2021: things that didn’t quite make the cut

This year we mostly concentrated on the year ending in "1", covering gadgets and technology from 1941, 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011. It turns out to be a decent last digit for computers, games consoles and cars in particular. But here are some of the things that were also notable that didn't get covered.

2011 saw the launch of two rival handheld gaming platforms that were evolutions of previous devices. The Nintendo 3DS had a dual display capable of displaying glasses-free 3D on an otherwise modest hardware platform, the Sony PlayStation Vita was a more powerful device but also a more traditional gaming console. Both products competed directly against each other, but it was the Nintendo that won out although the Sony did gain a dedicated fanbase.

Nintendo 3DS and Sony PlayStation Vita

A decade earlier, in 2001, the Nintendo GameCube was launched against the Sony PlayStation 2 and the original Microsoft Xbox. In this fight, the GameCube came in third - in quite a bruising result for Nintendo.

Skipping back another decade to 1991 we see the Commodore CDTV, a repackaged Amiga that was meant to compete against the Sega Mega Drive and Nintendo SNES. It was a failure, and helped to accelerate Commodore to its demise a few years later.

Nintendo GameCube and Commodore CDTV

In the early eighties, the best place for video games was the local arcade and 1981 was part of the golden era of arcade machines. We've covered quite a few from this year, but Namco's Galaga and Atari's Tempest were both notable and were very different types of shoot-em-up. And if you fancied something different from endless slaughter, there was Taito's Qix which was more of a puzzle game where the player had to fill the screen with boxes while being chased by a mysterious electric entity.

Galaga, Tempest and Qix

None of this would be possible without the microprocessor, and the first commercially-available device was the Intel 4004 which was launched in 1971. Originally designed for a calculator, the 4004 could be used for a variety of other purposes. A successful line of products followed for Intel, notably the x86 series of processors used in most PCs today.

The same year saw the release of the world's first floppy disks. Originally a huge 8 inches across (and very floppy), these inexpensive and transportable storage media and their 5.25 and 3.5 inch descendants were the standard way of transferring files into the 1990s and beyond.

A decade later, the Intel 8085 and a pair of 5.25" floppies could be found in the ergonomically designed Nokia MikroMikko. Nokia Data had a series of mergers and acquisitions, first with Siemens and then ICL until finally vanishing into Fujitsu.

Intel 4004, 8" floppy disk (with 3.5" for comparison), Nokia MikroMikko

Nokia have made many things over their long history, including car tyres. Today you might find Nokian winter tyres on a Nissan Patrol or Toyota Land Cruiser - both these rugged and practical 4X4s were originally launched in 1951 and were heavily inspired by the wartime-era Willys Jeep.

Nissan Patrol (circa 1958) and Toyota Land Cruiser (circa 1966)

If exploring in your Japanese offroader with your Finnish tyres, you probably want a good system to tell you where you actually were in the world. Today you'd use a GPS system, but that wasn't an option back in 1981 when Honda announced the world's first in-car navigation system, the Electro Gyro-Cator. Instead of using satellites, it used inertial navigation and a set of transparent maps fitted over a screen. It was bulky, expensive and of limited use, but eventually the first in-car GPS system was launched in 1990 by Mazda.

Honda Electro Gyro-Cator

Stretching things out a bit more… if you found yourself off-roading in your big Japanese 4X4 with Finnish tyres in the 1970s or 1980s and you wanted to make a high-quality video recording of your journeys, the choice of professionals was a Sony U-matic recording system which was launched in 1971. Capable of capturing broadcast-quality images, the U-matic was the choice of professionals. Smaller than a traditional film camera, most units were still quite bulky and required a crew of two or three - one for the camera, one for the recorder unit and perhaps one for the microphone boom. Perhaps on your exploration into the wilderness you might want to pack some supplies, and there's a good chance that these might include Heinz Baked Beans, a staple of tinned food since 1901. Luckily the Japanese make some of the best can openers in the world too..

