Retro Thing

The World's First Commercial VCR

The world's first practical videotape recorder was released in 1956. It was as large as a dining room table and cost a cool $50G. The Ampex VRX-1000 featured an incredibly modern-sounding model number, too.

Ampex discovered that the secret to recording video on tape was to use a rotating head. This enabled them to fit 90 minutes onto a single reel, making the VTR practical for TV broadcast use. The tape ran past the head at 15 inches per second, so those reels must have been huge! They obviously hit on the right approach: Modern VHS and dv recorders still use a rotating head mechanism.

(trivia: The man standing third from the right is Ray Dolby who later founded Dolby Labs.)

Ampex VRX-1000 video recorder [Pasta & Vinegar]

SOS: Save A Film Magazine

smallformat is a brand new magazine that covers 8 and 16 mm film. The first issue is fantastic. To continue, they desperately need subscribers. The editor says:

We need another 200 subscriptions to survive. So, if you are interested in the future of a magazine like this and have not subscribed yet, please be so kind and send us an eMail with your full address.

Subscription is US-$ 79 or € 69 for six issues (one year). Please be so kind to inform your friends and other Super 8 and 16mm enthusiasts about small format.

If you're interested in film-making, or think you might be, please subscribe. All they need upfront is an email.

small format magazine
More Super 8 information and links (onSuper8.org)

Seriously Unscheduled Maintenance

My apologies to all who've had problems reaching Retro Thing in the past few hours. Six Apart experienced serious technical trouble today.

Things are getting better, and I'm doing my best to get some new features online soon.

Electronic Plastic: Almost 400 Vintage Handheld Games

Dutch interactive designer and author Jaro Gielens is one obsessed man. He spent over five years collecting more than five hundred electronic handheld games from the 1980s. Thankfully, he took the time to lay out his collection in printed form. The result?  One hundred and seventy six pages that capture the art and design of these strange little gamebots from the Eighties.

From the publisher:

"Rare collector’s items, retro-futuristic cases, bright logos, elaborate packaging and a generous helping of wistful nostalgia – in Electronic Plastic, a fascinating journey into the product design of the 80’s, author Jaro Gielens presents more than 380 of the prettiest and craziest handhelds and tabletops from the Stone Age of consumer electronics..."

Electronic Plastic (Amazon)

Devious Danish Electric Bikes

'Fancycle' sounds like a bizarre product name from Japan, but it's actually a sleek electrically assisted bicycle from Diavelo, a Danish company. Their products are leading-edge, offering 36 Volt electric motors powered by high capacity Lithium battery packs. They even managed to cram in a little battery monitor and speedometer.

The Fancycle is a hybrid design, meaning that to get peak performance you have to pedal.  This offers a couple of advantages: first, if the battery dies, you're not forced to walk. Second, you get the benefits of electrically assisted travel with minimum additional weight. Power is provided by a 250 Watt electric hub motor that's integrated into the rear wheel, giving a useful range of 50 - 60 km. 

eebike Fancycle (on Diavelo's not-quite-finished site)

Retro Thing's Top 20 Retro Cars

I started scribbling a list of my favorite retro cars on the train yesterday morning. I restricted my choices to fairly common and affordable vehicles -- don't expect to come across an Aston Martin DB5, 1962 Corvette convertible or Jaguar E-Type here.

One thing many of these vehicles share is simplicity, although several were technically flawed or suffered from massive variations in quality. One final note: accurately ranking these retrocars was  almost impossible -- they're all bucket loads of fun.

20. AMC Gremlin - Like it or not, the Gremlin earns a spot on the Retro Thing list as the first American made subcompact, introduced in 1970. What made it special was AMC's 6 cylinder engine that put out 128 HP (impressive for the Seventies). A three-speed column-mounted manual shifter was standard. Base price? $1879. I'll take two in lemon yellow, please!

19. Citroen 2CV6 - If you like insects, you'll probably love the 2CV6. Despite its prehistoric styling, it was famed as the Citroen that seemed destined to live forever. The original 2CV appeared in 1948 and remained on the market in various forms until 1991. It's main claim to fame is the hideously designed roll-back roof. Apart from that, you got a 602cc engine that output a whopping 28HP. It puttered along with so much retro charisma that people didn't seem to mind its turtlish ways. Over 5,100,000 of these weird and wonderful creatures were produced.

