Get IT Done - Wind IT Up

I am organic to the area, raised in the white Winter fields of upstate NY. This season brings me many fond memories; skating, tobogganing, and sitting around a warm fire with a hot chocolate. While the snowy weather may be my most persistent memory, my most exciting reminiscences involved the “magic” of the holiday season.

As a Rochesterian born in the 50s, we had no indoor suburban malls, but we had Midtown Plaza. At Midtown towered Santa’s seasonal home, Magic Mountain. It was breathtaking (for a child). While I remember it in detail, I cannot attest that my memory isn’t blurred a bit with a scene from “A Christmas Story”. I didn’t really believe in Santa, but I was super excited to ride Midtown’s monorail. I remember traveling the perimeter of the mall over crowds of people at a dizzying height of [probably] fifteen feet.

While this was a time of gift giving, the only gifts I cared about were toys. Socks, bathrobes, and sundry other items were not gifts. In this article we will talk about toys because the history of toys is intertwined with IT. While the transistor was invented in 1947, it took decades for them to find their way into toys. This article describes the evolution of toys; from passive, to electrified and then “chipped”.

In the early years (1940s & 50s) board games were the rage, Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, Scrabble, and Clue, to name a few. Some of these early toys still endure; Slinky, Magic 8 Ball, Silly Putty, Mr. Potato Head, Matchbox Cars, Frisbees, Gumby, and Play-Doh. In those days, if toys moved, they did so with wind up motors. A few toys had an electrical component, but none employed Information Technology (“IT”) which is no surprise as the science remained esoteric.

The 1960s see an increase in electric toys. Electric Sports Games, Race Cars, Lite-Brite, Ovens, and a plethora of Trains. Curiously, the first electric train was not created as a toy. The first “toy train” was designed as an eyecatching display for a New York store window in 1901. In the 60s, there was an exploratory foray into gaming with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey platform. This platform was awkward as you needed to overlay the Odyssey screen on the television screen to create the gaming visuals. The seventies brought a Cambrian explosion of IT in toys. It began with Intel’s release of the world's first microprocessor in 1971. Shortly thereafter, Atari gave us the first home video games that we could play through our TVs. By introducing addictive games like Pong, Atari drove the Magnavox Odyssey out of business. Computer chips began to be ingrained into traditional toys including dolls and stuffed animals like Teddy Ruxpin and My Buddy. In the 1990s, the chips became the toys with Furby, Tamagotchi- Sky, and Giga Pets.

As interesting as IT enabled toys became, it is gaming that now dominates the market [by revenue]. It began in the late seventies with Space Invaders and Pac-Man being released in quick succession. Then came a steady progression of gaming platforms. Each new generation created ever more compelling worlds through upsurges in texture and spatial rendering. This pitted Americans against each other in a new "standards war"; Nintendo 64 vs Xbox. In 2006, Nintendo also released the Wii which shook up the gaming community by introducing motion sensitive controllers.

Chips now saturate toys and spill into most of our other possessions. As discussed in other articles, we are now moving into the age of the Internet of Things (IoT) where everything will be “chipped”.

If you are interested in toys; old, new, and in between, the Strong Museum is the place you should visit. It is a local jewel of a museum. It is a place that is enjoyable for both children and grandparents.

Wind IT up and have a wonderful holiday season!

Think About IT!

Tony Keefe, COO, Entre Computer Services www.entrecs.com