Sony U-matic in a carry bag and Heinz Baked Beans

Image credits:
Nintendo 3DS: Evan-Amos via Wikimedia Commons - CC0
PlayStation Vita: Evan-Amos via Wikimedia Commons - CC0
Nintedo GameCube: BugWarp via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
Commodore CDTV: Patric Klöter via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0
Tempest: Russell Davies via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0
Galaga: David via Flickr - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Qix: Joho345 via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0
Intel 4004: Simon Claessen via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0
8" floppy disk: Michael Holley via Wikimedia Commons - CC0
Nokia Data MikroMikko: Nokia
Nissan Patrol (1958): Sicnag via Flickr - CC BY 2.0
Toyota Land Cruiser (1966): Sicnag via Flickr - CC BY 2.0
Electro Gyrocator: Honda
Sony U-matic: Joybot via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0
Heinz Baked Beans: Ian Kennedy via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0

UNIVAC I (1951)

Introduced March 1951

The immediate post-war years saw the first viable commercial and scientific computers hitting the market, such as the LEO I and Ferranti Mark 1 in the UK and the UNIVAC I in the United States. These huge, heavy, power hungry, expensive and slow computers are very primitive by today’s standards, but they found their niche in corporations and laboratories.

UNIVAC I in use at the US Census Office

Rather like the British LEO I, the UNIVAC I was a business computer made up of around five thousand vacuum tubes, weighed about 8 tons and sucked in 125kW of electricity. Primary memory consisted of 1000 12-character words stored in mercury delay lines (similar to the LEO), but one novel feature the UNIVAC had was magnetic tape drives for secondary storage. These UNISERVO I drives were the first ever commercially available computer tape drives, and they used heavy nickel-plated phosphor bronze tapes. Other rival computers tended to use punched cards, and initially the UNIVAC I lacked this option.

It was an eye-wateringly expensive system, costing the equivalent of around $7 million in today’s money.  This tended to put it out of reach of many universities and into the realm of government departments and large corporations instead. Given the price and complexity of the UNIVAC I, they wouldn’t always go straight to the customer but would instead be used for a while as demonstrators.

UNIVAC I mercury delay line memory

Once such UNIVAC I was bound for the US Atomic Energy Commission, but took a detour to detour to CBS to help predict the results of the 1952 US Presidential Election. Programmed by the legendary computing pioneer Grace Hopper, the UNIVAC had a complex model built up of data from past elections. With a sample of 5.5% of the vote, the UNIVAC came up with a prediction – out of the two candidates of Dwight D Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, Eisenhower would win in a landslide. The problem was that the UNIVAC’s prediction was completely at odds with pollsters who were predicting a win for Stevenson. So the UNIVAC’s analysis was downplayed by CBS.

Even if you don’t follow US presidential elections of the 1950s, you’ve probably heard of President Eisenhower and not President Stevenson.. that’s because the UNIVAC turned out to be accurate and Eisenhower did indeed beat Stevenson, by a similar margin to the computer’s prediction. Eisenhower might have won the vote, but the UNIVAC won when it came to the star of the election night count. 

Grace Hopper working on a UNIVAC I console

Demand for UNIVAC machines boomed… but Remington Rand were struggling to build them. So ironically, it was rivals IBM who actually benefitted with their IBM 701 mainframe and its successors as they could build them in the quantity customers wanted. As for Remington Rand, they were taken over by Sperry in 1955 which in turn merged with Burroughs to create Unisys in 1986. Unisys is still around today, and it still makes computer hardware such as the Intel-based ClearPath Forward systems among a muddle of consultancy services and resold products.

Although the UNIVAC I was only a moderate success in sales terms, it is socially significant for its role in the Presidential Election where it offered a glimpse into the future of computing, only seven years after the end of the Second World War. It’s astonishing to think that all this was still more than a quarter of a century before the launch of micros such as the Apple II…

Image credits:
U.S. Census Bureau via Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
Tiia Monto via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0
Smithsonian Institution via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 2.0

LEO I and Ferranti Mark 1 (1951)

Introduced February 1951

The years immediately after the end of the Second World War saw huge advances in the use of electronics and the development of early computers. By 1951, these machines were becoming practical – albeit in strictly limited scenarios – and February 1951 saw both the world’s first public demonstration of the LEO I and the delivery of the first Ferranti Mark 1 computers.

