The CB fad of the 1970s entered the public consciousness through a series of economic, political, and technological circumstances. The 1973 oil crisis, which put long-haul truckers in a tough spot due to gas shortages, along with the new federal 55 mile-per-hour speed limit, made CB radio a key method of information dissemination for truckers in a newly hostile economic environment…

Sony’s first Betamax VCR was the SL-6200, and it was housed in a teak wood cabinet with a 19″ Trinitron TV. The LV-1901 console, as the package deal was called, was released in Japan in May 1975 and debuted in the US that November. Price: between $2,295 and $2,495. Weight? Really fucking heavy…

U.S. Space Camp was inspired by Saturn V designer Werner von Braun—a longtime advocate of a “public program for space science education”—and pioneered by Edward O. Buckbee, a NASA public relations specialist and director of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the location of Space Camp since its inaugural session in 1982…

In April 1977, computer enthusiasts gathered in San Francisco for the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire. (The quirky spelling of the word “Faire” evokes another nerdy subculture born in California: the Renaissance Faire.) Two personal computers that would go on to dominate the first half of the red-hot PC market in the 1980s had their debut that year: the Commodore PET and the Apple II…

Combining the insular self-sufficiency of a lunar module with the intimidating bulk of a futuristic tank, the GMC Motorhome was the perfect attack vehicle for the leisure wars of the 1970s when—encouraged perhaps by the hermetic novelties of the space race—the recreational activities of the wealthiest fragment of the planet began to reflect a growing preoccupation with what we might call modular living…