18. VW Type II -  I stretched the definition of 'car' a bit for this one, but the Type II is here because it's based on the classic Beetle (otherwise known as the Type I). The VW Bus is firmly entrenched in popular culture as the Ultimate Hippie Road Tripper. Part of that stems from its incredibly adaptable interior, and many did duty as affordable compact campers, chugging along the highway with a sound reminiscent of a happy tractor.

17. Honda Civic CVCC - Small, simple and affordable to operate. Honda's fortunes blossomed with the 1972 introduction of the Civic. The key to their success was the clean-burning and economical new CVCC engine, which earned Honda a reputation for producing fuel efficient and reliable automobiles.

Wrist Computers

I just stumbled upon Pocket Calculator Show's "For Sale" page. They're offering a plethora of vintage wrist computers and digital watches to the unwashed masses (that's us).

The strangest is the Seiko Epson RC-20 Wrist Computer (above). It packs a Zilog Z-80 microprocessor and a touch screen interface in a package small enough to strap to your wrist. The idea was that you wrote some incredibly cool programs on your home PC, downloaded them to your watch, and then ran around the neighborhood demonstrating your coding prowess until the Cops arrived to subdue you. Very cool nonetheless.

Other offerings include a copy of the Seiko digital watch worn by James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me, a red Seiko wrist computer, and the tremendously daft Casio GM-1 10-in-1 Game Watch.

Digital Retro Watches (Pocket Calculator Show)

From Sunglasses to Cameras: Polaroid

Most of us think in terms of instant photography these days. Digital cameras are everywhere and it's getting difficult to buy a mobile phone that can't snap a few pics.

Back in the late 20th Century, instant photography still seemed like magic and the Polaroid Corporation was home to the master sorcerers. Edwin Land's company got its start selling polarized sunglasses and moved into the instant camera market in 1948. They competed head-to-head with Kodak for many years, and even managed to develop Polavision -- an ill-fated instant movie system that cost the company millions.

Alas, they were late entering the digital camera market and filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The company is now owned by Petters Group Worldwide and markets a variety of affordable digital cameras, video equipment and instant cameras.

In recent years Polaroids have become an incredibly popular artistic medium. Perhaps the most beautiful example of this is Sia's Breathe Me music video that features thousands of Polaroid shots.

Polaroid instant film cameras start at about $32 for the Polaroid One 600 Classic. They're now discontinued, so you'll have to poke around the Net a bit to find one.

X-Arcade Controllers: Feels Like The Real Thing

Good condition vintage arcade consoles are becoming harder to find each year. Many were converted into less desirable games as the years passed, and others are sitting forgotten in the back of warehouses and basements. One option is to buy a new multi-game console, but that can be a multi-thousand dollar quest.

The best bang-for-the-buck seems to be the X-Arcade series of game controllers and MAME software (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). A single joystick model goes for $99.95, and the dual version fetches a reasonable $149.95. They include an adapter to connect to your PC, PlayStation 1/2, Dreamcast, or Xbox system. These units offer a bit more heft and playability than most plastic game controllers.

If $149.95 strikes you as a bit much, they have a limited number of refurbished dual joystick units on sale for $100, or you can purchase some affordable Do-It-Yourself kits to roll your own.

X-Arcade Joysticks (Xgaming.com)

Foof: The Non-Beanbag

Beanbags ran rogue across the planet in the 1970s and 1980s. Fast forward a couple of decades, and their kids are set to reconquer the Earth.

Foof chairs look like beanbags, but they're not. Traditional beanbags are filled with lumpy foam peanuts that compress over time, lowering you uncomfortably to the floor. Not so with Foofs -- They're filled with a patented urethane foam that doesn't break down over time and can be "re-foofed" as required. The result is what they claim "may just be the most comfortable chair on Earth."

Their line offers a truly astounding variety of squishy furniture: basic beanbags, cubes, stars, pillows for watching TV, massive multi-person foofs and even soft fruit. If you're looking for compressable furniture, this is the place to be.