Both computer systems were British designed and built, they used vacuum tubes and masses of discrete components such as diodes and resistors, housed in huge boxes weighing several tons that sucked in electricity at a phenomenal rate. Primitive by today’s standards, the Ferranti Mark 1 and LEO I was early examples of successful commercial computers.

The computers had different markets, the Ferranti was aimed at scientists and engineers but the LEO was the world’s first dedicated business computer.

LEO Computer name plate

“LEO” stood for “Lyons Electronic Office”, and it was a computer originally designed for the J Lyons company in the UK. Lyons at that time was a massive business of food manufacturing, tea shops and other hospitality businesses spread throughout the country. Almost every town had a Lyons Tea Shop, making them the post-war equivalent of Costa Coffee or Starbuck today – and they had a huge number of customers and staff to support them, requiring a steady and uninterrupted supply of food to keep everything going.

It was a massive logistical enterprise, and Lyons managed it very successfully. Indeed, Lyons successful management of logistics led to the British government giving them the contract to run a large munitions factory called ROF Elstow during World War II. Logistics was the key to the Lyons business, and this led to their interest in the developing world of computers.

The LEO I was designed to help with that. Inspired largely by the EDSAC computer developed at the University of Cambridge, the LEO I started with the mundane task of bakery valuations before moving on to inventory management and payroll. Lyons even started doing payroll for other companies, and there was demand for LEO I systems from other large companies in the UK.

LEO I Mercury Delay Line Storage Unit

A few years later, the successful computer division was spun out as LEO Computers leading to the LEO II and LEO III which used more modern technology. In the 1960s, LEO Computers were merged into English Electric, then International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and eventually found their way into ICL which itself was taken over by Fujitsu in 2002. The J Lyons company also faded away, by the 1960s the tea shops were losing money and despite a merger with Allied Breweries in the late 1970s, the profitable parts of the company were sold off but the Lyons name lives on under different owners.

The Ferranti Mark 1 had a different lineage – essentially a commercialised version of the Manchester Mark 1 developed at the University of Manchester. Ferranti themselves were a more traditional electrical engineering and electronics company, working in diverse markets such as defence, power systems and home appliances. Their experience in electronics in World War II made them an obvious choice to collaborate with the Manchester project.

Although both computers used vacuum tubes, they had very different forms of memory – the LEO used acoustic mercury delay lines and the Ferranti used a CRT called a Williams Tube. These technologies were only marginally viable even in 1951 and neither technology made it to the end of the decade. Data storage for both systems included the rather more long-lasting solutions of paper tape and punched cards.

Several generations of improved computers came after the Mark 1, but Ferranti wasn’t competitive in the business computer market so eventual sold that off to ICT (who became ICL), concentrating instead on industrial and military applications. Development of these computers continued into the 1980s, alongside Ferranti’s successful semiconductor business.

Ferranti Mark 1 Logic Door

But where J Lyons faded away, Ferranti’s end was more sudden and dramatic. A takeover of a US firm called International Signal and Control (ISC) in 1987 was a disaster – although ISC looked like a good fit, it turned out that the books that Ferranti had inspected were false and instead of ISC being a profitable and above-board defence contractor, its real business was in illegal arms sales which were often made at the behest of the US government. These illegal contracts stopped as soon as ISC because British-owned leading to a massive black hole in Ferranti’s accounts. By 1993 it was all over, Ferranti collapsed and the viable business units were bought out by competitors.

It’s a familiar story of course, early innovators fall by the wayside and then disappear. Not every company can become an IBM or Apple, but in the case of Lyons and Ferranti rather more was lost along the way. 

Image credits:
Ferranti Mark 1 Logic Door - Science Museum Group – CC BY 4.0
LEO Computer Name Plate - Science Museum Group – CC BY 4.0
LEO I Mercury Delay Line - Rhys Jones via Flickr – CC BY-NC 2.0

Kenwood Chef (1950)

Introduced March 1950

Recently we explored a whole bunch of domestic gadgets that are in common use today but actually trace their origins to the Nineteenth Century. One such gadget was the food mixer, tracing its roots back to the 1850s and with electric food mixers coming to market around the turn of the century.

