Portable communicator

Motorola these days is associated with cellular phones and funky tablets; but they have a long history at building gadgets: they invented car radios in the 1930's and they also invented the earliest personal communication devices: the hand-held "Handie-Talkie", during World War 2.

Heavy and clumsy looking, but this makes for a really exciting collectable.

"Handie talkie", 1945
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The shadow touch

It doesn't exactly say what the shadow touch might be, other than a marketing ploy, but it's thanks to advertisements like this one that we know what the past was like.

Almost terrifying!

"Shadow touch", 1956
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Portable Radio

A marvel of gadgetry in 1940; a portable two-way radio. According to this piece "it can be worn under a coat"

Lucky for us, the 5-pound beast and its unsightly harness was soon rendered obsolete by all the gadgetry invented during the Second World War. Like the walkie-talkie.

"Portable radio", 1940
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You think you're a gadget freak? (3)

A long time ago, there was a machine called a "mimeograph duplicator"; it worked by copying a typed stencil onto sheets of paper, by means of a rotating drum -much like a printing press. 

For many years they were used everywhere, and even tests in some schools were printed using these machines -in a peculiar purple ink. But photocopiers quickly took the market over in the 1970's, and they are now just a memory.

"Duplicator", 1937
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