billion-dollar apps like Instagram.

 

23) Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

 

Amazon began as an online bookstore, so it's no wonder that its most impactful piece of technology transformed the way we read.

The Kindle immediately dominated the e-reader industry, becoming Amazon.com's best-selling product of 2010.

Success has also been found in subsequent hardware efforts, such as the Kindle Fire Tablet and the Echo home assistant.

The Kindle also represents the beginning of Amazon's growth as a digital media company.

Along with books, the corporation now provides digital outlets for music, movies, and video games.

 

22) Stivo

Stivo

 

When the first TiVo was launched in 1999, this magazine wondered, "How much would you pay to never see another talking frog or battery-powered bunny again?"

The machine, dubbed a "Personal Video Recorder" at the time, is the predecessor to today's DVRs.

TiVo owners may record shows from a digital menu (no more complex VCR settings) and pause or rewind live television.

Much to the chagrin of TV executives, the TiVo allowed viewers of recorded television to skip ads.

The fact that TiVo made it easier than ever to record a TV show gave rise to "time-shifting," or the practise of viewers seeing content when it fits their schedule.

 

21) Toshiba DVD Player

           Toshiba DVD Player

In the early 1990s, electronic manufacturers started experimenting with standalone optical storage, but Toshiba's SD-3000 DVD player was the first to hit the market in November 1996.

The DVD player made it possible to watch crisp digital movies off a tiny platter just 12 centimetres in diameter—still the de facto size for mainstream optical media (like Blu-ray) today. It replaced loud, tangle-prone magnetic tape (as well as the binary of "original" versus "copy").

 

20) Sony Playstation 

                 Sony playstation

You'd be hard pressed to find a single PlayStation feature that altered the gaming industry on its own.

Sony's fixation with cramming high-end technology into sleek, cheap devices, then making all that power available to developers, is what has made the PlayStation family an enduring icon of the living room.

Part of Sony's success was simply reading the demographic tea leaves: the business advertised the PlayStation as a game system for adults to kids who'd literally grown up playing Atari and Nintendo games.

And that helped propel the original system, debuted in 1994, to skyrocketing sales, including the PlayStation 2's Guinness World Record for the bestselling console of all time—a record that even Nintendo's Wii hasn't gone close to shattering.

 

19) Wii Nintendo Unveils

 

              Wii Game Device

 "Thanks to Nintendo's Satoru Iwata, we're all gamers today," read the headline of Wired's obituary for Nintendo's adored CEO, who died last July.

Nothing speaks more to Iwata's legacy than the company's game-changing Wii (pun intended).

Nintendo's little pearl-white box, launched in 2006, and which users engaged using motion control wands, had moms and dads, grandpas and grandmas out of their seats swinging virtual golf clubs or dancing.

No game system has done more to demonstrate the cross-generational appeal of interactive entertainment.

 

18) Jerrold Cable Box

 

jerrold-cable-box

 

True story: Cable TV was already available in the 1950s.

True, it took Ted Turner in the 1970s and channels like MTV in the 1980s to usher in what we now consider cable TV's golden age.

However, decades before, the first commercial cable box that would inspire so many others was an unassuming wood-paneled console produced by Pennsylvanian manufacturer Jerrold Electronics, with three-way sliders for dozens of different channels.

  

17) Nokia 3210 / Handy

 

Nokia 3210 / Handy

 

Following its introduction in 1999, Nokia's colourful candy bar-shaped 3210 characterised the cell phone for many.

It became a best-seller for the Finnish firm, selling more than 160 million copies.

The 3210 did more than merely introduce the cellphone to new audiences.

It also set a few crucial precedents.

The 3210 is recognised as the first phone with an inbuilt antenna and the first to include preinstalled games such as Snake.

Even more than ten years after its release, gadget reviewers complimented the phone for its lengthy battery life and clear reception.

 

16) HP DeskJet 

                  hp deskjet

Devices like the 1988 HP DeskJet, which replaced noisy, inefficient dot matrix technology, allowed computer owners to quietly output images and text at a rate of two pages per minute.

The DeskJet wasn't the first inkjet printer on the market, but at $995, it was the first one that many home PC users purchased.

HP sold almost 240 million DeskJet printers in the 20 years following the product's inception, printing millions of Christmas messages, household budgets, and book reports.