The popularity of such devices grew and in 1950 the British public saw the launch of what is perhaps the most iconic mixer of its type – the Kenwood Chef. Designed (perhaps unsurprisingly) by Kenneth Wood, the original Chef (model A700) came with a variety of attachments that could mix bread, cakes, sausages and even drinks.

Kenwood Chef A700

It wasn’t cheap, the launch price was a little under £20 in 1950s money which is nearly £700 today. Still, it was immensely popular for those who could afford it and it was the sort of thing you could show off to friends and neighbours to make them envious.

Because it was stylish, well-built and versatile the popularity endured, and although over the decades the product has changed and improved in that time, the modern Kenwood Chef is still fundamentally the same as the one from 70 years ago.

Perhaps these days with the rise of pre-prepared foods and takeaways, the food mixer isn’t the must-have appliance that it once was. However, vintage Kenwood Chefs from the 1950s and 1960s have a surprising number of fans, and working ones in good condition can be had for less than £200. If you want a contemporary model then these start at £250 going up to £700 or so, with an even wider range of gadgets you can plug in.

Image credit: Science Museum
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Xerox 914 (1959)

Xerox 914 plus contemporary advertising

Launched September 1959

Pretty much ever since human beings invented paper, they’ve wanted an easy way to copy what was written, printed or drawn on that paper. One Wednesday in September 1958 – about 2000 years after paper was invented – there was finally a solution.

The Xerox 914 was the fruit of a two-decade development of a dry copy processes called xerography, a technology that had been acquired by the Haloid Company of New York. Able to copy full-sized documents onto plain paper, the 914 was a significant technological advance over the slower, messier methods that had gone before.

Weighing nearly 300 kilograms and with a large footprint as well, the 914 was pretty big but still quite usable as a departmental copier. With an ability to copy 100,000 pages per month at 7 sheets per minute, the 914 is still pretty competitive by modern standards.

If you wanted to buy one it was phenomenally expensive at $27,500 (roughly equivalent to a quarter of a million dollars today) or apparently you could rent one for just $95 a month plus a charge for each copy made.

It has its problems though, notably paper jams could result in a small fire which later models of 914 dealt with by including a small fire extinguishers euphemistically called a “scorch guard”.  Despite this the Xerox 914 was a huge success, shipping 200,000 units until the end of production in 1976. Haloid even changed its name to Xerox after its best-known line of products.

A behemoth such as the Xerox 914 is hardly a collectable item, and given that probably most of them were rented you are probably unlikely to stumble across one. But perhaps there are still a few gathering dust in basements and store rooms…

Image credit: Xerox

2018: things that didn’t quite make the cut

We’ve covered a range of stuff this year, as far back as 1888 and through to 1928, 1938, 1948, 1958, 1968, 1978, 1988, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 (phew!). But quite a few things also had anniversaries this year. Here are some that we didn’t get to cover.

If you like spicy food, then there’s a good chance that you own some Tabasco sauce. The tabasco peppers the sauce contains originally came from the Mexican state of the same name, but the Tabasco branded sauce you typically see comes from Louisiana where both it and the McIlhenny Company were created in 1868.

One thing that you could put a dash of Tabasco in would be a Cup Noodle. Introduced by Nissin into Japan in 1958, the Cup Noodle eventually spread throughout the world, inspiring other very similar brands such as Pot Noodle in the UK.

Tabasco Sauce (1868), Cup Noodle (1958), Pepsi Cola (1898)

If you were looking for a beverage to wash your spicy Cup Noodle down with, Pepsi-Cola was invented in 1898 or you could try some Vimto, invented in Manchester in 1908 and popular with members of temperance societies who didn’t drink alcohol. Vimto also because a hit in many Muslim countries for the same reason.

1958 saw a peculiarly American take on a Scandinavian favourite with the launch of Swedish Fish. A brightly-coloured remake of the salty liquorice original, Swedish Fish remain popular in the United States today, although they contain no actual fish. Similarly, Jelly Babies contain no actual babies, but are also squishy and brightly coloured. Bassetts launched their well-known take on Jelly Babies in 1918.

