The Philco, a shortened version of The Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, was a pioneer in early radio and television and an early manufacturer of transistors, starting in 1953 with the famous Surface Barrier type (SBT).

The Philco in our collection originally belonged to Nancy Foltz (her name is still visible on the leather case) and is in remarkably good condition.  If you turn it just so, you can still pick up a pretty decent radio signal.  Not bad for a gadget pushing 50.

Compare that to when the first iPod was launched. Steve Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

I remember when I finally gave in and purchased my first iPod, albeit a mini (turquoise blue!), but nevertheless still an iPod.  I thought it was the most revolutionary piece of equipment to hit the market since the bread slicer.  Something tells me Nancy Foltz was thinking the same thing back in 1959.

Now with my 120GB sixth-generation iPod, I consider myself at the forefront of portable media technology, but also still scratching my head at how familiar the Philco transistor looks.

A while back BBC News reported on these same similarities in an article comparing the Regency TR-1 transistor radio to the iPod mini.

If you put the two side by side, they look incredibly similar; same rectangular shape and roughly the same length.  Of course the iPod is lighter, but not by too much.  Both offer (or offered) a multitude of colors with accompanying cases.  I guess when you think back to technology 50 years ago, you’d expect it to be far more different. Here’s a line-up of an iPhone and the Philco:

Not exactly what you would call uncanny.

So next time you cruise the streets with your latest and greatest MP3 player, just try not to get too caught up in your trendy ways.  Because let’s face it, Nancy Foltz was doing the same thing 50 years ago with a device that looked just like yours.

Museum of Mobility History – Mattel Football from Mobility Public Relations on Vimeo.

Every once in a while we will grab an item from our collection and showcase it with video. This post features Mattel’s Football game – a product near to our heart. We fondly remember getting the game as a holiday gift, ripping it out of the box, playing it, and figuring out the defense by that morning.

Originally released in 1977, the game was originally shelved by Sears, its distributor, due to low sales. They noticed that sales bumped a bit, re-released it, and sold millions of units.

The same game was actually re-issued in 2000 as an exact replica – and is even now offered as an app on the iPhone.

If you ever happen to stop by MuMoH and you want to challange us to a game of Football – you’re on!

MobHappy’s Russell Buckley has a wonderful post that points to a presentation from 2000 that forecasts the future of mobility. Some of the technology:

• Wireless headset? Check.
• Pocket MP3 player? Check.
• Digital camera with built-in modem? Close.
• Glasses for watching DVD movies? Not quite yet – though on the way – we saw one at CTIA last April.

Slides from a presentation given by O2 – just a mere eight years ago — also show a mock-up of a mobile worker [done tongue in cheek but still pretty spot on] and how users will be using mobile devices.

Our museum is chock full of mobile devices that look like they’re from two decades ago but in reality are only a few years old. Years from now I suppose my toddler will get a nice chuckle at the expense of my iPhone [“You had to use your finger to move text?”].

Any guesses on where the mobile space will be in 2016?