Even in an increasingly paperless society, inkjet technology lives on in 3-D printers, which are fundamentally the same devices but extrude molten plastic instead of dye.

 

 15) Palm Pilot

Palm Pilot palmtop computer, c 1998.

 

When it debuted in 1996, the original Palm Pilot 1000 cemented mobile computing, paving the way for BlackBerry and, eventually, today's smartphone.

The "palm top" computer (get it?!) included a monochrome touchscreen that supported handwriting and could sync data such as contacts and calendar entries to users' desktops.

It gave rise to the "personal digital assistant," or PDA, gadget category.

It wasn't the first device of its kind—the Apple Newton came before it—but it was the first one that people wanted and bought in droves.

 

14) Dynatac 8000x by Motorola

 

Dynatac 8000x by Motorola

 

When Motorola's Dynatac 8000x debuted in 1984, it was the first genuinely portable cellphone.

Marty Cooper, a Motorola engineer at the time, demonstrated the technology by making the first public cellular phone call from a New York City sidewalk in 1973.

(It was both a public relations manoeuvre and an epic humblebrag: Cooper called his AT&T opponent.)

The Dynatac 8000x weighed about two pounds and cost nearly four thousand dollars.

 

13) Apple iBook

 

                  Apple iBook

 

The iBook's brightly coloured, plastic trim may already appear old, but it was the first laptop to enable wireless networking.

Apple's consumer-oriented portable turned into a significant business, thanks to its cool factor as well as its technology.

The unveiling of the product was a great example of Steve Jobs' theatrics at its best.

During the 1999 MacWorld convention, while loading a webpage and demonstrating the computer's display, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs took the computer off its table and walked across the stage.

The audience erupted in approval.

He demonstrated that Wi-Fi was here to stay with a gesture.

 

12) Oculus Rift

                 oculus rift

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset from 2016 may be a complete flop, yet we'd still give Oculus a special position in computer history.

Not simply because Facebook paid $2 billion for the parent business of the device, predicting a future of social connection and virtual vacations enabled by VR.

Whatever happens next, the Rift, along with its vivacious developer Palmer Luckey, will be remembered for reviving the idea of strapping awkward-looking objects to our faces in exchange for the opportunity of visiting convincingly genuine imagined worlds.

 

11) Sony D-50 Discman

sony-discman-d50

 

Following the success of the Walkman, Sony introduced this portable CD player in 1984, only a year after the music business accepted the format.

In less than a decade, the gadget and later portable CD players helped compact discs overtake cassettes as the primary music format in the United States.

 

10) Roku Netflix Player 

 

          Roku Netflix Player

 

Roku's hockey-puck sized Netflix-and-more video streaming box arrived out of nowhere in 2010 to rally thousands of cord-cutters who had abandoned their cable.

What the box's bulky remote lacked in capabilities, it more than made up for in software.

While Apple struggled to justify their somewhat sparse Apple TV-verse at first, Roku was delivering thousands of channels and the most agreements with the top players.

 

9) Fitbit Alta

 

                    Fitbit Alta

 

Pedometers have been around for decades (check it up), but it was Fitbit that helped bring them into the digital age and into the hands of the general public.

The initial device released by the firm, in 2009, measured customers' steps, calories burnt, and sleep habits.

Most crucially, it made it simple for customers to upload all of their data to the company's website for continuing analysis, encouragement, or guilt.

The Fitbit, for $99, demonstrated that wearable might be affordable.

In 2015, the business sold over 20 million of the devices.

 

8) Osborne 1 handheld microcomputer

 

Osborne 1 handheld microcomputer

 

The Osborne 1 is perhaps not the first thing that springs to mind when you think of a portable computer.

However, when it was released in 1981, this cumbersome 25-pound computer was lauded by technology critics—BYTE magazine boasted that it "fit under an aircraft seat."

Sales were modest due to the Osborne's restrictions, such as a screen approximately the size of a current iPhone.

The machine's ultimate impact was not so much on subsequent gadgets as it was on how they are promoted.

The company's leadership had a bad habit of prematurely announcing new items, causing potential buyers to wait for a better version and so reducing sales.

Marketing students are being taught how to prevent the pernicious "Osborne effect."