Vimto (1908), Swedish Fish (1958), Jelly Babies (1918)

Back in Sweden, 1978 saw the launch of perhaps the most recognisable SAAB automobile, the SAAB 900. Spending 15 years in product, the 900 was an understated yet rather desirable car that showed Swedish engineering at its finest… and most quirky. One thing that drivers of the SAAB 900 would find interrupting their otherwise enjoyable journey were traffic lights, first introduced in London in December 1868. This gas-powered traffic light was short-lived however, as it exploded the following month. It took another half century or so for the idea to gain popularity… but my goodness, it did.

More entertaining than traffic lights, the LP record was launched by Columbia Records in 1948. Starting a familiar pattern of trying to squeeze more entertainment into a physical format, technologies such as the LaserDisc, CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays really just followed the LP’s lead.

SAAB 900 (1978), Traffic Light (1868), LP Record (1948)

1918 saw the creation of the electronic flip-flop, a bistable circuit that can be used to save a 0 or a 1, and is therefore an important step into creating modern computing.  Three-quarters of a century later this led to the not exactly awe-inspiring Atari Jaguar and Amstrad Mega PC consoles, plus the Apple MessagePad PDA. But apparently there was a lot of other stuff along the way too.

Flip-Flop (1918) plus Atari Jaguar, Amstrad Mega PC, Apple MessagePad (1993)

In the online world, the process of connecting computers together to share information was given a boost by the invention of the modem in 1958, allowing computers to communicate over plain old telephone lines. 30 years later this allowed many Internet-connected computer users to talk to each other using Internet Relay Chat, and 5 years after THAT - in 1993 -  these technologies had grown into the nascent World-Wide Web and the world’s first recognisable search engine was born… no, not Google but something called JumpStation.

Modem (not actually a 1958 model), Jumpstation (1993), Internet Relay Chat (1988)

What can we look forward to next year? We see the anniversaries of such diverse products as TiVO, the Intel 486, Sinclair ZX80, Lunar Lander and... err, the Toyota Crown S130. Not all breakthroughs are as obvious as you would think. In the meantime, enjoy a mince pie - first introduced into Europe in the 13th Century.

Image credits:
g4ll4is via Flickr
Rainer Zenz via Wikimedia Commons
Qirille via Wikimedia Commons
Wapster via Flickr
Swedennewyork via Flickr
Sam Greenhalgh via Flickr 
Huynh Phuc via Wikimedia Commons 
Raysonho via Wikimedia Commons
Sheila Scarborough via Flickr
Turbojet via Wikimedia Commons
Evan-Amos via Wikimdia Commons
Association WDA via Flickr
MKFI via Wikimedia Commons
Frederik Ramm: Recherchieren und Publizieren im World Wide Web
Darkbear via Wikimedia Commons

Morris Minor, Hindustan Ambassador, Rover P5, Citroën Visa, Fiat Strada (1948-1978)

What do the Morris Minor, Rover P5, Hindustan Ambassador, Citroën Visa and Fiat Strada have in common? Well, they were all launched in September 1948, 1958 or 1978… but let’s see if we can make a tenuous connection between them all.

Morris Minor (1948)

Late model Morris Minor Traveller

Perhaps – after the classic Mini – the post-war Morris Minor is the most quintessential British car. Manufactured between 1948 and 1971, over 1.3 million of these cars were produced. This made it the first British car to ship over a million vehicles.

Much of the inspiration behind the Morris Minor can be attributed to legendary car designer Alec Issigonis. Work on the Minor began under the codename “Morris Mosquito” during the Second World War, work that had to be carried out in secret because Morris Motors was meant to be concentrating on war production.

The Mosquito was technically a radical design for its time…  a bit TOO radical it turned out. But most of the ideas behind it found themselves productionised into the new car. The Minor came with rack and pinion steering, independent torsion bar front suspension that allowed the engine to be placed nearer the front and lower down giving better handling characteristics and optimised internal space by having small wheels near each corner. Taking inspiration from American cars of the time, the original Minor had low-set headlights, although these were moved to the more familiar position on top of the wings later.

