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Tech
Sony sold the first Walkman, the TPS-L2, in Japan in 1979, and within a few years headphones on the street stopped looking strange. The devices here changed a habit and still look right on a desk. Nintendo's Game Boy arrived in 1989. Sony's PlayStation launched in Japan in December 1994. Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, and Teenage Engineering, a small Stockholm studio, released the OP-1 synthesizer in 2011. Cameras get plenty of space, from the Polaroid SX-70 that Edwin Land unveiled in 1972 to the Leica M6, first made in 1984 and reissued in 2022, and the Fujifilm X100 with its hybrid viewfinder. Audio has its own thread, with Bang and Olufsen from Struer in Denmark and the Technics SL-1200 turntable that became a DJ standard. Each piece explains how the thing works and whether it is worth buying today.
Stories
Tech4 min read
Ricoh GR: The Pocket Camera Street Shooters Won't Give Up
Ricoh's 28mm compact began as a magnesium film camera in 1996. Thirty years later, street photographers still leave the house with one in a jacket pocket.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Game Boy: How Gunpei Yokoi Won With Old Tech
Nintendo's 1989 handheld had a four-shade screen and no backlight. It buried every color rival anyway, thanks to a designer who trusted old parts.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Sony Walkman and the Birth of Personal Audio
How a blue and silver cassette player from Tokyo turned music into something you carry, and why the TPS-L2 still shapes the way we listen.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
The iPod: How Apple Put a Wheel in Every Pocket
A $399 Mac accessory with a monochrome screen turned into 450 million units and the white earbuds that marked a decade. The wheel did most of the work.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Nothing Phone (1): Carl Pei's See-Through Comeback
After leaving OnePlus, Carl Pei set up shop in London and sold a phone you could see into. The lights on the back did most of the marketing.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech3 min read
Teenage Engineering OP-1: The Synth That Looks Like a Toy
A Stockholm startup's first product was a synth, sampler and four-track tape deck in one aluminum slab. It still sets the look of desirable music gear.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Analogue Pocket: The Game Boy, Rebuilt in Silicon
Analogue's handheld doesn't emulate the Game Boy. It rebuilds one in programmable silicon, then gives it a screen with ten times the resolution.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech5 min read
Leica M6 and the Film Camera Revival
A metered rangefinder from 1984 became the camera of the analog comeback. Why the Leica M6 matters, and what changed when Leica brought it back.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Fujifilm X100: The Camera TikTok Made Impossible to Buy
Fujifilm built a fixed-lens digital camera that looked like a 1960s rangefinder. Six generations later it is the hardest camera in the shop to find.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
PlayStation Design History: Gray Box to Black Monolith
A broken deal with Nintendo gave Sony a reason to build a console. A designer who fought for handles gave it a shape people still recognize.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Polaroid SX-70: Edwin Land's Folding Miracle
In 1972 Polaroid sold a single-lens reflex camera that folded flat and spat out pictures that developed in daylight. Nothing else has matched it since.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Tech4 min read
Bang & Olufsen: A Century of Sound as Furniture
A Danish radio maker from a small town in Jutland turned stereo gear into objects that museums collect. The story runs through two designers.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
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