Feature

The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

Here's PC World's official (and entirely idiosyncratic) list of the top tech gadgets of the last half century.

27. Commodore 64 (1982)

The best selling computer of all time still appears to be the Commodore 64: Estimates of this PC's sales range from 15 million to 22 million units. The first C64 cost $595 and came with 64KB of RAM, a 6510 processor, 20KB of ROM with Microsoft BASIC, 16-color graphics, and a 40-column screen. (How times have changed!) It also was the first PC with an integrated sound synthesizer chip, according to Ian Matthews of Commodore.ca. Photo courtesy of the Computer History Museum.

28. Apple Newton MessagePad (1994)

The Newton PDA had the dubious distinction of being lampooned in Doonesbury, thanks to its less-than-spectacular handwriting recognition. At nearly 1 pound and costing $700, it was too big and pricey for most users, but it paved the way for smaller, simpler devices like the PalmPilot and the iPod. At the time, there was no cooler gadget to be found. For more, see this description and photo of the Newton.

29. Sony Betamax (1975)

Few gadgets have had a bigger impact than the first stand-alone video cassette recorder. Shortly after the Betamax appeared, Sony was sued by the movie studios; in 1984 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Sony's favor, finding that beneficial uses of the new technology (time-shifting TV programs) outweighed potential harms (video piracy). (The version pictured here is the SL-6300 from 1975, in a high-end wooden case.) The Betamax changed our lives and helped spawn the $20 billion video rental industry, but it couldn't compete with JVC's cheaper VHS devices and eventually disappeared. Those who love and honor all things Beta, however, have a place to gather. Photo courtesy of Sony Electronics.

30. Sanyo SCP-5300 (2002)

Sanyo was the first to bring a camera phone stateside, although it wasn't the first to introduce such a device to the world--that credit goes to Sharp, which released the J-SH04 in Japan in 2000. Sanyo's SCP-5300 took 640-by-480-resolution snapshots, and according to PC World's first look, the clamshell phone was easy to use. But the quality of the photos was mediocre, and the only ways to get images off the phone were to send it to another person's cell phone or e-mail address or to upload them to Sprint PCS's Web site (the handset was available exclusively to Sprint customers). But, hey, it's almost impossible to find a cell phone without a camera these days. That's saying something. Photo by Marc Simon.