h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We didn't have the Internet or cellular telephones but the 1970's produced a lot of cool gadgets and technology.

For those of us who were technically minded the thing to have was a killer "Hi-Fi" system. You might have individual components with great specs including speakers the size of phone booths. Vinyl LP's still ruled the land and were the source of the best sound. Reel-to-reel tape decks were cheaper and had now had features like auto-reverse. The new Dolby stereo cassette decks were also coming along nicely. Some guys also flirted with "quadraphonic" 4 channel systems, the precursor to Surround Sound.

In 1970 television was a simple set (often black & white for the budget minded) with an antenna to receive the 2 to 6 channels available over the air. By the end of the decade we had cable TV with 30+ channels, video games like the Atari 2600 and of course the VCR (Beta and VHS).

Lot's of other technology took off in the 1970's. Telephone answering machines, quartz digital watches (a pretty neat idea?), electronic calculators, bar code scanners and automatic teller machines all came into our lives.

The microprocessor was invented and developed into the early "personal" computers as well as video games. Word processors began replacing typewriters (at least for rich businesses). CRT terminals replaced punch cards and paper tape for "talking" to computers. Personally I knew the "silicon revolution" had taken over when (about 1976) my local electronics store threw away the town's only public vacuum tube tester.