This 18″x24″ wall poster includes some of the best and worst moments in the history of Apple, ranging from the original Apple II to the Mac to the systems of Apple’s “dark” period, like the Quadras, Performas, eMate 300 and the hideous first-gen iBook. You know, the one that looked like a toilet seat.

While the chart seems fairly comprehensive from 1983 through 2011 – all the way up to the iPhone 4S, you won’t find Apple’s XServw line, some of the special educational models, or the earliest Apple models like the Apple I, Apple II and II+. I wonder why they chose to skip those. I’m a bit of a completionist, so would like to have seen EVERY Apple system ever. Except for those awful 3rd party clones from the likes of Power Computing, Motorola and UMAX. I’d rather forget that era.

Regardless, it’s still a pretty cool bit of chart-art for Apple fanatics. Each poster is signed and numbered by the artists, from this limited second-edition of just 1000 prints. I you’d like one for your wall, you can order it from Brooklyn’s Pop Chart Labs for $25(USD).

Apparently, the thought is the contract will fetch in the area of $100,000 to $150,000 (USD). The document will be auctioned as part of the Fine Books and Manuscripts auction on December 13, 2011 in NYC. Sotheby’s books and manuscripts head says that the document is a foundational document in terms of tech history. The contract has the signatures of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

Every time I hear the name of the third Apple founder, I feel sorry for him. Wayne gave up his shares of Apple for a mere $2,300 back in the day. The shares would be worth somewhere around $2.6 billion today. The document showing Wayne’s departure and the first $800 payment is included with the auction. He would later receive another $1500 when they converted Apple from a partnership to a corporation.

[via PCMag]

In The History of Nintendo, Volume One, author Florent Gorges (along with Isao Yamzaki) carefully documented the beginnings of Nintendo, dating back to as early as 1889, all the way through 1980.

The book is the first of a ongoing series, with 240 full color pages, and over 2,000 images of hundreds of Nintendo products over their first Century of operation. Every card game, toy and product that could be found is documented in the pages of the book.

From Nintendo’s Hanfuda playing cards, to the awesomely cheesy Love Tester is covered in rich historical detail, with photographs to back up the story.

The publishers of the book, Pix’n Love Publishing were kind enough to share some scans of the interior of the book for us to post, and it really looks like a wonderful book for any serious video game or Nintendo fan.

Inside the covers, you’ll also find some of Nintendo’s early arcade games from the 1960s and 1970s, along with their first home video game systems, leading all the way up the the introduction of the Game and Watch series. You’ll also discover things that you never knew Nintendo made, like baby strollers, slotless race cars, and even the Japanese version of Twister.

What you definitely won’t find in Volume One are the NES, Game Boy, SNES, N64, Gamecube, NDS, 3DS or Wii, all released after 1980.  And since Volume Two is focused entirely on the Game and Watch series, you’ll have to wait until (as yet unannounced) future volumes to get into Nintendo’s real gaming hey-day.

You can order The History of Nintendo, Volume One now over at Pix’N Love’s website for £24.99 (~$40 USD).

The 4-minute clip was created by a team of game design students in Munich, Germany, and it walks us through many of the highlights of video gaming throughout the years. The clip starts out with 1958′s Tennis for Two (played on oscilloscope), all the way through God of War III on the PlayStation 3.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Granted, they did skip over some pretty major milestones (like Pong, Space Invaders, the Atari 2600 and the entirety of handheld gaming), and God of War III came out after Rock Band – but I do give them credit for their creativity and single-shot video composition skills. Plus, it was just fun to watch all those classic games one more time.

[via Kotaku via Engadget]

In celebration of the dawning of the modern console era (ok, the Dreamcast was really the better console, IMHO), Sony has released this short film documenting the brief history of the PlayStation line…

My, how far we’ve come. I still miss the original Parappa the Rapper, though. I don’t think they’ll ever recapture that magic. Ya gotta believe, I suppose.

That’s Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube. Behind him are elephants. Aaaand that’s about it. Not a promising first, but a first nonetheless.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Elephants are cool because of their long trunks. Enlightening stuff. Was he stoned when they filmed that? Probably just nervous. But if you think about it, a lot of YouTube videos are still essentially like that – pointless and time-wasting. But we’ll keep on coming back, because hey, what else are we going to do at the office?

[via Gearfuse]

Fast forward to 2009, and after 30 years it’s quite unfortunate to see that the brand has not aged well. Its latest flag bearer – the Walkman X – is freakin’ expensive and has poor online capabilities, but at the end of the day it’s an excellent music player, and that’s what the brand is all about. To celebrate it’s 30th anniversary, Sony made a chronological montage of the bajillion iterations of the Walkman.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I wasn’t born in ’79 but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t recognize almost all of those models. This is how a techie like me knows he’s getting old, by the number of models that a gadget has had in his lifetime. Dammit. At least I can say that I’m just 3 PlayStations old. Or is it 7 PlayStations?

[via Akihabaranews]

The machine takes advantage of the fact that patents often refer to other (or earlier) patents to connect the words that it got from the book. I’m not 100% sure but I think this is how it works: if for example the first two words that the machine got from a book are “fox” and then “dog”, the machine will first look for a patent with a drawing of a fox. But before looking for a drawing of a dog, it looks for a third patent drawing that will connect the fox-patent to the dog-patent. Then it draws the fox, then the connection between the fox and the dog – a patent for a foxdog? – and then the dog.