Work was already being finalised on the Minor when a last-minute decision was made to widen the car by four inches. Although this made for a bigger cabin and better handling, many of the panel pressings had already been finalised. As a result, the bonnet had to be widened by adding a strip in the middle, which actually looked rather pleasing. However, on the original models the bumpers also had an unsightly gap as a result.

There were three main versions of the car over 23 years of production, including two and four-door saloons, an attractive convertible, a popular estate version called the Traveller with exposes wooden beams plus vans and pickups. Many engines were shoe-horned into the Minor over the years, and there was a process of continuous improvement… although by 1971 it was looking extremely dated.

The Morris Minor remains a popular classic car today, with over 13,000 still on the road in the UK. Issigonis went on to design several other cars for Morris and its successor British Leyland, one of which was the Morris Oxford...

Hindustan Ambassador (1958)

Rare example of an Ambassador exported to the UK

The next part of our story takes us to the Issigonis-designed Morris Oxford Series III, which was introduced in 1956 and was a fairly traditional saloon. Morris had a long history of cooperation with Hindustan Motors of India, and in 1958 they made their own version of the Oxford – the Hindustan Ambassador.

Although the Oxford Series III was in production for just three years, the Ambassador was in production for a remarkable 56 years. Although there were technically several generations of Ambassador, they all retained the basic body shape of the 1950s Morris and most of the changes were to the engine with some creature comforts added in over the years.

A huge success among the growing middle class in India, the Ambassador also fulfilled roles as a car for government officials and was a popular taxi too.

The Ambassador soldiered on in production until 2014, but it was always an oddity compared to the modern cars that the rest of the Indian automotive industry made. There are countless Ambassadors still on the road of India though, and there are rumours that the Ambassador may yet be reborn in partnership with PSA of France.

Rover P5 (1958)

Rover P5

Meanwhile, back in England the Rover Car Company released its new saloon, much more upmarket than anything in the Morris catalogue. The Rover P5 was designed to be impressive to look at and well-built, and it succeeded decisively over the 15 years it was in production.

The P5 was a favourite of senior management, politicians and the police… and even royalty. The plush interior with the stylish exterior made this an attractive car, and it was certainly screwed together with an air of quality. The main problem was the power plant.

Weighing approximately 1.6 tonnes, the P5 was a heavy car for its time. The original straight-six 3 litre engine produced 115 horse power which was good for the time, but it made the P5 a bit of a slouch. Tweaks to the engine for the 1962 Mark II upped to power to 129 HP, the 1965 Mark III squeezed 134 HP out of the same unit. This was better, but it hardly made the P5 fast.

In 1967 the final version of the P5 was introduced – the P5B. “B” in this case stood for “Buick” and referred to the American-designed V8 engine that Rover had acquired the rights to. This 3.5 litre engine produced 158 HP which was finally enough to make the Rover impressively fast with a top speed of 110 mph and a 0-60 time of 11.7 seconds.

Later P5s were available in a standard and rather stately saloon version, or a rather more rakish four-door coupé. The British government liked the P5B so much that it stockpiled a decade’s worth of cars for Prime Ministers and other important officials.

Most of the design of the P5 was done by David Bache, along with Spen King and Gordon Bashford. Between them, this trio also produced the Rover P6, Rover SD1 and the original Range Rover.

Although Rover and Morris were competing companies in 1958, in 1968 Rover was merged into British Leyland… where Bache, King and Bashford were employed alongside Alec Issigonis.

Citroën Visa (1978)

Issigonis had recognised the practicalities of the small hatchback car back in 1967 with the 9X prototype, which to our eyes is a recognisably modern layout, but his employers didn’t pick up on the idea. A decade-and-a-bit later, the small hatchback was all the rage and it was clear that Austin-Morris had missed the boat.

Citroën had been looking for something new to at least partly replace its extremely ancient range, including the then-30-year-old 2CV. The company had been struggling financially, and the oil crises of the 1970s had hit sales of their bigger cars hard. In 1976, Peugeot had taken over Citroën to form the PSA Group. Under this new ownership, Citroën had produced a small hatchback called the LN which was basically a frumpy-looking version of the Peugeot 104 with a 2CV engine. Hardly inspiring stuff.