Foof Chairs & Accessories (Comfort Research)
Foof Pricing and Stuff (Buy from Amazon and support Retro Thing)

Japanese Retro Televisions

Retro Enterprises in Tokyo now offers an interesting lineup of vintage televisions. They replace the innards of stylish boxes from the 1950s and 1960s with brand new color TV components.  The result is a remote-controlled vintage TV with state of the art picture quality. The lineup includes funky models from Toshiba, Hitachi, Matsushita (Panasonic), Sanyo and others.

The star of Retro's lineup is the 168,000 Yen ($1450) Model RT-39 (above) with a way-too-modern 15 inch Fujitsu LCD screen. It has VGA, S-Video and standard inputs and receives both NTSC and PAL transmissions, ensuring worldwide compatibility. As with all of Retro Enterprises' updated TVs, you'll have to use the remote to change the channel and volume -- the ancient front panel controls aren't connected to the modern internals. Owner Tak Kohyama speaks English, so email him with questions if you're interested.

Reincarnated classic televisions (In Japanese, but lots of pictures)
Retro Enterprises' English home page

World Toy Camera Day

Tomorrow (Saturday October 22, 2005) is World Toy Camera Day. toycamera.com encourages us to run around like the crazed children we secretly are, snapping brilliant and unique pix with our Holgas, Pinholes, and LOMOs. You then submit your best shot to Toycamera.com for a chance at unspecified  -- but probably cool -- prizes.

World Toy Camera Day (via Reevo's excellent Ektopia)

The Top 100 Vintage Toys

TV Cream have released their Top 100 Toys list, and it's a doozie. If you grew up in the 1970s or 1980s (in the UK, it seems) a handful of your favorites are almost guaranteed to be here. Word of warning: it's a boy-centric list, unless you were the kind of grrl who played with Action Man (GI-Joe), Top Trump cards, and the Star Wars Death Star Playset.

Here's what they say about Sea Monkeys:

Winner of the award for "Largest Disparity Between Portrayal In Advertising Materials And Reality", it is with some pleasure we see these fishy fraudsters in such a high position in our chart (as this can only mean so very few people owned a set). Far from the apparent hierarchical society of tiny grinning mermen and mermaids presented in illustrated form on the packaging (to this very day), Sea Monkeys were, in fact, tiny - and we mean microscopic - crustaceans of the Artemia Salina family. Yet we were, as youngsters, encouraged to believe that they inhabited a mysterious world of sunken treasures, kings and queens, castles and adventure, in a brazen example of spin that should have surely invited the full punitive powers of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Much cool stuff, although their Number One is a bit of a cop-out.

Top 100 Toy List (via Boing Boing)

Snazzy Sextants - For When You're Really Lost

Once upon a pre-digital time, seafaring explorers had to rely on the sun and stars for navigation. They used Sextants to measure the angle of celestial bodies (sun, stars or geostationary space stations) above the horizon. The angle and time it was taken could be used to compute a position line on a navigational chart. Of course, this didn't do a lot of good for intrepid explorers traveling with incomplete, incorrect, or non-existent maps.

The Tamaya Jupiter is a beautifully modern sextant. It weighs almost 4 lbs (1.8kg) and includes a molded plastic carrying case. After that, I admit to not having a clue:

It has many of the features of more expensive sextants yet still has impressive +/- 12 arcsecond accuracy.  The large 57x42mm index mirror and 57mm diameter horizon offer a bright view.  The inclined handle provides a natural and comfortable grip.  Built to rigid specifications and engineered for quality, the Jupiter professional marine sextant is the most popular selling sextant Tamaya offers.  The Tamaya Jupiter Sextant offers full illumination on both the arc and drum.  Interchangeable 4x40 or 7x35 monocular scopes are available.

[Mental note: Add "Learn to use a sextant" to my list of things to do before I'm relegated to Shady Acres Retirement Village.]

Tamaya Jupiter Sextant (Stanley London)

Crumpler Camera Bags

Lugging around a vintage SLR camera or movie camera can be tons of fun. But watch out -- you might become an easy mark for thieves. One way around the problem is to use a camera bag that doesn't look like the traditional carrying cases of yore.

Australian manufacturer Crumpler makes a fantastic array of bags "for all your baggy needs." Some are perfect for carrying photo gear or portable electronics, while successfully stymieing thieves.

Go check out their website, if only to marvel at the click-and-drag creatures and animated sheep.

Crumpler Oz (Their home)
Crumpler UK