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Gallery of Past Tech (and Other) Advertising

Posted by kdawson on from the masters-of-persuasion dept.

theodp writes "The Vintage Ad Browser takes you back to the days when Google conjured up images of Barney Google (1948). When the hip music player was a Walkman (1982). When Osborne meant state-of-the-art in computing (1982). When Big Picture TV meant 12" (1948). When compact camera referred to a Pocket Instamatic (1972). And when wireless meant getting phone calls 300 feet from the house (1982)."

7 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. You can't read the ads, just buy them by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How useless. I went to the site, found an ad that seemed interesting and clicked on it. Nothing. No, I couldn't zoom in to be able to read the text. The only link is to ebay so I can buy it from the site owner. This is just one big stupid catalog of ebay sales.

    I am just about to put up some stuff on ebay to sell - I must remember to post the "story" here.

    1. Re:You can't read the ads, just buy them by j_philipp · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm aware that unfortunately not all images have zooms going with them. Just some do, when you see the magnifying glass below them.

    2. Re:You can't read the ads, just buy them by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't know, some of it is pretty cool. When I saw this one, I was reminded that once RCA was a pretty cool company.

      Note to self: if you ever own a failing technology company, it's better to close up and try again than sell out.

      --
      Qxe4
    3. Re:You can't read the ads, just buy them by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd like to expand on that: I had an RCA VCR from 1988 that didn't give out until 2005, and that with fairly regular use. Its replacement didn't last three years. Sometimes when they say, "They don't make things like they used to" they are right, although the old VCR did cost a bit more.

      --
      Qxe4
  2. Backstory on the Vintage Ad Browser Website by theodp · · Score: 3, Informative

    lifehacker: Vintage Ad Browser Provides Classic, Cheesy Marketing Images

  3. Young Bill Gates Says... by theodp · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Next to my software, nothing's more user friendly than the Wall Street Journal." Undated, but obviously pre-Vista. :-)

  4. Re:On your marks, get slashdotted, go! by j_philipp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As the creator of the site, I'm hoping for the best :) For what it's worth, I'm using Amazon S3 for the storage of the images (which needs to be paid by bandwidth, admittedly, so I'll have to watch my costs closely), and due to caching there should be no database connections on any ad page once it has been viewed for a first time (unless I iterate the version of the site or clear the cache... never before searched queries do cause database connections, naturally). But none of this guarantess uptime during slashdotting... again I can just hope for the best!