A whole bunch of Visas in hatchback, van and even pickup configurations

Starting with the same 104 underpinnings, another renowned designer Robert Opron was working on something rather better and more in keeping with Citroën’s design philosophy which concentrated on sleek aerodynamics and comfort - the Citroën Visa. Up until then, hatchbacks (such as the Fiesta) had been rather boxy.

Over the years the original 625cc engine was upgraded, leading eventually to a 1.6L 115 HP unit in the Visa GTi – a car weighing just 870 kg, which was seriously fun to drive as a result. Production of the Visa ended in 1988, but it set new standards for design and also showed that platform sharing between cars wasn’t simply a case of badge engineering.

Fiat Ritmo / Strada (1978)

Fiat Strada

Launched in the spring but coming to market in September, Fiat launched a somewhat larger hatchback called the Fiat Ritmo (or the Fiat Strada in the UK). Fiat had pioneered the hatchback market with the 127, but the Ritmo was a replacement for the larger Fiat 128 instead.

Two things made the Ritmo stand out – firstly there was Sergio Sartorelli’s smart and contemporary styling, but secondly the body was assembled and painted by robots, which led to a memorable advertisement screened in the UK.

The advertisement was so well-known that it spawned a parody, filmed on the production lines of the British Leyland Ambassador (not the Hindustan Ambassador!). THAT car – to carry on our tenuous link – was designed by Harris Mann, who can be considered Issigonis’s successor in the Morris / BMC / BL story.

The Ritmo / Strada carried on in production until 1988, with a “facelifted” version that actually toned down Sartorelli’s original design. The 1983 Abarth model introduced the obligatory 80’s hot hatch with a 130 HP two litre version.

Today the robotic automation used in assembling the Ritmo is commonplace in the car industry, but back in 1978 it made the Rtimo / Strada stand out from other rival hatchbacks and helped to cement Fiat as a successful Europe-wide automaker.

From a pair of quintessential British and Indian cars of the 1940s and 1950s to a pair of quintessential French and Italian cars of the 1970s, all of these vehicles managed to do something significant. And curiously enough, out of all those cars – on British roads at least – the oldest one is the most common, with thousands of Morris Minors still roadworthy compared to only a few dozen Visas and Stradas from 30 years later..

Image credits:
Loco Steve via Flickr
Ron Fisher via Flickr
pyntofmyld via Flickr
Klaus Nahr via Flickr
CarbonCaribou via Wikimedia Commons

Ericofon (1956)

General launch 1956

Launched to the general public 60 years ago, the iconic Ericofon telephone was symbolic of an era of growing prosperity and hope. Decades of economic hardship, starting with the Great Depression followed by World War II had left much of the world severely disrupted. In the mid-1950s, Europe was still rebuilding itself and food rationing in the UK didn't even end until 1954. But things were beginning to get better, and consumer goods were becoming much less utilitarian.

The Ericofon was a complete re-think about the industrial design of a telephone handset, which had pretty much settled into a two-piece affair with a handset sitting on a cradle, with the dialler, bell and everything else housed underneath. The snake-like design earned the Ericofon the nickname "Cobra" in some markets, but if that wasn't striking enough then the wide variety of bright colours (18 initially) that the device came in were certainly eye-catching.

One thing that made the Ericofon particularly desirable was that in many markets you were not allowed one. Monolithic old telephone carriers such as GPO in the UK and AT&T in the US simply didn't allow equipment to be connected to the network that didn't come from themselves.

Elegant design and exclusivity is often a recipe for success, and it seemed to be true for the Ericofon.

Variants of the phone were made for several different markets with two main types of case, and the phone's radical looks made it a favourite in movies and TV shows over the years. Between 1956 and 1982 some 2.5 million Ericofon handsets made in Sweden were sold around the world, with licensees and contractors making many more.

Modern reproductions of the Ericofon are available, but if you want an original one then prices vary from €50 or even less up to several hundred euro depending on type and condition. Ericsson went on to produce mobile phones such as the iconic R380, a business that was merged with Sony's to form Sony Ericsson in 2001 (the T610 being an example product), and which was finally bought out by Sony in 2012 when Ericsson left the consumer market behind for good.

Image credit: mollybob via Flickr