What inventions do you remember seeing for the first time and being amazed by?

[BettyCarver]

I remember the first time I saw someone with a Sony Walkman; it must have been about 1982; this dead cool guy at university. I remember it looking incredible that someone could walk around listening to cassette tapes like that The guy was pretty well off which I imagine is no coincidence because walkman’s must have been relatively hugely expensive back then.
Seems so funny now when you think of all the stages we’ve gone through since then for listening to music

This was the table.

@BertieBotts I went to a restaurant in Tokyo a few years ago which had this a set up - basically an iPad-like device on the table that you ordered through. Seemed futuristic at the time but is absolutely common place now!

I remember seeing a CD is a shop 💿 and marvelling at how shiny it was snd how the colours bounced and moved on the surface.

I do remember being impressed the first time I saw video billboards; it reminded me of the background of futuristic sci fi films

Toddlerteaplease I love the Iron Bridge! Designed so the components are in compression not tension, because cast iron doesn't have high tensile strength. Such a clever solution from pioneering engineers.

I remember the first time I used RightMove. I thought it was amazing to be able to look inside any house that you wanted to!

The spectrum computer my sister had, she never let me touch it which of course made it even more desirable.

CD's on Tomorrow's World, I remember that! Can't be scratched, oh no.

Caracarus Potts breakfast making machine in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Blew my mind!

Voice Recognition software at a trade show years ago. You had to speak RP English like a robot at it, but it sort of knew what you were saying.

I used to love Tomorrows World when I was a kid. Would love to see an update about which things happened and the things that ever took off.

Those solar powered bins that compact the rubbish and send an e-mail to the Council to tell them when it needs emptied.

Allan keys. I still am thrilled by them. I just wish I could use them more often. A little metal thing that turns another metal thing. About ten years after I discovered Allan keys I discovered....you can use them either way round!

I remember DVDs coming in and they seemed so futuristic. My DF set about replacing all of our VHS tapes with the DVD versions....it doesn't seem long ago at all and now even DVDs are becoming obsolete. DC aged 4 saw them in the library the other day and didn't know what they were! We don't own a DVD player as we have Netflix etc.

A digital watch my cousin had in the 70's.

Mobile phones! The ones the size of a brick! yes I'm that old.

More recently, that an astronaut on the space station could send me photos that i could see on a mobile phone.

And bang up to date, that I can have a playlist of music on my phone which is bluetoothing to a speaker that I'm controlling from my watch, while my iPad broadcasts me speaking to thousands of people around the world.

CDs and later, PalmPilots blew my mind.

Currently, it's 3D-printed prosthetic limbs.

A Sinclair c5 my uncles friend had one. I was just amazed by it

TFL Journey Planner. Total game changer. I planned a whole late night journey back from Shepherd’s Bush to twickenham - printed it out and annotated it with possible alternatives gleaned from my research. But I was too naive to realise that any journey between midnight and 3 am that involved at least 3 or 4 different night bus changes would likely not be a good idea.

After that, I changed my settings on the site to “fewest changes” or “avoid buses”.

Also, I am still awaiting the magic tights I saw on tomorrow’s world where they intrinsically crept back up your legs to stop them from falling down and wrinkling.

TV remote control, my Dad used to work for Radio Rentals and would bring the latest tv/vcr/games console home for weekends for us to play with, I remember being fascinated with the original control that you had to plug in and trail the wire across the room and when he bought the wireless one back it blew my mind!
It was so basic too, just two buttons to skip though the channels and volume.

My most recent one was a vr headset, I only bought it in March this year and its such a great experience, being "in" a virtual world, I've ridden rollercoasters, done workouts, played paintball with people from around the world on their headsets and also have an app on there which is like Google maps where you can go anywhere in the world but you're actually in the place so you physically turn around to look at the surroundings, it's saved me a fortune not having to physically go to Macchu Picchu now 😂

Television, we were invited next door to watch the Coronation.

Mobile phone, I was in a queue for the ferry and got chatting to a chap. I said I was going to the terminal building to use the phone. He handed me a large grey brick, saying "Do use mine"! Amazing!

A webpage with sound! It was a seagull screeching. Up till then they were simply pages of text. But this was a sound embedded into the page header on an art gallery website.

ATM When one arrived in town, a friend couldn't get it to work at all, so asked me to watch her to see what she was doing wrong. I quickly spotted that she was entering her phone number not a PIN.

There are lots more, the excitement of sending your first email and getting a reply back from the other side of the world, the jam spread on the CD....
What amazing times we live in!

My Dad simply described a flat screen TV he had seen in a swanky residence he visited for work. The description alone amazed me.

When PC's were the norm at work and even at home for some in the late 90's early 2000's I went to Currys and saw a display model of a new PC and on its screen there was a small video playing of a Hewlett Packard woman describing the PC's features. I looked at it in wonder and genuine amazement. Up until then computers were all about the word processing and the spread sheets and looking at text only websites. A moving image on the screen? OMG!

Sending my first emails from my Uni to a different Uni where my friend was in about 1995.

Actually the video billboards always blow my mind a bit when I come back to the UK.

They weren't really a thing when I left (2013) and they haven't taken off where I live now (Germany) so to come back and see them everywhere always makes me feel really discombobulated.

I also find it really shocking TBH to juxtapose that with the real social problems the UK is having today - massively underfunded services in crisis, people struggling with mental health and poverty, huge splits in social opinion etc.

A cassette recorder when I was little. My friends and I used to spend hours making terrible shows that we recorded.

When I became a student - my first twin cassette deck so I could borrow tapes & record them.

I was shown a chip and pin machine at Lloyd's Bank head office in the early 90's.

I went to a Starbucks in NY for breakfast about 2011 and literally everyone had an iPad.

I still think email is witchcraft.