Since the dawn of the electronics age, humans have engaged in the relentless pursuit of new and ingenious devices to enjoy our entertainment.  Here's a sampling of some of our favorite hits and misses from the last 100 years of electronics...

Personal TV viewing at its finest!

No company produced more proprietary audio and video formats that made it to the consumer market than Sony, and while many of its formats were technologically superior to offerings by their competitors, Sony was reluctant to share their technologies, which lead to their demise.  The most famous case of this was Betamax, which was significantly superior to VHS (JVC, the developer behind VHS, licensed its technology to several other manufacturers, and ultimately won the first video format war)

The first piece of media I ever bought was the Soundtrack for Star Wars Episode IV - on 8 track.  As such, this format has a special place in my heart.  While superior in operation to Cassette, 8 tracks were significantly larger in size.  The development of portable electronics incorporating cassette ultimately lead to the demise of 8 track.

Best. Format. Ever.  Not from a performance standpoint, and certainly not from a user experience standpoint (My copy of Jurassic Park spanned 4 double sided discs - every 15 minutes, I needed to either flip a disc or change a disc in order to keep watching the movie), but the LP sized silver discs were easily the coolest looking media format ever produced.  Useless piece of trivia:  Laserdisc was available to consumers years before either VHS or Beta.

Long before the disc, there was the cylinder.  The Edison Phonograph employed cylinders etched with bumps to create beautiful music.  This particular model was spring loaded and crank powered.  Essentially, it was the first "wireless" music system.

This was one of the first "curved" televisions - circa 1980.  The reason for the curve was valid; (unlike the current curved televisions)  the curve was necessary to maintain the distance from the CRT guns and subsequently the geometry of the image at a constant.

We did some work for a client not too long ago who owned not one but two of these beauties, both in working condition.  Reel to reel machines are a marvel to watch in operation - I almost forgot to listen to the music!

Television cosmetics have changed almost as often as clothing fashions over the years.  This bubble CRT looks both retro and futuristic at the same time.

This was the first camcorder that I had the pleasure of using - a two piece model that had a full size vcr for recording that I lugged around in a shoulder bag.  The whole thing weighed about 60 pounds including the NiCad Battery pack, which was good for about 30 minutes of recording before it needed to be recharged.

If you think today's 3D glasses are cumbersome, consider this contraption.  The Stereoscope allowed for 3D viewing of a still image.  The image cards would have two images on them, side by side.  When viewed through the stereoscope, the resulting single image appeared 3D.