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Top 50 gadgets of the past 50 years


As you may know, we at Engadget have been covering the gadget scene for decades. But it looks like the septuagenarians at PC World have us beat, since they've just put together a guide to the top 50 gadgets of the past 50 years. Not surprisingly, the pickings are a little slim for the first two decades on that list; just two gadgets from the 1950s (the Regency TR-1 transistor radio and the Zenith Space Command remote control) made the cut, along with a mere five from the 60s. But the 1970s unleashed a motherlode of gadgets, incuding PC World's number one pick, the Sony Walkman. While we agree with many of the magazine's choices, a few left us scratching our head; the Rolodex REX (a PDA that fit into a computer's PC Card slot) didn't exactly take the world by storm, and we think they're giving Microsoft a bit too much credit by picking the IntelliMouse Explorer as a "groundbreaking" product. Nevertheless, a good read, and an excuse to spend the holiday weekend digging through the attic to see how many of these toys you still have lying around somewhere.

[Thanks, Sammy]