 

7) Thermostat Nest

 

             Thermostat Nest

 

The Nest Learning Thermostat, created by the "Godfather of the iPod," Tony Fadell, was the first smart home product to garner widespread market attention after its debut in 2011.

The Nest features significant computing power, combining the traditional round design of conventional thermostats with a full-color display and Apple-like software.

(For example, its ability to recognize and predict consumption trends for heating and cooling a home using machine learning.)

As intriguing as the technology is, the Nest thermostat made headlines in 2014 when the company behind it was purchased by Google for $3.2 billion.

The search engine giant made the device the centerpiece of its smart home plan, hoping to usher in an era of interconnected devices that will make daily life more efficient.

 

6) Raspberry Pi Product

 

    Raspberry Pi

 

The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer with a price tag that corresponds to its small size: around $35 without a monitor, mouse, or keyboard.

The Pi is not intended to replace standard computers, but it is being used in classrooms around the world to assist students learn programming skills.

With eight million Pis sold as of last year, the chances are good that the next Mark Zuckerberg will have started playing with one.

 

5) DJI Phantom 3 Professional 

  

              DJI Phantom 3 Professional

Small drones may soon be delivering packages, filming family gatherings, and assisting first responders in locating people trapped in a tragedy.

For the time being, they're mostly toys for enthusiasts and videographers.

DJI, a Chinese company, manufactures the world's most popular drones, the Phantom series.

Its most recent generation, the Phantom 4, employs so-called computer vision to detect and avoid obstacles without the need for human involvement.

This makes it easier for inexperienced pilots to operate a drone, making them more accessible than ever.

 

4) Clavinova Digital Pianos by Yamaha

 

Clavinova

 

You may argue that the Minimoog did more for music technology or that the Fairlight was cooler, but if you visit average U.S. households from the 1980s to the 1990s, you're more likely to come across the Clavinova.

Yamaha's popular digital piano combined the style and size of a spinet (a smaller, shorter upright piano) with the modern features of a tiny synthesiser.

It's become a staple for parents eager to introduce maintenance-free musicality—you never have to tune it—into their homes without surrendering vast swaths of living space, thanks to its plausible pianistic weighted motion and space-saving design.

 

3) Segway

 segway

 

What is it about the Segway personal scooter that makes it such a powerful cultural symbol?

Perhaps it has something to do with serving as a metaphor for America's increasingly out-of-shape population.

Perhaps it was witnessing a United States president fall off one.

Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" video also helped.

The Segway, as much as it has been touted and criticised, is a defining example of "last mile" mobility, an electric scooter designed to make walking unnecessary.

(Recently, the concept has been partially revitalised by the appearance of so-called hover boards, which are likewise approaching a kind of post-fad twilight.)

The symbolic significance of the Segway much outweighed its commercial success.

Before the firm was purchased by a Chinese entity in 2015 for an unknown fee, unit sales had never crossed the six-figure threshold.

 

 

2) Replicator Makerbot

 

Desktop 3D Printer Replicator 2

 The Makerbot Replicator was neither the first nor the greatest consumer-level 3-D printer on the market.

However, it was the model that made the technology broadly available for the first time, because to its low price of under $2,000.

The Replicator employed inkjet printer-like technology to extrude hot plastic into three-dimensional artwork, mechanical parts, and other objects.

Makerbot's future as a firm is unknown.

However, the company's equipment was instrumental in bringing 3-D printing into the mainstream and is now a fixture in many American classrooms.

 

1        1)
Google Glass

 

Prescriptions for Google Glass

 

Google Glass, which cost $1,500 for those invited to a public beta test, never caught on.

The comparatively strong head-mounted computer sent significant signals about the future of wearable technology.

Glass demonstrated that designers working on wearable computing devices face a unique set of assumptions and constraints.

Glass, for example, makes it simple for users to secretly capture footage, prompting numerous restaurants, pubs, and movie theaters to prohibit the device.

Glass also demonstrated the potential drawbacks of easily recognized wearable, possibly best demonstrated by the coining of the moniker "Glass holes" for its early adopters.

While Google Glass was formally discontinued in 2015, augmented reality—the display of computer-generated graphics over the actual world—is a concept that several firms are currently working to perfect.

Google is among them.