1974
Motorola - Pageboy I
FUN DETAIL
Before texting, people developed pager codes — 143 famously meant “I love you.”
A pager was a tiny wireless receiver used to alert someone that they needed to call back or respond. Doctors, emergency workers and businesses relied on them heavily before mobile phones became commonplace.
1971
IBM — development team led by Alan Shugart
FUN DETAIL
The floppy disappeared decades ago, but its shape still lives on as the universal Save icon.
Floppy disks were removable storage for moving documents, software and games between computers. Storage was tiny by today’s standards, but for years this little square was basically your USB stick, cloud drive and installer all in one.
1963
Philips — led by engineer Lou Ottens
FUN DETAIL
Philips made the Compact Cassette format available royalty-free, helping it become a worldwide standard.
Compact cassettes made audio portable and recordable. People used them for music, voice recordings, answering machines and, most importantly, making painfully curated mixtapes for other people.
1989
Nintendo — designed by Gunpei Yokoi and Nintendo R&D1
FUN DETAIL
Its screen had only four shades of green — and somehow that was enough to make Tetris impossible to put down.
The Game Boy brought proper video games outside the living room. Its simple hardware, long battery life and interchangeable cartridges helped turn handheld gaming into a mass-market phenomenon.
1985
IBM — Model M
FUN DETAIL
Its famous buckling-spring mechanism is responsible for that ridiculously satisfying CLACK.
Mechanical keyboards were built for serious computer input and heavy everyday use. Each key used an individual mechanical mechanism, giving typists strong tactile feedback and making some vintage keyboards durable enough to still work 40 years later.