In essence, it turns a text-based story into a technological history of sorts. Here’s the Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus in action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Honestly I found it to be a bit boring. Maybe if I knew exactly which “recent best-selling book” it started from I could appreciate the drawings more. Or maybe I should see it live. As it is, I don’t have context, and the drawings make little to no sense to me. Definitely weird though.

[via likecool]

Artist/Designer/Illustrator Kyle Bean recently created Mobile Evolution, an intricate set of nesting models from cardboard. See how each phone fits neatly inside it’s older, larger sibling?

Designs start with the classic late 1980s Motorola DynaTAC “brick” phone and take us all the way up to the Apple iPhone (though I’m not sure if that’s the 3GS there). See if you can name all the phones without cheating.

Be sure to check out the video clip over on Kyle’s portfolio page to see how they all fit together.

And if you happen to be in the UK, you can see Mobile Evolution in person for the next couple of weeks over at the YCN Building at 72 Rivington Street in London.

[via Creative Review via Tina Paterson via Wired via Gadget Venue (phew!)]

Regency TR-1
Back in 1954, I.D.E.A. released the very first portable transistor radio. The Regency TR-1 radio measured 3″ x 5″ x 1.25″ and featured an analog AM tuner. In a strange prediction of things to come (I’m talking to you iPod), the Regency came out in a variety of colors over the years, ranging from a simple bone white to pearlescent lavender and lime colors.

The TR-1 tuned stations by a simple gold dial and played through a low-fidelity monophonic speaker. It retailed for $49.95 back in the day, which would make it cost around $325 in today’s dollars.

KLH Model 11 Portable
With the companies he founded still making an impact on today’s audio scene, Henry Kloss developed the very first portable stereo back in 1962 when he released the KLH Model 11.

The Model 11 was the first transistorized stereo system, and featured a record player, amplifier and two speakers which all folded neatly into a “suitcase” for easy transportation. While the stereo only ran on A/C power, not batteries, it still was a milestone in the development of portable music players.

Philips Compact Cassette and the Norelco Carry-Corder 150
In 1965, Philips released the first ever compact cassette tape. Originally designed for recording dictations and other boring stuff, the cassette recorded up 45 minutes of sound on single 1/8-inch tape.

To compliment Philps’ innovation in recording media, they released the battery-powered Carry-Corder 150 cassette recorder. It ran on 5 flashlight batteries and weighed in at over 3 pounds (fully loaded). Later, Mercury Records would release a selection of music on Philips cassettes for about $6 a piece. Cassette and 8-track tapes would dominate the portable music world for the next 20 years.

Sony Walkman TPS-L2
Back in the 1970′s and 1980′s Sony was the king of miniaturization, and in 1979, they released the first truly self-contained portable music system, the TPS-L2 Walkman cassette player.

The Walkman’s real innovation was its size, measuring only slightly larger than a cassette tape itself. Featuring a pair of portable, lightweight headphones and operating on AA batteries, it ushered in a new era of portability. The original Walkman retailed for 33,000 Japanese Yen, which would be around $274 US dollars today. The Walkman went on to sell millions of units and spawned numerous variations and imitators for many years after its initial release.

Sony Discman D-50
As CDs overtook cassette tapes in both sound quality and popularity, Sony saw the need to update its popular Walkman line for a new generation.

In 1984, on the one year anniversary of the introduction of compact discs, Sony introduced their D-50 portable CD player, the first ever portable digital music player. The D-50 was actually my own first foray into portable music players, and it truly was a marvel. Just slightly larger than a CD case, the player offered all of the great audio quality that digital recordings had to offer.

SaeHan / Eiger Labs MPMan F10
The very first solid state commercial music player didn’t come from Apple, Diamond or Creative as many think. In fact, it came from a Korean company called SaeHan Information Systems, and was imported to the U.S. by Eiger Labs. The MPMan was the very first MP3 player of all time. It featured a whopping 32MB of RAM (expandable to 64MB by sending the player back to Eiger for an upgrade,) and held about 8 average length tracks (around 32 minutes of music.)

The MPMan appeared on shelves in the summer of 1998, and ran on a rechargeable NiMH battery pack. Since the player used solid state memory, it actually had about 9 hours of battery life, which is still better than many hard drive based players today.

Apple iPod and iTunes
Leave it to Apple to stand back, look at what other companies were doing wrong, and to vastly improve upon their mistakes. The original iPod, released in 2001 combined a 5GB hard drive with a rechargeable battery pack and a paradigm breaking user interface. Marketed by Steve Jobs as “1000 songs in your pocket,” the iPod didn’t necessarily do that much differently under the hood from other MP3 players, but it had a sleek design (by 2001 standards), a unique and simple navigational system, and the Apple brand name to back it all up.

Initially, the iPod only supported Macintosh computers, and the only way to get music tracks was to record from your own CDs or from (often illegal) downloads on the Internet. In 2003, Apple released iTunes and opened their iTunes store, which made it easy to purchase legal music downloads for just 99 cents a track. Shortly afterwards, they introduced a Windows-compatible version of their software.

With their one-two punch of form and function, Apple continues to dominates the portable music player market today. Over the years Apple has continued to release a plethora of new iPod models, including the recent addition of video playback, and the forthcoming iPhone.

Only time will tell how portable media players will evolve. With innovations like touchscreens, high definition video playback, wireless streaming, low cost solid state memory and more on the horizon, the first 50 years were just the beginning.